I would like to start this Editorial by extending my gratitude to our ‘invisible’ team of reviewers. The quality of the journal relies heavily on the ability of our reviewers to give expert opinion on manuscripts, and return their reviews in a short timescale. This allows us to provide feedback to authors in a timely manner. We believe this, regardless of outcome, provides our authors with a valuable service. Once accepted, the final articles are promptly published online to await allocation to an appropriate issue. Over the past two years we have improved the efficiency and quality of the review process, and with it an increase in the quality of published articles.
Volume 11 (2015) saw a move from four to six issues per year and an increased page count to accommodate the growing popularity of the journal. This has provided the space to publish a larger number of articles that bridge engineering and design, and which collectively highlight the uniqueness of this journal. In the final issue of Volume 12, there are five articles from authors based in Finland, Malaysia, The Netherlands and the UK.
The first article is concerned with developing university campus spaces through the act of co-creation. Lundström, Savolainen and Kostiainen have investigated user needs and the link to the final product through participatory design in Finland. Their research has followed the progress of a project from the design phase through to six months of the building in use via a case study. In many respects, this article encompasses many of the key themes of the journal, addressing collaborative design and the link between design, engineering and the building in use. Attention to value creation and analysis of the space in use reveals fascinating insights into how best to incorporate user expertise into the design and delivery process. The work also reveals some of the challenges of participatory design as well as the opportunities offered by collaboration.
Our second article looks at the use of prescriptive and performance approaches by healthcare designers in the UK. Wanigarathna, Sherratt, Price and Austin rely on three case studies to investigate designers’ attitudes and practices when involved in the design of hospitals. Their work looks into what evidence is used to inform design decisions and in what way it is used. Analysis of the findings reveals a complex picture, with designers expressing preferences for a wide range of evidence sources and a mix of prescriptive and performance specifications. The findings add both to the body of knowledge on healthcare design and to the literature into how designers use information as part of the design process; a body of work that has its roots in the 1960s and 1970s.
Staying with health, our third article deals with the issue of sleep and the layout of our sleep environment. Sleep quality influences our health and well-being. There are many complex factors that influence the quality of our sleep: ranging from our underlying mental and physical condition, to the position and comfort of the bed to the physical environment of the bedroom (ventilation, temperature, noise, light etc.). Hong, Abdul-Rahman and Wang have investigated subjective sleep quality by applying the Form School Feng Shui model to the sleep environment. Via a questionnaire survey, the authors sought the opinions of 405 respondents. They found that there was a preference for bedrooms arranged on the Form School Feng Shui model, but there was no link to a better sleep quality. Although their work emphasises the difficulty in undertaking such work, it also highlights the need for more (multi-disciplinary) research into this important area.
The well-being theme continues into our fourth article. Although this journal does not cover construction management per se, we do include articles on construction safety given the clear link to design and engineering decisions. The fourth article by Nnedinma is concerned with approaches and motivators of health and safety self-regulation in the Nigerian construction industry. The work provides a unique window into construction in Nigeria and how health and safety is interpreted and applied in a Nigerian context. Although this work is a scoping study, with many limitations due to the context in which the research was conducted, it does reveal previously hidden insights into self-regulation and the internal and external pressures on companies. The results will be useful for design, engineering and contracting firms working in Nigeria.
Our final article for Issue 12 addresses the topical issue of building information modelling (BIM). This time the focus is on BIM and its influence on supply chain partnering. Papadonikolaki, Vrijhoef and Wamelink have employed case studies to investigate collaboration patterns emerging from the use of BIM and supply chain partnerships in The Netherlands. Their work helps illustrate the potential importance of BIM in terms of improving how we work together in temporary project environments. The findings have implications for the implementation of BIM and for the integration of BIM within the entire supply chain, which constitute an issue that will, no doubt, be further addressed in future editions of this journal.