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This chapter discusses the involvement of procurement in smart city development. Procurement plays a vital role in the development of strategies in planning, and execution in the construction industry. This is further introduced into smart city to find the best possible methods of bringing the ideas behind smart city into realisation. The common procurement methods are explained along with their involvement in smart city. Common drawbacks to smart cities procurement and measures to challenges in the procurement of smart city are also explicitly explained in the chapter. Through an identified and accepted procurement method into smart city, the processes involved in executing smart city will be the ones with directions and proper planning.

Distributed photovoltaic (DPV) projects generally have output risks, and the production effort of the supplier is often private information, so the buyer needs to design the optimal procurement contract to maximise its procurement utility.

Based on the principal-agent theory, we design optimal procurement contracts for DPV projects with fixed payments and incentive factors under three situations, i.e. symmetry information, asymmetry information without monitoring and asymmetry information with monitoring. We obtain the optimal production effort and expected utility of the supplier, the expected output and expected utility of the buyer and analyse the value of the information and monitoring.

The results show that under asymmetric information without monitoring, risk-averse suppliers need to take some risk due to output risk, which reduces the optimal production effort of the supplier and the expected output and expected utility of the buyer. Therefore, when the monitoring cost is below a certain threshold value, the buyer can introduce a procurement contract with monitoring to address the asymmetry information. In addition, under asymmetric information without monitoring, the buyer should choose a supplier with a low-risk aversion.

Considering the output risk of DPV projects, we study the optimal procurement contract design for the buyer under asymmetric information. The results provide some theoretical basis and management insights for the buyer to design optimal procurement contracts in different situations.

This paper investigates the impact of green construction procurement practices (GCPPs) on circular economy (CE) success by identifying environmentally sustainable procurement practices that can promote a CE in the construction industry. The goal was to promote circularity in construction through GCPPs.

A quantitative research approach was adopted and purposively selected 100 respondents for a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. Data from the questionnaire survey were analysed using mean score ranking, One-sample t-test and regression analysis.

The study found that using on-site systematic waste management, project stakeholder commitment and support for green practices and environmental requirements in technical specifications, significantly impact CE success in construction, with a 12.8% variance in CE when green procurement is practised. This implies that GCPPs have positive repercussions on CE success, where the CE success is expected to change as GCPPs levels increase.

The study provides insights into green procurement, promoting its use in infrastructure development and aiding clients, particularly in the government sector with insights into the challenges and practices involved in green procurement. Practitioners can also benefit from better implementing CE strategies to draft and manage contracts for infrastructure projects that prioritize circularity.

The limited impact of GCPPs on advancing CE principles in construction suggests policy and practice must strengthen procurement requirements to fully leverage spending and drive the sector’s transition towards a circular model. Also, novel insight is provided into the most effective types of GCPPs for promoting CE success, aiding policymakers in optimizing construction procurement strategies.

The South African Government announced the black economic empowerment (BEE) legislation in 2003 in the public procurement systems. The legislation was deemed a catalyst for the emancipation of the previously disadvantaged citizens due to the apartheid government policies that secluded them from economic activities. This study aims to explore the challenges of black construction professionals with the BEE as a procurement policy.

This study adopted a qualitative research approach. Thirty-five black construction professionals were contacted for interviews, of which 21 responded. Due to the COVID-19 restriction, participants were interviewed using telephone interview techniques. The information received was analysed using the thematic contents analysis method.

The findings revealed the challenges confronting black construction professionals regarding the BEE policy as corrupt practices (leading to the award of contracts to unqualified people), fronting of contractors and individuals for unqualified firms, preventing the participation of experienced and foreign firms, poor policy implementation with no monitoring mechanism and loss of tender due to strict requirements.

Urgent attention is needed to review the BEE policy implementation process by the South African government to address the challenges enumerated by the policy beneficiaries to ensure the achievement of the policy objectives.

This study has identified the challenges of the BEE policy; thus, the government can institute measures to address the hindrances thwarting the beneficiaries from realising the policy objectives.

In most countries procurement is undervalued compared to the attention paid to other key areas of Public Sector Reforms. Ghana represents a case in point. Under the health reforms in Ghana, the Ministry of Health and its partners (donors, financing institutions and the private sector) recognized the importance of procurement in its Medium-Term Health Sector Strategy for Ghana 1997 to 2001. With the aid of an external consultant, using a highly participatory approach in the development, training, and the implementation of new structures and procedures, good results have been achieved. Although work is ongoing and important challenges still need to be addressed, the authors argue that the new procurement structures now in place can serve as an example of a standardized support system for health reforms.

The determination of the most appropriate procurement system for a capital works project is a challenging task for public sector clients considering the array of assessment criteria that are considered and the procurement methods that are available. This is particularly pertinent to the Western Australian public sector where there has been a propensity to use traditional lump sum as the default procurement solution despite knowing that the selection of an inappropriate procurement method may lead to cost and time overruns, claims, and disputes on projects. This paper aims to present a six‐step procurement method evaluation approach that requires public sector agencies to consider in detail an array of options so as to obtain value for money.

A procurement evaluation approach is developed and is examined using a focus group of 12 participants comprising a public sector client, project team and key stakeholders. The focus group was used to examine the developed approach in the context of a real‐life capital works project.

The procurement method evaluation approach was deemed to be pragmatic and enabled decision makers to re‐evaluate outcomes from previous steps in the process. All focus group participants stated the six step process enabled a recommendation that was grounded in reflection and detailed evaluation.

The developed procurement approach has enabled the public sector client to evaluate the way in which it views procurement method selection and examines how “value for money” is obtained.

The six‐step procurement approach makes use of quantitative and qualitative techniques and is reliant on discourse and reflection in making a procurement method recommendation. Consequently, the approach enables public sector clients to account for the complexities often associated with procurement selection.

Offsite construction (OC) is an efficient method to reduce waste in the construction industry from a circular economy perspective. Yet, its uptake is subdued by the ambiguities around its supply chain. Hence, the purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the OC project delivery models, the limitations in their procurement approach to facilitate the resilience of the supply chain and interventions to promote supply chain resilience (SCR) and to identify the gaps in the existing procurement process and propose further research areas that implement strategies to improve SCR.

The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. In total, 41 peer-reviewed research papers published between 2013 and 2023 were shortlisted through the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis guidelines. A descriptive analysis was conducted, followed by a thematic analysis.

The descriptive analysis reveals that the emphasis on digitising OC has shifted to transforming the business model, procurement and supply chain with a human-centric view. In thematic analysis, the predictability of the SC partners and the probabilities of evaluating the prospects are revealed as arbitrary characteristics in the current procurement strategies. Rewarding collaborative relationships among SC partners and incorporating provisions to postpone the module delivery are some interventions to promote flexibility. Drafting comprehensive and effective contracts that address transparency issues and facilitating the need for continuous development of capabilities through procurement are among the further research avenues proposed.

This study is a precursor demonstrating the potential of the procurement process to implement the decrees of SCR for better goal congruence of the OC supply chain.

Infrastructure forms a basis for the operations and sustainability of the modern society. This paper aims to recognize value creation from the infrastructure procurement ecosystem perspective to achieve those goals. The pursuit of enhancing value creation involves an examination of infrastructure procurement challenges, boundaries as well as boundary spanners that facilitate effective knowledge transfer and interaction.

The qualitative study is based on content analysis of 25 thematic interviews. Data was transcribed and coded via Atlas.ti software.

Infrastructure procurement value creation challenges appear complex and related to boundaries that hamper collaboration, coordination and knowledge sharing. Our results show that these boundaries locate within and between different levels of procurement ecosystem. Therefore, value creation in infrastructure procurement requires boundary spanners for leveraging knowledge sharing and interaction. Artifacts, discussion, processes and brokers as identified boundary spanners are strongly nested and interrelated in the industry. Special attention should be given to supporting individuals to act as brokers, since they play the key roles in trust building, culture steering and usage of other boundary spanners.

Promoting value creation in infrastructure procurement helps to achieve socio-economic development goals.

This study offers a unique perspective on value creation in the context of infrastructure by adopting an ecosystem lens and examining boundary crossing mechanisms. The results support future development of collaboration and knowledge sharing practices fostering procurement productivity.