Editorial

Citation

Akintoye, A., Davis, P. and Holt, G. (2013), "Editorial", Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, Vol. 18 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jfmpc.2013.37618aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, Volume 18, Issue 1

Welcome to Volume 18, Issue 1, of the Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction (JFMPC ) – the first issue of 2013 and the first to include only papers that were submitted via our ManuscriptCentral submission portal. The new submission process is working well to facilitate efficient reviewing and timely publication of papers. The journal’s EarlyCite system is now also established, with electronic versions of papers being available on the web site well before hard copy of the journal is printed and distributed. Next year, EarlyCite papers will be afforded a digital object identifier (DOI, 2012); meaning that all papers published up to and including issue 19.1 (first issue, 2014) should be appropriate (i.e. within the public domain) for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF, 2012) assessment, if authors desire.

We continue to welcome the broadest scope of papers submitted to the journal (that harmonize with our editorial aims – see journal homepage) and are pleased to report a notable increase in property-related studies. This is very encouraging and augers well for the future, in striving to continue as the journal of choice for academics and practitioners wishing to publish in the property and construction finance disciplines. Our aim remains to merge both academia and professional practice; as a mechanism to share leading-edge knowledge and experience. This is increasingly important in the current climate of austerity, with pressure on budgets on the one hand, and a pressing need for investment in construction to kick-start ailing economies and deliver much needed infrastructure on the other. This emphasis on cost has crystallised into a planned special edition of the journal that will concentrate on issues of project cost overrun (provisionally scheduled for Volume 18, No. 3, 2013). Readers are encouraged to view details of the call for papers for this special issue on the journal web site ( JFMPC, 2012) – and we look forward to your contributions on this theme.

And so, to the papers making up Volume 18, Issue 1.

The first paper by Yongjan, Florence and Yan provides a comparative analysis of the public procurement process in four cities: Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong and Sydney. In so doing, the paper investigates the funding sources, organization, regulations, approval process, procurement methods and bid evaluation procedures utilised. The importance of such comparative analysis cannot be overstated. As alluded to earlier, public finances are facing unprecedented demands and meeting these demands requires a willingness to examine and adopt best practice, wherever it can be identified. The paper also casts light on the complexity and variety of processes and procedures that can exist in localised markets – providing a useful context for potential entrants into such markets. Given the size and regional/international importance of the case study cities selected, this is a valuable outcome in itself.

The second paper by Sundaraj and Eaton presents a formal approach to the quantification of “robustness” in PFI projects. This is timely conceptual work that demonstrates potential to develop into a mechanism to monitor and manage this aspect of PFI performance, at an operational level. Such investigation, with prospect to improve the ability to “stress test” key finance mechanisms such as PFI, is at the core of the journal’s remit and continues a tradition of scrutinising the PFI/PPP sector that will be continued in forthcoming issues.

In the third paper Abdulaziz returns to the topic of cost, this time from the perspective of bidding behaviour in the construction industry of Kuwait. The paper applies the “relative importance index” to data, to ascertain the relative importance of key factors. It identifies employer type and identity, project size and clarity of technical specifications as the most important of these in influencing bid mark-up behaviour. This research is of value locally and in similarly situated markets and might be utilised by practitioners and policy makers alike, to remove unnecessary barriers to efficient, cost effective procurement.

Higgins provides the fourth paper which investigates the ability of current forecasting techniques and practice to deal with so-called “black swan” (low probability, high magnitude) events. Given apparent increase in such events (due to factors such as climate change, globalisation and economic instability); it is perhaps important to interrogate current practice. The findings suggest that a simple “no change” model often outperforms industry forecasts in the context of such events. Whilst “predicting the unpredictable” will always present a challenge, it is one which lies before society and one which the insurance and investment communities (among others), increasingly require to be satisfied. Failure to address such shortcomings will carry the risk of devaluing forecasts in particular and professional advice in general – as we advance into an increasingly uncertain (financial) future.

Finally, the paper by Belniak, Leśniak, Plebankiewicz, and Zima considers an element at the heart of cost control – predicting the likely impact of a building’s shape on its construction cost. Whilst modern building technology makes designing and building with complex shapes more achievable, the paper reminds us that there are some fundamental relationships involved. The study interrogates traditional and more modern approaches relevant to building shape cost estimation and provides evidence to support the use of rectangular building forms with approximate 1:2 ratio of sides. This exposition of techniques, metrics and ratios is timely; and of value in ensuring building design can be cost-informed at the earliest stage.

Akin Akintoye, Peadar Davis, Gary Holt