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Cost estimating process is an important element within the project life cycle. Comprehensive information, expanded knowledge, considerable expertise, and continuous improvement are needed to obtain accurate cost estimation. The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical factors that affect accuracy of cost estimation and evaluate the degree to which these factors are important from contractors’ and consultants’ viewpoints.

Qualitative and quantitative research approaches were adopted in collecting and analyzing the data, and testing the hypotheses. Based on the literature review, a questionnaire was prepared and then was modified according to the results of face-to-face open-ended interviews conducted with 11 project managers. The final version of the questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of 265 respondents. For analyzing the collected data Kendall’s and Mann-Whitney tests were conducted.

The analysis revealed that there is a strong agreement between contractors and consultants in the ranking of the factors related to consultant, contractor, design parameters, and information. A slightly weak agreement between contractors and consultants was noted regarding the factors related to market conditions (external factors) and factors related to project characteristics. Furthermore, the results show that the top ten factors affecting the accuracy of cost estimate are clear and detail drawings and specification, pricing experience of construction projects, perception of estimation importance, equipment (cost/availability/performance), project complexity, clear scope definition, accuracy and reliability of cost information, site constraints (access, storage, services), material availability, financial capabilities of the client, and availability of database of bids on similar project (historical data).

Offers an original view of the concept of accuracy of cost estimates as it relates to the efficiency of the project relying on both literature review and empirical evidence.

Construction contractors in Palestine, as in many other developing countries, suffer from many problems. One of their main problems is their inability to meet contractual requirements, such as completing projects within time, at the agreed cost and to the desired quality. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the causes of the non-fulfillment of contractual requirements in three different types of projects: building, road and electro-mechanical projects.

Two methods were adopted to collect the data – qualitative and quantitative. In total, 65 causes were identified from the literature and qualitative semi-structured interviews with professional experts. These causes were classified into five categories: managerial, financial, contractor capabilities, regulations and laws and political. In the quantitative approach, a questionnaire was developed and then distributed to 50 professional experts: 20 building experts, 15 road experts and 15 experts in electro-mechanical projects. A five-point Likert scale was used to assess the importance, from the perspective of the subject matter experts, of the causes that had been identified. About 35 responses, which represent a combined response rate of 70%, were received. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, with the mean, standard deviation and degree of importance for each of the identified causes being determined, and the SPSS software platform used to rank them.

The results reveal that the most important reasons why contractors did not fulfill their contractual requirements in building projects were that contracts were awarded to the contractor offering the lowest price, and the profit margin was low because of intense competition among contractors. In road projects, the most important causes were the poor estimation of the equipment required and a lack of standardized conditions in the construction sector, while in electro-mechanical projects, the most important causes were the inability of the contractor to estimate the cost of the project accurately because of unclear bid documents and a lack of contractor capital.

The results of this study will be useful to stakeholders and Palestinian contractor unions. They can be disseminated to give guidance so that contractors can avoid these problems in future construction projects and enhance their compliance with contractual requirements. Moreover, knowing about these causes may lead to the reduction of conflicts and disputes between contractual parties (owners and contractors), which in turn will be reflected in the work quality and reputation of contractors.

Occupational stress among professionals in construction industry is increasing considerably due to faster economic development projects in many developing countries. Reportedly, construction professionals are the third most affected group after miners and police officers. Hence, the study aims to explore profession-specific occupational stressors, their impact on professional and the prevention strategies in place at an organizational level. The study is further focused to identify specific prevention strategies that can be implemented at the organizational level.

A questionnaire-based survey was performed among construction professionals such as project managers, engineers and quantity surveyors involved in large construction projects to identify occupational stress causing factors pertinent to construction professionals, their impact and occupational stress prevention strategies. Stress prevention strategies at primary, secondary and tertiary levels were analyzed to establish the stress prevention framework for large organizations.

Eleven occupational stress causing factors were identified to be significant in creating negative impact at work. Further, 13 resultant impacts of negative stress were recognized. Three primary prevention strategies, three secondary prevention strategies and a tertiary prevention approach were identified using a factor analysis to manage these occupational stresses at the organizational level.

Impact of occupational stress on construction professionals that may cause poor performance of the industry can be controlled by effectively managing and controlling the negative stresses.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the perception of tradespeople about project-specific constraints (PSCs) influencing construction productivity in Nigeria.

Using a qualitative descriptive survey comprising face-to-face semi-structured interviews and a purposive sampling method, views of eight groups of tradespeople and seven project managers on live construction projects in Nigeria were collected. The study used conventional content analysis with the aid of NVivo 12 pro computer software for the analysis.

The research evaluated the PSCs and their effect on construction productivity of tradespeople. The findings identified five key PSCs, namely: lack of promotions/reward system, unsafe/poor health condition of workers, delay in material availability, inadequate site amenities and an ageing workforce. These results support earlier research on constraints influencing labour productivity, however, the poor health condition of workers and material unavailability appear to be more unique when compared to other previous studies.

The study focussed on the Federal Capital Territory Abuja and the Lagos State of Nigeria. It provides insight into the PSCs influencing the productivity of tradespeople in the Nigerian construction industry. Further research to identify the PSCs in depth, in the Eastern part of Nigeria is necessary.

The PSCs influencing tradespeople’s productivity was identified. The level of the relative impact of the PSCs is expected to guide the project team in addressing the PSCs in a method that is cost effective.

This study is original research that has underlined some areas of improvement in construction project performance.

Construction process is complex and traditionally fragmented; thus, it is almost impossible to have a project completed without changes to the original plan or the construction process. The purpose of this study is to identify and examine the causes of variation orders, ascertain their effects and establish the cost and time performance implication as a result of variation orders.

This study obtained information from 90 construction stakeholders on 30 completed educational building projects to ascertain the causes and effects of variation orders on project delivery using questionnaire survey. In addition to this, a pro forma document was designed to obtain the project characteristics, cost and time data from these 30 completed educational building projects. Factor analysis was used to categorise the causes of variation orders, while severity index was used to examine their effects on project delivery. The hypothesised statement was tested using paired t-statistics to examine whether a statistically significant difference existed between variation orders, cost and time performance of the projects.

The study identified 13 main factors as causes of variation orders and the results revealed that the most frequent effects of variations were increase in construction costs, time, client dissatisfaction, increase construction project rework and demolition and project abandonment. The results also showed that variation orders had significant effects on both cost and scheduled performance of the educational building projects with average cost and time escalation of 33.95 and 29.45 per cent of the original project cost and time, respectively, for the entire projects studied, while average cost implication of variation orders is 23.79 per cent.

The findings in this study will be of assistance to government agencies and management of public works in higher institutions of learning in managing variations in construction projects. The study will also add to the current literature on the impact of variation orders on educational building projects in developing countries. Finally, it will create the much-needed awareness on the severity and implication of change or variation orders on project delivery.

The study identified and examined the causes of variation orders, ascertained their effects and established the cost and time effects of the causes of variation order on project performance. This will assist project initiators, contractors, consultants and other stakeholders to fully appreciate and understand the significant effects of variation orders on project performance.

Stressors emanated from construction projects are causative factors for occupational stress inherent in the construction industry. Concomitant implications of stressors ignite a burst of empirical evidence, which necessitates a systematic review to capture the state of art of the extant literature. Therefore, this paper addresses this significant gap by conducting a systematic review of mental stressors.

A three-stage screening and data extraction method were employed to retrieve 38 papers that met the inclusion criteria for the study.

The annual publication trends and contributions of selected journals were elucidated. Moreover, this review identified 49 stressors from 38 selected peer-reviewed journals between 1997 and 2020. The most frequently reported mental stressors include work overload, home-work conflict, poor working environment, role ambiguity and poor working relationships. The 49 stressors could be classified into five main categories, namely; organizational stressors, task stressors, personal stressors, physical stressors and gender-related stressors.

The findings of the study broaden the understanding of the practitioners and policymakers on the dynamics of stressors for the development of stress interventions. Future research should focus on exploration of mental stressors specific to construction projects and different occupational trades.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main reworks and their causes in a case study of the ongoing mass housing project in Iran. Using the real data captured from the project, the most important causes for reworks have been computed and prioritized.

More than 900 non-conformance forms filled in the construction site have been used to categorize reworks. Then, the frequency and cost of each rework group in the project have been estimated. Finally, using these data, the primary classification and sorting of the main causes of reworks have been specified.

Results show “Poor site supervision and inspection” with 24 percent of costs had the most impact and “unclear project management process” with about 6 percent of costs had the least impact on the formation of non-conformances. “Cost of each incidence” (COI) ranged from 0.67 for “The need to categorize the complicated operations” to 1.86 for “Unclear project management process.”

The causes of rework which are not in contractor’s hand (like change orders from the client) have not been considered in this study.

Although some works have been done in rework causes, the key elements and causes of reworks in mass housing projects in developing countries have not been yet fully specified through the real data. Knowing the root causes of reworks can help project managers to remove them and reduce reworks costs in future projects. COI which is defined here for the first time and computed in a relative concept could be a good criterion to compare rework causes between two or more similar projects.

The pertinent information about green buildings (GB) is laden with cost misperceptions (CM) that are paraded into adoption decisions without factual clarifications. The unsupported beliefs are fundamental to the disparaging low adoption of related technologies globally. The purpose of this paper is to explore the causes of CMs among construction stakeholders and why is it difficult to discredit this information?

The research adopted two-tier approaches involving a Delphi study and a questionnaire survey. Construction stakeholders and GB experts, totalling 415 were surveyed, while 12 professionals participated in the Delphi study. This study analysed data from 254 valid responses using Factor Analysis, Fussy Set Theory and Kruskal Wallis test to explain why CMs are prevalent.

The causes of CMs converge towards seven principal factors including low knowledge of GB practices, non-familiarity with performance metrics, inadequate evidence, poor-risk perceptions and reliance on the costs of exemplar projects. The results were explained using gaps in cost management, knowledge and sustainability accounting to show the critical improvements that can benefit GB adoption.

CMs are not abstract but develop from patterns that can be detected and understood within a specific context. Growing GB projects within a region would improve cost information, sustainability accounting, cost management and quality of evidence. GB cost information paraded into adoption decision processes are overestimated and overvalued beliefs of their financial implications. Tackling the important sources of CMs in the study is appropriate to improve rational decision-making aiding GB adoption.

This study untied causes of negative dispositions towards the cost of GB that distort stakeholders’ adoption decisions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of knowledge management critical success factors (KM CSFs) on project management performance outcomes in major construction organisations in Sri Lanka. As a result, the significant KM CSFs are prioritised to support KM implementation.

This study is cross-sectional in nature, adopting the quantitative method of analysis. The research model includes nine KM CSFs (culture, leadership, organisational structure, IT support, T-shaped skills, training, teamwork, performance measurement and benchmarking) and nine items measuring project management performance outcomes. Data were collected from senior, middle and technical staff involved in projects by means of a self-administered survey questionnaire mailed to them.

The Pearson’s correlation coefficient suggests that all of the KM CSFs are adequately correlated except for organisational structure, which has a poor correlation with IT support, T-shaped skills, teamwork and benchmarking. The results of multiple linear regression show that four KM CSFs (T-shaped skills, teamwork, benchmarking and transformational leadership) are significantly and positively related to project management performance outcomes. The remaining five KM CSFs are not significant. The multiple-criteria decision-making analysis reveals that benchmarking, transformational leadership, teamwork and T-shaped skills are the main priority for the construction organisations to consider in implementing KM.

Future studies should consider construction organisations of multiple sizes and include factors beyond organisational control, KM processes and the effects of demographic variables. Longitudinal studies are also imperative to determine the performance impact brought about by KM implementation over a period of time.

Benchmarking, transformational leadership, teamwork and T-shaped skills should serve as the initial focus to support KM implementation to achieve the desired project management performance outcomes. It is only after these KM CSFs are in place that the construction organisations can concentrate on other factors.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the relationships between the KM CSFs and project management performance outcomes in the construction industry in Sri Lanka, which is still at its infancy stage of KM implementation. Prioritisation of the significant KM CSFs in supporting effective KM implementation in the construction organisations further enhances the value of this study.

Construction management research (CMR) surveys frequently use questionnaires that employ “Likert-type” items, Likert-items, and Likert scales to capture respondents ' self-reported attitudes. This Editorial builds substantially on earlier observations by Holt regarding the significance of appropriate questionnaire response scale design and, use of the relative importance index (RII) method to analyse those data such scales yield. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Several RII models are examined by their application to a data set. Objectives include to contrast their practicality in use, compare outputs, highlight limitations of some models and discuss methods of RII data analysis, interrogation and interpretation.

Principal messages are: all components of response scales should be carefully designed; alternative RII models can produce similar results of analysis; “simple percentage” RII models may not yield “real” percentages; the minimum rating scale integer should accurately reflect its descriptor; only rating scales offering a “0” response, or an “adjusted percentage” RII model can achieve unity; and RII outputs should be interpreted cautiously.

Uncertain application of the RII has been observed within CMR literature, so implications of the Editorial will be of direct relevance to this research community (and beyond).

Aside from that cited above, no additional literature has been identified that specifically links RII usage to CMR.