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Railroad transit infrastructures are amongst major capital-intensive projects worldwide, which impose significant risks to the contractors of build-operate-transfer projects because of the fluctuations in steel price fluctuation. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodology for hedging steel price risk using financial derivatives.

Cox–Ross valuation lattice has been used as an option valuation model for determining option’s price for the construction companies involved in fixed-price railroad projects. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted using the financial option Greeks to evaluate the impacts of option’s pricing factors in the total price of option.

The result of valuation shows that European options cost to safeguard against the effects of price risk is only a fraction in contrast to the total cost of steel procurement for a typical railroad construction company. This confirms that using this kind of financial derivative is a beneficial yet effective approach for hedging steel price risk for railroad construction companies.

The applicability of the financial derivatives, both exchange-traded and over-the-counter instruments, is evident in broad financial industry. This paper shows how European options can be readily used for risk management of a typical railroad project, and explains the methodology in a step-by-step procedure.

Although the financial engineering literature is rife of theory and application of derivatives in various contexts, to the best knowledge of authors there is only few papers on the application of these well-developed financial instruments for risk management in construction industry. This study intends to illustrate how financial derivatives can add value to risky construction projects and shed new light in this important application area.

In the UK healthcare sector, funding and provision of public care facilities has been primarily the responsibility of government through the National Health Service (NHS). After decades of under-investment and consequent effects on the quality of care, new procurement routes are currently being used to improve the standards of facilities to meet the requirements of modern care services. This paper critically reviews these new procurement routes in terms of concepts and suitable areas of application, and examines how the principal procurement methods have evolved into the forms used for UK healthcare facilities. The paper outlines recommendations for further research in assessing the suitability or otherwise of these new procurement methods, both for construction projects generally and specifically for healthcare facilities.

Governments throughout the world are being forced to review how to fund the increasing demand and rising expectations of their citizens. This is especially relevant for developing countries, which often have limited capital resources to meet the soaring needs for essential infrastructure. This has consequently led to increased involvement of the private sector in the provision of public services, using various forms of Public‐Private Partnerships (PPPs). It is, however, important for both the public and private sectors to understand the various risks associated with PPPs throughout the whole life cycle of the projects in order to guarantee long‐term success. This is especially true in Nigeria and other countries where the use of PPPs are still in the early stages of development. Sixty‐one PPP risk factors were identified from literature and classified into exogenous and endogenous risks. This paper presents the results of the questionnaire survey that investigated the perception of Nigerian construction professionals on the relative importance of the identified risks and their preferences of allocation between the public and private sectors. The results show that the three most important PPP risk factors in Nigeria are “unstable government”, “inadequate experience in PPP” and “availability of finnance”. The respondents’ risk allocation preferences show that while most of the endogenous risk factors could be assigned to the private sector partner, the public sector should retain political and site acquisition risks, while relation‐ship‐based risks should be shared between the private and public sector partners

The main objective of this paper is to show how fuzzy logic and multiple regression analysis (MRA) techniques can be used by construction companies for determining the size of contingency that will be included in bid prices for international construction projects in a more systematic way and to compare their modelling performances.

The steps followed in the execution of this study mainly consists of: conducting a literature review on international construction in order to identify the factors that may affect contingency amounts that will be included in bid prices for international construction projects; developing the general framework of the proposed contingency estimation model; designing a questionnaire based on the information gathered from the literature review, delivering these questionnaires to construction experts, and obtaining the actual data of 36 international construction projects; developing a fuzzy logic model based on expert judgments and three multiple regression analysis models (MRAM) using the collected data; and comparing the performances of these approaches.

In this study, a fuzzy logic model and three MRAM were developed. Their modelling performances were compared using actual data obtained from 36 international construction projects that had been completed by 20 large-scale Turkish construction companies in 14 different countries. It is found that the developed fuzzy logic model outperforms the MRAM built for the studied projects.

This study shows that fuzzy logic and MRA techniques can be successfully used by construction companies, which predominantly do business in foreign countries, for estimating the size of cost contingency that will be included in bid prices for international construction projects. The modelling performances of fuzzy logic and MRAM are also compared.

The purpose of this paper was to examine UK shale gas viability. The recent commitment to shale gas exploration in the UK through fracking has given rise to well-publicised economic benefits and environmental concerns. There is potential for shale gas exploration in different parts of the UK over the next couple of decades. As argued in this study, if it does, it would transform the energy market and provide long-term energy security at affordable cost.

Interviews with senior practitioners and local communities were recorded, transcribed and entered into qualitative research software Nvivo. Validity and reliability were achieved by first assessing the plausibility in terms of already existing knowledge on some of the economic and environmental issues raised by participants.

Findings from this study suggest that environmental, health and safety risks can be managed effectively provided operational best practices are implemented and monitored by the Health and Safety Executive; Department of Energy, Climate Change; and the Mineral Planning Authorities. Participants further suggested that the integration of shale gas technology will protect consumers against rising energy prices and ensure that government does not get exposed to long-term geopolitical risks.

The present study corroborates the position that environmental, health and safety risks can be managed effectively provided operational best practices are implemented and monitored by the Health and Safety Executive; Department of Energy, Climate Change; and the Mineral Planning Authorities.

The present study confirms that the government is committed to ensuring that the nation maximises the opportunity that cost-effective shale gas technology presents, not just investment, cheap energy bills and jobs but providing an energy mix that will underpin the UK long-term economic prosperity.

The present study corroborates the position that environmental, health and safety risks can be managed effectively provided operational best practices are implemented and monitored by the Health and Safety Executive; Department of Energy, Climate Change; and the Mineral Planning Authorities. As shown in this study, the UK has a very strong regulatory regime compared to USA; therefore, environmental, health and safety risks will be very well managed and unlikely to escalate into the crisis being envisioned.

Efficient manpower planning has been recognized as a critical aspect for the development of an economy. In 2001, the Works Bureau of the Hong Kong SAR Government (predecessor of Environment, Transport and Works Bureau) commissioned an HKPolyU consultancy team to develop a computer‐based model to estimate the demand for different categories of construction personnel. This article presents the concept and features of the manpower demand‐forecasting model developed for the construction industry of Hong Kong. The forecasting model is formulated on the basis of the labour multiplier approach by deriving the relationship between the number of workers required and the project expenditure in the given project duration. Multipliers for 61 project types were derived for 38 labour trades using completed project data. The labour demand by occupation for each project can then be estimated by multiplying the corresponding multipliers and the estimated project expenditure. Several unique features of the model have been developed, including “normalization” and “contract cost adjustment factor”. Normalizing the labour multipliers can facilitate the prediction of occupational labour requirements at different stages of a construction project. The adjustment factor is introduced to eliminate the discrepancy between the original estimates and final contract values so as to enhance the estimation accuracy. The model can also be used to predict the number of jobs created for a given level of investment. The government can apply this model to check and compare which project types will generate most jobs before committing public money. This model could be easily adopted and adapted by foreign construction authorities while planning manpower.

A substantial amount of research argues that built environmental interventions can improve the outcomes of patients and other users of healthcare facilities, supporting the concept of evidence-based design (EBD). However, the sources of such evidence and its flow into healthcare design are less well understood. This paper aims to provide insights to both the sources and flow of EBD used in three healthcare projects, to reveal practicalities of use and the relationships between them in practice.

Three healthcare case study projects provided empirical data on the design of a number of different elements. Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify the source and flow of evidence used in this design, which was subsequently quantised to reveal the dominant patterns therein.

Healthcare design teams use evidence from various sources, the knowledge and experience of the members of the design team being the most common due to both ease of access and thus flow. Practice-based research and peer-reviewed published research flow both directly and indirectly into the design process, whilst collaborations with researchers and research institutions nurture the credibility of the latter.

The findings can be used to enhance activities that aim to design, conduct and disseminate future EBD research to improve their flow to healthcare designers.

This research contributes to understandings of EBD by exploring the flow of research from various sources in conflation and within real-life environments.

This paper aims to develop a fuzzy risk assessment model for construction projects procured with target cost contracts and guaranteed maximum price contracts (TCC/GMP) using the fuzzy synthetic evaluation method, based on an empirical questionnaire survey with relevant industrial practitioners in South Australia.

A total of 34 major risk factors inherent with TCC/GMP contracts were identified through an extensive literature review and a series of structured interviews. A questionnaire survey was then launched to solicit the opinions of industrial practitioners on risk assessment of such risk factors.

The most important 14 key risk factors after the computation of normalised values were selected for undertaking fuzzy evaluation analysis. Five key risk groups (KRGs) were then generated in descending order of importance as: physical risks, lack of experience of contracting parties throughout TCC/GMP procurement process, design risks, contractual risks and delayed payment on contracts. These survey findings also revealed that physical risks may be the major hurdle to the success of TCC/GMP projects in South Australia.

Although the fuzzy risk assessment model was developed for those new-build construction projects procured by TCC/GMP contracts in this paper, the same research methodology may be applied to other contracts within the wide spectrum of facilities management or building maintenance services under the target cost-based model. Therefore, the contribution from this paper could be extended to the discipline of facilities management as well.

An overall risk index associated with TCC/GMP construction projects and the risk indices of individual KRGs can be generated from the model for reference. An objective and a holistic assessment can be achieved. The model has provided a solid platform to measure, evaluate and reduce the risk levels of TCC/GMP projects based on objective evidence instead of subjective judgements. The research methodology could be replicated in other countries or regions to produce similar models for international comparisons, and the assessment of risk levels for different types of TCC/GMP projects (including new-build or maintenance) worldwide.

Benchmarking of best practices has proved useful in the business and manufacturing sectors. However, benchmarking is not established in the construction industry in general and in government organizations in particular. A study of the contractor selection methodologies used by various clients confirms the multiplicity of approaches in practice. This paper aims at identifying some relevant ‘best’ practices and highlighting ‘innovative’ contractor selection approaches that have been used by large public clients. A ‘co‐operative’ and ‘non‐competitive’ conceptual benchmarking model is formulated and presented with a view to encouraging continuous improvement in contractor selection for construction projects.

This book aimed to conceptualise a construction workforce management model suitable for effectively managing workers in construction organisations. To this end, this chapter presents the conceptualised model, which consists of seven workforce management practices with their respective measurement variables. Drawing from existing theories, models, and practices, the chapter concludes that a construction organisation that will attain its strategic objectives in the current fourth industrial revolution era must be willing to promote effective recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits, performance management and appraisal, employee involvement and empowerment, training and development, as well as improving workers emotional intelligence and handling external environment pressure. These practices can promote proactiveness, participation, and improved skills and can lead to effective commitment, better quality, and flexibility within the organisation.