Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to address the overfitting and collinearity problems that frequently occur in predictive cost estimating models for construction practice. A case study, modeling the cost of preliminaries is proposed to test the robustness of this approach.

A hybrid approach is developed based on the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and principal component regression (PCR). Cost information for a sample of 204 UK school building projects is collected involving elemental items, contingencies (risk) and the contractors’ preliminaries. An application to estimate the cost of preliminaries for construction projects demonstrates the method and tests its effectiveness in comparison with such competing models as: alternative regression models, three artificial neural network data mining techniques, case-based reasoning and support vector machines.

The experimental results show that the AIC–PCR approach provides a good predictive accuracy compared with the alternatives used, and is a promising alternative to avoid overfitting and collinearity.

This is the first time an approach integrating the AIC and PCR has been developed to offer an improvement on existing methods for estimating construction project Preliminaries. The hybrid approach not only reduces the risk of overfitting and collinearity, but also results in better predictability compared with the commonly used stepwise regression.

As a viable housing option for older people, retirement villages need to provide a sustainable living environment that satisfies their residents’ needs in terms of affordability, lifestyle and environmental friendliness. This is, however, a significant challenge for not-for-profit developers because of the high upfront costs involved in using sustainable practices. The purpose of this paper is to identify the sustainable features and practices adopted in not-for-profit retirement villages.

Because of the lack of quantitative historical data, a case study approach was adopted to identify the sustainable features and practices used in a not-for-profit retirement village in Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Data were collected based on interviews, direct observation and documentation, and collected data were analysed by using content analysis.

The research findings indicate that similar to private developers, not-for-profit developers also have the capability to make their village environment sustainable. In this case, the sustainable practices cover various aspects including the selection of village location, site planning, provision of facilities and services, social life and living costs. Although the associated costs of adopting sustainable features is a concern for both developers and residents, some of the identified sustainable practices in this case do not result in significant cost increase but can improve the residents’ quality of life substantially.

The research findings provide a number of practical implications on how to deliver sustainable retirement villages in a not-for-profit village setting.

This paper provides a first look at sustainable features and practices adopted in both the development and operation stages of a not-for-profit retirement village.

Bayesian approaches have been widely applied in construction management (CM) research due to their capacity to deal with uncertain and complicated problems. However, to date, there has been no systematic review of applications of Bayesian approaches in existing CM studies. This paper systematically reviews applications of Bayesian approaches in CM research and provides insights into potential benefits of this technique for driving innovation and productivity in the construction industry.

A total of 148 articles were retrieved for systematic review through two literature selection rounds.

Bayesian approaches have been widely applied to safety management and risk management. The Bayesian network (BN) was the most frequently employed Bayesian method. Elicitation from expert knowledge and case studies were the primary methods for BN development and validation, respectively. Prediction was the most popular type of reasoning with BNs. Research limitations in existing studies mainly related to not fully realizing the potential of Bayesian approaches in CM functional areas, over-reliance on expert knowledge for BN model development and lacking guides on BN model validation, together with pertinent recommendations for future research.

This systematic review contributes to providing a comprehensive understanding of the application of Bayesian approaches in CM research and highlights implications for future research and practice.

Many cities across the world are actively investing in ways to excel in the innovation economy through the development of innovation districts as one of the most popular policy options. While innovation districts are among the leading drivers of innovation activities in cities, they are also high-cost and high-risk investments. Besides, holistic approaches for assessing these districts’ multifaceted performances are scarce. Bridging this knowledge gap is critical, hence, this paper aims to explore how innovation district performance can be assessed through a classification framework.

The paper introduces a multidimensional innovation district classification framework and applies it into Australian innovation districts with divergent features, functions, spatial and contextual characteristics. The study places 30 innovation districts from South East Queensland under the microscope of the framework to assess the multifaceted nature of innovation district performance. It uses qualitative analysis method to analyse both the primary and secondary data, and descriptive analysis with basic excel spreadsheet calculations to analyse the validity of the data.

The data analysis clusters 30 innovation districts from South East Queensland under three performance levels – i.e. desired, acceptable and unsavoury – concerning their form, feature and function characteristics.

The results disclose that the framework is a practical tool for informing planners, developers and managers on innovation district performances, and it has the capability to provide guidance for policymakers on their policy and investment decisions regarding the most suitable innovation district types and characteristics to consider.

This study aimed to identify driving factors of safety attitudinal ambivalence (AA) and explore their influence. Construction workers' intention to act safely can be instable under conflicting information from safety management, co-workers and habitual unsafe behaviour. Existing research explained the mechanism of unsafe behaviours as individual decisions but failed to include AA, as the co-existence of both positive and negative attitude.

This study applied system dynamics to explore factors of construction workers' AA and simulate the process of mitigating the ambivalence for less safety behaviour. Specifically, the group model building approach with eight experts was used to map the causal loop diagram and field questionnaire of 209 construction workers were used to collect empirical data for initiating parameters.

The group model building identified five direct factors of AA, namely the organisational safety support, important others' safety attitude, emotional arousal, safety production experience and work pressure, with seven feedback paths. The questionnaire survey obtained the initial values of the factors in the SD model, with the average ambivalence at 0.389. The ambivalence between cognitive and affective safety attitude was the highest. Model simulation results indicated that safety experience and work pressure had the most significant effects, and safety experience and positive attitude of co-workers could compensate the pressure from tight schedule and budget.

This study provided a new perspective of the dynamic safety attitude under the co-existence of positive and negative attitude, identified its driving factors and their influencing paths. The group model building approach and field questionnaire surveys were used to provide convincible suggestions for empirical safety management with least and most effective approaches and possible interventions to prevent unsafe behaviour with tight schedule and budget.

Service-oriented innovation economies are becoming the new trend for the construction industry. Benchmarking the quality management level of developed countries and improving quality management are also becoming necessities for promoting innovation in the economy. The purpose of this study is to analyse the internal relationships between the five enablers of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence model, based on a market-oriented strategy, to serve as a framework for managing and improving quality.

Considering the different market environment and culture, this study refines the strategy enabler based on Zebal and Goodwin's (2011) Developing Country Market Orientation Scale, and builds a market-oriented EFQM Excellence model. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to analyse the results of a questionnaire survey of 683 China construction industry top enterprises to explore the internal relationships between the model's five enablers.

(1) “Leadership” has a positive influence on “Market-Oriented Strategy”, “People” and “Partnerships and Resources”; (2) “Market-Oriented Strategy” has positive influence on “Partnerships and Resources”; (3) “People” has a low influence on “Processes, Products and Services”; (4) “Partnerships and Resources” has a medium influence on “Processes, Products and Services” and (5) the relationships between “Market-Oriented Strategy” and “People”, “Partnerships and Resources” are not significant.

This study refines the strategy enabler of the original EFQM Excellence model with Zebal and Goodwin's (2011) Developing Country Market Orientation Scale. It also develops a market-oriented EFQM Excellence model that is suitable for developing countries, and it tests the implicit relationships of its five new enablers in an innovation environment where cultural differences exist.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel version of Dunning’s eclectic paradigm of internationalisation (OLI framework) to explain both inbound and outbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multinational contracting.

The OLI factors and hypothesis are significantly developed to address a weakness in the OLI framework in its application to settings, such as multinational contracting, with extreme heterogeneity arising from extreme location specificity.

These developments advance Dunning’s seminal contribution and bring this to life in construction research that has barely applied the framework and, when doing so, has focused only on outbound FDI by multinational contractors (MCs).

The power of the OLI framework is increased on explaining and predicting FDI in contexts that exhibit extreme heterogeneity associated with extreme location specificity. Furthermore, the operationalisation of key theories representing the framework’s OLI factors is made far more precise.

Engineering, construction and architectural managers, can now more reliably apply the OLI framework both in MCs’ outbound FDI decisions and in governments’ decisions to attract new MCs – or inbound FDI.

A significant advance is made in the OLI framework in settings with extreme location specificity, along with the operationalisation of key theories associated with the OLI factors, including the first steps to operationalise Coase’s Nobel prize-winning transaction cost thesis.

Adoption of building information modelling (BIM) in facilities management (FM) provides an information platform to store and exchange asset data. Quantity Surveyors, with cost management expertise, are increasingly involved in FM roles in the operation phase. However, no study has been conducted on how BIM may assist Quantity Surveyors when contracted in FM roles. This study aims to identify the potential benefits and challenges of using BIM by Quantity Surveyors in FM roles.

Interviews were conducted with eight professionals from an international built and natural asset design and management company and its FM business partner in Australia.

Lack of complete and accurate data was the main issue faced by Quantity Surveyors in FM. The benefits of BIM in FM were digitizing and storing asset information and developing a cost database that would be useful for Quantity Surveyors, whereas challenges included keeping model data up to date, cost, industry resistance to change and contractors' lack of model use.

This study contributes to revealing the niche adoption of BIM by Quantity Surveyors in FM and identifying the issues faced by Quantity Surveyors in FM roles using BIM. It contributes to the knowledge of BIM adoption in post-construction. Findings will be useful to develop strategies for adopting BIM in FM and supporting Quantity Surveyors' roles in FM.

The smart building concept has gained prominence in the construction sector during the past decade. In the United Arab Emirates, although smart building technology has been widely adopted in different building sectors, no empirical studies have examined the applicability of the smart buildings concept in prison facilities. The current study aims to understand the current status of prison buildings in the UAE and the challenges faced by the prison industry to implement new smart technology.

This study involved a semi-structured interview consisting of 14 participants who were interviewed face-to-face about their opinion about the objectives of the study. The interviewees were experts from the prison and construction industry of the UAE working at the top management level. Mind-maps were created from the thematic data using Nvivo software.

The results demonstrated that among current issues prevailing in prisons, overcrowding was regarded as the most severe issue. Additionally, in most cases, there is no systemic classification of inmates. Concerning the potential challenges in the implementation of smart technologies in the prison buildings, being too old and outdated of prison buildings are a significant concern, followed by a substantial gap in the approval system of budget to purchase new smart technology.

The findings of this study are of vital importance and help to identify potential challenges involved in the implementation of smart technologies in prison buildings that should be taken into consideration before selecting any new smart technology.

The increasing need for sustainability-literate construction professionals has prompted higher education institutions to incorporate a sustainability agenda education into their construction courses. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sustainability knowledge embedded into a quantity surveying (QS) undergraduate course.

Using the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) as a case study, analysis of sustainability knowledge embedded into the QS course is conducted by examining the content of QS course structure, unit aims, learning outcomes, assessment framework and weekly lecture and tutorial materials.

The results show that the “incorporation approach”, i.e. the practice of incorporating the sustainability themes into existing relevant subjects, is mainly used in delivering the sustainability knowledge to the QS students. Additionally, it is found that in its QS course, QUT has covered all aspects of sustainability comprehensively from an environmental viewpoint and with regard, to economic, social and governance aspects.

This research also proposes recommendations for further improvement of the sustainability education in the QUT QS course and beyond.

This study revealed the current practices and approaches of incorporating sustainability knowledge into QS education programme and addressed the knowledge requirements of future sustainability literate QS professionals.