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Clients of the construction industry, an important segment of the project management (PM) discipline, can make an important contribution to the occupational health and safety (OHS) performance of the construction projects they procure. This practice note aims to describe an initiative of the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner in Australia.

A model client framework was developed to assist Australian Government agencies to embed OHS into their procurement and PM practices.

The model client framework establishes principles for the management of OHS in construction projects and establishes processes for client involvement in OHS through the planning, design and procurement, construction and completion stages of construction projects. Within each project stage, key management actions are established for Australian Government agencies.

The model client framework will enable Australian Government agencies to operate in a consistent framework and on a similar footing, with respect to the management of OHS in their construction projects. This practice note describes the key components of the framework.

The model client framework is the first comprehensive set of tools and resources to support construction clients to integrate OHS into their procurement and PM processes. The life‐cycle approach ensures that OHS information is transferred throughout the construction supply chain from the client, through the designer, constructor and ultimately to the end‐user. The Framework shows how the integration of OHS into all aspects of project decision making (led by the client) can significantly improve the OHS performance of construction projects.

Construction research comprises quality contributions to the modern methods of construction (MMC) context in terms of their benefits and relative advantages. However, the uptake of MMC is yet deemed very low in the public sector. Knowing that public clients acquire the purchasing power and the influential status to drive industry change, understanding their low MMC uptake is necessary.

A systematic review of literature has been chosen to extract the key variables contributing to the limited adoption of MMC across the public sector, reinforced by a qualitative semi-structured interview with 12 industry leaders and public clients. This methodology enables the authors to explore works from the past decade, paving a direction for an adequate empirical investigation by reviewing and critically analysing 49 academic articles and interviewing 12 industry leaders and public clients.

The study captured and argued the characteristics that have an influence on public clients' decision, inhibiting the extraction of values associated with greater MMC deployment. A critical analysis resulted in identifying 13 characteristics under 4 main themes, providing a new argument to existing knowledge by calling on the need to better understand public clients and the influence of their own characteristics on their MMC uptake.

This paper utilises the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory which offers constructs that help explain the influence of the characteristics of a decision-making unit. The authors’ knowledge on public construction clients is limited, and more research in this direction may help in better aggregating construction demand. Overall, arguments provided in this paper enable relative improvements in supply's business models when approaching the public market. The study is believed to be in support of the relative governmental efforts to shape effective policies that can enhance innovation uptake among public bodies.

Previous research within the dynamic capabilities literature has primarily targeted the strategic innovation of technology firms and significantly less interest has been given to project-based organizations that operate in the construction sector. A recent study by Davies and Brady (2016) places the dynamic capabilities concept in a project-based context, drawing upon research on dynamic capabilities and organizational ambidexterity. The purpose of this paper is to apply the aforementioned framework in a case involving public construction clients with the aim of examining their approaches for maintaining or developing project capabilities depending on the volatility of the environment.

The study is based on a case study of a decentralized association of 16 healthcare client organizations in Swedish counties, which was compared to a centralized unit for healthcare planning and construction in Norway. In total, 19 interviews were conducted, alongside two workshops and a feedback questionnaire.

The interviewees emphasized the lack of adequate support to handle the increasingly more complex projects. Results indicate the need for a more segmented approach for understanding how dynamic capabilities are managed in client organizations based not merely on the level of stability in the environment, but also taking into account the resources that are utilized. It is further argued that there is a need for a more granular research approach to studying the development of capabilities in a case-based setting, an approach that more specifically links the development of dynamic capabilities with their relevant antecedent activities.

The study sheds light on how the various approaches for maintaining/developing project capabilities available to the public sector construction client depend on the volatility of the environment and the resources they require.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of what clients value from contractors’ services. Understanding client values and the way by which clients perceive value will contribute to client-perceived value within contracting services.

A literature review was conducted to understand how clients perceive value in the construction industry. In addition, conducting expert interviews and document analysis helped in achieving the research purpose.

The findings show that values associated with time, cost and quality can be considered as important client values, while they are not exclusive values for assessing contractor service anymore. Construction clients are concerned about health and safety, low rate of environmental impact, guarantees, creativity, technology transfer, value for money, reliability and tangibles of their contractors’ services. In addition, they value their contractors’ behaviour, attitude and professionalism.

The study has disseminated different client values, through classified outcomes, to make the knowledge area more available to construction service providers. This study’s findings helped in understanding client values and how clients perceive value from contractors’ services. With this information, contractors are able to provide better services to clients. Satisfactory delivery of the values identified in this study is believed to have the greatest impact on client-perceived value within contracting services. Developing a management strategy that recognises, prioritises and satisfactorily delivers these values is essential to ensure that highest level of client-perceived value is achieved.

The construction literature is focussed on traditional values related to time, cost and quality, while this study highlighted the role of values such as trust, commitment, communication and other non-result-ordinated values essential for achieving client satisfaction. This study’s findings proposed a new practical assessment concept to value construction contractor services.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case, with live examples from a construction industry development initiative in India, for developing a proactive construction clients charter; and a core set of key performance indicators (KPIs), as basic tools for facilitating the expectations of this special issue in “securing clients’ organisational objectives and project aspirations throughout construction project lifecycles” apart from empowering construction industry improvements in general.

Having identified 19 critical issues in the Indian construction industry at two construction clients-academia roundtables, two of the “action teams” formed to address specific issue sets, separately developed a relevant construction clients charter and useful KPIs, respectively, through a combination of literature reviews and brainstorming conference calls, along with iterative drafts of, and feedback on interim outputs. Validation of “working papers” presented at a “Consolidation Roundtable” of construction clients and their consultants, elicited further suggestions for fine tuning of final outputs.

The charter was formulated in structured steps, including identifying “priorities” under four categories: overall, expectations from supply chains, by supply chains and by end users. The six sub-heads of the charter are on procurement, design, innovation and technology, project execution, human resource development and worker welfare, and quality, safety and sustainability. The “suggested KPIs” for building clients in India enable organisations to choose: from three different groups (i.e. design phase, construction phase, or business outcomes), and at three different levels (i.e. project/organisation level, benchmarking club level, or industry level).

There is no known overarching Construction Clients’ Charter at present. Some project KPI sets are available elsewhere. However, those developed in India, while focusing on project performance, also connect to organisational performance and business outcomes. Furthermore, KPIs are provided to separately probe client, consultant and contractor performance. Significantly, the charter and KPIs are outcomes from an industry-led self-improvement initiative launched with building construction clients at the forefront, rather than a top-down imposition from government. Furthermore, while prioritising client aspirations, they also address common supply chain and end-user concerns, which may also be interpreted as a longer-term win-win-win client’s aspiration.

The paper seeks to suggest methods that will enable innovative and effective communication and collaboration between clients and construction project management professionals.

The methodology involves workshops with construction clients documented in working documents circulated to participants.

Workshops revealed trends that urge a re‐evaluation of the briefing process. The need for better briefing with the focus on end‐users is increasing. The findings also pointed to difficulties for construction projects to deliver what the user‐clients need. There was considered to be a lack of systems and methods to keep track of user client demands sufficiently and in a satisfactory way. Goals need to be iterated and validated on a regular and coherent basis throughout projects. An increased interest for process‐oriented and strategic briefing was indicated.

Further studies are required to develop a client/user driven construction process that is more than just new statements. Research needs to address not only issues in the business as such, but also what requirements should be put on the education and training of stakeholders who are active in the construction sector.

The paper presents a challenge to the traditional role of several actors; there is a need to communicate core business needs to construction prerequisites in a reciprocal way. There is a need of choosing logic – however, this does not diminish the need for methodologies for capturing, processing and verifying requirements in the process of provision of facilities to a user.

The paper proposes the idea that different logics govern actions by construction industry stakeholders, an issue the construction sector needs to address.

To empirically investigate the problems encountered in trying to integrate supply chains in the UK construction industry and to set these problems in the context of the extensive literature on supply chain management and partnering.

A brief review of current supply chain issues in the construction industry is provided. Three case studies of leading construction clients were carried out and these included public and private organisations from different sectors of the economy, public transport, information and communications technology and vehicle manufacturing. A large number of interviews were conducted with the various clients, their main contractors and key subcontractors and suppliers.

The findings reveal that the large number of supply chain partners and the significant level of fragmentation limit the levels of integration that are achievable. The interplay of environmental and procurement related factors renders the realisation of truly integrated supply chains very problematic and difficult to achieve. Nevertheless the paper identifies some key principles that do need to be followed if the elusive goal of integration is to be eventually realised.

While the present cases were chosen to be representative, they may not necessarily reflect the experiences of all clients and contractors in the construction industry.

This paper adds another dimension to the extensive body of knowledge that already exists on supply chain integration. In particular, it focuses on construction, a large and important sector of the economy but one that does not receive as much research interest as the manufacturing and distribution sectors.

Today there are a number of different types of procurement routes available for clients to choose from. Each different type of procurement (traditional, design and build, management, etc.) has its own proponents and inherent strengths and weaknesses. Selection of optimal procurement systems is difficult, because even experienced clients cannot know all the potential benefits or risks for each system. Procurement is, therefore, a succession of ‘calculated risks’. Industry and academia have focussed research on reducing procurement risk through better procurement‐system selection methods. Current research considers procurement as a set of rationalistic decisions within a closed environment, aiming to produce generic, prescriptive rules for clients and advisers to use to select the ‘best’ procurement route for their project. This paper seeks to identify whether prescriptive procurement guidance was adhered to on a set of case study projects. It was found that clients usually selected appropriate procurement systems, and where an inappropriate system was selected, alterations were made in contract form to incorporate aspects of the ‘best’ procurement route.

Construction industry is a vital sector for national and economic development of any country. Past studies reveal that the Nigerian construction industry is suffering from buildability problems. Buildability improvement is the duty of every key stakeholder, including designers, builders and clients. This study sets out to determine the principal roles of clients in buildability improvement in Nigerian construction projects.

A questionnaire survey was adopted to evaluate construction industry professionals’ views on the roles of clients in buildability improvement in Nigeria. Eighty-one questionnaires were sufficiently filled and returned, representing a return percentage of 76% which formed the basis of this study. Data elicited were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results from factors analysis show that the roles of clients in buildability improvement can be categorised into two constructs: commitment to buildability assessment and other related practices, and adequate planning of project objectives.

This study contributed to more effective buildability studies by highlighting the roles of clients in buildability improvement in the construction industry. An understanding of these roles is very significant for minimising buildability problems as well as for improving and embedding buildability as a practice in the construction industry.

The focus of this work is on the client-designer interface where decisions have significant impact over the lifecycle of the project. Therefore, the briefing stage is examined in the context of clients’ needs which is divided into project-based strategy and broader clients’ strategy. The purpose of this paper is to address the pitfalls in the briefing process which has been attributed to the shortcomings in the client-designer communication interfaces. This will be achieved by developing an automated brief generation framework. The research examines the efficiency of standard approaches to modelling and design, and the benefits that these methodologies have offered to the computer industry. The work reviews the similarities between the two industries and argues in support of the potential benefits in adopting a standard methodology in the construction industry. The structure upon which the framework is developed is based on system analysis and design methodology (SSADM) which has proven to be an effective platform used within the software development industry.

SSADM is an established methodology within the software development industry. The paper will demonstrate that due to fundamental similarities between the construction and software development industries, SSADM is likely to offer a viable platform upon which an automated enhanced brief generation model is developed for use in the construction industry. The construction design and construction process will be mapped on SSADM high-level definition before focusing and honing on the design phase. The methodology for the development of the framework will be based on the rationalist approach of generating knowledge through reasoning leading to model-building.

A model that is based on SSADM is proposed for the design development phase of construction projects. In order to shape the project strategy, the model considers the combined role of clients’ requirements with organisation strategy and environmental factors. The paper has shown that it is feasible to increase the automation of the briefing process and enhanced the briefing output. The model here does not diminish the importance of direct communication between the client and the design team. It provides a more structured way of doing so, while taking advantage of vast array of data and technology in order to improve the brief outcome.

From practical perspective, the proposed framework is in its formative stage, thus requiring incremental refinement through several case studies. This is particularly true about the AI components of the system which typically rely on extensive data representing the real-case scenarios. Therefore, the work invites further research into the examination of various parts as well as the overall system.

There are several ways by which construction projects are procured. There may be fluctuation in their rate of usage, but while there is no indication of any procurement option fading, new ones such as PPP and PFI are periodically introduced. The existence of this diversity is indicative of the fact that the industry tends to respond to problems rather than attempting to instigate a measured solution supported by theoretical underpinning. Subsequently, there have been suggestions of a communication and information discourse between actors and within processes involved in project lifecycle. This project is aimed at addressing the gap in the client-designer communication. The automated approach to brief generation will lead to better briefs while reducing ambiguities as well as the overhead associated with brief generation.

The quality of project brief has a significant impact on decisions at the design stage. In turn, these decisions will influence all phases of construction project lifecycle. The briefing session and requirement analysis of a construction project can be very difficult for inexperienced clients particularly for complex projects. Therefore, there is potential for the process of client-requirement-analysis to be optimised. The work promises to improve the quality of the briefing process, thus helping clients to realise their intended objectives and minimise resource waste.

The work builds on the commonalities of the construction and software development industries and takes advantage of the advancements in the latter. In doing so, project quality is defined quantitatively which is used to develop project strategy in a three-dimensional space. The development of the model was also contingent upon enhancement of artificial neural network structure.