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The construction industry suffers from significantly large number of insolvencies than other industries due to its inherent characteristics and these have dire consequences on project participants and the industry at large. The purpose of this paper is to determine both the causes of liquidation and the distribution of losses to construction parties through an analysis of liquidators' reports on some construction firms based in New Zealand.

The study collates primary information from Liquidators' reports for firms operating within three main sub‐sectors of the construction industry. The information was then analysed using simple interpretative techniques for the period covering 2005 to 2009. Altogether the data set used for the analyses included 65 construction firms.

The major reasons for construction insolvencies are found to be: financial difficulties due to non‐payment, poor debt management, drop in property prices, and the liquidation of related companies. Other reasons are discussed within the paper. The paper also illustrates that liquidation of construction firms causes payment delays and consequential losses to project stakeholders. The results show that settlements of trade creditors take an average of 18 months and payment is usually not received fully after liquidation proceedings. It is apparent that there is little security for payment losses in construction insolvencies.

In this paper, information on reasons for and the consequences of liquidation provide a valuable thought‐starter for managing payment problems in the construction industry. The paper extends knowledge on possible security to payment losses experienced by lower tier project participants when the upper tiers become illiquid.

Despite the benefits provided by the implementation of the lean philosophy, the most recent research discusses whether the high degrees of efficiency obtained with the implementation this philosophy could contribute positively or negatively in current pandemic scenario. This study aims to analyze how resilient construction industry companies in Brazil were in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing the performance of construction companies with different implementation levels of lean construction.

Three case studies were carried out in construction companies in Brazil with different application levels of the lean philosophy.

Among the results obtained, greater resilience to face COVID-19 was verified in those with a higher implementation level of the lean philosophy. Additionally, it was found that the larger the size of the companies surveyed, the greater the level of implementation of the lean philosophy.

Due to the state of pandemic, and the work carried out in the home office, contact with companies was restricted. In addition, few companies actually adopt the lean philosophy in the construction sector in Brazil. Most of companies use only a few lean construction tools in specific sectors. For the few others who actually implement the philosophy, the acceptance to participate in the research was low.

The lean construction is something very new and innovative for the construction sector in Brazil, and there is little evidence of its use. Few companies adopt the philosophy in the country, and many of them also did not experience such an impactful moment in their entire existence. Thus, the analysis of the relationship between lean construction and resilience in the civil construction sector in Brazil is something innovative.

Construction businesses are perceived uncertainly by investors, and are generally assumed to represent more risk than other businesses. Added to this is the perception of poor business management practices being adopted by construction companies, sometimes resulting in business‐failure. Fluctuations in construction workload contribute to investor anxiety. In this light, the paper aims to present a study of the comparative management efficiency performance of construction companies.

Publicly listed Australian construction companies over the ten‐year period 1998‐2007 are examined. Performance is compared with a select number of “blue chip” companies as a benchmark. In total, 19 management efficiency measures are used including asset management ratios, debt and safety ratios, and cash flow ratios. The construction companies used in the study engage in work covering the full range of construction activities.

The results indicate that construction companies perform as well as, and in some cases better than, other businesses, dispelling some of the misconceptions about construction businesses.

The paper's finding will be useful to those investing in the construction industry, and will lead to a better public perception of construction businesses.

Construction companies typically allocate limited resources, i.e. human resources and funds, for marketing activities; so, they commonly face the problem of deciding in which marketing activities they should primarily invest and how much resource they should allocate for the selected marketing activities. Indeed, the problem of selecting the best set of marketing activities should be treated as a multi‐objective optimisation problem with multiple obligatory and flexible goals with different priorities, several interdependencies, and multiple constraints on resources. The main objective of this paper is to solve the problem of optimal allocation of scarce marketing resources using the combination of analytic network process (ANP) and zero‐one‐goal‐programming (ZOGP) models.

The research methodology of this paper mainly involves: reviewing the relevant literature on marketing and construction marketing; identifying the marketing activity alternatives in which construction companies may consider to invest; constructing an ANP model in order to calculate the importance weights of the different marketing activities; formulating a ZOGP model, which uses the weights obtained from the ANP model and considers the obligatory and flexible goals with different priorities, interdependencies and constraints on resources, that enables construction companies to optimize their scarce marketing resources; and conducting two case studies in order to illustrate how the proposed methodology works.

This paper provides construction companies with an integrated decision‐support methodology, which will assist them in allocating their limited marketing resources for different marketing activity alternatives in a more efficient way. The proposed methodology does not only consider the constraints on marketing resources and priorities of the goals that need to be satisfied but also show the deviations from the desired goals.

This paper is of benefit to construction companies as it offers an efficient and convenient tool that allows construction companies to optimise scarce marketing resources.

The aim of this case study is to characterize the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis on the financial performance of public listed construction companies.

Financial analysis was conducted on 32 public listed construction companies in Malaysia. Twelve financial ratios were examined to determine the profitability, liquidity, activity, leverage and solvency of these companies over the period between 2005 and 2010. This was complemented by a distress analysis using Altman’s Z-index. The study also used a content analysis of the Chairman’s or Managing Director’s statement to shareholders to uncover the responses and strategic initiatives undertaken by the management in response to the financial crisis.

The only direct impact of the financial crisis was a reduction in profitability. Total revenues and total assets of these companies continue to grow due to increased demand for construction from year 2007 following two large capital investment programs initiated by the Malaysian Government to mitigate the potential effects of the financial crisis. Net profits rebounded back to 5 per cent by year 2010. These companies immediately responded to the crisis with more prudent financial management; curtailing expenses, cutting dividends, reducing bank borrowings, increasing equity; and to the extent of disposing of assets to mitigate losses.

The sample of only 32 public listed companies out of a total of more than 60,000 construction companies may be considered small, but these 32 companies represent nearly 20 per cent of the total construction volume for 2010.

The study documents the effects of increased capital spending by the government to mitigate the loss of investor confidence followed by a slowdown in economic growth during a period of global financial distress. Key findings will inform on prudent financial management to withstand future financial crises.

The responses and strategies adopted by the management to mitigate the effects and to enhance future performance of these companies have been uncovered. These are important considerations in managing construction companies; the analysis and observations will be invaluable to researchers intending to study how the construction industry responds to a future slump in demand.

The purpose of this study is to investigate project selection in the context of business management with the specific aim of understanding the role of business models in project selection. The logic followed for making decisions and selecting projects significantly influences construction companies’ success.

The research objective is pursued by conducting a multiple-case study. Managers acting in key decision-making roles from eight construction companies are interviewed. A conceptual framework is developed for analysing the interview data and the prevailing project selection practices in construction.

The findings suggest that project selection is not guided by any specific business model, but that the decision-making process is dominated more by short-term factors such as need of work and profitability. Thus, estimation know-how largely determines the kind of projects companies are willing to consider, regardless of their competence to deliver them.

The study produces a hypothesis that ignorance of business models in project selection and their general underutilisation in management have negative effects on performance of the construction industry. More consistent management practice would enable the development of business models and processes, contributing to performance and help companies to distinguish themselves from each other.

As opposed to previous studies that have produced bidding models that emulate the current industry practices, this research analyses the prevailing logic of project selection from a more critical perspective. In addition, the project selection practices of Finnish construction companies have not been investigated previously.

Human resource (HR) practices are increasingly concerned with adding value through increased skills, autonomy and contribution. Whilst useful in some cultural and industry contexts, there is potential for incompatibility with other norms, especially those outside western culture or the manufacturing industry mainstream. Australian construction companies in Malaysia use the language of normative HR, but they are challenged by the differing cultural norms of Asia. It is concluded that HR policies and corporate culture are used as marketing devices not solely as management strategy.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how companies in the reinforcing bar industry and the construction industry operate and implement brand alliances.

This research uses a qualitative interview survey and the grounded theory method to extract key factors of brand alliance development and management in the targeted industries. The interview survey included six managers from different construction companies in Taiwan.

This research identifies four common firm-level operational process stages (core categories) of brand alliances including different multidimensional factors, and proposes a conceptual model based on these identified core process stages. The four common core process stages include selection of brand alliance partners, communication with brand alliance partners, enforcement of brand alliances and assessment of brand alliances.

The proposed model offers a tentative explanation of the development and management of brand alliances between the reinforcing bar industry and the construction industry. This study represents an initial research attempt in this field and explains how reinforcing bar and construction companies operate and implement brand alliances.

The purpose of this paper is to provide construction companies with an analytic model, namely a four‐level analytic network process (ANP) model, to assist them in prioritising and thereby selecting marketing activities which offer maximum return on investment, for which they should primarily allocate their limited resources.

The research methodology of this study mainly involves: reviewing the literature on marketing and construction marketing in order to identify the marketing activity selection criteria and their constituent sub‐criteria; determining the marketing activity alternatives in which construction companies may consider to invest; constructing an analytic model, namely a four‐level ANP model – to assist them in selecting the most viable marketing activities for which they should primarily allocate their limited resources; and conducting two case studies, one in a bidding contractor and the other in a developer, in order to illustrate how the model works.

This paper illustrates how to empirically prioritise marketing activities by using a four‐level marketing activity selection model. Two case studies are also demonstrated in order to illustrate how the model works. The case studies indicate that the rankings of the marketing activities for these companies are rather different due to the type of the construction company (i.e. bidding contractors or building developers) and its client profile (i.e. public or private owners). The findings of the case studies concurred with the expected direction in these companies.

This model is of benefit to construction companies and researchers. The proposed ANP model offers an efficient, convenient and simple tool that allows construction companies to select the marketing activities for which they should primarily allocate their limited resources. It also allows researchers to see the potential use of ANP in the marketing activity selection problem.

Risk management has become an integral part in businesses around the world. In the construction industry, risk management has also been introduced and has been mainly entrusted in the hands of the project team to go through a laid down risk management processes to identify possible risk events, which may occur during the project execution and the impact they may have on the project deliverables should they occur. It is, however, believed that small construction firms do not take risk management as a serious exercise even though most of the project risks are transferred to them as subcontractors. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate risk management processes in the small construction companies and the impact of risk management on their project deliverables.

A case study of a single construction company was used for this study. Data were collected through structured questionnaire to 16 respondents who are involved in the project execution in the case study company. Two managing directors of the case study company were also interviewed. In total, 11 project site meetings were also attended to observe meeting proceedings and to record issues discussed. In total, 15 monthly project reports and project close-out reports were also studied. In total, One hundred and five completed projects of which 58 per cent were renovation projects, 27 per cent were new projects and 15 per cent were civil/structural works were also examined. The data were then analysed using excel analytical tool and the content analysis method.

The findings indicate that small construction companies with respect to the case study company do not have a specific laid down risk management processes that project team are made to go through before and during the execution of their projects. There is, however, no conclusive evidence regarding the impact of risk management on project performance as a significant number of projects done were able to meet a successful project performance indicators even though risk management exercises were not done. Some of the identified risk events that caused project failures are payment delays, labour related issues, subcontractor/main contractor related issues, insufficient contingency reserves/plan, etc.

Only one construction company was used as a case study for this research and all sources of data were related to a single company. The results may, therefore, be not generalisable.

The research has discovered that projects outcome could have improved tremendously if proper risk management exercises were implemented before project execution as most of the causes of project failures could have been identified through the risk management processes. This study, hence, gives an insight as to why small construction firms like the case study company should take risk management seriously in their projects execution to improve on the performance of their projects.

The research has discovered that projects outcome could have improved tremendously if proper risk management exercises were implemented before project execution as most of the causes of project failures could have been identified through the risk management processes. This study, hence, gives an insight as to why small construction firms like the case study company should take risk management seriously in their projects execution to improve on the performance of their projects.