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The UK Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 places a statutory duty on all public authorities to promote race equality throughout all their functions. The purpose of this paper is to discuss steps being taken by social landlords in Wales and contractors and consultants to promote race equality within the construction procurement process.

The principle methods of data collection were focus groups with social landlords and postal questionnaires and semi structured telephone interviews with construction contractors and consultants.

Little action is being taken by social landlords in Wales to promote race equality within the construction procurement process. Furthermore, construction contractors and consultants that undertake work on behalf of social landlords are doing little to ensure race equality within their own organisations.

A relatively small sample of construction contractors and consultants took part in the research.

In order to meet their obligations under current legislation social landlords need to ensure that they promote race equality within the procurement process. Construction companies including maintenance and minor works contractors that aspire to be engaged by social landlords will need to demonstrate that they are committed to race equality and its implementation and have the appropriate policies and procedures in place to ensure this.

This research is the first to evaluate the procurement practices of social landlords in Wales and how these practices may impact on race equality within the procurement process. The research also examined the steps being taken to promote equality by construction contractors and consultants operating within the social housing sector in Wales.

The decisions of contractors could impact the reduction of construction carbon footprint. These decisions are linked to the belief of contractors which equally affects how they behave while delivering projects. This study aims to investigate the behavioural tendencies of contractors that could lead to carbon minimisation during the execution of construction projects.

An industry survey was performed amongst 41 UK construction professionals. Spearman’s correlation and factor analysis were used to analyse the data.

The result of the Spearman’s correlation gave rise to 14 contractors’ carbon reduction behaviour (CCRB) variables and their factor analysis yielded two distinct factors, namely, contractors’ consummate carbon reduction behaviour and contractors’ pragmatic carbon reduction behaviour. The findings suggest that in the UK, contractors are willing to take voluntary practical steps to decrease the carbon footprint of construction projects.

This finding might be unexpected to construction stakeholders, especially construction clients who may believe that infusing strict carbon reduction obligations in contracts is sufficient in nudging contractors to lessen the carbon impact of projects.

The study attempted to quantitatively derive CCRB, thereby extending the breadth of knowledge in the construction carbon reduction domain.

This research uses contingency theory and Venkatraman’s concept of moderating fit to explore how key project stakeholders (clients, consultants and suppliers) influence project performance from the perspective of small and medium contractors in the Jordanian construction industry.

An anonymous structured survey was performed comprising 200 key informants including senior project managers, construction managers, engineers and general managers working for small- and medium-sized contractors in the Jordanian construction industry. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the data.

The results of this study show that consultant-related factors (quality of documentation produced, ability to communicate and technical competencies) are perceived to have the most significant direct effect on project performance, followed by client-related factors (payment promptness, decision certainty and documentation control) and supplier-related factors (supplier performance, defects control and logistics management).

The results contribute new theoretical, empirical and practical insights to existing construction project performance research by highlighting the key performance factors which need to be managed for each stakeholder group to ensure effective project performance from a small- and medium-sized contractor perspective.

This study provides a framework for comparing construction management contracts in the UK and the US construction practices. It starts by reviewing previous studies on UK and US contracting practices and explores the main delivery methods, inform of comparison with construction management contracting systems. It examines construction management contracting types, processes and procedures and interaction between the construction manager and other stakeholders. This study was based on a literature review and the result shows the similarities and differences between the American and British CM systems within each practice and between both practices; the distribution of responsibilities and risks both in pre‐construction and during the construction stages; and allocation of responsibility in both practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a few leading Hong Kong construction firms are also efficient contractors. Theoretically, market leaders can exploit the virtue of economy of scale, learning curve and cost leadership to consolidate their competitiveness. However, if market share is key success factor for firms to become and stay competitive, smaller contractors will be further marginalized if the construction market continues to shrink as Hong Kong's economy approaches maturity. Hence the research question is: Have a few leading contractors been taking advantage of their market size to be efficient in Hong Kong?

Based on the Data Envelopment Analysis Assurance Region (DEA_AR) model, the efficiency scores of 17 major Hong Kong contractors are compiled over the last ten years. DEA is a non‐parametric approach to examine the relative efficiency among different firms, in terms of output/input ratios. Unlike traditional I‐O analysis which relies on a static table of coefficients, DEA does not require any priori and usually subjective weights for inputs or outputs.

The results identify efficient contractors, among which the three leading ones (China State Construction, Shui On Construction and Yau Lee Holdings) have captured the majority of housing construction contract values. Nevertheless, only China State Construction has ranked consistently as most efficient over time. The efficiency scores of Shui On Construction have decreased successively from 2002 to 2009, and it has been the least efficient contractor from 2006 to 2009. Yau Lee Holdings has a V‐curve of efficiency scores.

This study represents the first attempt to adopt a DEA_AR model to evaluate construction contractors' efficiency, which reduces the number of zeroes and the variation in weights for estimation and enhances the adequacy for individual contractor's efficiency scores, compared to other types of DEA models such as the CCR model and the BCC model.

Management capability is one of the major criteria for evaluating construction contractors during prequalification and tender evaluation This paper aims to investigate the impact of contractors' management capability as a prequalification criterion on cost and time performance of selected building projects.

Prequalification assessments of management capability of wining contractors as well as cost data relating to 77 completed building projects executed between 2004 and 2007 are obtained. The data obtained from a questionnaire and archival data are analyzed using one‐way analysis of variance and multiple regression.

The results reveal that contractors' management capability has significant impact on cost and time performance of building projects as evidenced by p‐values of 0.042 and 0.039, respectively.

The research could be of significant benefit at the research implementation stage of public procurement practice especially in relation to the construction industry in Nigeria. Construction practitioners involved in prequalification and tender evaluation should continue to seek relevant information relating to management capability from the candidate contractors during prequalification and tender evaluation.

Models capable of predicting the final cost and duration of building projects are eventually derived based on prequalification assessment of contractors on management capability, proposed contract duration and the initial contract figure. The goodness of fit of the models as defined by the value of R² is found to be 96.2 percent and 90.01 percent for cost and time, respectively; thus signifying high predictive efficacy of the models.

This study aims to map out contractors' thoughts on construction-related environmental recovery as an excuse for deliberately carrying on unsustainable construction.

A typical highway construction project in China was investigated. Textual materials were collected through semistructured interviews. Content analysis was conducted to derive qualitative data from the textual materials.

The research findings reveal a trend of environmental recovery associated with construction activities. It is found that contractors utilize this trend to maintain unsustainable construction. Furthermore, the effects of environmental recovery equip local governments with a tolerance for environmental degradation, and the environmental tolerance allows contractors to continue unsustainable construction without being discovered.

This paper presents an environmental recovery-based perspective on unsustainable construction and sheds some light on the promotion of sustainable construction.

A contrast of site productivity levels for an in situ concrete operation (reinforcement fixing) on a high‐rise project amongst construction contractors from Germany, France and the UK is given. The productivity rates provided by contractors' planning engineers for a model construction project form the basis of this evaluation. Conclusions drawn, based on relatively small samples, are considered approximations of the actual productivity levels in each international location. An analysis of variance based on international origin indicates significant differences between these productivity rates. Generally, amongst the sample surveyed, UK and German contractors exhibit the most efficient levels of labour productivity for the operations observed, whilst French contractors are by far the least productive. For the model building, UK contractors are the most productive, requiring less labour input than those from Germany and France. The UK contractors also demonstrate a high degree of performance variation. Leading on from these analyses, a construction (labour) cost comparison indicates the UK to be the most economic location. A comparison with previous research indicates contrasting findings. It is concluded that the performance ranking of French, German and UK contractors will vary depending upon the construction operations concerned, and therefore, assumptions regarding national contracting industries should not be based on individual operations. Contractors could benefit from developing closer links with their international counterparts since this would facilitate dissemination of European ‘best practice’.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and rank the critical factors influencing the bid/no bid criteria and their importance in the Australian construction industry.

The research study has been undertaken by conducting an extensive literature review on bid/no bid decision-making criteria. As a result, the researchers identified 26 most common bid/no bid decision-making criteria that are accordingly grouped into five distinct categories, namely, “project”, “market”,“contractor”, “client” and “contract”. The literature review was followed by a national survey that was designed and utilised by the researchers to collect data for this purpose. The survey was sent to potential 450 Australian construction companies in various locations and responses were received from 81 Australian construction companies. Response data were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. Kruskal Wallis one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to detect significant differences between the mean score grouped according to the organisation size (contract value).

The descriptive and empirical analysis demonstrated a disparity of ranking of the 26 bid/no bid criteria factors among the groups; however no statistically significant differences among the 26 bid/no criteria factors despite the absolute differences in the rankings and mean scores in the following four factors: (1) “bidding condition”, (2) “strength/weaknesses”, (3) “contract payment terms” and (4) “number of competitors/bidders”. Based on the overall sample, the highly ranked four factors were “client financial capability”, “project risk”, “project future benefits and profitability” and “number of competitors/bidders”. The following were the least ranked: “contractors’ financial situation”, “project duration” and “contractors’ material availability”. “Client financial capability”and “project risk” were jointly ranked as the most important by large, whereas “client financial capability” was also rated highly for smaller Australian construction contractors (ACCs). The medium ACCs had “project risk”as highly ranked.

The majority of the participants were small construction contractors in Australia. The reason is that the researchers were not aware of the contractors’ size prior to inviting them for participation in the research study. Second, the findings may not generalise to other industries or to organisations operating in other countries.

The identified “bid/no bid criteria” increase the awareness of existing decision-making practices and play a critical role in the future decisions of the construction companies, where decision makers need to evaluate the next opportunities encountered. Furthermore, knowledge and possession of these identified “bid/no bid” criteria would enable contractors to select a project with a higher probability of success in the future, which will accordingly result in long-term financial benefits and higher performance. Finally, the awareness of these factors could contribute to changing the contractor’s behaviours when bidding in a competitive environment or market conditions.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge on tendering and bidding practices among contractors in Australia, an area previously under explored. Second, this study provides some insights on the factors influencing the bid/no bid decisions among the ACCs.

The emergence of massive modern technology construction projects is seen to be a real occurrence in Pakistan’s construction industry, which in turn demands a better and systematic way of undertaking the project. Hence, this requires capable contractors to perform the task. A plethora of research studies are carried in the past three decades on the identification of evaluation criteria of contractor’s selection, but the road of modern technology construction projects is still unpaved.

This study strives for the most essential but exhaustive criteria, especially for modern technology construction projects in Pakistan. A pilot survey followed by an exhaustive questionnaire survey was carried out alongside with one-on-one interactions with professional experts serving in various public organizations under public procurement department. A total of 87 attributes were analyzed, correlated, rotated and weighted using exploratory factor analysis for identification of evaluation criteria.

The study finds that for modern technology construction projects basic format of contractor’s selection attributes is not extensive. Henceforth, the most robust, comprehensive and precise assessment is required for such modern technology construction projects. Consequently, four inimitable sets of evaluation criteria groups are designed keeping in view the growing demands of public projects around the globe.

The research work added a novel contribution in this research area which is in quest of resolutions from the past three decades. This research opens the novel avenues in the future in terms of designing the evaluation criteria while keeping the project demands and scope in mind.

The research is a blueprint for the construction organizations and other authorities especially to those agencies involved in the modern construction technology projects. This eye-opening work will further stimulate the clients to focus on not only the designing phase but also the execution part of such advanced construction projects which turn in the successful project outcome.

The larger number of past studies addressed so for from the last couple of decades is very useful to a certain extend for instance for small to medium-sized traditional construction projects. This research delineates the future to call upon the most alarming future issues and consequences of selecting the traditional contractors for their advanced projects. Being premier research in this realm, the study filled the gap of evaluating the contractors inimitably compared to what was practiced in the past.