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This chapter provides a general introduction to the companion, to FIDIC as an organisation and to the FIDIC contractual framework. It also includes a general guide to drafting international contracts as well as a more specific guide to drafting FIDIC based contracts. It includes a comparison of main features of the FIDIC conditions, a guide on selecting the right FIDIC form, and a general introduction on structuring a FIDIC based contract. Finally, it includes a list of suggested further reading.

The construction industry has arrived at a crossroads of rapid technological progress. While it is foreseen that the advent of new construction technologies will disrupt the construction industry’s future, such disruptions often create the ideal environment for innovation. As poor payment practices continue to plague the construction industry, the advent of smart contracts has created an opportunity to rectify the inherent flaws in the mitigation of payment problems in traditional construction contracts. Given the intrinsic resistance of construction firms to such revolutionary changes, this study aims to understand the various factors influencing the adoption of smart contracts in the Singapore construction industry.

A mixed method was adopted involving quantifying respondents’ perceptions of the factors influencing smart contract adoption, and validation from a group of interviewees on the matter. Out of 461 registered quantity surveyor members contacted via the Singapore institute of surveyors and valuers website, 55 respondents took part in the survey. This is followed by semi-structured interviews to validate the survey results.

The findings indicate that construction firms have neither a significant knowledge of nor willingness to adopt smart contracts. A total of 29 institutional factors were also identified that significantly influence the adoption of smart contracts. The quantitative findings were further reinforced by qualitative interviews with five industry experts.

With recognition of and the successful formulation of the significant institutional drivers and barriers, the key findings of this study will be integral in driving the commercial adoption of smart contracts within the construction industry.

The adaptive performance of architects as a key professional in project delivery teams has become important for developing strategies, skills and cognitive behaviours for sustainability of working systems. However, the understanding and knowledge of adaptive performance of architects is lacking in the current literature. Thus, this study fills this gap by primarily assessing the adaptive performance of architects in project teams in project delivery.

By adopting the widely used eight-dimension attributes of adaptive performance, a questionnaire survey was conducted among team participants and stakeholders who directly or indirectly work on projects with architects in the public and private sectors project delivery supply chain in Ghana. A total of 42 responses were subsequently used in a fuzzy set theory analysis being facilitated by a set of linguistic terms.

From the assessment, the overall adaptive performance of architects from the eight-dimension attributes emerged to be fairly high. Additionally, the architects’ performance in the individual eight-dimensions showed varied results. High performance was registered in architects’ ability to handling work stress and cultural adaptability. Also, architects demonstrated a fairly high performance in dealing with uncertain or unpredictable work situations. However, in the cases of learning work tasks, technologies and procedures, interpersonal adaptability and handling crisis and emergency situations, architects were deemed to have low and fairly low adaptive performance among project teams.

Given the vagueness and complexities in understanding adaptability among teams and its assessment, through the use of fuzzy set theory based on a suitable set of linguistics terms, the study presents a novel understanding of the level of architects’ adaptive performance in project teams in project delivery. The findings are extremely useful in helping architects adapt and cope with changing competitive work environment by developing the right cognitive behaviours for task functions and organizational roles, disruptions and aiding their ability to self-regulate.

The debate around automation through digital technologies has gathered traction in line with the advancement of Industry 4.0. Blockchain-powered construction progress payment has emerged as an area that can benefit from such automation. However, the challenges inherent in real-time construction payment processes cannot be solely mitigated by blockchain. Including building information modeling (BIM)-based schedule information stored in decentralized storage linked with a smart contract (SC) can allow the efficient administration of payments. Accordingly, this study aims to present an integrated BIM-blockchain system (BBS) to administer decentralized progress payments in construction projects.

A mixed-method approach is adopted, including an extensive literature review, development of the integrated BBS, and a case study with 13 respondents to test and validate the BBS. This study proposes a BBS that extracts the invoices from BIM and pushes them to the decentralized app (dApp) for digital payment to the contractor through the Ethereum blockchain. The Solc npm package was used to compile the backend SC. Next.js was used to create the front end of the dApp. The Web3 npm package is paramount in developing a dApp. A total of 13 construction professionals working on the case study project were engaged through a questionnaire survey to comment on and validate the proposed BBS. A descriptive analysis was conducted on the case study data to apprehend the responses of expert professionals.

The proposed BBS creates an SC, enables sender verification, checks contract complaints, verifies bills, and processes the currency flow based on a coded payment logic. After passing the initial checks, the bill amount is processed and made available for the contractor to claim. Every activity on dApp leaves its trace on the blockchain ledger. A control mechanism for accepting or rejecting the invoice is also incorporated into the system. The case study-based validation confirmed that the proposed BBS could increase payment efficiency (92.3%), tackle financial misconduct (84.6%), ensure transparency and audibility (92.4%), and ensure payment security (61%) in construction projects. A total of 46.2% of respondents were skeptical of the BBS because of its dependency on cryptocurrencies. A further 23.1% of respondents indicated that the price fluctuation of cryptocurrencies is a major barrier to BBS adoption. Others highlighted the absence of legal frameworks for cryptocurrencies’ usage.

This study opens the avenue for the application of dApp for autonomous contract management and progress payments, which is flexible with applications across various construction processes. Overall, it is a potential solution to the endemic problem of cash flow that has devastating consequences for all project stakeholders. This is also aligned with the goals of Industry 4.0, where process automation is a key focus. The study provides a practice application for automated progress payments that can be leveraged in construction projects across the globe.

The construction industry is complex, human-intensive and driven by monetary values. Hence, disputes are widespread. Initial conflicts among parties may develop into a disastrous dispute that costs the project success and good relationships and affects stakeholders' expectations. There has been a focus on causes of construction-related disputes, and studies over the past three decades have attempted to identify a more comprehensive list of reasons for disputes. Some of these studies' limitations were geographical, project delivery methods and project types. The purpose of this study is to identify the most recent and conclusive list of causes of disputes based on current literature by undertaking a systematic literature review (SLR).

Considering the large number of studies that focused on causes of disputes, this study aims to develop a comprehensive list of causes, using a SLR, as it ensures that all previous articles in multiple databases are reviewed to produce a comprehensive outcome. A six-stage SLR was followed from background study to analysis and reporting.

Not surprisingly, the number of publications has increased over time, most from the Middle East region. The interconnected nature of the causes was widely emphasised. The SLR has produced eight common core causes of disputes. They are: poor contractual arrangements, employer-initiated scope changes, unforeseen site changes, poor contract understanding and administration, contractor’s quality of works, the inability of the contractor to achieve time targets, non- or delayed payments and poor quality of design. The majority of previous authors realised that disputes could be avoided by parties’ involvement during the early stages, avoiding being opportunistic and acting collaboratively.

Even though numerous studies have been carried out to identify the causes of disputes in the construction industry, none did a SLR. This study aggregates all the previous studies that focused on construction-related disputes systematically. Categorising causes based on the party primarily responsible help various stakeholders by providing a distinct list of factors to avoid that contribute to disputes.

The variance between the winning bid and the owner's estimated cost (OEC) is one of the construction management risks in the pre-tendering phase. The study aims to enhance the quality of the owner's estimation for predicting precisely the contract cost at the pre-tendering phase and avoiding future issues that arise through the construction phase.

This paper integrated artificial neural networks (ANN), deep neural networks (DNN) and time series (TS) techniques to estimate the ratio of a low bid to the OEC (R) for different size contracts and three types of contracts (building, electric and mechanic) accurately based on 94 contracts from King Saud University. The ANN and DNN models were evaluated using mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean sum square error (MSSE) and root mean sums square error (RMSSE).

The main finding is that the ANN provides high accuracy with MAPE, MSSE and RMSSE a 2.94%, 0.0015 and 0.039, respectively. The DNN's precision was high, with an RMSSE of 0.15 on average.

The owner and consultant are expected to use the study's findings to create more accuracy of the owner's estimate and decrease the difference between the owner's estimate and the lowest submitted offer for better decision-making.

This study fills the knowledge gap by developing an ANN model to handle missing TS data and forecasting the difference between a low bid and an OEC at the pre-tendering phase.

Competency frameworks can support public procurement capacity development and performance. However, literature on connecting professionalisation with national procurement contexts is limited. This paper aims to explain and conceptualise recent Romanian experience with developing bespoke competency frameworks at national level for public procurement that reflect the features of the Romanian public procurement system. The approach used could guide in broad-brush, mutatis mutandis, other (national) public procurement systems with comparable features, mainly those seeking a shift from a rather administrative function of public procurement towards a strategic function.

This case study reflects on the methodology used for analysing the Romanian public procurement environment in EU context to develop bespoke professionalisation instruments, and on ways to integrate competency management approaches in Romanian public procurement culture. That methodological mix has been mainly qualitative and constructionist, within an applied research approach. It combined desk research with empirical research and included legal research in this context.

A principled, methodological and pragmatic approach tailored to the procurement environment in question is essential for developing competency frameworks capable to resonate to and address the specific practical needs of that procurement system.

Competency frameworks can uphold societal objectives through public procurement.

Using valuable insights into the development of the Romanian public procurement competency frameworks, the paper provides a conceptual framework for instilling competency management approaches to public procurement professional development where the latter is governed by a rather distinct, public administration, paradigm. This conceptual framework can guide other public procurement systems and stimulate further research.

This paper aims to contribute to the management control systems (MCS) changes in public-private partnerships (PPSs) by developing a conceptual archetype explaining the relationship between trust and MCSs in PPPs, and highlighting how this relationship may evolve over time.

The paper adopts a longitudinal case study methodology focusing on a hospital built and operated under a project finance deal. The methods adopted include semistructured interviews, direct observation and internal documentation analysis. We conducted 15 semistructured interviews from 2019 to 2021. In analyzing different documents and interviews, we triangulated data to ensure solid interpretation.

The case shows how trust can take different configurations depending on the type of MCS used. The results highlight how different patterns of MCSs, about trust, can be combined to govern PPPs. The case also shows the temporal dynamics of how MCS and trust evolve at different organizational levels and how bureaucratic control matched with contractual trust and trust-based control matched with competence trust can coexist at different times and organizational levels.

Managers involved in PPPs will be aware of the role of different types of trust in shaping and managing the relationship between partners at different organizational levels. Furthermore, the findings could help policymakers to adopt more informed decisions and to promote practice-based trust at various organizational levels of PPPs.

The paper proposes a management control archetype based on bureaucracy- and trust-based patterns concerning the level of programmability of tasks, as well as defined risks.

The dynamic nature of the built environment and trending smart construction project complexities demand proactive needs tailored towards architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) education. It is a task for the built environment professionals (BEP) to prepare for the future, including the quantity surveying (QS) profession. Studies are scarce in preparing QS education from Nigeria’s stakeholders’ perspective regarding digital technology. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate how to improve QS education by continually updating curriculum digitalisation to meet the construction industry requirements.

Data were sourced from elite virtual interviews across Nigeria. A total of 40 key stakeholders knowledgeable in QS education, advocating a future template for the advancement of QS education in higher institutions, were engaged, and saturation was achieved.

Findings show that improving QS education through continually updating curriculum digitalisation to meet industry requirements cannot be over-emphasised in the 21st-century-built environment industry. The outcomes of the results led to the conclusion that the current QS education curriculum was not meeting the expectations of other BEP stakeholders. Thus, for competitiveness in the future, the QS education curriculum needs to infuse more related-digital technology modules/courses to assist in the sustainability and relevance of the profession within the BEP.

This paper focussed on improving Nigeria’s QS education using digital technologies via a qualitative approach. Future study is needed via a quantitative approach for broader coverage and validation.

The research revealed the need for designing QS programmes to provide for industry demands with emphasis on digital technologies modules/courses. Nigeria’s QS education stakeholders have been stirred up to embrace the curriculum review and make the profession digitalised and relevant within the BEP. The built environment sector is trending towards digitalisation, and the QS programmes cannot afford to be behind.

This research identified the current gap regarding digitalisation of the curriculum. This study will stir QS educational providers and regulators to improve future programmes via digital technologies. It would encourage the use of digital technologies with the right enabling environment. The outcome would mitigate the gap and improve Nigeria’s QS education in the future.

The main objectives of this study are to (1) develop and test a cost contingency learning model that can generalize initially estimated contingency amounts by analyzing back the multiple project changes experienced and (2) uncover the hidden link of the learning networks using a curve-fitting technique for the post-construction evaluation of cost contingency amounts to cover cost risk for future projects.

Based on a total of 1,434 datapoints collected from DBB and DB transportation projects, a post-construction cost contingency learning model was developed using feedforward neural networks (FNNs). The developed model generalizes cost contingencies under two different project delivery methods (i.e. DBB and DB). The learning outputs of generalized contingency amounts were curve-fitted with the post-construction schedule and cost information, specifically aiming at uncovering the hidden link of the FNNs. Two different bridge projects completed under DBB and DB were employed as illustrative examples to demonstrate how the proposed modeling framework could be implemented.

With zero or negative values of change growth experienced, it was concluded that cost contingencies were overallocated at the contract stage. On the other hand, with positive values of change growth experienced, it was evaluated that set cost contingencies were insufficient from the post-construction standpoint. Taken together, this study proposed a tangible post-construction evaluation technique that can produce not only the plausible ranges of cost contingencies but also the exact amounts of contingency under DBB and DB contracts.

As the first of its kind, the proposed modeling framework provides agency engineers and decision-makers with tangible assessments of cost contingency coupled with experienced risks at the post-construction stage. Use of the proposed model will help them evaluate the allocation of appropriate contingency amounts. If an agency allocates a cost contingency benchmarked from similar projects on aspects of the base estimate and experienced risks, a set contingency can be defended more reliably. The main findings of this study contribute to post-construction cost contingency verification, enabling agency engineers and decision-makers to systematically evaluate set cost contingencies during the post-construction assessment stage and achieving further any enhanced level of confidence for future cost contingency plans.