Search results

Occupational safety issues among employees remains a contemporary and omnipresent concern. In developing countries, safety-related problems are amplified, resulting in higher incidences of serious accidents and occupational diseases. This study aims to evaluate employees’ knowledge and attitudes toward occupational health and safety, and how these influence overall occupational health and safety compliance. Ghana’s oil and gas industry provides the contextual backdrop for this research, given it is characterized by high rates of injury.

A positivist and deductive research strategy was used to quantitatively analyze both primary and secondary data sources. A structured survey was administered to industry employees, and multiple linear regression was used to establish the effects of employee’s knowledge and attitude toward occupational health hazards on overall health and safety compliance.

The findings indicate that most employees had both a high level of knowledge and positive attitude toward mitigating occupational health hazards. Moreover, the study reveals that most employees complied with occupational health safety practices. However, the study also reveals that the effect of employees’ knowledge and attitude toward occupational health hazards does not translate into deployment of comprehensive safety practices. Interestingly, female employees were found to be more knowledgeable and compliant with occupational health and safety practices than their male counterparts.

Premised upon the findings, the study recommends: implementation of relevant education and training programs encompassing the proper usage of machinery and equipment, tailored hazard safety training appropriate to specific employee job requirements, effective dissemination of risk information and governance initiatives that enforce strict adherence to correct safety procedures.

The study uniquely examines the influence of employee’s knowledge of health and safety to overall compliance within the oil and gas industry. Cumulatively, the study’s findings and recommendations contribute to improving the occupational health and safety outcomes within the industry.

The UK government has elaborated the effect of late payment on the economy, with its impact on the construction sector being particularly pronounced. This paper aims to evaluate the late payment epidemic that persists within the construction industry, specifically analysing the effectiveness of government-led voluntary payment initiatives.

A mixed philosophical lens is adopted that incorporates both pragmatism and post-positivism to examine the late payment phenomena. Couched within deductive reasoning and a case study strategy, a questionnaire survey was conducted to elicit responses from one-hundred construction professionals. Elucidating upon respondents’ perceptions of the UK’s late payment epidemic, a comparative analysis was undertaken of upstream (main contractor) and downstream (subcontractors/suppliers) contractors through Cronbach’s alpha, descriptive statistics, independence chi-square test, Kruskal–Wallis test and Mann–Whitney U test.

Emergent findings reveal that in practice, the monitoring and enforcement of government-led voluntary payment initiatives has been unprosperous with numerous contractors being forced to adopt indefensibly poor and punitive payment practices. Survey responses and extant literature substantiate and underscore the industry’s need to strengthen voluntary government-led payment initiatives. To create a responsible payment culture, any future code created should be mandatory and enforceable as a self-regulating approach has failed dismally. The work concludes with practical additional measures that could be introduced to create a responsible payment culture and promote ethical trading within the UK construction industry.

This paper constitutes a novel vignette of, and reflection upon, contemporary practice in this area of construction finance and serves to emphasise that very little has changes in the sector despite numerous UK government led reports and interventions.

A comprehensive literature review of performance management within the Dutch steel processing industry is presented. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the motives for companies to become excellent performers in their field of expertise. These internal and external motives (refined by quantitative analysis of bibliographic data) sought to reveal the common factors that impact company performance.

Inductive reasoning was adopted using an interpretivist philosophical stance to generate new theoretical insight. A mixed-methods analysis of pertinent extant literature afforded greater synthesis of the research problem domain and generated more valid and reliable findings. The software visualisation of similarities viewer was used to conduct a qualitative bibliographic analysis of extant literature to yield greater clarification on the phenomena under investigation.

Four thematic groups of past research endeavours emerged from the analysis and were assigned appropriate nomenclature, namely: industry internal motives; industry external motives; excellent performer and incremental working method. To further expand upon the continuous improvement process (CIP – embodied within performance management), the paper describes the virtuous cycle of improvement, which consists of the consecutive steps of “planning”, “doing”, “checking” and ultimately of “acting” accordingly to the previous steps. It can be concluded that a high-performing company acts according to its mission, plans in line with the vision do as defined in the strategy and checks by reflection.

This unique study provides invaluable insight into the performance management of Dutch steel processing companies. Although the research context was narrowly defined, the findings presented are equally applicable to clients, contractors and sub-contractors active in other sectors of the construction industry. The research concludes by prescribing factors of mitigation strategies to support chief executive officers to focus on the optimum distribution of their scarce resources.

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are notoriously prone to disputes among stakeholders, some of which may unduly jeopardize contract performance. Contract disputes arising in Iran are often due to inefficiency of PPP concession agreements and practice. This study presents a causal-predictive model of the root causes and preventive measures for inter-organization disputes to enhance the likelihood of achieving desirable performance in PPP projects.

A theoretical “causal-predictive” model was developed with fourteen hypotheses based on extant literature and contractual agency theory, which resulted in the creation of a pool of 110 published items. Data were obtained from a questionnaire survey with 75 valid responses, completed by 4 stratified groups of Iranian PPP experts. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for validating the proposed model via a case study.

Results reveal that the main three factors of PPP desirable performance are as follows: on-time project completion, high quality of activities/products and services for public satisfaction. Further, the most influential factors of the lifecycle problems, construction stage, and preferred risk allocation included risk misallocation, improper payment mechanism and failure to facilitate a timely approval process.

For researchers, the findings contribute to the theory of contractual agency; specifically, how different influences among the model's elements lead to better PPP performance. In practical terms, proposed outcome-based strategies will inform PPP stakeholders to avoid dispute occurrence and thus improve the time, quality and services of projects.

Maintenance policy is an element of building maintenance management that deals with organisation policy, planning and procedures, and delineates how maintenance units in an organisation will manage specific building components, auxiliary facilities and services. Given this contextual setting, this study investigates whether organisational maintenance policies (OMPs) utilised in developed countries are relevant in developing countries – using Nigeria as a case study exemplar.

An empirical research design (using deductive reasoning) was implemented for this research. Specifically, a Delphi study conducted revealed 23 elements that impact OMP development in Nigeria.

Of these twenty elements, six had a very high impact on maintenance management (VHI: 9.00–10.00), nine variables had a high impact (HI: 7.00–8.99) and eight other variables scored a medium impact (MI: 5.00–6.99). Emergent findings reveal that the elements of organisational maintenance policy that engender effective building maintenance management include preparation of safety procedure, optimisation of the maintenance policy, optimisation of the maintenance action plan, well-defined priority system, risk factor establishment, suitable maintenance procedures and a clearly delineated process.

The study findings will guide policymakers in identifying the main elements required in maintenance policies development towards making national public asset preservation and economic gains. Also, the content of the future educational curriculum on maintenance management study will be more receptive to the body of knowledge and the built environment industry.

Cumulatively, the research presented illustrates that these elements replicate those adopted in other countries and that effective maintenance management of public buildings is assured when these elements are integral to the development of an OMP.

This study aims to develop a taxonomy of requirements for mobile BIM technologies (MBT), clarify the relating terms and concepts, and identify the interactions between MBT features and the construction management functions on sites.

A positivist approach with elements of interpretivism is adopted to allow to capture what is perceived as “reality” in relation to individuals’ interpretation and experience in the use and implementation of MBT. This is achieved by using a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach that can capture the various understandings of MBT. The research methods included a longitudinal case study over 12 months, two project workshops, expert interviews and an industry survey that together helped to investigate MBT at project, enterprise and industry levels.

The MBT requirements taxonomy included requirements relating to both project and organisation. Project requirements addressed MBT functionalities for sites and information management, while organisation requirements focused on the integration of MBT solutions with the enterprise from information technology, legal and security perspectives. A detailed matrix showing the interactions between five key MBT features and seven construction management functions was also developed.

The two constructs developed by this study can help researchers to structure their investigation of key uses of MBT applications and their benefits. It can be used by researchers aiming to investigate integrated approaches to the digitalisation of construction sites, such as those enabled by Digital Twins. The interaction matrix can aid researchers in evaluating the intersections between the MBT functionalities and the site construction management functions (e.g. theoretical analysis of interactions from Lean Construction, benefit evaluation perspective). More broadly, the two constructs can support research and practice investigating the development of data-driven approaches on construction sites.

The developed MBT taxonomy can guide construction organisations in selecting suitable MBT for Field BIM for their projects. It can also act as a baseline against which varying MBT solutions can be compared.

Constructs such as taxonomies for MBTs; an understanding of MBT capabilities and use within the industry; and a lack of delineation between related terms, such as Mobile BIM, Field BIM, Site BIM, Cloud BIM and Mobile Apps, were lacking in the literature. This study contributed to addressing this gap.

Proper identification of the key motivating factors (or key drivers) is needed to ensure successful adaption and implementation of the lean concept for construction projects. However, there lacks a study investigating the complex interrelationships existing among the key drivers contributing to Sustainable and Successful Lean Construction (SSLC) implementation for such projects. To address this shortcoming, this study aims to uncover the main critical key drivers towards the implementation of SSLC for the very first time by capturing the complexity of this vexing problem.

In this study, a new hybrid framework is developed through the integration of Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Social Network Analysis (SNA). The novel developed framework is called the DSNA approach.

Considering the case of Malaysian construction projects, the developed DSNA gives the following major outcomes: (1) Most important critical key drivers are seen to be optimization, continuous improvement, and, improve company culture, and (2) For SSLC adoption, the critical drivers impacting other key drivers are seen to be “improve teamwork”, “reduce leadership conflict”, and “improve company culture”, thereby demanding more attention.

The outcomes of this study give insight for decisions and policymakers in the construction industry regarding critical key drivers and their complex interrelationships towards the further adoption of SSLC, promoting the sustainability paradigm within the respective sector.

This paper not only presents a list of critical drivers and the corresponding association among them towards SSLC adoption, but also proposes DSNA as a novel approach for uncovering the complex interrelationship existing in an intricate problem, improving the intricate process of decision-making.

Previous studies have postulated that an advance payment system (APS) positively impacts the contractor's working capital and is paramount to ensuring an efficient and effective project cash flow process. However, scant research has been undertaken to empirically establish the cash flow performance and domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance.

The epistemological design adopted a positivist philosophical stance augmented by deductive reasoning to explore the phenomena under investigation. Primary quantitative data were collected from 504 Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) registered contractors (within the grade bandings 1–9) in South Africa. A five-point Likert scale was utilised, and subsequent data accrued were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Emergent findings reveal that the mandatory use of an APS does not guarantee a positive project cash flow, an improvement in organisational performance or an improvement in project performance.

The ensuing discussion reveals the contributory influence of APS on positive cash flow and organisational performance, although APS implementation alone will not achieve these objectives. Practically, the research accentuates the need for various measures to be concurrently adopted (including APS) towards ensuring a positive project cash flow and improved organisational and project performance.

There is limited empirical research on cash flow performance and the domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance in South Africa, nor indeed, the wider geographical location of Africa as a continent. This study addresses this gap in the prevailing body of knowledge.

The demand for energy infrastructure projects has increased steadily over the last few decades and has come at a high cost. Disruptive technologies (DTs) have the inherent capability to affect the performance of energy infrastructure projects. Therefore, this research aims to explore the implications of DTs on the performance of energy infrastructure projects.

This research adopts a positivist philosophical position. A quantitative strategy and deductive approach (based on a survey design) guided this study. Sixty-six respondents participated in the study. The study’s population comprised of experts in energy infrastructure projects who possessed a high level of industrial experience including top- and middle-level management of power generation companies. Cochran’s formula was used to select a sufficient sample for the study. Linear regression, one sample test and Cronbach’s alpha were the analytical tools adopted.

This study established that there is an 18.4% increase in the performance of energy infrastructure projects in Ghana when DTs are applied. In order of importance, DTs improve speed of operations in energy projects; reduce operating cost and enhance efficiency of energy projects; drive sustainable economic development; enhance security in energy projects; and improve environmental sustainability of projects. The study also revealed that e-commerce technologies, renewable energy technologies, three-dimensional printing, bar code technology, photogrammetry, global positioning systems, geographic information systems and nanotechnologies were the topmost ranked DTs with the most impact on the performance of energy infrastructure projects.

This is a novel investigation on the implications of DTs on the performance of Ghanaian energy infrastructure projects. This study’s practical implication is evident in both policy and practice. Energy sector policymakers should endeavour to adopt DTs in their operations to enhance sustainability and performance.

The construction industry is beset with unethical behaviours. Although several studies have investigated the effects of unethical behaviours on project performance, research in the Ghanaian construction industry (GCI) remains scant. Consequently, this research assesses the interactive effects of ethical and unethical behaviours of construction professionals on project performance in the GCI.

A quantitative research approach was used to obtain primary data from 68 construction professionals, viz, quantity surveyors, architects, civil engineers, clerk of works and project managers, via a closed-ended questionnaire survey. Data collected were analysed using one-sample t-test and Kruskal–Wallis test statistics, after which two hypotheses were tested and validated using regression analysis.

Reduction of project risks, avoidance of legal problems and maximisation project quality performance were critical effects of ethical behaviours observed on project performance, whereas the effects of unethical behaviours such as cost overrun, abandonment and time overrun were severe on project performance in the GCI. Ethical behaviour was seen to relate to project performance positively, and unethical behaviour was proved to have dire consequences on project performance.

Construction project performance is greatly influenced by professionals' ethical and unethical behaviours. Emergent findings emanating from this research will assist emerging economies in developing and implementing counter policies and systems that mitigate the unethical behaviours of construction professionals.

The study highlights the effects of ethical and unethical behaviours on project performance to reorient individuals' perceptions that unethical behaviours are less critical in the construction industry. Supporting evidence encourages individuals to adhere to ethical behaviours in a project environment.

The inability to obtain data across the entire geographical spread of Ghana is acknowledged as a major limitation of the study and affects the generalisation of the results.

This study constitutes a first attempt to establish the interactive effects of ethical and unethical behaviours of construction professionals on project performance within the GCI. A significant addition to the body of knowledge is that ethical and unethical behaviours impact project performance positively or negatively, respectively.