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Effective inter-organisational relationships are key to engendering innovation and ensuring the successful delivery of infrastructure projects. Relationship-based contracts are thus widely used to stimulate best-for-project ideals and attenuate the otherwise adversarial relationship that often exists between clients and contractors. This study examines the effectiveness and limitations of a project facilitation model as coaching tool for developing conducive inter-organisational relationships for construction project delivery.

The study adopts a case-study approach using evidence from triangulated data sources of focus group workshops, semi-structured interviews and document analysis.

(1) The facilitation model enabled an environment for psychological safety to be developed, which engendered a platform for effective cooperation for problem-solving and achieving quasi best-for-project ideals. (2) The model provides the mechanism to develop team behaviours that support enhanced performance and create an environment less adversarial and more collaborative than traditional contracting.

The novelty of this research is that relationship-based principles have been utilised as part of a traditional design-bid-build contract with lump-sum payment arrangements.

Drawing on mainstream arguments in the literature, the paper presents a coherent and holistic view on the causes of cost overruns, and the dynamics between cognitive dispositions, learning and estimation. A cost prediction model has also been developed using data mining for estimating final cost of projects. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A mixed-method approach was adopted: a qualitative exploration of the causes of cost overrun followed by an empirical development of a final cost model using artificial neural networks.

A conceptual model to distinguish between the often conflated causes of underestimation and cost overruns on large publicly funded projects. The empirical model developed in this paper achieved an average absolute percentage error of 3.67 percent with 87 percent of the model predictions within a range of ±5 percent of the actual final cost.

The model developed can be converted to a desktop package for quick cost predictions and the generation of various alternative solutions for a construction project in a sort of what-if analysis for the purposes of comparison. The use of the model could also greatly reduce the time and resources spent on estimation.

A thorough discussion on the dynamics between cognitive dispositions, learning and cost estimation has been presented. It also presents a conceptual model for understanding two often conflated issues of cost overrun and under-estimation.

Preliminary cost estimates for construction projects are often the basis of financial feasibility and budgeting decisions in the early stages of planning and for effective project control, monitoring and execution. The purpose of this paper is to identify and better understand the cost drivers and factors that contribute to the accuracy of estimates in residential construction projects from the developers’ perspective.

The paper uses a literature review to determine the drivers that affect the accuracy of developers’ early stage cost estimates and the factors influencing the construction costs of residential construction projects. It used cost variance data and other supporting documentation collected from two case study projects in South East Queensland, Australia, along with semi-structured interviews conducted with the practitioners involved.

It is found that many cost drivers or factors of cost uncertainty identified in the literature for large-scale projects are not as apparent and relevant for developers’ small-scale residential construction projects. Specifically, the certainty and completeness of project-specific information, suitability of historical cost data, contingency allowances, methods of estimating and the estimator’s level of experience significantly affect the accuracy of cost estimates. Developers of small-scale residential projects use pre-established and suitably priced bills of quantities as the prime estimating method, which is considered to be the most efficient and accurate method for standard house designs. However, this method needs to be backed with the expertise and experience of the estimator.

There is a lack of research on the accuracy of developers’ early stage cost estimates and the relevance and applicability of cost drivers and factors in the residential construction projects. This research has practical significance for improving the accuracy of such preliminary cost estimates.

Critical knowledge and lessons learnt from the delivery of infrastructure projects have often remained untapped mainly due to the transient and fragmented nature of construction delivery. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of a project facilitator in attenuating disruptions in knowledge flows during the delivery of an infrastructure project.

An inductive case-study method is employed in examining the mediating role of the facilitator in an infrastructure project. Content analysis was undertaken by coding the data derived from eight focus group interactions, 23 semi-structured interviews and 24 documentary sources from workshops using NVivo 12 plus.

(1) The project facilitator provided a coherent context to re-invent the narratives (i.e. behaviours and events) by creating a forum for understanding critical problems and stimulating constructive dialogue and intervention. (2) The project facilitator leveraged on both explicit and tacit knowledge within the team, leading to improvement in the proactive management of emergent technical, operational and behavioural challenges, and (3) The project facilitator sustained a valuable intervention in attenuating disruptions in knowledge flows for problem-solving, relationship-management, best-practice strategies, coaching and leadership, as well as reflexive practice.

The novelty of this research is that a facilitator is used as the “knowledge-broker” in a multi-party infrastructure delivery team assembled using a traditional lump-sum contract framework. Facilitators have only previously been used in collaborative contract environments like alliancing and partnering.