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Construction trade unions have been a vital force in improving the job standards and wellbeing of trade workers. However, the union membership in the construction industry has dropped by half between 1983 and 2017. The objective of this study is to identify and assess the controlling factors of construction electrical trade unionization in the United States.

The study involved four main steps. Literature review and industry townhall meetings were conducted to identify the electrical trade unionization factors. A new unionization trend metric was developed using available union market share data to quantify the growth and decline of local unions. Mixed-mode surveying was used to collect questionnaire and interview data on the unionization factors in different local units of the electrical trade union. Finally, the survey data from the questionnaire and interviews were merged and their correlation with the unionization trend data was assessed.

The study found that the unionization of this specialty trade is dependent on increasing the crew ratio, expanding the non-apprenticeship union membership program, organizing larger contractors, and continuing the union focus on public and heavy industrial projects.

The study contributes to the construction management body of knowledge by providing a data-driven industry-wide assessment of the factors that affect electrical construction unionization. The study advances the understanding of construction trade unions by narrowing the theory-practice knowledge gap, illustrating the use of macro quantitative empirical research methods, and developing a new unionization trend metric.

Heavy industrial construction often relies on large mobile cranes to erect equipment and pre-assembled modules. Engineering calculations are required for the lifting analysis where lifting capacity is analyzed to ensure the feasibility of the lifting scenarios. Such engineering calculations are often presented in static formats, e.g. two-dimensional or three-dimensional models. However, it is difficult to help practitioners (e.g. lifting engineers, site crews and operators) understand the complexity of the lifting process and thus operational decisions are often made intuitively. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce a game-based simulation system to allow for interactive analysis of the lifting process to improve lifting efficiency and safety.

The proposed method treats the mobile crane as a robot with degree-of-freedoms, and the movements are simulated in the Unity game environment. The lifting capacity is calculated dynamically based on the lifting object weight, rigging weight and lifting radius.

Compared with the four-dimensional visualization, this development has added a dimension of real-time interactive simulation; this allows the users to understand the complexity and feasibility of the lifting process.

The developed prototype has been tested and validated using a real case study from a heavy industrial project with the possibility of generalizing crane lifting configurations.

Engineering consulting firms involved in the design and construction of large‐scale industrial plants attempt to find flaws as early as possible in the design process to avoid more costly deviation corrections later on, particularly during and after construction. Deviation corrections can be reduced by pursuing more diligent quality prevention and appraisal efforts. Quality performance management system (QPMS) is a cost evaluation programme designed to measure the prevention and appraisal effort and its impact on deviation corrections. Examines this system and details the quality improvement results for a multi‐million dollar chemical plant project. Approximately 12 per cent of the total cost of design and construction was attributed to quality costs, a majority of which was categorized as various prevention and appraisal activities. Describes overall cost reductions and other benefits of QPMS.

This study aims to thoroughly examine the trends and developments of crane layout planning (CLP) in the construction field and reveal future research directions for modular integrated construction (MiC).

Through a rigorous systematic mixed-review methodology that integrates bibliometric, scientometric and qualitative analysis, this study explored the crane layout research trend; the scientometric analysis of journal sources and keywords occurrence network; the research contributions and links between influential countries; the classification of research articles based on the type of problems and solution approaches; the qualitative analysis of existing findings and research gaps; and the future research direction for CLP in MiC.

This study found five categories under the CLP domain, namely, crane selection, crane location, integrated crane selection and location, integrated crane location and allocation of supply points and hybrid problems. The major research approaches used to solve CLP is optimization (43%), visualization (23%), decision support systems (16%), simulation (11%) and qualitative techniques (7%). The possible future research directions include artificial intelligence-based models, multi-crane locations, CLP for MiC re-use, dynamic models representing real-life scenarios and building information modeling-based virtual reality models.

Through a mixed-review methodology, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of problem settings and solution methods of CLP while mitigating the subjectivity of traditional review methods. Also, it presents a repertoire on CLP and illuminates future directions for seasoned researchers in the context of MiC.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of exogenous factors in the strategic performance of construction companies. A conceptual model is proposed where strategic performance is influenced by a two‐dimensional construct composed of market conditions and strategic alliances.

A questionnaire survey was administered to 73 construction companies. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and test the hypothesis that strategic performance is impacted by exogenous factors. The individual constructs used in the study passed the internal reliability test, all factor loadings were statistically significant at α=0.05, all goodness of fit indices consistently indicated a good fit, and the hypothesized path coefficient was large and significant at α=0.05.

The hypothesis was supported by the data and analysis. Indeed, macro‐economic, political, legal, socio‐cultural conditions and the level of competition and demand are expected to impact differentiation strategies, and market/project/partner selection strategies. The quality of the relationships with government agencies and clients is expected to influence client/project/market selection strategies, while the quality of the relationships with labor unions may affect the ability to differentiate by using innovative construction methods, materials and equipment.

It is likely that endogenous factors such as company resources, capabilities and project management competencies also impact strategic performance. But the study is confined only to the exogenous factors of market conditions and strategic alliances.

The findings of the study benefit construction company executives in that they make the executives more cognizant of the market environment and they draw the executives' attention to the importance of alliances with other parties. While market conditions are beyond the control of construction executives, relationships with other parties are somewhat within their sphere of influence.

Only a few studies have ever investigated non‐financial measures to assess the effectiveness of company strategies. Also, exogenous factors which are unavoidable in a project environment were also rarely discussed in the construction management literature. The originality of this study is that it uses non‐financial measures to assess the effects of exogenous factors on strategic performance.

The purpose of this study was to prioritize the appropriate generic contractor selection criteria for Engineering–Procurement–Construction (EPC) projects in the construction industry.

Proceeding from a review of previous studies and validation by a small group of experts, a preliminary set of 16 criteria was first identified. This was followed by three rounds of Delphi surveys: firstly, with 64 experienced participants confirming the relevance of the 16 criteria; secondly, with a reduced subgroup of 47 more experienced participants scoring the importance of each; and finally, providing the opportunity for these 47 to revise their scores in the light of knowing the aggregated results of the previous round.

The results show the consensus view, of which the most important criteria are ranked as past performance, project understanding, technical attributes, key personnel, health and safety, past experience, time, management, financial, contractual and legal, quality, cost, relationships, environmental and sustainability, organizational and industrial relations, and geographic location.

The findings are useful for both practitioners and academics in making a significant contribution to the body of knowledge of the EPC process. This will assist in providing a better understanding of criteria importance and pave the way to developing an EPC contractor selection model involving the criteria most needed to objectively identify potential contractors and evaluate tenders.

Lowering of investment barriers between European nations has led to increasing integration of their capital markets. Consequently, global investors may be well‐advised to evaluate European stocks, not on the basis of the country of listing, but on the basis of the transnational industrial sector to which the stocks belong. This study utilizes performance measures, grounded in modern portfolio theory, to assess the risk‐adjusted return that has accrued to major transnational industrial sectors in Europe, such as consumer products, technology, utilities and financial services. The empirical documentation generated here can be used by international investors as input in decision making for sectorial allocation of funds in the European component of their global stock portfolios.

Precast wall lifting during prefabricated building construction faces multiple non-lean problems, such as inaccurate lifting-time estimation, unreasonable resource allocation and improper process design. This study aims to identify the pathways for improving lifting performance to advance lean construction of prefabricated buildings.

This study developed a methodological framework that integrates the discrete event simulation method, the elimination, combination, rearrangement and simplification (ECRS) technique and intelligent optimization tool. Two schemes of precast wall lifting, namely, the enterprise's business as usual (BAU) and enterprise-leading (EL) schemes, were set to benchmark lifting performance. Furthermore, a best-practice (BP) scheme was modeled from the perspective of lifting activity ECRS and resource allocation for performance optimization.

A real project was selected to test the effect of the methodological framework. The results showed that compared with the EL scheme, the BP scheme reduced the total lifting time (TLT) by 6.3% and mitigated the TLT uncertainty (the gap between the maximum and minimum time values) by 20.6%. Under the BP scheme, increasing the resource inputs produces an insignificant effect in reducing TLT, i.e. increasing the number of component operators in the caulking subprocess from one to two only shortened the TLT by 3.6%, and no further time reduction was achieved as more component operators were added.

To solve non-lean problems associated with prefabricated building construction, this study provides a methodological framework that can separate a typical precast wall lifting process into fine-level activities. Besides, it also identifies the pathways (including the learning effect mitigation, labor and machinery resource adjustment and activities’ improvement) to reducing TLT and its uncertainty.

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 purpose of this paper is to examine the use of contingent labour in the construction and civil engineering sector in the UK.

The paper presents the findings of a national postal survey of employment practices within the UK construction and civil engineering sector. The survey was conducted in 2002 and covered firms of all sizes within the sector. This technique has been supplemented with in‐depth interviews to provide a deeper understanding of the issues raised.

The paper finds that employers' use of contingent labour is widespread and that in many cases, the use of contingent labour has increased over recent years. It is argued that recourse to the use of contingent labour may increasingly be a constrained choice for employers, reflecting overall labour shortages and recruitment difficulties in the sector. The paper also finds that the use of contingent labour contributes to skills shortages in the industry, with the scope of training offered to workers on these contract forms being limited in nature.

The paper reveals the complex relationship between the use of contingent labour and ongoing skills shortages in the sector. The paper concludes that the cycle of turning to contingent labour in response to recruitment difficulties does not replenish the skill profile of the sector and therefore offers no long‐term solution to the skills shortages within the construction industry.