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This paper aims to draw attention to the weakness inherent in the current theoretical model underpinning built asset maintenance and to propose a new performance based model that aligns maintenance/refurbishment expenditure to corporate performance.

An action research approach was used in which participants from within a commercial organisation worked with the research team to develop a new theoretical approach to built asset maintenance. A series of meetings, workshops and interviews were used to: evaluate the organisation's approach to built asset maintenance; identify opportunities for improvement; and develop a new conceptual model of their built asset maintenance process. The logic underpinning the conceptual model was tested through a series of presentations to the organisation's middle and senior management.

The current theoretical model underpinning built asset maintenance does not allow direct links to be drawn between expenditure and impact on business performance. The new approach forces facilities managers to consider the business implications of their actions before large maintenance programmes are developed and provides feedback mechanisms to monitor the impact of any actions against key business drivers.

At this stage the new performance model is still theoretical and requires implementation to test its robustness and resilience.

The adoption of the model will force facilities managers to consider the implications of their maintenance/refurbishment actions at a strategic level, thus placing their considerations on a similar footing to their human resource and financial counterparts.

This paper extends the performance based concept to built asset maintenance and provides a practical process model through which the concept can be implemented.

Presents the findings of a questionnaire survey which examined the use of computers in maintenance management. Identifies the various maintenance activities that have been computerized, reviews the level of use of computers across the building management industry and assesses the level of user satisfaction with computerized maintenance management systems. Concludes that, although many maintenance organizations are using computers for many aspects of their work, there is considerable potential for future development.

Nissan's Sunderland plant in the UK is a shining example of employee ownership and participation in action. This strategy of continuous Training and development has helped the company achieve its many successes and, it is hoped, will continue to do so in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the problems encountered and the solutions developed when using benchmarking and key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor a major UK social house building innovation (change) programme. The innovation programme sought improvements to both the quality of the house product and the procurement process.

Benchmarking and KPIs were used to quantify performance and in‐depth case studies to identify underlying cause and effect relationships within the innovation programme.

The inherent competition between consortium members; the complexity of the relationship between the consortium and its strategic partner; the lack of an authoritative management control structure; and the rapidly changing nature of the UK social housing market all proved problematic to the development of a reliable and robust monitoring system. These problems were overcome by the development of multi‐dimensional benchmarking model that balanced the needs and aspirations of the individual organisations with the broader objectives of the consortium.

Whilst the research methodology provides insight into the factors that affected the performance of a major innovation programme its findings may not be representative of all projects.

The lessons learnt should assist those developing benchmarking models for multi‐client consortia.

The work reported in this paper describes an inclusive approach to benchmarking in which a multiple client group and their strategic partner sought to work together for shared gain. Very few papers have addressed this issue.

Dwelling retrofit strategies generally concentrate on measures to reduce energy use and carbon emissions. However, climate change projections predict increases in both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including heat waves. It is predicted that by the 2040s severe heat waves similar to the European one in August 2003 may be expected to occur every year. Future guidance therefore needs to combine mitigation with adaptation in order to provide safe and comfortable dwellings, whilst also reducing heating energy use, within the available retrofit budget. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The research presented here used dynamic thermal simulation (EnergyPlus) to model a range of passive interventions on selected dwelling types to predict the effect on both dwelling overheating during a heat wave and annual space heating energy use. The interventions include modifications and additions to solar control, insulation and ventilation.

Results demonstrate the effectiveness of interventions that reduce solar heat gains, with external shutters fitted to windows being the most effective single intervention in many cases. Solar reflective coatings also reduce overheating but lead to increased winter heating energy use, whilst wall insulation reduces heating energy use but can, in some cases, lead to increased overheating. The choice of wall insulation type is shown to be very important, with external insulation consistently performing better than internal for overheating reduction. The modelling further demonstrates that combined interventions can significantly reduce or in many cases eliminate overheating. Overheating exposure was found to vary significantly (up to a factor of ten times) between dwelling types. It can be significantly greater for residents who have to stay at home during the daytime, such as the elderly or infirm, and different interventions are sometimes more suitable in these cases.

An innovative modelling methodology integrating overheating reduction, heating energy use and intervention cost has been developed and implemented for adapting UK dwellings to future heat waves. Other innovations include an automated approach for large volumes of simulations (over 180,000); a unique graphical interpretation method for presenting single and combined intervention results; and a user-friendly, interactive retrofit toolkit, which is available online for public access and free of charge.

Sex discrimination in organisations operates at two distinct levels. On one hand, women experience difficulty entering certain occupations/organisations. This type of discrimination has been labelled access sex discrimination. This form of discrimination relies heavily on stereotyping. One form of stereotyping—sex characteristic stereotypes—refers to widely held beliefs that men and women are different in terms of their personalities and capabilities. The existence of these differences is used to justify the position that women are not capable of successful performance in certain occupations. A second form of stereotyping—sex role stereotypes—refers to widely held beliefs concerning the appropriateness of behaviour. This form of stereotyping implies that while women could enter certain occupations as they have the capabilities, they should not.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Americans choose a country and medical facility to travel abroad for medical treatment based on the following factors country environment, tourism destination, medical tourism costs and medical facilities and services.

Online survey with the help of Amazon Mechanical Turk website was used for data collection, and 541 valid cases were used of American residents who had travelled abroad for medical tourism. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were undertaken to validate the scales.

Findings indicated four major factors that can influence American medical tourists’ choices of medical tourism destinations. These factors are overseas’ country factors, attractiveness of tourism destination, medical tourism costs and facilities and services. Both the convergent and discriminant validities for the constructs were established. The results of the measurement-model-fit based on various measures were within the suggested cut-off values.

Out of the 541 responses of post-travel experienced medical tourists, it is hard to tell how similar/dissimilar the participants are in terms of ranking the four factors. To be competitive to attract global medical tourists, research suggests that the five popular countries of treatment, India, China, Thailand, Mexico and Turkey, identified in this study should provide high quality of medical and tourism facilities to patients.

This study contributes to the understanding of the underlying factors, which influence American medical tourists’ choice of destinations, with validated scales. For this exploratory research, 25 new items together with 34 items from other studies were adapted.

Disaster response and recovery is implemented through multiple projects with traditional project management approaches criticised as too time consuming and inflexible in circumstances of high uncertainty, requiring rapid reaction for multiple stakeholders. This research aims to understand the role of project and stakeholder management in the management of disasters as an opening for identifying improved disaster resilience opportunities using participatory project management approaches.

Using the 2011 Queensland floods as a case study, the positioning of project management in disaster management discourse was investigated through summative content analysis.

Results demonstrate that project and stakeholder engagement are poorly positioned in current disaster management discourse, although risk management appears more central, closely associated with disaster response.

This is the first stage of more extensive reviews of the positioning of project management in disaster management policies and practice. Further stages will involve a wider range of texts and textual analysis.

Results confirm poor recognition of traditional project management approaches in disaster management discourse indicating potential for more innovative and participatory approaches integrating multiple stakeholder perspectives to support disaster resilience.

Achieving improved community safety and disaster resilience requires multiple stakeholder collaboration for capability development in effective management of projects required to predict, respond and recover from disastrous events.

The paper addresses the sparse overlap between project and disaster management literatures identifying potential for more participatory management of disaster events.