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Widespread efforts to promote the use of building information modelling (BIM) as part of the construction industry transformation agenda in many advanced countries are yet to reach the wished-for effects. While there are various studies on the factors influencing BIM adoption, empirical evidence detailing how construction companies can successfully adopt BIM in their organisations remains scarce. This paper identifies and describes how enabling factors are implemented by large UK contractor firms to transform their organisations using BIM for projects.

A qualitative exploratory approach is employed in this paper. Data are gathered through 42 semi-structured interviews with professionals in strategic and management roles in construction companies in the UK, followed by case studies of five leading main contractor companies selected to provide examples of how they implemented the identified enablers.

This research identifies and describes six key enabling factors that influence successful BIM adoption and implementation, namely, committed leadership and management; a digital transformation strategy with realistic objectives; building a capable supplier network; building trust-based relationships with clients; upskilling employees; and establishing a robust structure for effective collaboration and communication.

Nine practical recommendations are provided to guide construction firms in taking steps to adopt and use BIM in their organisations and for their projects.

This study provides empirical evidence detailing how key enablers are implemented towards successful BIM adoption and use by large UK contractors.

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.

This study aimed to address a gap in subcontractor management by focusing on previously unexplored complexities surrounding subcontractor management in developing countries. While past studies concentrated on selection and relationships, this study delved into how effective subcontractor management impacts project success.

This study used the Bayesian Network analysis approach, through a meticulously developed questionnaire survey refined through a piloting stage involving experienced industry professionals. The survey was ultimately distributed among participants based in Accra, Ghana, resulting in a response rate of approximately 63%.

The research identified diverse components contributing to subcontractor disruptions, highlighted the necessity of a clear regulatory framework, emphasized the impact of financial and leadership assessments on performance, and underscored the crucial role of main contractors in Integrated Project and Labour Cost Management with Subcontractor Oversight and Coordination.

Previous studies have not considered the challenges subcontractors face in projects. This investigation bridges this gap from multiple perspectives, using Bayesian network analysis to enhance subcontractor management, thereby contributing to the successful completion of construction projects.

Construction industry is one of the worst affected sectors due to the impact of the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the key competencies that should be demonstrated by the contractors in the post-COVID-19 scenario to make them resilient to the adverse impact of pandemic outbreaks.

A survey instrument was developed using an extensive literature review and was tested using a pilot study. It was then administered online using survey monkey to 900 respondents, out of which 324 complete responses were obtained. The data analysis was performed using exploratory factor analysis and second-order confirmatory factor analysis.

After analyzing the data, it was identified that the most critical competence was managing site safety (standard factor loading (SFL) = 0.91), followed by leadership skills (SFL = 0.88), technical competence (SFL = 0.81), managing supply chain disruption (SFL = 0.73) and financial stability (SFL = 0.48) that were found to be less essential from the respondents’ point of view.

The study is first of its kind to identify the core competencies that should be demonstrated by the contractors to cope with COVID-19-induced disruptions. The findings of this article can be used by the practitioners to develop policies and procedures for selection of contractors.

Construction organizations' investment in effective talent-development programs is a key strategy in attracting, developing and retaining staff. Such programs are especially important given the current challenges in the construction workforce, including labor shortages, an aging workforce, generational differences in the workforce, supply chain disruptions and the need to effectively train staff in the skills that are essential in a constrained labor environment. To address these challenges, this study proposes a performance measurement strategy that construction companies can use as input to design their talent development programs.

The strategy intends to assess the performance of project managers and develop criteria that define categories of their performance, including the top performers' category. This enables construction organizations to provide each project manager with individualized training that addresses areas of weakness and in turn, develops the skills that correspond with being top performers. The proposed strategy was developed and tested by surveying the immediate supervisors of 187 project managers working for general and specialty contractors in the United States. Principal component analysis was used to develop a single performance construct from seven performance criteria.

This construct was used to organize the project managers into the categories of top, above-average and below-average performers. According to the findings, top-performing project managers have well-rounded skills in the areas of leadership, communication, technical proficiency and overall job knowledge.

The outcomes of this study can help construction organizations focus their talent-development programs on the skills most associated with PMs being top performers.

This study provides construction organizations with a comprehensive performance-measuring construct to focus their talent-development programs on the skills most associated with top-performing project managers. Researchers can use this study as a foundation for further understanding how performance is related to various construction professions.

Governments worldwide seek to optimize value in public project bids. Social procurement (SP) has become a global tool for achieving project goals. The purpose of this study is to assess the understanding of SP among contractors and identify its drivers to optimize the value associated with public projects.

A total of 15 major contractors were interviewed to obtain their views on SP, appreciate their current practices and identify the main drivers of SP in projects. A semistructured interview was used to gather relevant data. Neo-institutional theory is the lens of the study used to provide the focus of the research. The collected data were analyzed using the thematic data analysis technique.

The study found that SP is understood as corporate social responsibility and is not handled in a structured manner guided by policies or clearly defined procedures. Additionally, research has shown that compliance requirements, rather than value and goodwill, are the main inspiration for SP practices.

The study’s limitation is the fact that it was conducted in the context of Botswana and only used the interview technique as the solo data collection method. The other limitation is the lack of empirical literature on SP concerning the lack of SP policy in Botswana.

This study raises awareness of the concept of SP among contractors in Botswana and eases its implementation within the industry.

The study explored the disparity between construction clients and contractors on what constitutes “client satisfaction”. Such disparity is important because it can lead to different conclusions and thus disagreement on the assessment of project success.

The philosophical stance was interpretivism, thus the qualitative methodology was adopted. Employing purposive sampling, 30 interviews with clients and another 30 interviews with contractors were conducted in Saudi Arabia. The data obtained were evaluated by thematic analysis.

The results indicate differences in the consensus ad idem (meeting of the minds) between clients and contractors in terms of both their perceptions and prioritisation of the attributes that underpin client satisfaction. For example, some contractors thought that using advanced technologies was very important for client satisfaction, whereas some clients preferred the contractors to be honest with them.

The data collection was limited to Saudi Arabia and only the views of clients and contractors were studied, thereby limiting the generalisability of the findings.

The identification of the differing priorities of clients and contractors on client satisfaction provides an informed basis to make more concerted efforts to satisfy clients and minimise disputes on projects in Saudi Arabia.

The study contrasted the views of clients and contractors simultaneously on the subject matter of client satisfaction in relation to project success, and analysed this through the lens of consensus ad idem. The key influences on clients' satisfaction in Saudi Arabia are also presented.

The purpose of this study is to identify the antecedents of “power” and “dependence” attributes in the context of a construction project and to explore the impact of the antecedents on risk transfer and collaboration to develop a conceptual framework for decision-making.

A systematic review was performed using various databases to identify the antecedents and their measures. This review followed the established preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses protocols and 246 articles were identified. The articles were qualitatively analysed based on keyword co-occurrence approach using VOSviewer software.

The findings of this systematic review established latent constructs, that is, “clarity of procurement decisions”, “market structure” and “market competition” as antecedents of power and two antecedents of dependence, namely, “reputation” and “commercial importance”. And a framework was conceptualized to determine the contractual approach and the procurement design should be planned to take in account the scenarios and the course of action to enhance collaboration and control risk transfer.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to identify the “antecedents” of the attributes of “power” and dependence and framework was conceptualized to determine the contractual approach.

Building information modeling (BIM) is mostly limited to the design phase where two parallel processes exist, i.e. creating 2D-drawings and BIM. Towards the end of the design process, BIM becomes obsolete as focus shifts to producing static 2D-drawings, which leads to a lack of trust in BIM. In Scandinavia, a concept known as Total BIM has emerged, which is a novel “all-in” approach where BIM is the single source of information throughout the project. This paper's purpose is to investigate the overall concept and holistic approach of a Total BIM project to support implementation and strategy work connected to BIM.

Qualitative data were collected through eight semi-structured interviews with digitalization leaders from the case study project. Findings were analyzed using a holistic framework to BIM implementation.

The Total BIM concept was contingent on the strong interdependences between commonly found isolated BIM uses. Four main success factors were identified, production-oriented BIM as the main contractual and legally binding construction document, cloud-based model management, user-friendly on-site mobile BIM software and strong leadership.

A unique case is studied where BIM is used throughout all project phases as a single source of information and communication platform. No 2D paper drawings were used on-site and the Total BIM case study highlights the importance of a new digitalized construction process.

This research uses contingency theory and Venkatraman’s concept of moderating fit to explore how key project stakeholders (clients, consultants and suppliers) influence project performance from the perspective of small and medium contractors in the Jordanian construction industry.

An anonymous structured survey was performed comprising 200 key informants including senior project managers, construction managers, engineers and general managers working for small- and medium-sized contractors in the Jordanian construction industry. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the data.

The results of this study show that consultant-related factors (quality of documentation produced, ability to communicate and technical competencies) are perceived to have the most significant direct effect on project performance, followed by client-related factors (payment promptness, decision certainty and documentation control) and supplier-related factors (supplier performance, defects control and logistics management).

The results contribute new theoretical, empirical and practical insights to existing construction project performance research by highlighting the key performance factors which need to be managed for each stakeholder group to ensure effective project performance from a small- and medium-sized contractor perspective.