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The purpose of the paper is to investigate the critical success factors (CSFs) associated with the effectiveness of transfer and sharing of tacit knowledge in lean and agile construction processes.

The study identifies ten CSFs that initiate the transferring and sharing of tacit knowledge. The CSFs are validated through quantitative study. This study recruited project managers, executives, consultants and other managers that are directly involved in the management of a construction project. It recruits the respondents those have background and experience from disciplines such as lean construction, agile construction, construction supply chain (CSC) and knowledge management in lean, agile and CSC. The data collected through self-administrative questionnaire are categorised as ordinal data to analyse in SPSS with frequency and Kruskal–Wallis H test, Spearman’s correlation analysis and a rank-order analysis is done to establish the level of importance of those factors.

Initially, “Trust between construction organisations” is identified as the foremost CSF. Moreover, other CSFs such as motivation, leadership capabilities, business strategies and organisational capabilities follow trust.

This is the first study that investigates and establishes the CSFs that are essential to initiate transferring and sharing tacit knowledge in a lean and in an agile construction processes.

The purpose of this paper is to glean leadership lessons of megaproject managers through the life stories of four purposefully selected managers from two contemporary and two landmark megaprojects.

A narrative inquiry approach applying thematic analysis is used to capture lessons learnt from these stories with a focus on leading megaprojects. Narrative analysis has been used in organization studies and this paper is an attempt to use it in project management research.

Common strategies used by all four megaproject managers to be successful include: selecting the right people and building their capability; building trust with stakeholders; dealing with institutional power and politics effectively; and having the courage to innovate. There were also some differences in the approaches used by these managers due the times in which these projects were implemented.

The use of narrative inquiry is new to project management literature. As the life stories were not presented in the same way it was difficult to analyze them in the same manner, and further data had to be collected. This could have been avoided if it were feasible to collect narratives directly from the megaproject managers. This is being planned in future research emerging from this paper.

This study helps megaproject managers to exhibit leadership attributes that would be required to execute such large complex projects that have wide implications for the society, economy and the environment.

Megaprojects are often considered major displacements that cause social and geophysical issues that affect the environment. Lessons learnt from these stories could be useful to avoid such issues. The stories analyzed showed the human side of the megaproject managers toward people related, health and societal issues.

Narrative inquiry is new to project management literature. In the past, project management literature has focused on extracting lessons learnt from historical and classical projects, but lessons from life stories of project managers have not been used for the same purpose.

After completing the case, students will be able to understand the reasons for the lack of successful strategy implementation in companies, especially engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and general contractors in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemical industry; understand the importance of alignment as an organization capital in successful strategy implementation and familiarize themselves with assessing the alignment readiness of companies; understand the importance of leadership as an organization capital in successful strategy implementation, comprehend one of the most essential theories of leadership in the world of management and familiarize themselves with assessing leadership readiness using this theory; and understand the importance of leadership as an organization capital in successful strategy implementation, comprehend one of the most essential models of organizational culture in the world of management and understand how to assess the readiness of organizational culture in companies.

This case discusses the reasons for strategy implementation failure at PetroSahand International Group, one of the most prominent EPC and general contractors in the oil, gas and petrochemical industry in Iran. This case also examines organization capitals such as alignment, leadership and organizational culture, the three most important factors for the successful implementation of strategies, at this company. PetroSahand is an international, project-oriented company that has been able to successfully complete more than 100 large domestic and international projects during its four decades of activity. However, the company is currently facing many difficulties such as overdue debts and projects.

The target audience of this case are graduates and undergraduates in the courses of Strategic Planning, Strategic Management, Strategy Implementation, Strategy in Action and Change Management. Additionally, this case study can be useful for senior managers of companies and can help in the successful implementation of strategies as well as improving their company’s alignment, leadership and organizational culture.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Construction firms in the People's Republic of China (PRC) have been exporting their services to foreign countries. The aim of this research is to study how PRC contractors can improve their export performance. The specific objectives are to: ascertain the performance outcomes of projects undertaken by PRC contractors; identify strategies that PRC firms adopt to enable them to export effectively; and recommend areas in which PRC firms can improve their export performance.

The research design is a multi‐pronged approach, comprising industry‐wide postal/e‐mail survey using a structured questionnaire, in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews with PRC firms operating in Singapore and Singaporean firms that had worked with PRC firms in Singapore. Open‐ended questions were administered for the interviews.

The results show that PRC firms adopt cost leadership, diversification and networking strategies effectively. They generally have strong financial capacity and receive strong government support in their export activity. They offer low bids through low profit margins, low labour cost and satisfactory quality. They are not operating at the optimum level and there is room for improvement, if they wish to improve their export performance.

The limitation of the present findings is that PRC firms' export activities are investigated from the Singapore context, which may not be generalizable. Only nine PRC firms were interviewed, but this nevertheless represents 69 per cent of registered PRC contractors in Singapore. The qualitative data from the interviews precluded statistical analysis, but provided rich and comparable insights.

The study presents recommendations on how PRC firms may improve their export performance. Non‐PRC firms would be informed of the strategies and actions that PRC firms take or will take, and will be better prepared to compete with them internationally.

The study is of value because it identifies the strengths of PRC firms as exporters of construction services. Recommendations on how PRC firms can improve their export performance are also offered. PRC firms may leverage on their strengths, and take in some of the recommendations, so that they can further improve their export performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an interesting complex infrastructure construction case study project in which the initiation/design and delivery phases were managed differently, with diverse assumptions and workplace culture. It uses a recently developed collaboration and relationship-based procurement taxonomy to analyse the decision to commence a project and to deliver the project. The taxonomy tool reveals underlying assumptions and helps explain actions taken. The paper provides a window into the decision-making process. It also illustrates levels of innovation applied at the design and delivery phases.

A case study was undertaken, primarily using recorded and transcribed interviews, with five key senior participants in the project. This gathered a client, designer and contractor perspective that was subsequently analysed using a sense-making approach.

It is possible to start a project adopting a highly collaborative approach that maximises innovation, understanding complexity and developing a design that can then be delivered using a more traditional approach. The taxonomy used demonstrates that it is a useful visualisation tool for this purpose.

The research was limited to the perspectives of only five individuals even though they were key decision-makers and had a robust overview of the project as a whole. The delivery phase was chosen as a matter of policy without the ability to break loose from that policy. The implications for beginning the initiation and design process in a highly collaborative hands-on mode influenced the understanding of all parties involved in the project in a positive direction. The case study was based in Australia, which has extensive experience of collaborative project delivery approaches.

The taxonomy and its ability to provide visualisation of the experienced collaboration presents a powerful tool in helping us understand how it may be useful and what limitations to collaboration exists.

The paper illustrates the value of social interactions as alliance forms tend to consider triple bottom line issues and stakeholder engagement more highly than traditional, transnational approaches to project design and delivery.

The case study was unusual in its technical complexity; however, the main value of the paper is the application of the taxonomy and visualisation tool as a way to better understand how a project is being managed from a collaboration perspective.

With the aim of furthering the understanding of project speed and how to manage the urgent project, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the management challenges involved in delivering a telecommunications infrastructure project in a period of much shorter duration than a similar project. The authors wanted to understand the reasons behind the urgency and how the project management team succeeds in delivering in such a tight time window. Finally, the authors assessed the consequences (negative and positive, during and after the project delivery), knowing that the project was considered a success at its delivery, but not that it was successful at the post-project evaluation.

A case study based on qualitative research interviews with management team including the client, the main contractor and some related stakeholders, combined with case archives and internal documentation from the case project.

The urgency of a project or programme may lead to some negative consequences and impacts. The success seen in a short- and mid-term view is not enough to justify making acceleration decisions: thus holistic thinking and a long-term sustainable approach are needed to ensure continuity and profits.

This research is based on a single case study. There are some limitations regarding how urgent and unexpected the case was managed in comparing to normal case. A second limitation is that there is no clear definition of what are normal practices such that we can say what are a normal case and an urgent case.

There are some lessons learned from this case study about managing the unexpected and the urgent. Practitioners can obtain insight into positive and negative consequences of fast project delivery from this case.

This study is unique in its content and context, since it presents the first-hand insight into a case study that seemed to be successful to some extent (short-term impact); however, negative consequences appeared within a few years of its delivery.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship continuity across projects among actors in the construction industry, and to discuss why and how such continuity takes place.

The authors draw on the results from four in-depth case studies illustrating different strategies for pursuing relationship continuity. The results are analysed and discussed in light of the oft-mentioned strategies suggested by Mintzberg (1987): emergent, deliberate and deliberately emergent strategies. Furthermore, the ARA-model is used to discuss why the relationship continuity strategies are pursued, and which factors might enable and constrain the relationship continuity.

The main findings are twofold. First, the authors found that the strategy applied for pursuing relationship continuity may, in one-time period, contain one type of strategy or a mix of strategy types. Second, the type of strategy may evolve over time, from one type of strategy being more pronounced in one period, to other strategies being more pronounced in later periods. The strategies applied by construction firms and their counterparts can thus contain elements of emergent, deliberate and deliberately emergent strategies, in varying degrees over time. It is also shown that the strategies of the involved actors co-evolve as a result of interaction. Also, the main reasons for pursuing continuity appear to lie in the re-use and development of important resources and activities across projects to create efficiency and the possibility to develop mutual orientation, commitment and trust over time, and thus reduce uncertainty.

Further empirical studies are needed to support the findings. For managers, the main implication is that relationship continuity can arise as part of an emerging interaction pattern between firms or as part of a planned strategy, but that elements of both might be needed to sustain it.

The authors combine Mintzberg’s strategy concepts with the ARA-model to bring new light to the widely debated issue of discontinuity and fragmentation in the construction industry.

A voluminous amount of research has been conducted on project delay in the recent past; however, the persistence of the problem demands that a relentless quest for solutions is upheld. It can be argued that the problem is likely to be more pronounced in areas where development pressure is the highest. One such area is the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where the construction industry is said to have reached an unparalleled position in the last decade. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most significant causes of delays in the UAE construction industry.

A survey was conducted targeting three key types of stakeholders, namely clients, contractors and consultants. Validity and reliability were achieved by first assessing the plausibility of construction delay variables in UAE. The verification took place after the interpretation of quantitative data, this involved presenting the findings to the main participants. The validation took place after the verification process. Rigour was achieved by engaging participants previously engaged in UAE and focussing on verification and validation, this included responsiveness of the researchers during group discussions, methodological coherence, appropriate sampling frame and data analysis.

From the analysis, the study unveiled a number of important causes of construction delays in the UAE, ranging from unrealistic contract durations to poor labour productivity, with consultants and clients seemingly shouldering the bulk of the “blame game”. It was evident that all the three main stakeholders in a construction project (clients, consultants and contractors) need to change their existing practices in order to ensure timely delivery of projects. The research also confirms that delays are country specific and appear to be time related hence they should be viewed within the social, economic and cultural settings of the UAE.

A major limitation of the current study was the use of a single approach to facilitate data collection.

It was evident that practitioners need to change their existing practices in order to ensure timely delivery of projects. Continuous coordination and relationship between practitioners are required through the project life cycle in order to solve problems and develop project performance.

As suggested in this study methods should be put in place to reduce long and bureaucratic processes within the client’s organisations, not only to fulfil the requirements of the contract but also to suite fast-track projects.

Health and safety is an important issue in workplaces, and despite safety procedures becoming more strict, serious accidents are still happening within the UK construction sector. This demonstrates poor performance in the implementation of safety procedures on construction sites. One of the key challenges is the unwillingness of the site workforce, especially the subcontracted operatives, to adhere to safety provisions on construction sites. As such, this study investigates the strategies for enhancing safe behaviour amongst subcontracted operatives in the UK construction industry.

The study used exploratory sequential mixed method research, involving interviews and questionnaires as means of data collection, and thematic analysis, reliability analysis and exploratory factor analysis as methods of data analysis.

The study suggests that various carrot and stick measures are expected to be put in place as part of the strategies for enhancing safe behaviour amongst subcontracted operatives. These include adequate enforcement of safety practices by the management, operative engagement and motivation, commendation and rewards, site safety targets, leadership style and motivation.

Application of the suggested measures could enhance safety on construction sites, as it provides practical measures and solutions for inculcating safety behaviours amongst the site operatives who are most likely to be the victims of site accidents.