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In today’s competitive environment, global competition has forced many companies to seek ways in which to improve their manufacturing performance. Describes a case study of a small/medium subcontract jobbing shop situated in the industrial heart of North West England, and explains how, despite considerable setbacks and hardship, the company managed to develop, integrate and sustain a number of key enablers into their corporate culture. Describes the organizational culture within which an approach to leadership, continuous improvement, innovation and employee development has allowed the entire workforce to continue their quest for total quality. Concludes by describing how these key enablers have considerably improved the organization’s performance and contributed towards its success and growth, resulting in a positive proactive culture based on best practices.

Industry 4.0 is exacerbating the need for offsite construction (OSC) adoption, and this rapid transformation is pushing the boundaries of construction skills towards extensive modernisation. The adoption of this modern production strategy by the construction industry would redefine the position of OSC. This study aims to examine whether the existing skills are capable of satisfying the needs of different OSC types.

A critical literature review evaluated the impact of transformative technology on OSC skills. An existing industry standard OSC skill classification was used as the basis to develop a master list that recognises emerging and diminishing OSC skills. The master list recognises 67 OSC skills under six skill categories: managers, professionals, technicians and trade workers, clerical and administrative workers, machinery operators and drivers and labourers. The skills data was extracted from a series of 13 case studies using document reviews and semi-structured interviews with project stakeholders.

The multiple case study evaluation recognised 13 redundant skills and 16 emerging OSC skills such as architects with building information modelling and design for manufacture and assembly knowledge, architects specialised in design and logistics integration, advanced OSC technical skills, factory operators, OSC estimators, technicians for three dimensional visualisation and computer numeric control operators. Interview findings assessed the current state and future directions for OSC skills development. Findings indicate that the prevailing skills are not adequate to readily relocate construction activities from onsite to offsite.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first studies that recognises the major differences in skill requirements for non-volumetric and volumetric OSC types.

This paper seeks to focus on the requirements to manage change, tangible and intangible benefits in a joint approach to deliver outputs on time, to quality and cost without failing to realise the benefits of the change. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the need for benefits‐driven programme/project management as well as the importance of identifying the stakeholders' level of involvement and contribution throughout the process, and manage their expectations.

The methodology used is based on an action research approach, combining findings from a literature review and case studies within UK's primary healthcare sector.

Findings demonstrate development of a Benefits Realisation (BeReal) approach in healthcare through looking at case studies taking place within UK's primary and acute healthcare sector.

The framework development is based on theoretical evidence and further research is needed to test and validate its robustness.

The paper highlights the application of benefits realisation and management in developing and delivering primary healthcare facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to identify interdependent barriers to the search and selection of new technologies by design engineers at industry, organisation and individual levels. A “proof of concept” HyCon tool is presented to demonstrate the role of information technology design support tools in supporting designers to overcome these inhibitors, in this case for hybrid concrete, by providing immersive and interactive, information‐rich environments to explore design solutions.

The HyCon tool was developed through a prototyping methodology encompassing a testing, analysis, design and coding iterative cycle. This was supported by case studies and industry workshops.

The results of a collaborative research project are presented, which describes the HyCon design support tool to promote the understanding and use of hybrid concrete in structural frames. This tool is built around a knowledge creation, application, storage, and retrieval cycle to envision and support the use of this new technology.

This paper fulfils an identified need to integrate technology management and design process considerations within the context of an information technology design support tool, and offers a “proof of concept” HyCon tool to demonstrate key issues and potential utilities and applications.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for the standardisation of the work breakdown structure (WBS) for building projects. This is based on the premise that buildings in general retain basic elemental options, and that there is a commonality of activities in the procurement of building projects.

To achieve the objective, the general practice of developing the WBS is investigated. This is achieved by means of an industry‐wide questionnaire survey designed to identify the most widely used criteria among UK construction organisations in segregating building works into packages. The survey also investigates the sequencing of these criteria across the WBS hierarchy.

The findings reveal that the most frequently used decomposition criteria in the formulation of WBS for building projects are elements, work sections, physical location and construction aids. The proposed framework is presented as a hierarchical decomposition of a building project based on these criteria. It allows for flexibility in level of detail while maintaining a rigid sequencing of the criteria based on their frequency of use.

This paper reports on a specific part of an EPSRC funded project that aims to investigate the application of computer vision techniques to the on‐site measurement of construction progress. The part reported in this paper addresses planning issues that will lead to automatic generation of work packages. Previous studies have focused on automating the planning aspect by associating individual components with schedule information. However, large construction projects usually consist of thousands of components. Planning and tracking progress at the level of the component is unrealistic in these instances. The standardisation framework reported in this paper will form the basis for automating the formulation of work packages, thus providing a uniform basis for tracking progress (based on computer vision) during project execution.

There is no automatic link between research and teaching in higher education institutions. Hence, in order to achieve a productive relationship, these two activities need to be linked through effective mechanisms. The research reported in this paper aims at identifying such strategies that are appropriate to a research‐based department, in the built environment discipline.

The paper identifies key issues related to this challenge through a literature review, and subsequently verifies those issues through an exploratory case study.

The key finding from the study is that research‐based departments are poor at transferring their research knowledge into teaching especially at undergraduate level. Even though there are informal strategies in existence, there is a strong need for formalising them. The paper utilises knowledge transfer and learning literature to fully understand the process.

Drawing from the findings, the study develops a framework to enable the knowledge transfer from research into teaching. The framework provides useful guidance for research‐based higher education departments in the built environment to transfer research knowledge into teaching in a formal and productive way.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that categorises the features and characteristics of the built environment that impact on health outcomes.

An extensive literature review was carried out. A total of 1,163 abstracts were assessed, leading to 92 papers being reviewed.

There is a considerable amount of evidence linking healthcare environments to patients' health outcomes, despite the lack of clarity in relation to cause‐effect relationships.

The paper proposes a theoretical framework linking different built environment characteristics to health outcomes. This framework provides a structure to group causal effects according to their relation with design features, materials and ambient properties, art and aesthetic aspects and use of the built environment.

Mass customisation involves the provision of product variants that fulfil clients' specific requirements seeking to increase product values. The configuration process involves a chain of decisions, which needs to be undertaken to create product variants that meet each client specific requirements. In this paper, this chain of decisions is conceptualized in terms of customisation units. Each customisation unit encompasses a customisable attribute (e.g. size, colour) and the range of items offered for this attribute. A design science approach was adopted in this investigation. In this approach, knowledge is produced by creating and testing a solution, which provides practical and theoretical contributions. A method is proposed to analyse and improve the configuration process by conceptualizing this process as a tree diagram. The proposed method is used to analyse the configuration process developed by organisations of the house-building sector based in the U.K. and Brazil: a manufacturer of floor tiles, contractors, and registered providers. These analyses enabled a comparison of the distinct configuration processes adopted. In addition, problems associated to the configuration process (such as burden of choice) and opportunities for improvements were also identified. Finally, alternative chains of decision were also devised based on these analyses to address the problems identified.

High-level labor waste is a major challenge in construction projects. This paper aims to identify, quantify and categorize labor waste in the context of Iranian housing construction projects.

This research uses a case study approach, with empirical data collected through direct observations and semi-structured interviews.

Having triangulated the findings from the literature review and empirical studies, a list of eight types of waste was derived for the thirteen observed laborers in ten case study projects. The empirical studies allowed the labor waste identified from the literature to be verified and refined by considering it in the context of the observed activities, and led to two new types of waste being identified which were not considered in the literature. Findings indicate that nearly 62% of laborers' time is spent on non-value-adding activities. It appeared that “unnecessary movement,” “waiting” and “indirect work” make up the highest labor waste.

This research focuses only on onsite resource flows in a housing construction site. It does not include offsite flows such as material delivery to site.

The findings have provided substantial evidence on type and amount of labor waste and provide a solid basis to stimulate construction actors to participate in reducing labor waste and improving productivity.

Construction organisations are mandated to use Building Information Modelling (BIM) for Government projects from 2016. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current status of the management aspects of BIM.

Following a telephone sift, a web-based questionnaire was conducted with UK construction BIM experts with 92 responses.

This research demonstrates a paradigm shift in construction as operations were deemed more important than the technical aspects of BIM Adoption. Respondents agree with enforced Level 2 BIM, demonstrating client demand is a significant driver on uptake. BIM use will substantially increase in the next five years. Ranking of the importance of current BIM standards indicated BS1192 was most used but almost a third adopted individual standards producing fragmentation. BIM’s effect on consultant fees indicated the need for structural change.

Front end design via BIM models and clash detection outweighed the use for facilities management indicating industry were meeting the target but not exploiting BIM to its full potential. Design and build and framework arrangements were the most common BIM procurement routes. Fragmentation of standards use creates a future interoperability problem between BIM systems.

Design team structure changes are supported with the adoption of a separate BIM manager being popular. Analysis of industry-wide model hosting characteristics indicated individual disciplines managed their own models meaning without an additional target for Level 3 BIM the single model environment is unlikely to be widely adopted.

BIM fee structure and procurement are investigated for the first time