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Offsite construction approaches and methodologies have been proffered a potential solution for controlling “traditional” projects, especially where high levels of complexity and uncertainty exist. Given this, locations such as Western Australia (WA), where there are unique housing provision challenges, offsite construction method was considered a potential solution for not only addressing the complexity/uncertainty challenges but also alleviating the housing shortage. However, whilst acknowledging the benefits of offsite construction, recognition was also noted on perceived barriers to its implementation, primarily relating to cost uncertainty. This recognition is exacerbated by very limited offsite construction cost data and information available in the public domain. In response to this, this paper sims to provide detailed cost analysis of three offsite construction projects in WA.

To hold parameters constant and facilitate cross-case comparative analysis, data were collected from three embedded case studies from three residential housing projects in WA. These projects represent the most contemporary implementation of offsite in WA; where two were completed in 2016/2017 and the third project was still ongoing during the data collection of this research. The research methodological approach and accompanying data analysis component engaged a variety of techniques, which was supported by archival study of project data and evidence gathered from the offsite construction provider.

Core findings revealed three emerging themes from residential offsite construction projects pertinent to cost. Specifically, the overall cost of delivering residential housing project with offsite construction techniques, the cost variability of offsite construction residential housing projects as impacted by uncertainties and the cash flow of residential offsite construction projects based on the payment term. These three major cost drivers are elucidated in this paper.

This research presents new cost insights to complement the wider adoption of offsite construction techniques. It presents additional information to address the limited cost data and information of offsite construction projects available in the public domain particularly for residential housing projects (within the bounded context of WA). It also highlights the further stages needed to enhance data validity, cognisant of universal generalisability and repeatability, market maturity and stakeholder supply chains.

This study aims to support the development risk management strategies towards improving the resilience of assets located in the estuary and lower level of the Swan River, Western Australia. The study evaluated the key role of Federal/State policies in adaptation planning and the communication and interface between various stakeholders, including State/Local governments, construction professionals, property developers and landowners.

The study applied a mixed research approach through a questionnaire survey followed by an in-depth interview involving local construction experts. Collected data were analysed following the grounded theory methodology style of data analysis.

The findings revealed a convoluted understanding of communication networks and responsibility for owning the future risks between relevant stakeholders. As a result, a framework illustrating clear process and roles in mitigating risk and implementing adaptive asset management measures has been formulated and presented in this study.

Scientific evidence suggested that sea-level rise and increased frequency of major coastal flooding events are inevitable as early as 2100, and having a comprehensive risk management plan of assets to anticipate climate risks and to improve urban resilience is essential. The proposed framework is aimed at local stakeholders in improving current state of communication and adaptation planning as a pathway to develop a robust risk management strategy.

Off-site manufacturing (OSM) application in vertically higher and spatially larger projects within Western Australian (WA) commercial sector has demonstrated the potential of benefitting from such a construction technique, but introducing a new methodology to a traditional sector such as commercial sector is not always straightforward. The acceptance of the new methodology, level of awareness of the stakeholders involved and the readiness of the supply chain to deliver, for instance, may influence the success of its implementation. Given the infancy of such methodology in the WA construction industry, this research project aims to analyse factors influencing the implementation of OSM construction method in WA.

Following a thorough literature review, an existing research agenda in OSM was used to inform the direction of this research, i.e. focussing on external macro aspects of the decision making to implement OSM. Three projects in WA were studied, and the data collection was facilitated through archival study and semi-structured interviews with construction practitioners who were the stakeholders of the three projects. Data analysis was conducted through content analysis to draw the findings and conclusion of this research.

The analysis of the studied cases revealed relevant economic/financial, technological and regulatory factors, as well as social factors influencing the implementation of OSM, particularly in WA commercial projects. These findings were then used to develop an overall understanding of the external macro factors influencing decision making in implementing OSM that forms a formal research agenda aimed at enabling successful implementation of OSM in WA construction industry, particularly in its commercial sector.

The research findings presented in this paper identified factors that significantly influence the implementation of such alternative technology in a traditional sector. These factors were then structured to form the subsequent research agenda to continuously pursue the implementation of OSM in the sector. While the research agenda takes into account the unique characteristics of the WA construction industry, it contributes to the global and the Australian national research agenda, and the research methodology reported in this paper can be used to develop similar research agenda elsewhere.

This paper aims to disseminate the knowledge integration process modelling throughout the phases of the early contractor involvement (ECI) procurement methodology, to optimise the benefit of ECI procurement method. The development of the model was aimed at taking advantage from the associated benefits of integrating knowledge and of ECI procurement. ECI provides contractors with an alternative means to tendering, designing and constructing projects. Thus, this paper explores knowledge interconnectivity and its integration involving numerous disciplines with various stakeholders to benefit from the collaborative environment of ECI.

The methodology implemented in the research includes a thorough literature review to establish the characteristics of the ECI tender stage as well as the characteristics of knowledge to be integrated in an ECI setting. Following this, an embedded case study research methodology was used involving three healthcare ECI projects undertaken by a Western Australian commercial contractor through 20 semi-structured interviews and project archival study, followed by the development of knowledge integration process models throughout the ECI process of the studied cases.

The research findings provide the basis to develop a knowledge integration process model throughout the ECI stages. The tender stage was found to be the most crucial stage for knowledge integration, particularly from the main contractor’s perspective to impart change and to influence the project outcome. The outcome of this research identifies the richness and interconnectivity of knowledge throughout the knowledge integration process in an ECI project starting from the intra-organisational knowledge integration process followed by the inter-organisational process of knowledge integration. This inside-out perspective of knowledge integration also revealed the need for mapping the implementation of knowledge integration from instrumental to incremental approach throughout the ECI stages in optimising the intended benefits of integrating knowledge.

This paper reports the development of a knowledge integration process model with the view to optimise the management effectiveness of integrating knowledge in ECI projects. Although knowledge integration and ECI can be considered existing and widely accepted concepts, the novelty of this research lies in the specific use of the knowledge integration process to analyse the knowledge flow, transformation and, hence, management in ECI projects. As it has been acknowledged that knowledge integration is beneficial but also a complex process, the methodology implemented here in modelling the process can be used as the basis to model knowledge integration in other ECI projects to further capitalise from ECI as a collaborative procurement method.

Following the increasing need for faster construction, improved quality and evidence value propositions, offsite construction is increasingly being proffered as a viable contender to “traditional” construction approaches. However, whilst evidence supports the move towards offsite, its uptake has been lower than expected. Whilst the precise reasons for this seem to be influenced by a number of issues, including contextual drivers and market maturity; some project stakeholders also view offsite as carrying greater risks. The purpose of this paper is to report on the quality of information flow, in particular, the impact and influence of this on design risks in offsite construction projects.

An existing design risk framework is used as the point of departure for this research. This is further expanded into a specific model for evaluating offsite construction projects design risks, the rubrics of which were informed by two case studies of offsite construction projects in Australia and the UK analysed with a process-tracing technique. Whilst these cases were geographically separated, the constructs were aligned to uncover fundamental design information requirements and concomitant risks associated with offsite.

The findings of the research reported in this paper include the crucial information feeding into the design process emanating from the lifecycle of offsite construction projects, namely, design, offsite (manufacturing), handling and transporting, site works and installation and also occupancy. These are contextualised within the four categories, namely, client requirements, project requirements, regulation aspects and social aspects and the final outcomes were summarised into a holistic diagram.

Given that the offsite construction has shifted the working paradigm into assigning a significant level of efforts and emphasis at the front end of the construction projects, the importance of its design process and hence design risks management has gone up significantly in construction projects delivered using this technique. This research and paper contributes significantly to the built environment domain by identifying the crucial aspects along the project lifecycle to be considered to minimise the potential occurrence of design risks and hence increasing the confidence of project stakeholders in adopting offsite construction techniques in their projects.

The more contemporary views on managing projects recommend stakeholder engagement as an important part of the process. Challenges have been reported when attempting to involve project stakeholders in a construction project due to the complexity of the processes. In projects such as refurbishment projects, the efforts to incorporate end users' needs and preferences into spatial environmental functions increase the complexity of stakeholder engagement during the journey of the project. This paper presents a unique technique used to integrate different tools within the system enquiry methodology in modelling the project stakeholder engagement process for refurbishment projects.

Aiming to address the problem, system dynamics (SD) has been selected as the most suitable method for modelling the dynamic behaviour of this complex system over time. A tool known as a rich picture diagram (RPD) is proposed as the precursor of the development of a causal loop diagram (CLD) to facilitate a more holistic abstraction for applicable solutions. An example of a single case study involving the refurbishment of a higher education building project is presented to explain the analysis undertaken in the process of developing the CLD that models the dynamic behaviour within end-user stakeholder engagement.

This paper demonstrates the complementarity capabilities of the soft and hard systems of enquiry in modelling stakeholder's dynamics within the refurbishment construction contexts. The RPD soft system tool was found useful to congregate diverse stakeholder expressions and experiences of a complex system in a holistic manner. Subsequently, the development of the CLD was fully guided by the information and relationship captured and presented in the RPD to yield a representative system model. Furthermore, this paper also reports the dynamics of the actors, situations, events and their inter-relationship found in the presented refurbishment project.

This paper enriches the techniques within the system enquiry methodology by integrating hard and soft system tools for dynamic process modelling purposes. This is particularly achieved by utilizing the RPD as the precursor of SD that provides a useful way for researchers and stakeholders to fully understand the dynamics and develop robust systemic interventions to optimize end-user stakeholder engagement during the journey of refurbishment projects, particularly of higher education buildings.

The purpose of this study is to investigate ways of transferring knowledge and information during the life-cycle phases of construction projects, particularly between the construction and occupancy phases, and to find an approach to minimise knowledge and information gaps during the handover process.

The study applied a qualitative approach involving a literature review and an archival analysis of information flow in the studied cases of a construction project, followed by a cross-cases analysis and expert interviews. Data on information flow were collected from three cases of building construction projects in Perth, Western Australia. In addition, a total of 18 local facilities management experts were interviewed to identify the key reasons of knowledge and information gaps and to propose an effective knowledge flow model.

The findings of this study indicated a significant knowledge and information gap, which exists during the handover process in construction projects in Western Australia. The findings of case analysis and expert interviews identified that the project handover guidelines were often ignored in construction projects in Western Australia, and the handover phase was not given the same priority as the design and construction phases by most of the project stakeholders, which led to information and knowledge gaps between the project construction and post-occupancy phases. The study conducted, integrated knowledge and information flow modelling to analyse the knowledge and information gaps followed by mapping the gaps against existing knowledge sharing frameworks (KSFs) before proposing an integrated knowledge sharing conceptual model to improve current practice and to enhance the information flow during the various phases of the construction project life cycle.

The study is based on three cases in Perth, Western Australia, and thus the findings and recommendations are contextual. Whilst laying a good foundation to do so, further research is needed to investigate more cases in Western Australia and beyond to fully generalise the findings from this study.

The study contributes to improve the handover process and information flows in project life-cycle phases in Western Australia and develop an information flow model followed by bringing together existing KSFs, namely, the open communication channel (OCC), soft landing framework (SLF) and building information modelling (BIM), to propose an integrated knowledge sharing conceptual model. The methodology used here to analyse the information flow in a diagrammatic manner, the mapping of FM issues against the KSFs’ capabilities and a conceptual model to facilitate change in the industry’s silo mindset are the main contributions of this paper.