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The failure and abandonment of construction projects have proven to be insurmountable problems incessantly militating against the efficient performance of the construction industry in Nigeria. The complexity, technicality and a host of other project execution issues unique to multi-storey building projects do increase their susceptibility to failure and abandonment. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the factors influencing failure and abandonment of multi-storey building projects in Nigeria. This is with a view to provide inferential empirical data that could enhance successful delivery of multi-storey building projects in Nigeria.

Primary data were used for the study. A structured questionnaire was administered on consultants and contractors’ personnel within Lagos State, Nigeria. A total of 180 copies of the questionnaire were administered ,and 134 copies which represent a combined response rate of 74.4 per cent were retrieved. The data were analysed using frequency distribution and percentages, Mean item score and factor analysis.

The factors most significant to the failure and abandonment of multi-storey building projects are inadequate funding by the client, improper planning at the pre-construction phase, structural failure in multi-storey building during construction, bankruptcy/business failure of the contractor, improper scheduling of the building project activities and failure to engage qualified professionals with technical expertise and experience. The rated factors clustered under human resources capability, planning and structural quality, contractor selection and variation, insecurity and variation, and force majeure and political risk.

The study was limited to multi-storey building projects in Lagos State, Nigeria. Further studies could focus on specific resuscitation strategies for abandoned multi-storey building projects.

The study provided implications for effective project and contract management of multi-storey building projects which is very paramount to improve the delivery of complex, technical- and capital-intensive building projects in Nigeria.

The study provides specific implications for the management of multi-storey building projects, thereby enhancing the delivery of building projects.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and prioritize management practices that have the potential to improve labor productivity in multi-storey building construction projects.

The study adopted two-phase mixed-methods research design and 58 project managers, contract administrators and project coordinators were involved in the survey. During Phase I, qualitative data were collected from 19 experts using interviews and the management practices that could enhance labor productivity in multi-storey building construction projects were identified. In Phase II, quantitative data were collected from 39 contractors involved in the delivery of multi-storey building projects by using questionnaires. The data were analyzed to prioritize the practices identified in Phase I.

Well-defined scope of work, safety and health policy, safety and health plan, hazard analysis, long-lead materials identification, safe work method statement, and toolbox safety meetings are the top seven practices that have the potential to improve labor productivity in multi-storey building projects.

The research identifies the management practices that can be implemented to enhance labor productivity in multi-storey building construction projects in the context of Australia. Being the first study in the Australian context, the findings can be used as benchmark for international comparison.

The purpose of this study is how to use the quality function deployment (QFD) in the construction industry. The study was performed for the owners and decision-makers of a construction company in Egypt, as a sample, and the owners’ requirements.

The data collection process and the type of data collected are described in this section. The data used in this study was collected from a questionnaire survey and was quantitatively analyzed using statistical analysis to identify the practices that have a statistically significant correlation with the performance of the design in the structural system of multistory buildings. A structured questionnaire five points Likert scaled based was adopted in this study; the questionnaires were distributed to experts, managers in real estate companies, construction industry-academic experts and advisors. The resulting list of factors, issues and knowledge gaps was subjected to a questionnaire survey for quantitative confirmation and identification of the most important factors, issues and knowledge gaps by distributing the questionnaires to experts, managers in real estate companies, construction industry-academic experts, and advisor to identify ambiguous questions/items and to test the techniques used to collect data.

The effect of many internal and external factors that affect on value engineering and decision support systems, such as schedule time, cost, the purpose of the building, availability of materials and environmental, needs to be considered in the structural system for multi-story buildings. The final proposal for the house of quality-chart helps designers and decision-makers in the preliminary phase and feasibility study stage for choosing the structural system using value engineering analysis for multi-story buildings. Also, construction and engineering industries can use the findings from this study as a basis for selecting the optimal structural system for multi-story buildings. The estimating team will be able to accurately make decisions and give recommendations regarding an optimal structural system for multi-story buildings for different activities.

The proposed approach enables decision-makers and designers to select the optimum system for multi-story buildings according to the key performance indicators (KPIs) toward client satisfaction and conduct analytical investigations to facilitate decision-making in a structural system for the multi-story building in Egypt. The proposed approach enables decision-makers and designers to select the optimum system for multi-story buildings according to the KPIs toward client satisfaction and conduct analytical investigations to facilitate decision-making in the structural system for the multi-story building in Egypt.

QFD is a technique that availed in many industries and it is used in evaluating the customer expectations, reflecting this evidence on the product specifications. In recent years, this technique is used also in construction industry projects. It is will help designers and decision-makers in the preliminary phase and feasibility study stage for choosing the structural system using value engineering analysis for multi-story buildings.

Even as multi-story apartment building development proposals in existing neighbourhoods represent a substantial component of policy debate at local planning boards, there is limited evidence for the impact of such residential developments on surrounding apartment values. This paper aims to address the void in knowledge, and the impact of multi-story apartment building developments on apartment values in residential high-rise areas located outside city and district centres is investigated in Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland.

Whether a multi-story apartment building development is followed by an increase in housing values depends on both positive and negative externalities. To specify valuation effects of proximate development projects, advanced research design combining matched sample methodology and hedonic-based difference-in-difference approach is used.

It appears from the analysis that completion of a single multi-story apartment building has an immediate positive impact on apartment values within 300 metre radius, while there is no statistically significant impact on price trend.

This paper studies apartment values only in Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland, and it is important to notice that local regulations and market conditions may have a notable impact on the outcomes.

This study is the first of its kind to provide with statistically significant evidence for positive impacts from multi-story apartment building development in Finnish residential high-rise areas and may have a crucial role in helping to dispel prejudices related to such developments.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and prioritise the safety and health practices, which are suitable to improve labour productivity in building construction projects, and to investigate the association between company profiles, project characteristics and the safety practices.

The study adopted a mixed-method research design which involves two phases. In Phase I, qualitative data were collected and analysed to identify safety and health practices. In total, 19 experts who have experience in building construction projects were involved in the interviews. During Phase II, quantitative data were collected from contractors that are involved in the delivery of building projects using questionnaires which were administered via face-to-face interviews. After analysing the quantitative data, the safety and health practices were prioritised and the relationships between the practices and company profiles were investigated.

Safety and health policy, safety and health plan and hazard analysis are found to be the three most important practices that can improve productivity in building construction projects. The results of Spearman correlation analysis revealed that the level of implementation of the safety and health practices increases with project costs. Company experience and company size are positively associated with safety and health practices. Project delay is negatively correlated with safety and health practices.

The study provides useful information for international developers and contractors who want to do the construction business in Australia. Furthermore, contractors involved in the construction of building projects in Australia can implement the identified safety and health practices to improve labour productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on productivity as it unfolds during the execution of a particular task, i.e., reinforced concrete operations. The main aim is understanding whether the learning effect explaining the improvement of productivity in subsequent cycles of a given repetitive construction process is mainly attributable to a pure worker learning (independent on the specific site) or to the experience developed by the crew on the site conditions.

The authors conduct a research that empirically investigates and compares the change in productivity data of a single worker during his/her working life and that of a crew involved in specific repetitive work, such as the concreting activities of a multi-storey building.

The findings suggest differentiating between productivity gain as a result of the learning effect of the individual worker throughout his/her working life (which is independent of the specific project and site) and that of a crew composed by more workers which repeat reinforced concrete operations in a given specific project.

Despite the great attention reserved to learning in construction, few researchers discuss on the real applicability of the learning curve (LC) theory in the construction industry. The authors contribute to this literature by empirically investigating the contributions that the learning effect of the individual worker and that of a crew repeating a given task (i.e. reinforced concrete operations) in a given project have on the productivity improvement for subsequent cycles of the repetitive construction process.

The findings of this study have important managerial implications. The shape of the LC of the individual worker implies that learning increases relatively slowly in his/her working life (particularly after one to two years), while the effects of the crew experience are immediately significant in a time range of few weeks. This means that a single “one-off” multi-storey building project will show in the first storey the “historical,” individual productivity of the individual workers (i.e. not going to vary significantly in the next few weeks). The productivity improvement in the further storeys will only depend on the project-specific (and collective, for the crew) “learning” due, for example, to better coordination or to other issues that are progressively solved moving from the first storey to the following ones. So, the project-specific LC increases in a faster way than the individual one, and the overall productivity can be improved by accelerating the project-specific learning rate with more accurate project-specific design and management.

This paper enhances the understanding of the contributions that the learning effect of the individual worker and that of a crew repeating a given task (i.e. reinforced concrete operations) in a given project have on the productivity improvement for subsequent cycles of the repetitive construction process. This will contribute to improve the planning and control of site work activities, avoiding time and money wastefulness.

The paper aims to understand Finnish architects' attitudes towards the use of timber as a structural material in multi-storey (over two--storeys high) residential construction.

The study was conducted through a literature survey mainly including international peer-reviewed journals and similar research projects. Furthermore, the literature survey informed the generation of the web-based survey questionnaire design to gather information on architects' perceptions, attitudes and interest in the use of wood in multi-storey (over two-storeys high) residential buildings.

The paper's findings are as follows: (1) respondents perceived the most important advantages of wood as a lightweight, local and ecological material; (2) wood construction (compared to concrete) included perceived concerns about it being more costly and needing more complex engineering and (3) respondents had a favourable overall attitude towards the use of wood particularly in low-rise residential construction, whilst their perception of tall housing, including timber ones, was mostly negative.

No studies have evaluated the use of wood in tall residential buildings and architects' perceptions in Finland.

The purpose of this paper is to understand if and how industrialized house building (IHB) could support productivity developments for housebuilding on project and industry levels. The take is that fragmentation of construction is one explanation for the lack of productivity growth, and that IHB could be an integrating method of overcoming horizontal and vertical fragmentation.

Singe-factor productivity measures are calculated based on data reported by IHB companies and compared to official produced and published research data. The survey covers the years 2013–2020 for IHB companies building multi-storey houses in timber. Generalization is sought through descriptive statistics by contrasting the data samples to the used means to control vertical and horizontal fragmentation formulated as three theoretical propositions.

According to the results, IHB in timber is on average more productive than conventional housebuilding at the company level, project level, in absolute and in growth terms over the eight-year period. On the company level, the labour productivity was on average 10% higher for IHB compared to general construction and positioned between general construction and general manufacturing. On the project level, IHB displayed an average cost productivity growth of 19% for an employed prefabrication degree of about 45%.

Empirical evidence is presented quantifying so far perceived advantages of IHB. By providing analysis of actual cost and project data derived from IHB companies, the article quantifies previous research that IHB is not only about prefabrication. The observed positive productivity growth in relation to the employed prefabrication degree indicates that off-site production is not a sufficient mean for reaching high productivity and productivity growth. Instead, the capabilities to integrate the operative logic of conventional housebuilding together with logic of IHB platform development and use is a probable explanation of the observed positive productivity growth.

The main objective of this research is to identify the most important human resource management (HRM) practices, which have the potential to enhance labour productivity using fuzzy synthetic evaluation approach.

The study used a mixed-methods research design in which qualitative data were collected and analysed during Phase I and quantitative data were analysed during Phase II. Nineteen experts who have experience in building construction projects were involved in interviews conducted in Phase I. During Phase II, quantitative data were collected from contractors that were involved in the delivery of building projects using questionnaires and the data were analysed using FSE technique.

Clear delegation of responsibility, stability of organisational structure and crew composition are found to be the three most important HRM practices that can enhance productivity in building construction projects. The findings of the study showed that the overall importance index computed using the FSE model is 3.65 (≈ 4) with an equivalent linguistic term of “very important”. The study also suggested that the top three HRM practices should be implemented conjointly as there is no significant difference among their weights.

The output of this research can provide important information regarding the HRM practices in the Australian construction industry. Thus, international developers or contractors who want to do construction business in Australia can implement the essential HRM practices so that the productivity of their construction projects will not be affected negatively.

Risk analysis has come to be seen as a quantitative process in which risks are measured by the use of probabilities. However, since every new project is essentially unique with no previous data on it, decisions taken as to the nature of the risks are highly subjective and the actions that may be carried out to mitigate the effects of these risks are not clear‐cut; a non‐numerical approach can, therefore, be more useful. The risk management approach detailed here identifies the risks, checks for dependence amongst risks, and assesses the likelihood of occurrence of each risk by using linguistic variables through the medium of fuzzy sets. The use of linguistic variables is a departure from conventional risk analysis methods that rely rather heavily on statistical analysis to quantify the effects of risks on projects. The entire risk management process is explained, and a case study is carried out to demonstrate the use of the ideas treated. The case study concentrates on the activities of the substructure in a multi‐storey building project. The ten largest risks are identified, and dependence among them is assessed through fuzzy set calculations. The assessment of risk dependencies brings about a reduction in the total number of risks analysed, as highly dependent risks are treated together, and the use of linguistic variables brings about a non‐numeric approach to risk analysis with which project managers can be comfortable. The risk management process, through the use of fuzzy sets, is better able to handle project management knowledge on risk analysis which is highly subjective, and varies from project to project.