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This study aims to investigate and ranks the critical factors influencing the bid or no-bid decision and their importance for the indigenous small building contractors within the Tanzanian construction industry.

An interpretivist epistemological design was adopted to extensively manually review and search extant literature on bid or no-bid decision-making criteria. A total of 30 most common bid or no-bid decision-making criteria were identified. These were included in a questionnaire survey data collection instrument. The survey was distributed to 40 small indigenous (local) building contractors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In total, 33 responses were received. Response data was subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results show a disparity of ranking of the 30 bid/no-bid criteria factors among the two grades of small contractors, with 11 factors having statistically significant differences (p = < 0.05). Based on the overall sample, the most highly ranked seven factors in ascending order were: availability of capital; financial capacity of the client; project size; profitability; project type; need of work; and current workload. The following were the least ranked: tax liability; the degree of safety; availability of other projects; availability of labor; bidding document price; and uncertainty because of weather conditions. Availability of capital and financial capacity of the client were jointly ranked as the most important by Class VI contractors. In comparison, availability of capital and need of study were rated highly for Class VII contractors.

The sample consisted of indigenous small building contractors in one industry operating in Tanzania only and did not include the perceptions of the foreign contractors based in Dar es Salaam. Future studies are required to expand the current research and investigate this specific aspect further.

The identified “bid/no-bid criteria” information will allow indigenous small building contractors to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their bidding decision-making process. Emergent findings will enable said contractors to: better fit into the competitive construction business environment; increase their awareness of existing decision-making practices; and develop appropriate strategies for evaluation of opportunities encountered. Cumulatively, these findings benefit small indigenous building contractors by increasing their understanding of the factors influencing bid decision.

The study represents the first empirical study in Tanzania on the critical factors influencing the bid or no-bid decision among the indigenous small building contractors, which face fierce competition from foreign contractors.

The acknowledged mode of securing work by contractors is through the bidding process. However, the bidding decisions undertaken by some indigenous contractors in developing countries are fraught with challenges that often engender bidding practices (such as collusion through price fixing and intentional lower bidding) and threaten business survival. Therefore, in the quest to better understand these challenges and viable advocate solutions for overcoming them, this paper aims to identify the key challenges impacting the bid decision process by small indigenous building contractors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and establish the strength of their relationship between the pairs of key challenges.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify nine challenges impacting the bid decision of indigenous building contractors in Tanzania, which were used to design a questionnaire survey. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, mean score, inferential statistics (One sample t-tests), Kendall’s concordance and correlation analysis.

Challenges identified from a literature review were empirically tested using survey responses accrued from 33 participating small indigenous building contractors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The findings illustrate that lack of liquidity, profit returns, lack of equipment, lack of experience of several works and procurement procedures are perceived as being the five most critical challenges. Project location, site accessibility and lack of labour were least critical. The major finding from the correlation analysis was the existence of the strong and positive correlation between “project location” and “site accessibility”.

The study is limited by its sample and geographical settings which focussed and confined the results on one country, Tanzania. However, the findings can be considered as important for other developing countries wishing to gain insights into the challenges impacting bid decisions.

Measures for addressing the identified challenges impacting the bidding decisions of the indigenous small building contractors would be undertaken. The findings will enable contractors to not only reconcile the challenges with the industry and in so doing benefit both themselves and the clients but also enable them to be better prepared to deliver contractual obligations and generate socio-economic wealth. Government and policymakers will also be able to appropriately develop macro interventions for managing these challenges, which could be custom-tailored to indigenous small contractors. Finally, improving the ability of local firms to compete in the construction industry has been recognised as having the potential of advancing socio-economic development within the comity of developing countries.

The study enhances government, client and practitioners’ understanding of the challenges affecting the bidding practices among the indigenous building contractors in Tanzania. This area of investigation has previously been under explored particularly sub-Saharan Africa.

Implementation of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in African projects is inundated with a number of capacity building challenges which affects growth and project performance. Further, there is paucity of empirical studies on the strategies for overcoming these challenges. Therefore, this research addresses that knowledge gap by examining the human capacity building (HCB) strategies for improving PPP implementation in construction projects in developing countries, with a focus on Tanzania.

HCB strategies identified from the scoping review were administered to 81 handpicked Tanzanian practitioners attending PPP training course. To examine the differences in the perception of the identified HCB strategies, and the relationships between different pairs of the HCB strategies, the data were subjected descriptive statistics, parametric tests, Kendall’s concordance and Pearson correlational analysis, including group wise correlation analysis.

Based on the overall sample, “Engagement of stakeholders on capacity development”, “Organization of PPP seminars and training” and “Introduction of in-house training to Public institutions expected to undertake PPP projects” are the top ranked HCB strategies. “Development of study tours to stakeholders involved in PPP projects” is the least ranked. Significant differences between the sub-groups of “no PPP experience” and “some PPP experience” were evident for “Invitation of International experts to share experiences” and “Sharing of responsibilities” HCB strategies. The “no PPP experience” group rated both strategies higher than those with “some PPP experience”.

The identified HCB strategies can be used as a “road map” for the development of appropriate engagement strategies with various stakeholders for the successful implementation of PPP thereby, enhancing the performance of the construction firms.

Eight strategies have been identified from the literature and tested for the Tanzanian context. The uniqueness of Tanzanian PPP implementation context arising from varying cultural, organizational, political and economic conditions differentiates the priority of HCB strategies when compared to other contexts where these strategies were investigated. This is germane to the PPP research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between overcoming the value management (VM) implementation barriers and VM implementation in the Egyptian building sector.

A critical review of the literature on VM was used to through bibliometric analysis has been conducted to highlight the studies’ gap and establish the VM barriers. These obstacles were then contextually transformed via a semi-structured interview and a pilot study, and subsequently organized in the form of a theoretical model. The primary data was collected from 335 building stakeholders in Egypt through the administration of questionnaire surveys. Consequently, structural equation models of partial least squares were applied to statistically assess the final model of VM barriers.

The bibliometric analysis shows that there is an inadequate study on VM implementation barriers in the Egyptian construction industry and insufficient studies on implementing VM in developing countries. Results obtained from the proposed model showed that overcoming the VM barriers has a major connection with successful VM implementation. This is indicated with the value of ß = 0.743, which is necessary when the firm is overcoming 1 unit of VM barriers.

This study fills the knowledge gap by identifying and emphasizing the critical obstacles to VM implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Tanzanian practitioner’s readiness assessment for public–private partnership (PPP) adoption. This study is important as the readiness assessment enables the stakeholders to assess their capability and current status quo to implement new ideas such as PPPs.

Underpinned by the theoretical lenses of innovation diffusion theory (IDT), this research undertakes semi-structured interviews with PPP practitioners within the Tanzanian affordable housing sector. The content analysis was used for the data as collected.

“Lack of awareness and usage of PPPs framework models during the feasibility and subsequent implementation process”, “Limited knowledge and skills required for PPP practitioners”, “Poor capacity building”, “Lack of engagement of experts during the viability and assessment process” and “Poor selection process of private partners giving rising to unsolicited proposals” are the main PPP features influencing the readiness process and fostering of innovation.

The identification of the readiness approaches would support PPP policymakers and stakeholders with the government mechanisms for identifying the key areas needed to be addressed to improve the PPP implementation performance.

Outputs of this study provide insights on how to foster a better understanding of the readiness assessment strategies and approaches for successfully implementing PPP in affordable housing projects.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions of practitioners working within the UK design organisations on the perceived benefits of health and safety management (HSM). It further explores whether these perceptions could be influenced by the external factors such as the length of service in employment, organisation size, and the professional disciplines and educational backgrounds of the respondents. The study proposes the HSM index, an indicator reflecting the level of benefits from HSM approaches within the construction sector.

Using a data triangulation approach involving quantitative and qualitative methods and a KAP (knowledge, attitudes and perceptions) approach, a total of 110 questionnaires were distributed to the practitioners drawn from the small and medium sized design organisations within the UK, of which only 30 were deemed usable, giving a response rate of 27.3 per cent.

The ranking analysis suggest that “safer workplace”, “enhanced company reputation”, and “decrease in accidents” as the most important benefits arising from deployment of HSM programmes among the practitioners whereas “improved work performance”, “increased organisational performance “, and “reduced sickness and absence from work” though least ranked, still attained medium level of benefits. The findings further identified organisational skills as the most desirable for the effective implementation of safety management by project managers. The overall weighted HSM Index of 3.68 implies that the small and medium sized UK constructional related organisations perceive the benefits that arise from the deployment of HSM systems as medium.

The findings may help construction practitioners in reviewing decisions factors when they consider implementing HSM during the various stages of the construction process, from feasibility, design, tender and actual construction stage, also for improving their HSM approaches through considerations of the cognitive impacts.

Although there are several established frameworks for health and safety in construction, there are inadequate health and safety conditions at informal construction sites, and no framework has been designed to address this problem. The purpose of this paper is to develop a validated framework for health and safety risk management (HSRM) in informal construction sites with the aim of supporting Sustainable Development Goals 3, 8 and 11 of the 2030 Agenda, which are to ensure everyone enjoys a healthy life and to create inclusive, secure, robust and sustainable cities and human settlements, respectively.

The study is based on HSRM questionnaire survey and interviews with construction workers working on informal construction sites in Tanzania. A total of 13 health and safety specialists in construction were specifically chosen to validate the proposed framework for HSRM in informal construction to determine its applicability, efficacy and adaptation.

The validation results demonstrated that all of the suggested metrics within the framework for HSRM in informal construction scored higher than the test value, proving the framework’s feasibility

This research adds to the body of knowledge on the issue in a never-before-seen setting. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical study in Tanzania to develop and validate a framework for HSRM in informal construction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents and benefits of 3D and 4D modelling as a construction planning tool in the construction process, and examine why it is not being implemented throughout the construction industry.

A survey of the literature, questionnaire survey, and a case study including interviews and observations were used to conduct the study. The findings are investigated using appropriate statistical tests.

This study shows that using 4D modelling will benefit the industry once the lack of confidence amongst contractors, design teams and clients has been overcome. Eventually design teams will provide 3D models, but in the interim contractors wishing to receive the benefits of this technology are using modellers to produce these 3D models which planners can then manipulate to display their construction schedule as a 4D model. Attitude, lack of continuity of similar work, and lack of knowledge rather than cost of producing 4D models are identified as the main barriers impacting on the deployment of this technology among the construction planners. The preferred mode of communicating 3D and 4D awareness was via presentation, whereas the least ranked was through articles.

The cross‐sectional data would make it difficult to generalise the findings.

This technology will provide many benefits to the planning role, resulting in a much more thoroughly planned project which will in turn improve health and safety, shorten contract periods, improve quality and reduce costs. Furthermore, the results have provided a new series of issues and concepts that can help to develop the technology further.

The paper explains how this technology can benefit the planning role. The deployment of the technology results in costs reduction during the construction period and impacts on the securing of future work. The paper stresses that the planner should be involved in the process of adding the 4D modelling to a 3D model.

The main aim of this paper is to provide a practical approach for understanding the quality management (QM) terminology.

Using the existing QM measurement instruments available in literature, the terminology used is classified into constructs, practices and finally tools or techniques. QM may then be viewed as a combination of the three sets of terminology. This paper reports on the research which investigated the implementation of TQM within the constructional‐related SMEs.

The study classified the broad areas of where SMEs can align their TQM applications, into one of the following areas: customer‐oriented TQM, supplier‐oriented TQM, HRM‐oriented TQM, or process‐oriented. These four dimensions were deemed to be interrelated and mutually support each other.

This study contributes to clarifying the conflicting results being reported in the QM literature which inevitably leads to having different levels of analysis of QM. Accordingly, the strength of QM compared with other business philosophies should then focus on the practical methodology, namely the practices and techniques.

Green buildings have proven to be essential contributors to the sustainability of buildings in the construction industry. However, in developing economies, the rate of green building adoption is slow. Moreover, the factors linked to a relatively slow adoption rarely feature in the literature. This study seeks to bridge the gap by first exploring factors influencing the adoption of green buildings. Second, analysing strategies and preferences determining the adoption of green building principles and lastly, exploring case-based opportunities for their adoption in Tanzania.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data from twelve key informants. The qualitative data were analysed using content analysis.

The findings indicate that the most influential factors in green building adoption are related to key organizational decisions. Moreover, social and environmental factors are more related to green building adoption than economic factors. In addition, energy and water efficiency are the most commonly adopted sustainability features, while certified materials, recycling and reusing are rarely implemented.

Since green building adoption is still in its infancy, this study informs policymakers, professional bodies, developers, and researchers of the empirically supported factors for green building adoption. The conclusions can be amplified within the sustainability movement.

This study provides an in-depth understanding of the precursors of green building adoption, which is increasingly becoming a paradigm shift in the construction sector. The study is the first to present an in-depth analysis of the real-life factors influencing the adoption of green buildings in Tanzania.