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Effective communication is a key factor in presenting Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) awareness and prevention campaigns, and delivering treatment programmes, particularly in South Africa where different ethnic groups and a diversity of languages and educational attainment levels are encountered. Language is an important element of such communication. The purpose of this paper is to examine the communication effectiveness of AIDS-related intervention messages.

Case-based semi-structured interviews, with 42 employees from three construction organisations, and with six telephone counsellors from a service provider, were used to explore language in the HIV/AIDS context in the construction industry in the Western Cape region.

Workers’ knowledge about HIV (a key element in prevention and willingness to engage in treatment regimes) tended to align with their level of education. African cultures may inhibit the use of plain language about AIDS. Graphic posters with text in different languages were the most preferred communication media, but need periodic refreshment to remain effective. For toolbox talks and other company presentations, a comprehensive approach to language differences is limited, and appropriate confirmatory feedback loops are not used – the message sent is not always the message received. The recruitment and training processes for service provider counsellors ensure a more comprehensive grasp of HIV knowledge and a more consistent approach to communication.

Construction organisations should be more careful in their HIV/AIDS campaigns and programmes, ensure better targeting of audiences and pay more nuanced and sensitive attention to language needs, gender differences and cultural contexts with respect to communicating with workers in ways that engage them more fully about HIV/AIDS, stigma and disclosure.

Communication effectiveness is pivotal in the provision of intervention management by construction firms. Ineffective language and communication processes directly and adversely influence HIV/AIDS intervention management success.

Complex projects require careful management. They may expose stakeholders to greater risks and place additional demands upon resources. In the initial stages of project development, however, little may be known about the nature and magnitude of such complexity. This paper aims to ensure that this gap is at least subjectively assessed and addressed.

Research, using focus group workshops with a convenience sample of construction professionals, was carried out to test the validity of a Project Early Stage Complexity Assessment Tool (PESCAT). The PESCAT concept brings together selected complexity theories and uses subjectively based measures for assessment.

The findings confirm that an early-stage project complexity assessment tool is practicable and can contribute to project management practice in the construction industry. It should be applied by individual project stakeholders using small teams of experienced staff. PESCAT explores project complexity through “filter” sets of perspective factors which should be customised to reflect the stakeholder’s role and processes in a project.

In the initial complexity assessment model, resolution space and uncertainty were tested as project complexity parameters. However, in subsequent versions of the tool, four measures (differentiation and differentiation uncertainty; interdependency and interdependency uncertainty) are used in an innovative way that focuses users’ attention more clearly and points to a more targeted approach for addressing project complexity. The value of our model lies in its practical application and the project management benefits it can deliver.

Knowledge management presents a problem for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, largely because of the industry’s fragmented structure and project-driven nature. Construction companies may be involved in a variety of projects in different locations, each having its own knowledge requirements. Companies are also expected to be competitive, flexible and innovative, but introducing new knowledge management systems (KMSs) may represent a change that is beyond the organisation’s capacity to undergo successfully, and thus becomes a “nightmare”. The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a KMS solution that can help to facilitate the capture and application of important knowledge without introducing unnecessary changes in internal procedures for the organisation.

Following a review of existing systems, and an interview survey of 22 managers in the Portuguese AEC industry (contractors, design consultants and project management consultants) a new IT-based construction KMS called ConstruKnowledge was developed. The KMS was tested, verified and validated in two Portuguese construction projects and assessed by 12 managers in the construction company undertaking those projects.

The results of two pilot tests using ConstruKnowledge in two Portuguese construction projects demonstrate that its use can raise the levels of confidence in decision-making, and retaining knowledge; and that it serves to add value to the company.

The Construknowledge KMS is an innovative contribution to the greater acceptance of KMSs in the construction industry. The system facilitates the effective and efficient development of an organisational KMS using basic Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based collaboration tools. While undertaken in the context of the Portuguese industry, the KMS has a wider global potential for implementation and further development.

The originality and value of this research are that it demonstrates how a KMS can be developed and then used in a construction company to capture and share knowledge without introducing additional constraints.

Effective management and utilisation of plant history data can considerably improve plant and equipment performance. This rationale underpins statistical and mathematical models for exploiting plant management data more efficiently, but industry has been slow to adopt these models. Reasons proffered for this include: a perception of models being too complex and time consuming; and an inability of their being able to account for dynamism inherent within data sets. To help address this situation, this research developed and tested a web‐based data capture and information management system. Specifically, the system represents integration of a web‐enabled relational database management system (RDBMS) with a model base management system (MBMS). The RDBMS captures historical data from geographically dispersed plant sites, while the MBMS hosts a set of (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average – ARIMA) time series models to predict plant breakdown. Using a sample of plant history file data, the system and ARIMA predictive capacity were tested. As a measure of model error, the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) ranged between 5.34 and 11.07 per cent for the plant items used in the test. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values also showed similar trends, with the prediction model yielding the highest value of 29.79 per cent. The paper concludes with direction for future work, which includes refining the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and developing a Knowledge Based Management System (KBMS) to interface with the RDBMS.

In this chapter, the nature and extent of corruption in the construction industry is considered from a worldwide perspective, but particularly in the context of research conducted in South Africa. The definition of corruption is expanded to include conflict of interest and unethical conduct. Corruption in the construction industry is found to be universal and pervasive, occurring in all areas, at all stages, at all levels, and in all forms. A simple triangular model of corruption is replaced by a more complex four-dimensional risk-based model. The challenge for the construction industry, in combating corruption, will essentially require multilateral action in all four dimensions of the enhanced model: eliminating and reducing opportunities where possible; relieving the pressures to commit corrupt acts; rebutting the rationales and arguments used to excuse corruption; and substantially improving and innovating more forensic methods of detection. While the decision to engage in corruption is risk-based, particularly in terms of the capacity to evade detection; in essence corruption is a cultural and moral issue for society.

This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological writing in the classical pluralist phase.

An intellectual history, including detailed discussion of key Fox texts, supported by interviews with Fox and other Biographical sources.

Fox’s radicalisation was incomplete, as he carried over from his industrial relations (IR) pluralist mentors, Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, a suspicion of political Marxism, a sense of historical contingency and an awareness of the fragmented nature of industrial conflict.

Recent academic attention has centred on Fox’s later radical pluralism with its “structural” approach to the employment relationship. This paper revisits his early, neglected classical pluralist writing. It also illuminates his transition from institutional IR to a broader sociology of work, influenced by AH Halsey, John Goldthorpe and others and the complex nature of his radicalisation.

This article is concerned with emerging technologies that enable the construction of an Intranet with dynamically generated content, customised for different users. The underlying technology is server‐side scripting using ‘session cookies,’ which overcome the problem of HTTP being essentially stateless, and maintain a state across different pages. The article evaluates some of the available platforms — Allaire ColdFusion, Active Server Pages, Java Server Pages and CGI. The article argues that developing a dynamic site is relatively easy if you have a good grounding in producing web pages and SQL and if you choose the right tools.

Competitiveproduct‐market decisions differ according to the challenges a firm faces, and these variables need to be considered in the planning process. Four actual cases in point: