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The objectives of this paper are to identify the critical factors that influence the decision to outsource maintenance services in public Saudi Arabian universities, and to investigate the relative importance of each of the identified factors based on the expressed opinions of the in‐house maintenance managers in the concerned maintenance departments in these universities.

The authors conducted a comprehensive review of the literature in the fields of maintenance management and outsourcing practices to achieve a thorough understanding of the issues involved, and identifying the crucial factors affecting the outsourcing decision of maintenance services. A questionnaire survey was developed to assess each factor influencing the decision to outsource maintenance services in the public Saudi Arabian universities. The survey included 38 factors grouped in six major groups. The respondents who have opted to outsource several of their maintenance services to specialty contractors were asked to indicate their perceived level of importance for each of the identified factors. The level of importance of the factors and the groups were measured. The factor groups were ranked according to the obtained mean rating values.

The findings show that Saudi universities generally value the importance of the quality, management and strategic factors when making outsourcing decisions. The most important three factors influencing the decision to outsource maintenance services in the public Saudi Arabia universities were identified as “increase the speed of implementation”, “improve quality requirements” and “risk sharing with contractors”.

The findings of the study provide practical value for facilities maintenance managers in institutions of higher education confronted with the decision of whether to outsource maintenance services in their campuses.

The paper is original in the sense that it identifies how in‐house maintenance managers rate the importance of the factors influencing outsourcing decisions.

Housing sufficiency is an indication of national development, and in recognition of this, a longstanding development objective of the Malaysian Government is the provision of affordable housing. The government has introduced various policies, schemes and regulations to increase housing supply. However, despite these measures, homeownership rates are dropping, and housing prices are outstripping inflation. For this reason, this paper aims to explain the determinants of housing choices. The issues in affordable housing supply in Malaysia are that of shortage and distributions. The problem of distribution is largely addressable through choice reconciliations.

The research is based on a cross-sectional survey questionnaire, comprising 20 determinants and 468 householders/users. The questionnaire was developed via a review of the literature and the authors’ experience. The survey forms are administered by hand.

Six determinants were found to be extremely important to households’ choice of housing. The Kaiser’s measure of sampling adequacy (MSA) indicated that the strength of the relationships among the determinants was strong (MSA = 0.762). Bartlett’s test of sphericity, was significant χ² (1035) = 5013.814, p < 0.001), indicating the data were drawn from the same population and that the determinants were related. Using principal component analysis, all the 20 determinants were reduced to seven factors that accounted for some 60 per cent of the total proportion communalities. The factors were general factor, financial factor, building factor, income factor, accessibility factor, market factor and location factor.

Previous research only addressed factors affecting housing price, not a choice. This is the first study that explains determinants of housing choice determinants in Malaysia. This is the first study that involves large respondents. Previous research addressed housing in general and not affordable housing. The results will be useful to developers, homebuyers and policy makers towards affordable housing delivery.

The complexity of projects has become a serious issue and obstacle in their successful completion. In order to overcome these complexities, it has become imperative to identify the relevant management competencies of project managers. The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of cost, time and scope in engineering infrastructure projects due to their complexities through management competencies.

In the first phase of the study, 32 experts were interviewed through semi-structured pre-tested questionnaire. In this phase, essential elements of complexities were identified initially. This was followed by finding required dimensions of competencies to counter these complexities and to acquire improved performance. In the final stage, required levels of competencies for specific elements of complexity were identified. In the second phase, 85 “project managers” were also approached to get feedback about their recently completed public sector engineering infrastructure projects in Pakistan.

The study identified additional dimensions, i.e. honesty, enthusiasm and dedication, in the case of competencies and adverse law and order situation, political instability, land issues, energy crisis and weak authorization of project managers in the case of complexities. Leadership, management skill, communication skill, effectiveness and result orientation were identified as top quality traits required. The study concluded that there is a significant impact of management competencies and complexities on project performance.

The study contributes to a better understanding of how to improve performance in complex engineering infrastructure projects through adopting management competencies. It also empirically illustrates the relations among project management competencies, complexities and project performance. Although the research is grounded on public sector infrastructure projects, its findings may also be helpful for practices in project management of other sectors.