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The purpose of this study is to explore the formative development of construction supply chain guidelines or proposals in a UK region's schools' estates procurement process to more effectively address a forthcoming increase in investment.

The research approach is interpretive. Using an action research approach, repeated semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with a range of stakeholders are conducted.

The current construction supply chain in schools' estate procurement has many difficulties, not least given the highly fragmented and disconnected nature of the projects. Synergies are being missed and there is little or no continuous improvement. Drawing on these findings, the research iteratively develops a range of proposals and guidelines to address this situation.

This research adds weight to the current focus on pressing for change in the construction industry. It presents potentially valuable insights into the benefits of partnering arrangements and how these might usefully be incorporated into schools' estate supply chain.

A set of guidelines is developed to guide the public procurement of schools' estate in a UK region. These guidelines are set within the context of the Modernising and Rethinking Construction agenda.

The action research approach enabled the researchers to gain a unique insight into how public procurement and contractor personnel interact and to establish effective practical guidelines.

Standardizing the development, planning and construction of public building projects can contribute to timely and efficient project delivery. This is especially relevant when there are urgent needs for capacity. The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences from the development of standardized concepts for school extensions and prison building in Norway.

The research questions posed in this paper are on the interaction between public entities project delivery models and standardizing building types and the construction method. To investigate the research questions, the paper presents the findings from two case studies: school and prison development and construction projects. It is based on a literature review, semi-structured interviews, document studies and quantitative data on time and cost for the planning and construction phases.

Standardization and use of modularized building systems can contribute to shortened delivery time by reducing the duration of both the planning and construction phase. The most significant time reduction resulted from less time spent on quality assurance of cost estimates prior to the funding of the projects. Project costs increased in the school case, but were reduced in the prison case. An important challenge faced in both cases is a shallow pool of capable suppliers; the actors have approached the challenge with different strategies, yet neither actor has been successful in their attempts.

The paper provides empirical data to add to the collective knowledge on the project management aspects of using standardized project delivery models and standardized (modular) building. However, by emphasizing the interaction between project delivery models and standardization of the planning and execution of the projects, additional insight into the benefits and challenges are highlighted.

As part of the UK Government’s strategy to address the current shortage of primary school places is the construction of standardised designed schools. The UK Government has been facing an uphill battle to meet the demand for the ever-increasing number of school places it requires. This paper aims to explore the use of standardised school design in addressing the problem of primary school places in the UK.

Due to the exploratory nature of this investigation, a pragmatic research philosophy is utilised and mixed-method data collection techniques are used. Quantitative data collection is in the form of a survey involving 306 construction professionals and stakeholders; this has been consolidated using qualitative data collection in the form of nine purposefully selected semi-structured interviews.

The research highlighted the influence that people and their perceptions have on the successful implementation of standardisation. The results show that a high level of misunderstanding exists around the concept of standardisation and its definition. Standardised design has shown to have a remarkable influence in reducing the cost and time required for delivering the construction of new schools.

Due to the exploratory nature of this research, the results obtained have not been wholly conclusive but have instead provided a contribution to the area of standardisation in construction.

The research has uncovered that, to truly promote and drive standardisation in the delivery of schools, a joint approach is required with designers, contractors, clients and manufacturers, working in partnership to develop successful solutions. The paper will, therefore, help the key stakeholders delivering standardised schools in UK to fully understand the concept and turn the challenges into opportunities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perception of high school students on the factors impacting their career decisions and whether gender and grade have an influence on the decision‐making process.

Literature review was used to identify relevant factors which were incorporated into the design of the survey instrument. The questionnaire was administered via a postal survey and information collected from 599 male and 491 female high school students in the Western Cape Province. Survey response data were subjected to descriptive statistics and subsequently parametric tests.

Salary, working conditions, opportunities for promotion and lifelong learning were reported by both male and female students as the most important factors, whereas family tradition and peers were the least important factors according to the male and female high school students, respectively. Grade had a significant impact on the process with students in Grade 11 scoring higher on salary, working conditions and lifelong learning opportunities whereas Grades 12 and 10 scored higher on skills shortage and family tradition, respectively.

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

The findings are of particular importance to high school teachers and guidance counsellors who influence career choices amongst high school students. It is likely that teachers and counsellors themselves have been negatively influenced by the poor image of the construction industry. The identification of factors enables the development of viable strategies and balances the social dynamics of the male dominated environment.

There are few studies which try to investigate the career decision‐making process of high school students in an African environment. These results challenge the factors impacting career decision making among South African high school students and provide information rarely examined. Conclusively, the paper finds that control variables such as grade and gender are significant in the career decision‐making process of high school students. This paper contributes to bridging that gap.

The aim of this paper is to use stochastic frontier regression to measure the effect of the introduction and expansion of prevailing wage requirements on the cost efficiency of public school construction in British Columbia. The results provide evidence from a specific sector and location that contributes to the accumulated evidence on the topic.

Stochastic frontier regression is used to measure the effect of the introduction and expansion of prevailing wage requirements on the cost efficiency of public school construction in British Columbia. The results of a likelihood ratio test indicate that stochastic frontier regression is preferred to OLS cost estimation because of the presence of statistically different cost inefficiencies across a sample of covered and uncovered projects.

Specifically, projects covered by the introductory stage of the wage requirements are significantly less cost efficient compared to other public school projects. However, by the time of the expansion of the wage policy 17 months later, covered projects were no more cost inefficient than other projects. The results indicate that if prevailing wage laws are associated with changes in the cost efficiency of construction, stochastic frontier regression is the preferred estimation technique.

This is the first study of its kind with results specific to school construction in British Columbia. Further research based on data from other projects may/may not confirm the existence of differences in construction cost inefficiencies for projects covered by construction wage policies.

By implication, the results suggest that if the cost inefficiency of prevailing wage laws is short‐lived, the impact on the total cost of construction may similarly be ephemeral. The results imply that prevailing wage regulations do not contribute to long‐run construction cost inefficiency.

This is the first study to use stochastic frontier regression to examine the cost inefficiencies associated with prevailing wage laws. Previous studies that examine the effect of the wage policy on construction costs are based on OLS estimation.

Change orders (COs) adversely affect the cost and schedule of projects, specifically during the construction phase. COs of 95 new public school building projects contracted by the Clark County School District (CCSD) of Nevada were analyzed to quantify the cost and schedule growth as well as to determine the effect of COs on cost and schedule growth. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The data were collected from CCSD through questionnaire survey. Descriptive statistics and statistical tests were conducted to determine the effect of COs on cost and schedule growth.

It was found that the average amount of COs as well as cost and schedule overruns were 5.9, 3.0 and 7.4 percent, respectively. Statistical tests showed that the amount of COs had an adverse effect on schedule growth; schedule overruns in projects with less than 4 percent COs were significantly lower than projects with more than 4 percent COs. Cost overruns did not significantly differ in those two types of projects. The primary contribution of this study is that it provides the tools and the framework for school district engineers to determine the probability of the occurrence of COs as well as the optimum percentage of COs for a minimum effect on cost and schedule growth of new public school buildings. Probability curves were also developed to determine the likelihood of the occurrence of COs, cost growth and schedule growth in these projects. These findings could be used by school districts to avoid or reduce COs in future projects, minimizing the effect on cost and schedule growth during the construction phase.

The findings and the probabilities curves developed in this study should be used carefully in other cases. These data were specific to the owner, location and types of buildings and generalizing these findings may have negative consequences.

The practical implications are that this study could provide a tool to school building administrators to determine the probability of having COs as well as cost and schedule overruns and the effects of COs on cost and schedule overruns. To the authors’ best knowledge, no other studies of this type have been conducted previously.

The social implication of this study is it will help to efficiently use the tax payers’ money while building new school buildings.

This study has collected the hard data of COs, cost and schedule data of CCSD new school building projects. Therefore, the data are from the projects completed by CCSD. So, the paper is written from the original data received from CCSD.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a backlog in the pre-tertiary school infrastructure in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The purpose of this paper is to assess the adoption of alternative building technologies (ABT) for pre-tertiary educational infrastructure delivery with a view to providing empirical evidence that could guide policy responses towards its wider adoption.

The study adopted a mixed methodology approach. This comprises a triangulation of a questionnaire survey and interviews. In total, 100 participants were randomly selected from 182 built environment professionals namely quantity surveyors, architects and engineers (electrical, mechanical, civil and structural) from the Department of Roads and Public Works (DRPW), who are currently involved in the Eastern Cape School Building Program (ECSBP). The questionnaire survey was supplemented by semi-structured interviews conducted with four top government officials (three from the Department of Education (DoE) and one from DRPW) who were also part of the questionnaire survey. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and phenomenological interpretation respectively.

The key findings showed that the level of adoption of ABT for pre-tertiary school infrastructure in the Eastern Cape province is primarily influenced and explained by perceptions that ABT offers inferior quality products compared to the conventional method, and limited awareness of its benefits.

The study provides useful insights into the implications of the limited awareness of ABT as a an alternative technology for educational infrastructure delivery and policy responses towards its wider adoption and environmental sustainability.

Empirical evidence from this study indicates that the main motivation for the adoption of ABT is the limited government’s budget to cope with school infrastructural backlog, while environmental sustainability benefit is only secondary. Nonetheless, the realization that the backlogs in the provision of school infrastructure has resulted from sole reliance on the use of the conventional method is an indication of the potential that the adoption of ABT holds for minimizing of the backlog.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the root cause of a large number of quality problems in the current Chinese construction market.

Information economics theory is used to analyze the cause of construction quality problems related to the specific case of the Wenchuan earthquake of China.

The single low price competition in the construction tender market leads to the serious adverse selection and moral hazard behavior of bidding firms. The main solution to this problem is the introduction and improvement of an independent inspection/supervision mechanism.

The paper systematically analyzes the evaluation method of the lowest price winning bidding policy, which is the fundamental cause of adverse selection and moral hazard problems in the Chinese construction market.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the causal effect of vocational high school (VHS) education on employment likelihood relative to general high school (GHS) education in Turkey using Census data.

To address non-random selection into high school types, the authors collect construction dates of the VHSs at the town level and use various measures of VHS availability in the town by the age of 13 as instrumental variables.

The first-stage estimates suggest that the availability of VHS does not affect the overall high school graduation rates, but generates a substitution from GHS to VHS. The OLS estimates yield the result that individuals with a VHS degree are around 5 percentage points more likely to be employed compared to those with a GHS degree. When the authors use measures of VHS availability as instruments, they still find positive and statistically significant effect of VHS degree on employment likelihood relative to GHS degree. However, once they include town-level controls or town fixed effects, IV estimates get much smaller and become statistically insignificant.

The authorsconclude that, although VHS construction generates a substitution from GHS to VHS education, this substitution is not transformed into increased employment rates in a statistically significant way.

Studies an educational project, the Queen′s College Project, in terms of the various phases through which the project cycle moved. Highlights some of the learning issues underlying the project, with implications for the developing region. The project experienced time and cost overruns, occasioned by design changes, new additions, construction setbacks, adverse climate, indecisiveness and inadequate technical supervision. Yet the loan agreement was completed efficiently, competitive bidding was put in place, an executing unit ensured managing and monitoring, and an effective reporting and feedback system was used. Points to an important learning issue: that some basic operational measures need to be put in place to deal with the difficult and challenging problems of implementation, which would ensure more dependable and successful plan/policy/programme/project implementation.