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Several studies have underlined the potential of supply chain management (SCM) in meeting the formidable challenges associated with fragmentation, adversarial relationships and insufficient customer focus in the delivery of construction projects. However, properly documented examples of successfully implemented SCM initiatives, particularly at the lower tiers of the supply chain, are scarce. The purpose of this paper is to extend the existing debates by adopting an alternative approach focusing specifically on the internal SCM organisation of both main contractor and subcontractor organisations, and their direct inter-relationships.

This study sets out to explore the enablers and barriers to the implementation of SCM at the lower tiers of the construction supply chain, particularly the problematic collaboration between main contractors and subcontractors. SC maturity levels are formulated according to relevant SCM concepts and based on Holti et al.’s (2000) seven principles of SCM organisation, and transformed into a conceptual model. An explorative study is conducted based on interviews from eight large main contractor and subcontractor organisations in the Dutch construction industry.

Discouragingly, across the organisations, more barriers than enablers to SCM are identified. Organisations are found to be particularly struggling to compete through superior value, manage costs collaboratively, and develop continuous improvement within their supply chains. The findings also underline the low SC maturity of main contractors and their inability to play the essential role of supply chain managers.

The study underlines the need for a greater degree of main contractor leadership and improved internal organisation of both types of firms in order to achieve greater collaboration at the lower tiers of the construction supply chain.

The study contributes to the subject of SCM in construction in two respects. First, the findings should prove valuable to both policy-makers and industry practitioners interested in the delivery of performance improvement in construction. Second, the developed SC maturity model can form the conceptual basis for the development of an applicable improvement framework towards successful SCM implementation.

The allocation of risk among project participants is an important determinant of innovation success in construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine the capacity of risk allocation to encourage the implementation of environmental innovation, particularly sustainable energy innovation (SEI), within the private finance initiative (PFI) project delivery model.

A four-case qualitative research methodology is adopted within the context of the UK government’s building schools for the future programme.

The findings identify that SEIs are encouraged on the innovative projects by the perceived clarity, appropriateness, and manageability of the risks associated with the project’s energy performance on the PFI contract. The main SEIs were largely developed as strategies to manage long-term energy performance risks allocated to private sector actors and safeguard their long-term commitment to the project. However, the findings indicate that excessive perceived innovation-related risks, particularly capital cost risk, may restrict further SEIs to be implemented.

The qualitative case study approach adopted may limit the generalisability of the findings.

The study and provides practical guidance to policymakers and project managers in developing strategies to support the implementation of SEI in PFI projects.

The study attends to a significant gap in knowledge as there is a lack of conceptual and empirical work on managing innovative processes for sustainable energy in PFI projects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the quality of collaboration towards Sustainable Energy Innovation (SEI) in Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects. While the capacity of PFI to encourage collaboration towards innovation is largely advocated by its proponents; however, it remains to be supported by empirical evidence.

Adopting the Complex Product System (CoPS) innovation management model, the authors assess the quality of collaboration at the interface between the innovation superstructure of public sector clients and users, and the innovation infrastructure of private sector designers, contractors and operators. Two interactional elements are examined upon which the quality of collaboration is assessed: openness of communication and alignment of objectives. The authors apply the model to four new-built PFI school projects within the context of the UK government Building Schools for the Future Programme. Semi-structured interviews with total of 50 key stakeholders were used as the primary data collection method.

PFI has introduced a number of problematic issues weakening collaborative efforts towards innovation in the project environment. Particularly, the study underlines the restricting internal contractual relationships within the integrated Project Company and the misalignment of Design-Construction-Operation sustainability objectives. It also highlights ineffective communication with public sector clients and users brought in by the restricted nature of PFI engagement processes as well as the misalignment of public sector-private sector sustainability objectives.

The qualitative nature of the chosen research methodology limits the ability to generalise. The research findings need to be confirmed or rejected by means of quantitative research as representative of all PFI projects.

The study emphasizes the public authority’s role in relation to providing the necessary conditions for the creation of a collaborative environment conducive to SEI in PFI projects.

The study was able to expand the understanding of innovation and collaboration management processes in PFI projects in three respects: First, addressing the limited attention to innovation in PFI research, the study is the first to examine the quality of collaboration in PFI projects towards the implementation SEI. Second, examining the quality of collaboration in PFI projects through the lens of CoPS provides a new understanding of sustainability innovation and strongly indicates that the CoPS model should be expanded to account for the dynamics of innovation processes in the procurement of sustainable CoPS. Third, the explorative nature of the study was useful in generating research hypotheses that can form the basis for future research on SEI in PFI projects.

The purpose of this paper is to review the risk categories which are predominant in international projects and to rank them according to their effect on project success.

A literature survey of peer-reviewed journal articles, survey reports and books on project management is used as the research methodology. One among the various multi-criteria decision making methods named as Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) has been used to rank the risk categories according to their importance. The data for TOPSIS were collected through questionnaire as the research instrument.

The findings derived from evaluation of the publications led to the identification of eight different types of risk categories associated with international projects. The TOPSIS method resulted into political risks, technical risks and design-related risks as the top three risk categories in international projects. Contractual and legal risks and fraudulent practices-related risks are relatively low-ranked risk category.

The findings will be useful in successful implementation of international projects as the knowledge of risk categories and their ranking will help project manager to plan the risk response strategies. A larger sample size for decision makers and more variety of projects can give more exhaustive risk categories and their ranking.

This paper explores eight different risk categories in international projects. It represents the ranking of risk categories according to their importance in project success. This will be helpful to project managers for developing a general framework for planning the appropriate risk response strategies.

Governments of many countries around the world are encouraging their industries to undertake and successfully complete projects in foreign countries. However, many industries experience failure in projects as they fail to implement the risk management (RM) effectively in international projects. This research work provides the risk categories in international projects and their ranking which can assist in developing strategies to respond the risk appropriately.

This paper uses the TOPSIS method for ranking major types of risk categories in international projects. It might represent new opportunities for rigorous and relevant research that would contribute to an in-depth knowledge of RM methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the crucial influence of risks on the capital structure of build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects.

The equity portion of capital injected in a BOT investment is selected as the response variable and its relation with select identified risk factors is examined using a regression analysis on a data set of BOT projects.

Results have pointed out that the level of equity is significantly influenced by several sources of risk. Country, revenue, project and special purpose vehicle-related risks have been shown to have an impact on the size of the equity share of a BOT investment.

The results could support both investors and lenders to better define the financial leverage of BOT projects. In particular, the study could help to have a better understanding of the main factors that influence the equity apportion of capital in BOT investments.

This paper contributes to fulfilling the lack of works addressing the relationship between risk factors and capital structure in BOT projects. In this way, this research leads to a better understanding of the risk factors that influence the capital structure of BOT project and they have therefore been proposed as a base for the establishment of improved methods to design refined capital structures in BOT projects.

This study aims to investigate projects as social exchange networks, focussing on identifying knowledge brokers within the project network where they are key holders and disseminators of end-user needs. The purpose is to augment current theory through a practice lens so that building end-user requirements can be better incorporated in evolving project ecosystems.

An interpretive, an inductive case study is used to map knowledge brokers during a complex construction and co-location project. During the wider study, a variety of methods including archival data, interviews and questionnaires along with social network analysis (SNA) were used. The mixed methodology used has been pivotal in the triangulation of data from various sources. However, the output of SNA presented in this paper relies mostly on interviews and questionnaires administered to the project’s core network. Network relationships were mapped with knowledge of user requirements, being the key determinant of the binary relationships between actors.

The research found certain roles to be central knowledge brokers of knowledge related to end-user processes, including real estate and strategic planning, building operations and management, human and environmental factors, planning and project management and facility and service delivery. The knowledge of the above roles, albeit in a contextually situated case study, augments current understanding of which roles to tap on during project execution for better representation of end-user needs.

The research site is representative of a complex network of construction project stakeholders, including several categories of end-users and their representatives. The study demonstrates the use of the project-as-practice approach, whereby project theory is seen to emerge directly from practice. This has impact on practice as emergent theory about knowledge transfer and knowledge brokerage is essentially practice-led and hence more useful and relate-able to practitioners.

Research presented here is novel in terms of its approach towards understanding end-user needs such as need for privacy, control, attachment and interaction during construction projects. This is done through the identification of relevant knowledge brokers. The study uses SNA as an analytical tool to map knowledge transfers through the project’s network. End-user requirements are usually captured in the front-end of projects as specifications and deliverables, as new challenges emerge during execution, changes are required to the project’s direction and outcomes. It is therefore imperative that end-user needs are re-identified through knowledge brokers holding key knowledge. This allows project managers to prepare appropriate responses to changing project ecosystems.

In response to the world’s rising awareness on sustainability, industry players and policymakers are devoting great efforts to bolster green building developments. Every green building project (GBP) involves numerous stakeholders and potentially incompatible concerns. Despite the associated environmental, economic and social benefits, GBP developments have often confronted managerial barriers which are actually emerged from stakeholders – the actual key determinants of a project. Holistically analyzing the complexity of stakeholders in GBPs is, therefore, crucial to improving GBP management and achieving greater sustainability for all involved. The purpose of this paper is to analyze stakeholder complexity in large GBPs using a holistic framework which integrates both empirical and rationalistic analytical perspectives.

The complexity of stakeholders in GBPs can be considered from three aspects – identifying stakeholders, assessing stakeholder interactions and analyzing stakeholder concerns. The proposed stakeholder analysis framework uses both empirical methods (e.g. interviews and surveys) and rationalistic methods (e.g. chain referral sampling and social network analysis) to analyze GBP stakeholder complexity. Case study of a lab-enabled commercial GBP in Hong Kong was undertaken to illustrate the framework.

The framework enables a holistic, objective and effective stakeholder analysis; leading GBP leaders toward a complete understanding of project stakeholder complexity. The case study findings bring managerial insights to GBP leaders on the general SNA-related stakeholder dynamics and the important stakeholder concerns, of large Hong Kong GBPs. The findings diagnose general connectivity structures of GBP stakeholders, identify influential and peripheral actors in GBP information exchange, and suggest clues to improve their dynamics. In addition, ten key stakeholder concerns were identified, including comprehensive governmental standards and procedures, clear sustainability goals at the outset, effective stakeholder engagement, adequate design flexibility, and a “can-do” attitude of contractors and consultants – which are all vital for successful GBP development. The underlying reasons of these concerns and recommendations to addressing them were also discussed.

Many existing GBP stakeholder studies appear to use a single analytical perspective to assess project stakeholder complexity, but this may not gain a full understanding. The holistic stakeholder analysis framework used herein combines empiricism and rationalism. It helps to bring GBP leaders and implementers toward a more informed project decision making, a more thorough understanding of stakeholder complexity, as well as a more effective engagement of stakeholders.

In the contemporary society, new digital media play a key role in organizing both companies and the public sector, as well as public transportation systems in metropolitan areas and similar technological macro‐systems. Humans are encountering digital media through the screen but the underlying mechanisms and structure of the screen, their screenness, remain relatively poorly explored in organization theory. Literature on new media, visual studies, and studies of financial trading is used with the aim of presenting a case in favour of a more integrated understanding of the role of screens in organizing, unearthing screens and portraying them not as insignificant elements of a dull infrastructure but as key components in the day‐to‐day organizing of firms and social space.

The paper draws on secondary literature addressing the role of screens and screenness in everyday organizing.

Drawing on a study of financial trading, screens are envisaged as the surfaces on which the financial traders' life‐worlds present themselves and are enacted, rendering the abstract flows of capital and innumerable financial transactions meaningful and tangible through the use of certain aesthetics and geometries of representation.

The conceptual paper combines literature from a number of disciplines and theoretical perspectives.