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This study aims to understand the influence of megasonic (MS)-assisted agitation on printed circuit boards (PCBs) electroplated using copper (Cu) electrolyte solutions to improve plating efficiencies through enhanced ion transportation.

The impact of MS-assisted agitation on topographical properties of the electroplated surfaces was studied through a design of experiments by measuring surface roughness, which is characterised by values of the parameter Ra as measured by white light phase shifting interferometry and high-resolution scanning electron microscopy.

An increase in Ra from 400 to 760 nm after plating was recorded for an increase in acoustic power from 45 to 450 W. Roughening increased because of micro-bubble cavitation energy and was supported through direct imaging of the cavitation. Current thieving effect by the MS transducer induced low currents, leading to large Cu grain frosting and reduction in the board quality. Current thieving was negated in plating trials through specific placement of transducer. Wavy electroplated surfaces, due to surface acoustic waves, were also observed to reduce the uniformity of the deposit.

The formation of unstable transient cavitation and variation of the topology of the Cu surface are unwanted phenomena. Further plating studies using MS agitation are needed, along with fundamental simulations, to determine how the effects can be reduced or prevented.

This study can help identify manufacturing settings required for high-quality MS-assisted plating and promote areas for further investigation, leading to the development of an MS plating manufacturing technique.

This study quantifies the topographical changes to a PCB surface in response to MS agitation and evidence for deposited Cu artefacts due to acoustic effects.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of what clients value from contractors’ services. Understanding client values and the way by which clients perceive value will contribute to client-perceived value within contracting services.

A literature review was conducted to understand how clients perceive value in the construction industry. In addition, conducting expert interviews and document analysis helped in achieving the research purpose.

The findings show that values associated with time, cost and quality can be considered as important client values, while they are not exclusive values for assessing contractor service anymore. Construction clients are concerned about health and safety, low rate of environmental impact, guarantees, creativity, technology transfer, value for money, reliability and tangibles of their contractors’ services. In addition, they value their contractors’ behaviour, attitude and professionalism.

The study has disseminated different client values, through classified outcomes, to make the knowledge area more available to construction service providers. This study’s findings helped in understanding client values and how clients perceive value from contractors’ services. With this information, contractors are able to provide better services to clients. Satisfactory delivery of the values identified in this study is believed to have the greatest impact on client-perceived value within contracting services. Developing a management strategy that recognises, prioritises and satisfactorily delivers these values is essential to ensure that highest level of client-perceived value is achieved.

The construction literature is focussed on traditional values related to time, cost and quality, while this study highlighted the role of values such as trust, commitment, communication and other non-result-ordinated values essential for achieving client satisfaction. This study’s findings proposed a new practical assessment concept to value construction contractor services.

This paper aims to explore New Zealand construction practitioners’ approaches to organisational resilience practice in built environment discipline, based on survey and interview results. The objective was to explore the resilience practice within the construction sector with the intention of developing a resilient assessment tool specifically for construction organisations.

A literature review was conducted to gather information on assessment tools for measuring organisational resilience, their characteristics and indicators. Subsequently, a set of questions was formulated to collate opinions from construction practitioners in New Zealand, using a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews.

This paper concludes by showing that the construction industry lacks resilience practice, especially from an organisational perspective. The findings suggest that the industry would benefit from a resilience assessment tool to help improve resilience. The adoption of such a tool could potentially enhance organisational capacity to recover quickly from crises and disasters.

Improving the resilience of construction organisations to natural disasters not only minimises the negative consequences to their organisations post-disaster and enhances their organisational performance during business as usual but also helps to improve community resilience.

Improving the resilience of construction organisations also helps to improve community resilience and overall post-disaster recovery. However, at present, little research has been conducted on how construction organisations deal with the risk of natural disasters.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and prioritize the key client values within contracting services for reconstructing the built environment in post-disaster situations.

A literature review, semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey were included in this study. A comparative analysis was used to obtain different perspectives between public and private sectors.

A total of 39 client values were identified in this study. Clients for disaster reconstruction services put more emphasis on values such as timeliness, availability of resources, competency, building a trust-based relationship, financial stability, and communication techniques than contract price. Public and private clients have a different perspective regarding the importance of the identified values, while these are not statistically significant for the most important values.

The construction literature is focussed on business-as-usual rather than post-disaster reconstruction. To ensure that reconstruction programmes after a disaster are successfully implemented, it is necessary to identify and prioritize the client values within contracting services. Focussing the attention of the service providers on these values is believed to have the greatest impact on the programmes’ success.

Understanding the client values identified by this study can aid contractors to better prepare for reconstruction programmes and provide improved services to clients.

A number of important client values within contracting services that appear to have a bearing on the success of disaster reconstruction programmes were identified in this study.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on exploring the construction client values and qualities reported by scholars over the last 20 years, along with clarifying commonalities and differences between “value” and “quality” in terms of definitions and their constituent attributes in the context of construction.

An in-depth, systematic literature review was used to develop a basis for identifying client values and qualities. During the research process, citation analysis has been applied to understand these attributes in the literature.

While the findings may appear to align with the value theory concept of a strong interrelationship between quality and value, the authors argue that there is an intermingling of various subjective and objective preferences within construction scholarship, rather than a broad-brush adherence to the value theory and other related theories.

A qualitative research approach of inductive analysis was conducted using the semantics of terms and codes. Although reliability checks have been conducted, the generalisability of the study findings is subject to natural methodological limitations.

This study provides initial guidance on what contractors need to consider while providing services, and leads contractors to give their clients the best possible experience during a relationship. It proposes a shift in the way construction clients assess their contractors, to improve how services are delivered.

Enhancing client value is not straightforward, hence strong emphasis has been placed on understanding client values in this study, which contributes to the construction literature by facilitating further research leading to stronger construct definitions and theory-building efforts.