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The UK construction industry has approached the application of quality assurance with some confusion. This is due in part to the traditional methods of procurement which have tended to separate the responsibility for design from that of production, quite unlike manufacturing industries for which the quality systems standard BS 5750/ISO 9000 was developed. This article describes why the design and build method of procurement ‐ which offers a single point of responsibility for both design and production ‐ supports the successful application of quality management to a building. It is based on Reading University research into quality systems, and experience gained from the SERC‐funded Teaching Company Scheme at Kyle Stewart Ltd.

Discusses quality in all its various guises and expounds the theory that if there are untapped resources in the different areas amongst the various processes and types of worker, then an increase in quantity and productivity can ensue from these. It is the capability of people as much as anything which is important and higher quality performance from all activities therein which should then occur. Good financial management is also required to develop the capability of production and organization to provide consistently what is desired for basic success.

From time to time we report cases of food being sold under false and misleading descriptions, where the defence claims the consumer is really expecting too much for her money; like Pip, she has “great expectations.” The sale of food and drugs abounds with deceptive descriptions and devices; clever, subtle, attractive and far more extensively practised than in the old days when analysts and inspectors sought out the adulteration of food. Their annual reports contain the more lurid examples, which are but a fraction of the whole. The price of genuine products has risen out of all proportion in recent years and the introduction of artificial and synthetic materials in substitution is regrettably inevitable, but the importation of price into the offence of misdescription is likely to bring to confusion law that is probably more complete than ever before. It is the essence of all false descriptions that they should in fact mislead, but it is garnishing the point to suggest as many a defending counsel and not a few magistrates do, that the price paid must be taken into account in any alleged misdescription; that if it is low for such an expensive commodity as “cream,” then a purchaser should not be deceived into believing she was obtaining genuine cream, even if the name “cream” was being applied. As the County Magistrates at Leicester were recently asked to decide, “Who would expect real cream in a fourpenny cream bun ?” (p. 70). Still less so, if a fancy name such as “Kreem” is used; all this, Section 47, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, notwithstanding. In the case quoted, evidence was called to show that if a shopper requires a cream bun containing real cream, she will ask for a “dairy cream bun” and that the witnesses would only expect to receive the genuine article if they went to a dairy; that when buying cream confectionery from a confectioner's shop, they did not expect to receive anything but imitation cream.

This study provides a framework for comparing construction management contracts in the UK and the US construction practices. It starts by reviewing previous studies on UK and US contracting practices and explores the main delivery methods, inform of comparison with construction management contracting systems. It examines construction management contracting types, processes and procedures and interaction between the construction manager and other stakeholders. This study was based on a literature review and the result shows the similarities and differences between the American and British CM systems within each practice and between both practices; the distribution of responsibilities and risks both in pre‐construction and during the construction stages; and allocation of responsibility in both practices.

Capital budgeting plays an essential role in a firm's long‐term viability and survival. The capital budgeting process includes: identification of potential projects, prediction of possible outcomes, project selection, financing and implementation of the chosen project, and monitoring project performance (Mukherjee and Henderson, 1987). Although economic considerations should govern the capital budgeting decision, individual opinions and preferences often become primary factors affecting project selection.

The construction industry mostly adopts teams consisting of a collection of diverse professionals in each of its product delivery projects, where normally the construction project manager (CPM) becomes the leader of such a project team. The purpose of this paper is to identify the leadership roles of the CPM across the team development process.

This was approached through a multiple case study research method carried out using three construction projects in Sri Lanka; two projects on traditional procurement method and another on design and build procurement method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the respective project managers and with other three distinct team members of each project.

Based on the findings, leadership roles of the CPM across the team development process were revealed with the situational factors that affect these leadership roles in each stage of the team development process.

Even though project leadership is discussed by pervious researchers, concrete evidence has not been provided to show how it should change at different stages of a project. This research addresses this gap and would guide CPMs to change their leadership role appropriately to suit the needs of each team development stage.

China has experienced a fast economic growth and shown a significant rise in income inequality in the past decades. During the same period, fluid milk consumption in urban areas has rapidly expanded. The objective of this paper is to analyze and simulate the influence of income distribution changes on fluid milk consumption of households in urban China.

This study applies an inverse hyperbolic sine (IHS) double-hurdle model to modeling at-home fluid milk consumption of households across different income strata based on a sample of 11,861 urban households in five provinces in China, and simulating the impact of changing income distribution, including five income growth patterns, on fluid milk consumption of total households as well as specific household groups.

The fluid milk consumption in urban China will continue to increase, with the unconditional income elasticity being 0.334 for the full sample and 0.347, 0.335 and 0.162 for the low-, middle-, and high-income groups, respectively. The simulation results show an evidence that, compared with distribution-neutral and disparity-enlarging income growth patterns, a rising income equality would lead to a more significant increase in fluid milk consumption. And the inequality-reducing income growth pattern has a larger impact on fluid milk consumption of households with seniors and no children, as well as households having no local urban household registration (hukou).

The government should strengthen the supply measures of fluid milk in urban areas, enlarge domestic dairy production, and diversify the sources of milk imports. It is also necessary to subsidize low-income families, especially households with seniors or households migrated from other areas without getting local urban hukou, which could simultaneously improve nutritional benefits and alleviate financial pressures.

A simulation considering the evolution of income distribution as well as different household groups is conducted. Widely distributed data with a large sample size and detailed demographic information are used. The problems of zero consumption and non-normal distribution are addressed by the IHS double-hurdle model.

The building industry, through its structure and its mandate, faces endemic information problems; expert systems are expected to impact positively. Expert systems are suited to situations of uncertainty; knowledge and reasoning are separated, allowing easier updating. Knowledge acquisition from human experts is difficult and problems of information reliability arise, suggesting the scope for cooperation between knowledge engineers and documentalists familiar with the domain. In building, prevailing conditions seem to indicate the appropriateness of expert systems, particularly during the design phase; however, written documentation and general research results are rarely consulted. This highlights the need for an information ‘refining’ stage between production and use. It is easier to set up expert systems for specialised sub‐domains; however, on‐going research is attempting to develop a comprehensive approach to project‐specific information that would be operational from initial design through to completed construction. Criteria for a comprehensive design information system can be listed.

In order to ensure the health and safety of occupants, buildings must be inspected to check their compliance to current regulatory requirements prompted by occupancy changes, renovations and building code revisions. Recent inspections conducted by Public Works Canada have identified about 1700 occurrences of code violations in 19 buildings. There is an enormous amount of information that can be extracted from the study mentioned above to implement a knowledge‐based expert system to assist in future building inspections. The philosophy of this expert system is to integrate both knowledge‐based and hypertext representation techniques to enable building inspectors to quickly identify code violations, refer to the code text and provide case study information that can assist in resolving a problem. The present paper describes the development framework and details of a prototype implementation known as the Health and Safety Expert System (HASES). The HASES currently addresses the requirements of ‘Section 3.4: Requirements for Exits’ of the 1990 National Building Code of Canada. The software architecture consists of an external database of building details, an object hierarchy and a rule‐base representing the code requirements, hypertext user‐interface for code text and case study information. The ultimate objective is to make this system available for field inspections using notepad computers.