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Pre-project planning can be an important process for libraries managing large project portfolios. The process allows anyone within an organization to put forth a potential project, and it clearly articulates the process both for developing an idea into a project and for approving and prioritizing projects.

Drawing from experience, the authors introduce a preliminary step for proposing projects before the project management principles are applied.

Benefits of the process include: promoting stakeholder input; preventing organizational overwhelm; documenting the library’s project portfolio; and improving communication, transparency, and decision-making. Libraries implementing this process should define a project for their organization, build buy-in among those involved, and ensure that approved projects advance library goals.

This chapter is largely practical and derived from experience. It provides an in-depth look at pre-project planning, a concept largely ignored in the project management literature.

Top-down pressure from donors, public sector inefficiencies and fund deficits have steered the introduction of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in sub-Saharan Africa. However, PPP activities in the water sector have been quite insignificant compared to other infrastructure sectors in this region. In addition, a number of water PPPs have encountered great difficulties and subsequent failures. This study aims at unveiling the underlying reasons behind failures.

This study has classified the failure types of water PPPs and reviewed the development of water PPPs in sub-Saharan Africa to identify failed ones. Eight failed case studies are completed through the rigorous approach of event sequence mapping.

Nine root causes of water PPP failure are identified through a thorough examination of these failed water PPP cases and the interrelationships between these failure causes are established. The failure causes are further generalized through literature focusing on water PPP failures in developing countries and problematic issues that hinder the implementation of successful water PPPs across different Sub-Saharan African countries. Recommendations are provided for future improvements in carrying out water PPPs in Sub-Saharan Africa by learning past lessons and drawing experiences.

This is the first case study on water PPP failures in Sub-Saharan Africa from a construction management perspective. This study will help governments and the private sector in developing stronger future water PPPs.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain and list the most effective management strategies in efficiently handling the project complexities to enhance the performance of the project.

To fulfill the aim of this study, a comprehensive literature review was conducted, and the qualitative Delphi technique in two rounds was applied. Participants of the Delphi technique consisted of 12 subject matter experts (SMEs) with cumulative experience of 250 years in working in construction projects. In the first round of the Delphi technique, SMEs were asked to provide complexity management strategies to address the complexities due to 37 complexity indicators (CIs) under 11 complexity categories. In the second round of the Delphi technique, SMEs identified the top three management strategies for each of the 37 CIs.

This study collected the outcome of the two-round Delphi technique and based on the output developed the list of strategies to manage complexities related to each indicator. For example, establishing a well-informed governance team, assigning a Project Manager (PM) when the number of projects is more than one in an organization, and assigning a PM efficient enough to communicate with higher authority effectively will help in managing complexity that arises due to faulty assessment of the influence of a project on the organization’s overall success.

This study will help practitioners in effectively managing the project complexities, and thus will reduce the monetary loss associated with project complexities.

This study attempts to identify a simple and efficient framework to be implemented in the Sri Lankan construction industry to inculcate a “safe and healthy” working environment for its workforce.

The occupational safety and health (OSH) management strategies that could be implemented in the construction sites were identified through a comprehensive literature survey and a pilot survey. A questionnaire survey was carried out among the safety and health (S&H) experts to explore the most effective OSH management strategies and thereafter to derive OSH mechanisms to promote the safer and healthy environment in the construction sites. Success of these mechanisms in the local industry was analyzed and was subsequently used to develop the OSH management framework.

A total of 35 significant OSH management strategies, unsafe and unhealthy factors as risk factors for fatal and non‐fatal situations were identified. A further ten OSH management mechanisms were established as adequate safety supervision, site environment, controlling the workers' safe and healthy behaviour, centralized OSH management unit, resources and insurance policies, management commitment, supportive devices, OSH documentation, OSH education and awareness, and OSH committee. Further, these ten mechanisms were used to establish the OSH framework to be implemented in Sri Lankan construction sites.

OSH management in the Sri Lankan construction industry can be enhanced by implementing the proposed OSH management framework.

The need for measuring construction project performance has led to development and implementation of various key performance indicators (KPIs). This paper aims to present and discuss the results of a pilot study and interviews to identify process‐based KPIs for use in control of the pre‐project stage.

Initially, the process of the pre‐project stage was mapped to define its main generic sub‐processes and outputs based on the literature review. The process map was then verified through a pilot study. Based on the verified sub‐processes, a number of process‐based KPIs were identified and later validated by experts during the interviews.

As a consequence of the refinement process due to the results of the pilot study and the interviews, the process‐based KPIs for the pre‐project stage were identified and the main issues they have to encompass were discussed.

The identified KPIs offer a significant step towards process control within the pre‐project stage. They provide a basis for further development to improve process transparency and to explain the relationships between the various sub‐processes.

Evaluation of product development projects is quite intuitive and subjective. The purpose of this paper is to analyze decision makers' value perceptions of organizational impact before and after a project to explain how post‐project value perceptions are formed.

The research approach is hypothetic‐deductive and uses questionnaire data from 126 risky product development projects.

Pre‐project value perceptions explain post‐project value perceptions at a significant level and in a different way for different value dimensions. The results reveal two moderating effects by using a product development control system, and different product types.

The study was limited to risky product development projects with external funding and their retrospective cross‐sectional survey. The findings imply a strong relation between the early‐stage value estimates and the latter‐stage value estimates, which may make change decisions difficult in risky projects.

The initial value priorities of the managers have an important role in escalating commitment, and such value priorities can be reflected in the use of formal evaluation criteria.

Many studies express the need to understand the organizational impacts of projects better and take them into account in decision making. This empirical study on the perceptions of managers offers evidence on the formation and evolution of the perceived organizational impact during the project.

While the general trends in green building (GB) research are known, there is not yet a detailed review of studies on project delivery attributes (PDAs) influencing GB project outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature to understand the contributions of existing research in this area and to identify the challenges, gaps, and lessons for the future research relating GB project delivery.

For the systematic review, specially developed coding based on Boolean operators is used to search for relevant studies in major databases, i.e. Web of Science and Scopus. The studies from the initial search (443) are subjected to two rounds of scrutiny for shortlisting only relevant publications. Using a qualitative review of the shortlisted studies (20), the research objectives and findings of the studies are synthesized and critically analyzed. The contributions and challenges facing research in this area are identified. Future research directions are proposed.

Studies in the area have established association between PDAs and various GB project success criteria. In the literature, some PDAs such as project delivery method have been given greater attention than others. Challenges facing PDA research in GB include: the limited number of GB project cases and the complexity of GB project delivery process involving an overwhelmingly large number of variables, thereby limiting scientific rigor and creating some gaps in knowledge. The interaction among PDAs and their cumulative effect on various project performance outcomes/metrics have not been studied, limiting the validity of the existing studies. Scope exists to apply a combination of non-linear, dynamic, probabilistic, explicit, and implicit modeling as well as inductive and deductive approaches to research in this area.

Existing research findings have limited application in practice. Non-linear, dynamic, probabilistic, deductive, and inductive research techniques and approaches can substantially advance knowledge and lead to plausible findings that can be applied in practice.

Considering the critical role of PDAs in the successful delivery of GBs, the review provides clear directions for future research.

This paper explains how the capital proposals of large experienced clients of the UK construction industry are influenced by paradigms and perspectives. It shows how those involved in the decision‐to‐build process react to stimuli caused by a need to demonstrate objective decision‐making. The paper is taken from a 5‐year PhD study undertaken by the first author, which investigated the origins of the decision to build undertaken by leading clients. The clients sampled had a total annual construction budget of between £700 million and £1000 million in the year that data were collected. The product of the research was an explanation of what happens in the pre‐project stage, why it happens, and why it will change in the future. The significance of its conclusions is that any system designed to model or improve decision‐making in the pre‐project stage must be capable of adaptation and modification as influences and considerations shift. Moreover, the need to justify decisions as ‘objective’ empowers paradigms and perspectives that act as conditioning influences on the people making or shaping proposals. The paper concludes by showing that an understanding of the role played by paradigms and perspectives could allow management to ‘rethink construction’ and meet the challenges put forward by Sir John Egan (The Egan Report: Rethinking Construction, DETR, 1998).

Learning is an essential part of innovation, including the need to internalize and disseminate information and to reduce the duplication of research activities, both technological and organizational. Using a theoretically based framework that places emphasis on the interpretative dimension of organizational learning and centers on learning processes, descriptive accounts of organizational learning in the context of R&D‐intensive companies were produced. From these case studies, specific learning tools or mechanisms were identified: job rotation, innovation process planning (activities, responsibilities, networks, sharing assumptions) and (product innovation) project review. Overall findings point to an organizational learning process which involves a high degree of parallelism and depends on the knowledge base of the organization.