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doi: 10.1080/01446199300000024pmid: N/A
Construction management and construction economics are internationally recognized research fields which enjoy support from a strong and growing community of researchers, scholars and practitioners. Specialist academic and professional journals which serve the fields are relatively new. One of the prime journalsConstruction Management and Economics, celebrated ten years of continuous publication in 1992. In the ten years since its inceptionConstruction Management and Economicshas grown and has become more international. Whilst it has sharpened its focus on project-level production-oriented issues it has reflected the varied activities and interests of those involved with construction management and economics research and scholarship. Analysis of the pattern of publications in the journal and of their citations suggests a strengthening of the academic base of papers although there is little evidence that this is achieved by approaches to research that are clearly driven by, or contribute to, theory. In addition, patterns of citations suggest that studies are becoming increasingly inward-looking. Whilst there has been remarkable stability in the general characteristics of papers there have been significant changes in the identities of frequent authors and of key contributing institutions. A new generation of contributors has emerged. The paper documents these developments in the journal. In addition, through the design of a meta-classification model, it makes tentative proposals of dimensions by which research in the discipline can be defined and described.
doi: 10.1080/01446199300000025pmid: N/A
The industry's attempt to rationalize construction quality is examined. Two schools of thought are identified. While the determinist school of thought envisages a belief that every construction element can be quantified and accounted for in writing, the indeterminist school, on the other hand, suggests otherwise. The socio-political effects on quality as well as the technical safeguards taken by both the contractor and the employer are investigated. Emphasis is then directed towards workmanship and the relevance of Quality Assurance as a management process for achieving quality standards in the construction industry. The empirical results of a field study from six building sites in the West Midlands, England are presented to highlight the salient factors which influence respondents’ perceptions and attitudes towards construction quality. The findings from this study tend to mirror the existence of both the rational and irrational approaches to quality in the construction industry. The industry needs to recognize this phenomenon in its attempt to institutionalize any procedure to both achieve and maintain quality construction.
Kodikara, G. W.; Thorpe, A.; McCaffer, R.
doi: 10.1080/01446199300000026pmid: N/A
The prime purpose of the Bill of Quantities (BQ) is to enable all contractors tendering for a contract to price on exactly the same information. Subsequent to this, it is widely used for post-tender work such as: material scheduling; construction planning; cost analysis; and cost planning. Due to the re-work involved in the post-tender use of the BQ, the ‘extent of use’ of the BQ is important. The ‘re-work’ is any work such as; modification, or grouping, or breaking up of data when used for a particular task by a management group. The ‘extent of use’ is defined as the direct use, after subtracting the re-work from the total use. This paper identifies the contractor's current use of the BQ for post-tender work based on eight case studies, and establishes the ‘extent of use’ thus highlighting the re-working of the bill. By establishing the ‘extent of use’, the true picture of the direct use and the repetition work can be shown. The average extent of use of the BQ for post-tender work in the industry was found to be 50%. This 50% use of the BQ requires some form of re-working. This re-work needs to be reduced if improved post-tender use of estimating data is to be achieved. Information stored in the BQ should be arranged in a directly useable way. It was found that, ‘quantities’, ‘quantity units’, and ‘unit rates’ are the key elements of the BQ information that need to be presented in a more meaningful format if the amount of re-work is to be reduced.
doi: 10.1080/01446199300000027pmid: N/A
Cash flow forecasting and control are essential to the survival of any contractor. The time available for a detailed pre-tender cash flow forecast is often limited. Therefore, contractors require simpler and quicker techniques which would enable them to forecast cash flow with reasonable accuracy. This paper identifies causes behind the inaccuracy of current standard value S-curves (which are often used as an alternative approach for cash flow forecasting) and proposes the use of standard cost commitment models. The process of developing and testing the cost commitment models involved first collecting actual data for 150 completed projects. Several criteria were identified to classify these projects. Tests were conducted to identify which of these criteria affected the shape of the cost commitment curves. Projects were then distributed into different groups and S-curves were fitted into each using the logit transformation technique. Errors incurred when fitting these curves were measured and compared with those associates in fitting individual projects. Results showed that the difference between these errors was not significant. The reliability of selecting the cost commitment curve to model (instead of value curves) was evaluated. Results confirmed the hypothesis that cost commitment models are more accurate and reliable than value models. Finally, the paper outlines some of the practices involved in utilizing the proposed models.
Sommerville, James; Kennedy, Peter; Orr, Louise
doi: 10.1080/01446199300000028pmid: N/A
This paper considers the opportunities for, and barriers against, women within the UK construction industry. Women form the greater proportion of the economically active UK population and yet within construction, and other industries, they are under represented. Data available clearly indicates that women are more than capable of performing the tasks undertaken by many professional male counter-parts. Many of the professional bodies within the industry have a women's cohort, which may be perceived as a useful starting point, but does not fully reflect the potential available. It is suggested that women should be better represented and consideration is given to methods suitable for increasing the representation and reducing or eliminating some of the barriers to entry and eventual retention.
Moselhi, Osama; Lorterapong* , Pasit
doi: 10.1080/01446199300000029pmid: N/A
This paper presents an efficient resource allocation algorithm, and examines its performance against a number of scheduling heuristic rules, aimed at minimizing project durations in a multiple resource-constrained environment. The algorithm has been coded in BASIC and can easily interface with available planning and scheduling software systems. Unlike other heuristic network-based algorithms, resources are allocated simultaneously to sets of activities, rather than to individual activities in a sequential manner. An experiment was conducted to study the performance of the proposed algorithm and compare its results with those generated by four different heuristic scheduling rules, including those found to have the most superior performance such as the widely used least total float rule. Thirty-one network examples adopted from the literature are analysed. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm is superior to the others. The proposed algorithm provides a reasonable trade-off between the best accuracy associated with optimization techniques and the ease of computational effort associated with the simple least total float model. As such, it maximizes the benefits of the two limiting approaches.
doi: 10.1080/01446199300000030pmid: N/A
Extension of time and liquidated damages clauses have remained virtually unchanged for over a century and continue to give rise to the same problems. A new approach would be to have a target date for completion and no extensions of time or liquidated damages. The contract price would be reduced by an amount per day of overrun. There would be credits to reflect days when the contractor is prevented from working by certain defined events. The emphasis would be on the extent to which the contractor is prevented from working rather than the extent to which the contractor is delayed. The new approach may facilitate the administration of contracts.
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