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Chang, Chin‐Hsiang; Lin, Yu‐Cheng; Tserng, H. Ping
doi: 10.1080/01446190701819061pmid: N/A
Construction management requires engineers to acquire effectively and efficiently management experience. Most experience management (EM) in the construction industry focuses on explicit experience (such as writing reports and documents). Furthermore, tacit experience is usually more difficult to acquire than explicit experience. This study proposes an After the Issue Review (AIR) approach to acquire experience from engineers involved in construction projects, and effectively enhance experience sharing through a web‐based platform. Moreover, an AIR Construction Pattern (AIRCP) scheme is proposed and utilized to codify and edit the acquired experience. The web‐based experience management system presents a user‐friendly interface of an experience‐sharing platform, through which engineers learn valuable tacit experience derived from previous projects. Finally, a case study involving tunnel construction for expressway projects in Taiwan is utilized to validate the proposed approach and demonstrate the effectiveness of experience acquisition and management in construction.
doi: 10.1080/01446190801905380pmid: N/A
Chinese contractors have become more active in recent years in the international arena. This development is largely due to the encouragement and support by the Chinese government, coupled with the pressure of intensive competition within the domestic market. The increasing presence of Chinese international contractors (CICs) has attracted the attention of competitors from other countries. The CICs' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the international construction market are identified through analysing their business performance. Data used for the analysis are from multiple sources including literature reviews, policy reports, published statistics data and interviews with 25 construction professionals who work in CICs. It is suggested that CICs have made significant progress in building up their competitiveness in recent years and become competitors to other overseas contractors in international construction markets. The results provide valuable references for undertaking comparative research on organizational competitiveness among the contractors who come from different countries in international construction markets.
doi: 10.1080/01446190701874397pmid: N/A
The adoption and implementation of total quality management (TQM) are related to a company's culture. The relationship between cultural orientation and the implementation of TQM practices among certified Singapore contractors is investigated from an organizational culture perspective. The competing values framework was used to assess organizational culture and eight TQM elements were identified to gauge the implementation of TQM practices among contractors. A survey questionnaire was administered. Four organizational culture types have been identified from the survey findings. These are strong comprehensive, clan‐driven, hierarchy‐driven and weak comprehensive culture. Firms with strong comprehensive culture implement highly the TQM elements of top management leadership, people, process, customer and supplier management. Firms with clan‐driven culture implement highly the element of process management while firms with hierarchy‐driven and weak comprehensive culture implement lowly to moderately all elements. A culture‐based TQM implementation strategy is proposed.
doi: 10.1080/01446190701874405pmid: N/A
An industry report in Hong Kong calls for an agreed framework for appraising subcontractor performance. A set of performance appraisal criteria is developed that is agreeable to all key stakeholders in subcontracting. By examining the criteria being applied around the world and reviewing the available literature, a set of 31 subcontractor performance appraisal criteria was compiled. A questionnaire survey was conducted in Hong Kong to reveal the perception of relevant stakeholders on the most critical criteria for subcontractor appraisal. The independent samples t‐test confirmed that the main contractor and subcontractor groups had a significant agreement on the importance levels of most subcontractor performance appraisal criteria. Through factor analysis, the 15 most important subcontractor performance appraisal criteria and their underlying relationships are identified. The results indicate that the three overarching factors for subcontractor performance appraisal are ‘team interaction’, ‘accomplishment of project goals’ and ‘track record’. The identified appraisal criteria lay a solid foundation for the development of a centralized subcontractor performance appraisal system to facilitate performance reporting, data sharing and benchmarking.
Matar, Mohamed M.; Georgy, Maged E.; Ibrahim, Moheeb Elsaid
doi: 10.1080/01446190701842972pmid: N/A
Sustainable construction is an emerging field of science that aims at incorporating the general sustainable development concepts into conventional construction practices. While the foundation of knowledge in this field is continuously expanding, sustainable construction is not yet standard industry practice. One major technical barrier that hinders enacting sustainable construction is the absence of an application framework that integrates both sustainability and construction practices at an operational level. This shortcoming is being addressed through a three‐dimensional operational context space (OCS) that achieves the sought integration aspect. The three dimensions of OCS are: (1) project life cycle phases; (2) project executing entities; and (3) sustainability performance parameters. Such OCS facilitates the association of responsibility, by assigning each sustainability requirement to a specific project entity (or entities) during specific project phase(s), and further provides a numerical assessment for construction projects using sustainability as a criterion. Steps of constructing the OCS and how it could be employed in the evaluation and benchmarking of a project's environmental performance are examined, along with sample illustrations in the area of construction waste management.
Yeung, John F. Y.; Chan, Albert P. C.; Chan, Daniel W. M.
doi: 10.1080/01446190701793688pmid: N/A
Research into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for partnering projects in construction becomes vital because an increasing trend of client organizations has been observed to introduce a partnering approach to their building and construction works internationally during the last decade. A Partnering Performance Index (PPI) has been developed for construction projects in Hong Kong. The PPI can assist in developing a benchmark for measuring the performance of their partnering projects. However, it is worth noting that assessors may have their own semantic interpretations on each KPI. The aim of this paper is to establish suitable quantitative indicators (QIs) and reasonable quantitative ranges (QRs) for each KPI in order to avoid any possible discrepancies in interpreting the meaning of each KPI and provide objective evaluation results based on quantitative evidence. By conducting five structured face‐to‐face interviews and two rounds of a Delphi questionnaire survey in Hong Kong, a set of QIs were developed to measure the seven most important KPIs, including: (1) time performance; (2) cost performance; (3) top management commitment performance; (4) quality performance; (5) trust and respect performance; (6) effective communications performance; and (7) innovation and improvement performance. The identified QIs and QRs could assess and compare different partnering projects on a common basis objectively, thus helping to set a benchmark for measuring the performance level of partnering projects in Hong Kong. Construction senior executives and project managers can thus apply the QIs and QRs to measure, evaluate and improve the existing performance of their partnering projects in order to strive for construction excellence.
doi: 10.1080/01446190701882382pmid: N/A
The increasing necessity to establish a permanent presence in overseas markets challenges the tradition of tide‐like market entry mode of international contractors and confronts them with an important dichotomous selection between permanent entry mode and mobile entry mode. By borrowing theories and previous findings from the general international business area, the hypotheses regarding the influences of specific host country related factors upon the selection between the two generic entry modes, including cultural difference, trade link, host market potential, investment risk, institutional entry barrier and competition intensity are developed. Measures are proposed for these factors as well as some control variables and the dependent variable (entry mode). Data were collected from multiple sources for these variables. A binary logistic regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses and develop a statistical model for entry mode selection. The model is statistically significant and not all the hypotheses are supported, confirming the uniqueness of the population of international contractors in market entry mode selection.
doi: 10.1080/01446190701874413pmid: N/A
Although poor project management (PM) performance on construction projects and limitations in PM practices continue to be reported, there has been little research specifically focused on comparing perceptions of PM performance and practices of the construction business sector with other sectors and of construction projects with other types of project. This gap is addressed by a survey of 238 UK organizations, incorporating a sub‐sample from the construction business sector. A questionnaire was used to obtain data relating to perceived levels of PM performance and of levels of maturity in certain PM practices. Those involved in projects in the construction business sector perceived their PM performance to be higher than did those involved in projects from other business sectors. However, there was no difference in perceptions of PM performance on specific construction projects among participants drawn from all business sectors, i.e. owner/clients from other business sectors. In terms of practices the construction business sector reported higher levels of maturity in the management of programmes and organizational support for PM than other sectors. However, in the areas of sponsorship and benefit management the construction sector practices were no more evolved than those in other business sectors.
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