journal article
Open Access Collection
Home
Pellegrini‐Masini, Giuseppe; Bowles, Graeme; Peacock, Andrew D.; Ahadzi, Marcus; Banfill, Phillip F.G.
doi: 10.1080/01446190903480027pmid: N/A
A recent, major UK research project investigated technical and social aspects of reducing the CO2 emissions of UK domestic housing by 50% by the year 2030. As 80% of the UK housing stock that will be present in 2030 has already been built, this study aimed to research the whole life costs of three sets of energy demand reduction technologies for existing housing, over a 25‐year period, suitable to deliver significant CO2 emissions reduction up to 50%. Demand side technological interventions in the form of fabric upgrades and ventilation systems are identified. Whole life cycle analysis of interventions carried out on two housing variants prominent in the domestic stock under different energy price scenarios is carried out using discounted cash flow and compared with the do‐nothing option. The results show that, despite reducing annual energy bills, there is no clear financial case even over a 25‐year horizon for householders to invest in the proposed interventions that contribute to CO2 emission reduction targets. When discussed with respect to household income and consumption preferences, the results reveal the need for new policy approaches to overcome the financial and non‐financial hurdles for a mass uptake of energy efficient technologies.
Jewell, Carol; Flanagan, Roger; Anaç, Caner
doi: 10.1080/01446191003587729pmid: N/A
Services are very important to the UK balance of trade; a surplus has been recorded for trade in services every year since 1966. Construction professional services exports (CPS), which cover architecture, engineering and surveying (AES), have also increased, contributing over £3bn to the UK trade balance in 2007. The changing environment of construction professional services exports complicates the validity of the characteristics and definitions of services as described in the research literature and official export statistics. Through semi‐structured interviews undertaken with large consulting engineers and a roundtable discussion with industry and government representatives, the research found that the impact of globalization and the changes in the construction business environment, such as increasing foreign ownership and changing forms of procurement, are not fully reflected in the official statistics. There have also been rapid changes in technology, procurement and methods of delivery which have impacted on exporting AES firms and a more appropriate set of characteristics is needed to better reflect the project‐specific and knowledge‐intensive nature of AES firms.
Fan, Ryan Y.C.; Ng, S. Thomas; Wong, James M.W.
doi: 10.1080/01446190903369899pmid: N/A
As a driving engine for growth, the construction industry plays an important role in a country’s economic development process. Despite that, the industry is vulnerable to cyclical oscillation and at times more fundamental changes in work volume when the regional or global economy is hit by unforeseen events. In order to formulate appropriate policies and directions to help ease the impact of a fluctuating volume of construction work, a model that can reliably predict the work of various construction sectors after any economic turbulence would be extremely useful. In this study, the Box–Jenkins approach is used for model development due to its simplicity and sound theoretical background. The results illustrate that the Box–Jenkins models can reliably predict the medium‐term total construction demand and residential demand covering a turbulent period of ups and downs in construction demand. A multiple regression model is also developed to compare against the modelling reliability of the Box–Jenkins model.
doi: 10.1080/01446190903505948pmid: N/A
There has been a range of initiatives across many countries over the last 10 to 15 years to introduce reform to the construction process in order to improve performance. The so‐called UK ‘Continuous Improvement’ programme is evaluated as a case study through an analysis of demonstration projects. These projects symbolically represent best practice for others to follow directly in the UK and through influence indirectly in other countries. This raises methodological challenges, yet the scant empirical attention given to this field justifies such attention. The main conclusion is that there have been improvements, yet these seem not to have been continuous. Contractors are distant from direct value creation, increasingly relying upon others in the supply chain. Improvement measures have not penetrated most supply chains. This suggests that contractors need to develop learning and competency capacity; especially stakeholder management and/or clients need to identify new solution providers. There has been little direct evidence of this and the current environment is placing emphasis upon price rather than value. Capacity and capabilities for continuous improvement appear largely transient and insufficiently embedded to persist where present.
Jones, Stephen Mark; Ross, Andrew; Sertyesilisik, Begum
doi: 10.1080/01446191003587737pmid: N/A
Employee turnover affects performance and competitiveness of companies. Traditional voluntary employee turnover models attempting to predict voluntary turnover are based on job satisfaction. A recent model that breaks away from this tradition is the unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover (UMVT) which takes account of additional factors such as labour market forces, economy and habit. UMVT has been tested in various industries. However, in the construction sector UMVT is tested for the first time in this study. A convenience sample of 320 construction professionals was taken from the Global Construction Consultants, Davis Langdon. The sample provided useable online survey data from 104 respondents who had voluntarily left their previous employers in the last four years. The results reveal that UMVT’s ability to interpret voluntary employee turnover among construction professionals was weak. In contrast to previous studies of UMVT, a significant number of respondents (80.8%) followed paths other than the original five theorized paths. As a result, a new extended version of the UMVT is proposed that includes two new paths that have been theorized, which add to the understanding of voluntary employee turnover and may, in the long term, help support human resource management in construction professional practices to predict and manage voluntary employee turnover.
doi: 10.1080/01446190903473782pmid: N/A
Project overheads estimation by applying a selected rate as a percentage of direct cost is used widely in bidding in construction, but the rate is prone to inaccuracy if it is selected subjectively. An improved approach is developed, a decision support system (DSS) based on a construction firm’s cost data and using a neural network model for mapping of overheads rates from project attributes. The estimating ability of the proposed DSS is continually updated by retraining the neural networks with accumulated cost data in an expanding project database. An illustrative example is provided, in which the creation and updating of a prototype neural network model were simulated using cost data for projects spanning six years. The model explains the effects of duration and direct cost on overheads rates that the regression method fails to account for. The results also give empirical evidence that the DSS is capable of improving accuracy through annual model updating and may be used as a means for implementing organizational learning. The methods for assessing the loss risk for a bid incorporating an estimate from the DSS are provided.
doi: 10.1080/01446191003587745pmid: N/A
The relationship between trust and control in client–contractor interactions is explored, focusing on the control mechanisms used in a construction project. A longitudinal case study of a large laboratory construction project found that the client used a variety of control mechanisms to ensure that the contractor behaved trustworthily. Empirical data were gathered through interviews and non‐participant observation. The results indicate that the use of control mechanisms is part of a complex and dynamic socially constructed process that requires ongoing discussion and evaluation, and to which informal control mechanisms are central. Business relationships built solely on trust are seemingly rare; even in trust‐based collaborative settings, such as partnering arrangements; the contracting parties must pay attention to trust‐nurturing actions.
doi: 10.1080/01446190903473790pmid: N/A
The long‐term behaviour of the built environment is relevant to practising architects and engineers as well as to investors and policy makers. In contrast to this, the size, structure and dynamics of that important capital of society are not well established. As a first step towards assessing the dynamics of new constructions, refurbishments, demolitions and other building related event variables in urban building stocks in Southwest Germany, a first random sample of event data is examined using the more efficient ultrametric hierarchical classification in order to compare their dynamics. To this end, different ways of binary encodings of the multivariate data are carried out, and their ultrametric classification results compared. It turns out that municipalities of comparable sizes show similar behaviour in contrast to those of differing sizes, which corresponds to previous findings. Consequently, ultrametric methods can be applied to the study of building stock dynamics by revealing inherent hierarchical structure in data.
Showing 1 to 10 of 10 Articles