Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

DUFFIELD, COLIN

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021055

This paper presents a detailed case study of how a European heating contractor analysed the commercial viability of privately financing a critical component of the construction of new apartment heating systems in return for ongoing maintenance contracts. The adaptation of some of the concepts of more complex concession or Build Own Operate and Transfer BOOT contract arrangements for use on a small scale project are discussed. Some details of this simple form of privately financed contact are presented. Specifics of the funding mix between construction and fitout costs, capital equipment costs and ongoing maintenance agreements are discussed and related to the market price for energy. The example demonstrates the potential for this type of delivery mechanism for small scale construction. The constructor maintained a reasonable margin and profit during a period of economic recession, new clientele was developed and business expanded to provide a whole of life service. The developer was able to renovate a facility for a lower capital cost than would otherwise have been possible, and the user gained a state of the art heating system without any increase in heating costs.

AKINTOYE, AKINTOLA; TAYLOR, CRAIG; FITZGERALD, EAMON

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021056

The Private Finance Initiative PFI is a recent development in the UK in which private sector organisations, design, build, finance and operate assets to deliver a service to public sector clients. The initiative is expected to bring the private sector's finance, management skills and expertise into projects which would normally be undertaken by the public sector. Equivalents of this initiative, also found outside the UK, include DBFO Design Build Finance Operate, BOO Build Own Operate and turnkey projects. Two important considerations for a project to receive an approval for the initiative are that it must represent value for money and there must be sufficient transfer of risk to the private sector. This paper, based on a questionnaire survey, provided the perceptions of clients, contractors and financial institutions on risk associated with PFI and how these determine their approach to PFI schemes. The analysis shows that design changes and the level of information on functional, performance and output requirements for PFI schemes are of major concern to the parties involved in this procurement route.

SAUNDERS, ALASDAIR

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021057

This paper comments on the attitude of Banks to the HM Guidelines, for PFI as well as analysing the cost of finance obtained under the Guidelines and comparing it with finance from other sources. This analysis is extended, by way of example, to t he Dalmuir sewage treatment works project, as capital expenditure under EU Directives in Scotland.

ABDULAZIZ, ABDULRASHID; CHWEE NGOH TAN, AMY

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021058

On 15 December 1993, the most ambitious trade liberalisation package in history was concluded, marking the end of multilateral trade negotiations under the aegis of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GATT. Among the landmark achievements of that round was the addressing of the services sector for the first time in such a setting. This paper analyses the key provisions of the General Agreement of Trade in Services GATS in the context of the construction industry. Despite the fact that GATS is presently a framework which requires further negotiation, there are already certain matters that corporate strategists should be conversant with in preparation for the time when full trade surveillance is imposed on the industry. Specific reference is also made to the Government Procurement Agreement towards the end of this paper because of its galvanising force on future GATS negotiations.

CHAU, K.W.

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021059

The prices of construction resources construction cost have been increasing faster than construction output prices construction price in Hong Kong since the mid1970s, giving rise to a longterm divergence between the two price trends. As the difference has existed for quite a long time, it cannot be adequately explained by a shortterm change in supply and demand conditions. The present paper introduces the major indices that reflect the trends of the prices of construction resources and outputs in Hong Kong. It also attempts to explain, from an economic point of view, the major factors which contributed to the divergence between the longterm trends of the prices of construction resources and outputs. One of the conclusions is that, for the past 25 years, the productive efficiency of the Hong Kong building industry has benefited from and been greatly upgraded by imported construction technologies, as well as by a burgeoning quality of human resources. The data and examples quoted in the present paper are sided towards building construction. Therefore, the scope of investigation of this paper, strictly speaking, is confined to the building industry, and does not include the building services and civil engineering subsectors. However, because of the higher degree of mechanization and faster technological progress in the civil engineering and building services subsectors, the present author believes that the results and conclusions should also be applicable to the whole construction industry.

WALKER, DEREK H.T.

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021060

Conclusions flowing from an investigation of the literature together with the results of two recent research studies suggest that the relationship quality between the client representative CR, the design team and the team undertaking construction management activities is a major factor governing construction time performance CTP. While the managerial performance of the manager of the construction team was found to be a pivotal factor, the interaction between the CR and the construction management team was found to be crucial in facilitating good CTP, i.e. achieving a fast build rate. One interesting and valuable insight gained from the research studies reviewed in the present paper suggests that selection of a CR should be based on the capacity of the CR to gain the confidence of the project team. The CR characteristics which are significantly associated with good CTP are also discussed. It is proposed that these provide useful selection guidelines for appointing the appropriate person or team to represent the client's interests within the project coalition.

EVANS, R.C.; KAKA, A.P.

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021061

Several cash flow forecasting models have been developed for use by the contractor at the tendering stage. The majority of these models have been based on the standard Scurve. The accuracy of these models depends on the accuracy of the standard Scurve used. Many researchers have attempted to develop standard Scurves using past projects. These projects were primarily classified in terms of broadbased categories e.g. commercial buildings. The results of past research have demonstrated that cumulative valuecost curves vary significantly. In the present paper, a more specific type of building was selected food retail stores. Historical data for 20 projects was collected and analysed for the feasibility of developing a more accurate standard Scurve. The results demonstrate that an accurate standard Scurve was not achieved even when projects were further classified into more detailed groups i.e. different sizes of superstores.

OGUNLANA, STEPHEN O.; PIEN CHANG, WEI

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021062

The groundbreaking works of Maslow and Herzberg have been used by many researchers on construction worker motivation. These two classical theorists were used as the basis for a survey of needs, motivators and demotivators on highrise building construction sites in Bangkok, Thailand. The needs and felt motivators of construction workers in Bangkok are low on the Maslow hierarchy. The agreement between workers and supervisors regarding needs is strong. However, the agreement on motivators and demotivators is rather weak. This may lead to the use of inappropriate methods for motivating workers. A comparison of the results of the present survey with other studies showed that attempts to motivate workers should take cognizance of the cultural context in order to achieve good results.

LAUFER, ALEXANDER; SHAPIRA, AVIAD; GOREN, ITZHAK

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021063

The need to provide immediate housing solutions for hundreds of thousands of people in the early 1990's faced the Israeli construction industry with an unprecedented challenge to multiply overnight its output and drastically cut construction time. It also created a unique opportunity to observe a nationallevel experiment of great magnitude aimed at meeting that challenge. The present paper reports on a study that examined how construction companies managed to cut housing construction time to half of what had been accepted earlier as a normal pace. This was achieved by implementing an approach that concurrently and integratively treats environment, technology and management determinants, creating a synergetic effect. The present paper introduces and demonstrates the integrative approach to schedule compression, and highlights the role of the environment.

GOWRI, KRISHNAN; DEPANNI, SEBASTIANO

1998 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021064

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 knowledgebased expert system to assist in future building inspections. The philosophy of this expert system is to integrate both knowledgebased 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 rulebase representing the code requirements, hypertext userinterface for code text and case study information. The ultimate objective is to make this system available for field inspections using notepad computers.