Engineering Construction & Architectural Management

RWELAMILA, P.D.; TALUKHABA, A.A.; NGOWI, A.B.

1999 Engineering Construction & Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021122

The lack of ubuntu African group solidarity between project stakeholders in the Southern Africa Development Community SADC public building sector has been surrounded by controversy and strongly held opinions. The work reported in this paper attempts to indicate some salient issues affecting the relationships between project stakeholders. The Botswana public building sector is used as a main case study and followup studies are carried out involving another eight SADC countries. The paper addresses two propositions. First, that the lack of ubuntu between project stakeholders is primarily due to an inappropriate project organizational structure. Second, that a default traditional construction procurement system TCPS, provides a poor relationship management system. Information is obtained on the research areas through questionnaires to construction firm executives, contract managers, site managers, trade foremen and skilled tradespersons on the dominant procurement system used in Botswana. Furthermore, senior technical officers of Public Works Ministries of another eight SADC countries are interviewed as a followup to the Botswana study. The primary conclusion to be drawn is that the building procurement system purported to be in use in the SADC public building sector differs significantly from that recommended in the theory, resulting in poor relationships between project stakeholders. This is primarily due to the use of inappropriate building procurement systems. In general, the TCPS in the SADC public building sector is used as a default system. This has led to a situation where project management is a fire fighting activity, where group solidarity between project stakeholders is out of reach. Salient steps are proposed with a proviso that the SADC public building sector should establish appropriate methods of selecting building procurement systems as a prerequisite in formulating appropriate project organizational structures which will bring the spirit of real cooperation between project stakeholders towards project success.

MATTHEWS, JASON; ROWLINSON, STEVE

1999 Engineering Construction & Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021123

The philosophy that underpins this paper is that partnering needs the partners to set mutual objectives these objectives are agreed upon and stipulated within a project charter. Objectives within the charter should be regularly reviewed and performance assessed. The question addressed is can this mechanism, which has proved successful in a commercial context, assist in applying safety legislation, rules and management systems to a construction project Also, partnering advocates an open and trusting relationship between all parties can this philosophy be used to assist the management of site safety Implementing the partnering concept in the construction project environment provides an opportunity for the continuous improvement of safety performance. This paper addresses partnering as a concept and draws from examples of partnering in the UK and Hong Kong. A number of characteristics of partnering agreements have been identified that can all assist in promoting safety. These characteristics are continuous evaluation, the project charter, mutual objectives and team building. The context in which partnering in safety can be undertaken is reviewed and a discussion takes place of how the global trend to move away from prescriptive legislation towards performancebased legislation in the regulation of safety provides an ideal opportunity to adopt partnering as a methodology for safety improvement.

WIRAHADIKUSUMAH, REINI; ABRAHAM, DULCY M.; CASTELLO, JUDY

1999 Engineering Construction & Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021124

Finding the optimal solution to address problems in sewer management systems has always challenged asset managers. An understanding of deterioration mechanisms in sewers can help asset managers in developing prediction models for estimating whether or not sewer collapse is likely. The effective use of deterioration prediction models along with the development and use of life cycle cost analysis LCCA can contribute to the goals of reducing construction, operation and maintenance costs in sewer systems. When sewer system maintenancerehabilitation options are viewed as investment alternatives, it is important, and in some cases, imperative, to make decisions based on life cycle costs instead of relying totally on initial construction costs. The objective of this paper is to discuss the application of deterioration modelling and life cycle cost principles in sewer system management, and to explore the role of the Markov chain model in decision making regarding sewer rehabilitation. A test case is used to demonstrate the application of the Markov chain decision model for sewer system management. The analysis includes evaluation of this concept using dynamic programming and the policy improvement algorithm.

WHYTE, J.; BOUCHLAGHEM, N.; THORPE, ANTONY; MCCAFFER, RON

1999 Engineering Construction & Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021125

A survey of computer use in the British house building industry was conducted by means of a postal questionnaire to 100 house builders followedup by indepth interviews. The research shows widely variant levels of computer use and expertise in different house building companies amongst both regional developers and the nationwide volume builders. Some housing developers have sophisticated information technology strategies and are well placed to successfully implement advanced techniques whilst many have very little or no computer use for design and visualization and rely more on traditional competitive strategies.

KARIM, ASIM; ADELI, HOJJAT

1999 Engineering Construction & Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021126

The authors were motivated to overcome some of the limitations and shortcomings of the existing software systems for management of construction projects. The result is a new generation software system for CONstruction Scheduling, Cost Optimization, and Change Order Management, which is called CONSCOM. CONSCOM uses the recently patented Neural Dynamics model of Adeli and Park as its computational engine for construction cost optimization and advanced software engineering and objectoriented programming techniques such as framework and pattern. This paper presents some of its recent and innovative capabilities and features. CONSCOM includes an Integrated Management Environment IME as its user interface for the effective control and management of construction projects. An example of a highway construction project is presented to demonstrate the unique modelling capabilities of CONSCOM that cannot be modelled by Critical Path Method CPM or CPMlike networks.

LANSLEY, P.R.

1999 Engineering Construction & Architectural Management

doi: 10.1108/eb021127

After providing a brief review of the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise RAE of UK universities in the subject areas of Built Environment and Town and Country Planning, four measures are developed to represent the range of activities considered by the exercise. These have simple and strong relationships with the grades awarded to the universities. The findings suggest that the assessment method was broad and robust and that good grades were achieved through quite different activity profiles. Issues are raised about the general level of research activity and the small and static number of internationallevel departments in the UK.