Built Environment Project and Asset Management

Eadie, Robert ; Browne, Mike ; Odeyinka, Henry ; McKeown, Clare ; McNiff, Sean

2015 Built Environment Project and Asset Management

doi: 10.1108/BEPAM-07-2013-0023

Purpose – Construction organisations are mandated to use Building Information Modelling (BIM) for Government projects from 2016. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current status of the management aspects of BIM. Design/methodology/approach – Following a telephone sift, a web-based questionnaire was conducted with UK construction BIM experts with 92 responses. Findings – This research demonstrates a paradigm shift in construction as operations were deemed more important than the technical aspects of BIM Adoption. Respondents agree with enforced Level 2 BIM, demonstrating client demand is a significant driver on uptake. BIM use will substantially increase in the next five years. Ranking of the importance of current BIM standards indicated BS1192 was most used but almost a third adopted individual standards producing fragmentation. BIM’s effect on consultant fees indicated the need for structural change. Practical implications – Front end design via BIM models and clash detection outweighed the use for facilities management indicating industry were meeting the target but not exploiting BIM to its full potential. Design and build and framework arrangements were the most common BIM procurement routes. Fragmentation of standards use creates a future interoperability problem between BIM systems. Social implications – Design team structure changes are supported with the adoption of a separate BIM manager being popular. Analysis of industry-wide model hosting characteristics indicated individual disciplines managed their own models meaning without an additional target for Level 3 BIM the single model environment is unlikely to be widely adopted. Originality/value – BIM fee structure and procurement are investigated for the first time

Wibowo, Andreas ; Alfen, Hans Wilhelm

2015 Built Environment Project and Asset Management

doi: 10.1108/BEPAM-03-2014-0016

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify 30 government-led critical success factors (CSFs) from both the meso and micro levels in public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure development, measured the importance of these factors, and evaluated the government performance within the Indonesian context. Design/methodology/approach – The authors used weighted gap analysis, the Mann-Whitney test, and the Holland and Copenhaver procedure to support the analysis. Findings – The agreement-adjusted mean scores suggest that the identified CSFs are essential, but that these CSFs underperform in Indonesia. The tests indicated that the gap between performance and importance was significant on both the individual and aggregate level, and no respondent-background bias was observed in the data sets. Practical implications – This paper provides valuable information for prospective international investors who might be interested in alternative PPP investment opportunities in Indonesia. Originality/value – This paper enriches the existing body of knowledge on Indonesia’s PPP activities. This is important as, despite the fact that Indonesia offers one of the largest opportunities in Asia for investment in the national infrastructure sector, studies on Indonesia’s PPPs are rarely reported in the literature. This paper also offers a simple, practical, and replicable approach with a sound theoretical basis that can assist governments in identifying and evaluating PPP-specific determinant factors under their control, as well as in measuring their performance on these factors.

Oluwatayo, Adedapo Adewunmi

2015 Built Environment Project and Asset Management

doi: 10.1108/BEPAM-04-2013-0008

Purpose – There has been little empirical study on employees’ perceptions of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices in the architectural industry, where the employee architects have been described as the assets of the firm, and how these influence their job satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that define the perceptions of these employees of the HRM practices and how these perceptions influence their job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey of employee architects in Lagos, Nigeria was carried out. The respondents were asked to rate their perceptions of HRM practices in their firms. Data were analyzed using mean ranking, principal component analysis, and regression analyses. Findings – The results show that contrary to popular beliefs, most of the respondents were satisfied with their jobs overall, although they were least satisfied with their pay. The factors that predict the satisfaction of the employee architects with various aspects of the job were identified. Research limitations/implications – A major limitation to this study lies in the fact that samples were only taken from employees of privately owned architectural firms in Lagos, Nigeria. Practical implications – The results indicate areas of HRM practices that principals of architecture firms may explore to enhance employee architects’ satisfaction. Originality/value – The study adds to the body of knowledge on employee perception of HRM practices and satisfaction by providing evidence from the architectural industry. This study further contributes to literature satisfaction as a multi-scale item in relation with the employee architects’ demographic and HRM practices.

Tijhuis, Wilco

2015 Built Environment Project and Asset Management

doi: 10.1108/BEPAM-06-2013-0018

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze actual developments within PPP-projects, and the influences of business-cultures in the management-processes of such international PPP-projects. The paper focusses especially on the procurement, during which potential project-partners are being selected. Design/methodology/approach – The researcher adopted a recent model from literature for analyzing business-cultures within construction processes; especially the so called “3C-Model” was used, earlier developed and published within construction-management literature. Based on analysis of literature and comparable situations, conclusions and recommendations have been made for managing international PPP-projects, especially in the project-partners selection phase. Findings – Actual approaches within international PPP-projects do need a more structured approach during the selection of the project-partners. It is suggested to use more past-performance information, not only based on financials and/or organizational data/experiences, but also on behavioral (business-culture) data/experiences. This information needs to be structured in a proper way. Suggestions are given focussing on discussion and future-outlook. Research limitations/implications – It would be useful to test the findings on further actual cases, testing the further implications of the outcome. Practical implications – A better understanding of business-cultures’ influences increases the awareness of project-participants for the advantage of the suggested extra selection-criteria. This might reduce the risk for conflicts during the project-execution in the total project life-cycle. Social implications – When improving the actual practices of selection suitable parties for actual and future PPP-projects, it is of great value to be as effective as possible within this selection process. Especially, because this approach can prevent for several unpleasant situations afterwards during the operation-time (life-cycle) of the PPP-project. In this way, a proper handling of business-culture’s influence can save clients and other stakeholders involved (society) a large amount of possible conflicts (claims, etc.) afterwards. Originality/value – The proposed approach contributes to a better understanding of project-processes and its stakeholders (i.e. especially the – foreseen – project-participants). Current selection-processes still do not adopt a structured approach for incorporating past-performance behavioral data/experiences; so structuring and using them properly can result in more successful PPP-projects within a fast growing international PPP-market.

Shehu, Zayyana ; Holt, Gary D. ; Endut, Intan R ; Akintoye, Akintola

2015 Built Environment Project and Asset Management

doi: 10.1108/BEPAM-10-2013-0056

Purpose – Construction projects within Malaysia are plagued by time overruns that can transform what should have been successful projects, into those incurring additional costs, disagreements, litigation and in some cases abandonment. To help better understand this problem, the purpose of this paper is to investigate Malaysian project characteristics in relation to time overruns. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 150 Malaysian quantity-surveying organisations provided data relating to recent projects they have worked on. Project characteristics considered in analysis are new build and refurbishment, public and private sectors, procurement methods used, nature of projects and tendering methods. Findings – Public sector projects were found more prone to overruns than those in the private sector; refurbishment projects experienced better time performance than new build; construction management demonstrated better time performance than design-build or traditional procurement; and infrastructure projects/negotiated tendering, performed better than selective/open tendering, respectively. The study also developed a linear model to predict project duration, based on contract period. Research limitations/implications – The study adds a geographically specific detailed analysis to the extant literature of project performance generally and to that of time overruns more specifically. Practical implications – Findings provide stakeholders with information that may help mitigate the frequency of project delays among construction projects, especially in Malaysia. Originality/value – The analysis and modelling of time overrun in relation to Malaysian project characteristics in this way is novel.

Senaratne, Sepani ; Samaraweera, Aparna

2015 Built Environment Project and Asset Management

doi: 10.1108/BEPAM-10-2012-0049

Purpose – The construction industry mostly adopts teams consisting of a collection of diverse professionals in each of its product delivery projects, where normally the construction project manager (CPM) becomes the leader of such a project team. The purpose of this paper is to identify the leadership roles of the CPM across the team development process. Design/methodology/approach – This was approached through a multiple case study research method carried out using three construction projects in Sri Lanka; two projects on traditional procurement method and another on design and build procurement method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the respective project managers and with other three distinct team members of each project. Findings – Based on the findings, leadership roles of the CPM across the team development process were revealed with the situational factors that affect these leadership roles in each stage of the team development process. Originality/value – Even though project leadership is discussed by pervious researchers, concrete evidence has not been provided to show how it should change at different stages of a project. This research addresses this gap and would guide CPMs to change their leadership role appropriately to suit the needs of each team development stage.

Liu, Junxiao ; Love, Peter E.D. ; Smith, Jim ; Regan, Michael ; Palaneeswaran, Ekambaram

2015 Built Environment Project and Asset Management

doi: 10.1108/BEPAM-12-2013-0070

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the normative literature in regard to public-private partnerships (PPPs) and their evaluations, and attempts to investigate whether the Performance Prism is a feasible framework for effective PPP performance measurement. Design/methodology/approach – An in-depth and critical literature review is conducted in this study. Discussion concentrates on PPP features, performance measurement in PPPs, performance measurement in construction, and characteristics of the Performance Prism. Findings – The Performance Prism exhibits a strong ability to capture the distinct features of PPP infrastructure projects and can be considered as a framework suitable for effective and efficient performance measurement. Practical implications – It is essential that stakeholders have a feasible performance measurement framework to effectively measure performance as they embark on PPP infrastructure projects. This paper can be used as a theoretical base and conceptual framework capable of assisting in the design and selection of effective performance measures for PPPs. Originality/value – Many governments across the world use PPPs to procure public assets owing to the scarce funds available for infrastructure development. Effective performance measurement is critical to the successful delivery of a PPP project. Conventional ex post evaluation that solely focuses on meeting budget and predetermined project duration is being widely used to measure PPPs in practice. PPPs are more complicated than traditional procurement due to their multiple stakeholder integrations and long-term processes. However, the research on effective PPP performance measurement is limited for addressing such vital issues, and this paper attempts to bridge this knowledge gap.