Developing a system for assessing the costs associated with different procurement routes in the construction industry

In developing techniques for monitoring the costs associated with different procurement routes, the central task is disentangling the various project costs incurred by organizations taking part in construction projects. While all firms are familiar with the need to analyse their own costs, it is unusual to apply the same kind of analysis to projects. The purpose of this research is to examine the claims that new, ways of working such as strategic alliancing and partnering bring positive business benefits. This requires that costs associated with marketing, estimating, pricing, negotiation of terms, monitoring of performance and enforcement of contract are collected for a cross-section of projects under differing arrangements, and from those in the supply, chain from clients to consultants, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers. Collaboration with industrial partners forms the basis for developing a research instrument, bused on time sheets, which will be relevant for all those taking part in the work. The signs are that costs associated with,with tendering are highly variable, 1-15%, depending upon what precisely, is taken into account. The research to date reveals that there are mechanisms for measuring the costs of transactions and these will generate useful data for subsequent analysis.

Innovation in construction: a sociology of technology approach

An alternative approach to understanding innovation is made using two intersecting ideas. The first is that successful innovation requires consideration of the social and organizational contexts in which it is located. The complex context of construction work is characterized by inter-organizational collaboration, a project-based approach and power distributed amongst collaborating organizations. The second is that innovations can be divided into two modes: ‘bounded’, where the implications of innovation are restricted within a single, coherent sphere of influence, and ‘unbounded’, where the effects of implementation spill over beyond this. Bounded innovations are adequately explained within the construction literature. However, less discussed are unbounded innovations, where many firms' collaboration is required for successful implementation, even though many innovations can be considered unbounded within construction's inter-organizational context. It is argued that unbounded innovations require an approach to understand and facilitate the interactions both within a range of actors and between the actors and technological artefacts. The insights from a sociology of technology approach can be applied to the multiplicity of negotiations and alignments that constitute the implementation of unbounded innovation. The utility of concepts from the sociology of technology, including ‘system building’ and ‘heterogeneous engineering’, is demonstrated by applying them to an empirical study of an unbounded innovation on a major construction project (the new terminal at Heathrow Airport, London, UK). This study suggests that ‘system building’ contains outcomes that are not only transformations of practices, processes and systems, but also the potential transformation of technologies themselves.

Description and process evaluation of pharmacists’ interventions in a pharmacist-led information technology-enabled multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial for reducing medication errors in general practice (PINCER trial)

Objective To undertake a process evaluation of pharmacists' recommendations arising in the context of a complex IT-enabled pharmacist-delivered randomised controlled trial (PINCER trial) to reduce the risk of hazardous medicines management in general practices. Methods PINCER pharmacists manually recorded patients’ demographics, details of interventions recommended, actions undertaken by practice staff and time taken to manage individual cases of hazardous medicines management. Data were coded and double entered into SPSS v15, and then summarised using percentages for categorical data (with 95% CI) and, as appropriate, means (SD) or medians (IQR) for continuous data. Key findings Pharmacists spent a median of 20 minutes (IQR 10, 30) reviewing medical records, recommending interventions and completing actions in each case of hazardous medicines management. Pharmacists judged 72% (95%CI 70, 74) (1463/2026) of cases of hazardous medicines management to be clinically relevant. Pharmacists recommended 2105 interventions in 74% (95%CI 73, 76) (1516/2038) of cases and 1685 actions were taken in 61% (95%CI 59, 63) (1246/2038) of cases; 66% (95%CI 64, 68) (1383/2105) of interventions recommended by pharmacists were completed and 5% (95%CI 4, 6) (104/2105) of recommendations were accepted by general practitioners (GPs), but not completed at the end of the pharmacists’ placement; the remaining recommendations were rejected or considered not relevant by GPs. Conclusions The outcome measures were used to target pharmacist activity in general practice towards patients at risk from hazardous medicines management. Recommendations from trained PINCER pharmacists were found to be broadly acceptable to GPs and led to ameliorative action in the majority of cases. It seems likely that the approach used by the PINCER pharmacists could be employed by other practice pharmacists following appropriate training.

Building networks to work: an ethnographic study of informal routes into the UK construction industry and pathways for migrant up-skilling

The UK construction industry labour market is characterised by high levels of self-employment, sub-contracting, informality and flexibility. A corollary of this, and a sign of the increasing globalisation of construction, has been an increasing reliance on migrant labour, particularly that from the Eastern European Accession states. Yet, little is known about how their experiences within and outside of work shape their work in the construction sector. In this context better qualitative understandings of the social and communication networks through which migrant workers gain employment, create routes through the sector and develop their role/career are needed. We draw on two examples from a short-term ethnographic study of migrant construction worker employment experiences and practices in the town of Crewe in Cheshire, UK, to demonstrate how informal networks intersect with formal elements of the sector to facilitate both recruitment and up-skilling. Such research knowledge, we argue, offers new evidence of the importance of attending to migrant worker’s own experiences in the development of more transparent recruitment processes.

Investigating the level of awareness of building assessment tools in the construction industry of Botswana

Environmental building assessment tools have been developed to measure how well or poorly a building is performing, or likely to perform, against a declared set of criteria, or environmental considerations, in order to achieve sustainability principles. Knowledge of environmental building assessment tools is therefore important for successful design and construction of environmentally friendly buildings for countries. The purpose of the research is to investigate the knowledge and level of awareness of environmental building assessment tools among industry practitioners in Botswana. One hundred and seven paper-based questionnaires were delivered to industry practitioners, including architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, real estate developers and academics. Users were asked what they know about building assessment, whether they have used any building assessment tool in the past, and what they perceive as possible barriers to the implementation of environmental building assessment tools in Botswana. Sixty five were returned and statistical analysis, using IBM SPSS V19 software, was used for analysis. Almost 85 per cent of respondents indicate that they are extremely or moderately aware of environmental design. Furthermore, the results indicate that 32 per cent of respondents have gone through formal training, which suggests ‘reasonable knowledge’. This however does not correspond with the use of the tools on the ground as 69 per cent of practitioners report never to have used any environmental building assessment tool in any project. The study highlights the need to develop an assessment tool for Botswana to enhance knowledge and further improve the level of awareness of environmental issues relating to building design and construction.