Practitioners' opinions on a new construction process model

Construction projects have been criticised for low performance for many decades. One of the reasons for this situation is the temporary multi-organisation of the construction team; the ultimate reason may be due to the divergent background and specialist skills of the project team members. The aim of this paper is to investigate the different opinions of construction participants within the construction process. It focuses on the projects which use the traditional procurement strategy in the building sector as this process is often perceived as being far from efficient. The methodology used in this research is by interview; the targeted interviewees include architects, quantity surveyors, clients and planning supervisors. An expert system which has been developed to model the construction process, called the CONstruction Best Practice System (CONBPS), has been demonstrated and the participants’ comments sought. The findings are that different construction parties have different perceptions of the construction process and their understanding of each other’s role is ambiguous.

Development of a new best practice model for building projects

Time, cost and quality are the traditional determinants of project success. The level of client satisfaction is a newly defined measurement of project success. Often the satisfaction level of construction clients is not high. The reasons for this situation are twofold, firstly due to the temporary organizational structure of construction team and secondly, the inefficient construction process. The traditional procurement route, whilst still the most popular in the building sector, is probably subject to most criticism. The primary aim of this research is to develop a new best practice model for building projects. This will enable the client’s project manager to identify best practice under the traditional procurement route before the work is executed. Within this model, the sequence of construction activities, the responsibilities of the parties and the critical aspect of each phase of the project are identified. This model can then be utilized at both the design and/ or the construction stage in order to secure project success.