Decision support system for improving construction companies’ business performance

As part of a decision making process, the controlling process in construction companies can be supported by computer application that provides faster and reliable decision. This paper discusses the development of a knowledge-based decision support system for controlling construction companies’ business performance. The knowledge-base was developed using questionnaire survey and case studies. A questionnaire survey was conducted to identify potential problems that can occur in construction companies as well as the source of the problems and their impact on companies’ performance. Case studies were used to identify and analyse various corrective actions. The result of the study shows that decision support system using knowledge-based management system improves the effectiveness and the efficiency of decision making process for selecting the most appropriate corrective action that can improve construction companies’ performance. The application, which had been developed in this research, was designed to support the process of controlling construction companies’ business performance and to assist young manager in selecting the most optimum corrective actions for the problems related to achieving companies’ objectives. This computer application can be used as a learning tool for identifying potential problems that a construction company faces and the most optimum corrective action.

Joint venture behaviour in construction industry : an Australia case study

Joint ventures can take many forms and can be formed for different reasons, from sharing resources to creating future business opportunities. At the same time, there is increasing interest and discussion of alternative procurement methods, moving away from traditional procurement systems to relational approaches. Business systems and strategies need to be redefined and move from a short-term project to project culture to a more strategic, long-term perspective. Joint ventures of construction organisations, global and local, have become increasingly popular to deliver large-scale infrastructure construction projects. However, successful strategic collaborations require project organisations to formulate a fit between contractual and operational arrangements for each situation. This study reviews the movement from traditional procurement methods towards relational contracting approaches in Queensland, Australia. The study examines the organisational factors that facilitates sustainable relationship between project organisations and hence, lead to long-term business success. This paper reports on initial findings captured from a survey undertaken with construction contracting organisations in Australia, focusing on the supply chain relationships. Contractors’ perceptions of the relationship management process and the engagement of the supply chain are also presented.

Alcohol and other drugs in the Australian construction industry : A national evaluation and the best way forward

Anecdotal evidence highlights issues of alcohol and other drugs (AODs) and its association with safety risk on construction sites. Information is limited however regarding the prevalence of AODs in the workplace and there is limited evidential guidance regarding how to effectively address it. This research aimed to scientifically evaluate the use of AODs within the Australian construction industry in order to reduce the potential resulting safety and performance impacts and engender a cultural change in the workforce. A national qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the use of AODs was conducted with approximately 500 employees. Results indicate that as in the general population, a proportion of those sampled in the construction sector may be at risk of hazardous alcohol consumption and support the need for evidence-based, tailored responses. This is the first known study to scientifically evaluate the use of AODs and potential workplace safety impacts in the construction sector.

Measuring quality : how does this improve construction performance?

The paper charts the history and development of the Hong Kong Housing Department (HKHD) Performance Assessment Scoring System (PASS) from 1990 to the present day and examines its effect on facilitating change to the quality of construction work of building contractors engaged in the production of public sector housing projects Hong Kong. The paper builds partly on empirical research carried out by the author as part of a doctoral thesis from 2000 to 2005, on experiential knowledge and also on some relevant case studies. The outcomes from this earlier research and validation of PASS based on results derived from the system since the research was originally undertaken are of benefit to practitioners and academics working and studying in the areas of performance assessment and organisational culture and change. The conclusions presented in the paper further underpin the connection established in previous research between strong organisational culture and project and corporate success. Organisational culture was measured using a survey instrument originally developed by Denison and Neale (1994), adapted for the environment of the study, and corporate success was measured by the PASS system mentioned above. The major results of the original study indicate that there is significant linkage between strong organisational cultures and business success and the detailed findings were that, (1) strong organisational culture was positively associated a high level of company effectiveness, (2) a high level of company effectiveness was positively associated with the cultural traits of ‘consistency’, ‘adaptability’ and ‘mission’, and (3) a high level of company effectiveness was positively associated with the combined cultural traits represented by the dimensions of ‘external focus’ and ‘stable culture’. Several opportunities to take forward this research have been identified, including extending the study to other countries and also longitudinally re-evaluating some of the original case studies to ascertain how organisational cultures have changed or further developed in relation to the changing construction climate in Hong Kong.

Rough set-based reasoning and pattern mining for information filtering

An information filtering (IF) system monitors an incoming document stream to find the documents that match the information needs specified by the user profiles. To learn to use the user profiles effectively is one of the most challenging tasks when developing an IF system. With the document selection criteria better defined based on the users’ needs, filtering large streams of information can be more efficient and effective. To learn the user profiles, term-based approaches have been widely used in the IF community because of their simplicity and directness. Term-based approaches are relatively well established. However, these approaches have problems when dealing with polysemy and synonymy, which often lead to an information overload problem. Recently, pattern-based approaches (or Pattern Taxonomy Models (PTM) [160]) have been proposed for IF by the data mining community. These approaches are better at capturing sematic information and have shown encouraging results for improving the effectiveness of the IF system. On the other hand, pattern discovery from large data streams is not computationally efficient. Also, these approaches had to deal with low frequency pattern issues. The measures used by the data mining technique (for example, “support” and “confidences”) to learn the profile have turned out to be not suitable for filtering. They can lead to a mismatch problem. This thesis uses the rough set-based reasoning (term-based) and pattern mining approach as a unified framework for information filtering to overcome the aforementioned problems. This system consists of two stages - topic filtering and pattern mining stages. The topic filtering stage is intended to minimize information overloading by filtering out the most likely irrelevant information based on the user profiles. A novel user-profiles learning method and a theoretical model of the threshold setting have been developed by using rough set decision theory. The second stage (pattern mining) aims at solving the problem of the information mismatch. This stage is precision-oriented. A new document-ranking function has been derived by exploiting the patterns in the pattern taxonomy. The most likely relevant documents were assigned higher scores by the ranking function. Because there is a relatively small amount of documents left after the first stage, the computational cost is markedly reduced; at the same time, pattern discoveries yield more accurate results. The overall performance of the system was improved significantly. The new two-stage information filtering model has been evaluated by extensive experiments. Tests were based on the well-known IR bench-marking processes, using the latest version of the Reuters dataset, namely, the Reuters Corpus Volume 1 (RCV1). The performance of the new two-stage model was compared with both the term-based and data mining-based IF models. The results demonstrate that the proposed information filtering system outperforms significantly the other IF systems, such as the traditional Rocchio IF model, the state-of-the-art term-based models, including the BM25, Support Vector Machines (SVM), and Pattern Taxonomy Model (PTM).

Leadership construction : an exploratory case study of two exemplary female principals in urban primary schools in mainland China

Worldwide, education systems have undergone unprecedented change due to a variety of economic, social, and political forces (Limerick, Cunnington & Crowther, 2002). The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is no exception. Continuous educational reform at primary and secondary levels in Mainland China has created new challenges and accountabilities for school principals. The important role of principals in primary and secondary schools has been acknowledged in both policy documents and the broader literature (Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, 1985; F. Chen, 2005; Chu, 2003; W. Huang, 2005; T. Wang, 2003). Yet, most of the literature on primary and secondary school principals in Mainland China is prescriptive in nature, identifying from the perspectives of researchers and academics what principals should do and how they should enact leadership. Lacking in this research is an awareness of the daily practices and lived experiences of principals. Furthermore, within the small body of writing on primary and secondary school principals in Mainland China, gender is seldom given any attention. To date, only a small number of empirical studies have focused on female principals as a specific category of research (Zen, 2004; Zhong, 2004). This study aimed to explore the professional lives of two female exemplary school principals in urban primary schools in Mainland China. A qualitative exploratory case study was used. Semi-structured interviews with each individual female principal, with six teachers in each of the school sites and with the superintendent of each principal were conducted. Field observations and document analysis were also undertaken to obtain multiple insights about their leadership practices. The conceptual framework was based largely on the theory of Gronn (1999) and incorporated five core leadership practices (vision building, ethical considerations, teaching and learning, power utilisation, and dealing with risks and challenges) taken from the wider literature. The key findings of this study were twofold. Firstly, while the five leadership practices were evident in the leadership of the two principals, this study identified some subtle differences in the way they approached each of them. Secondly, contextual factors such as Chinese traditional culture, the contemporary societal context, and the school organisational context, in addition to the biographical experiences of each principal were significant factors in shaping the way in which they exercised their leadership practices in the schools.

Exit Statement : 2001-2009 CRC for Construction Innovation

The Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Construction Innovation is Australia’s national centre for research and innovation focused on the needs of the property, design, construction and facility management sectors. The period covered by this report is from 1 July 2001 to 30 October 2009. The report comprises of two parts. Part A details the future and possible future impact of the CRC including: The Future of the CRC, Research and Commercialisation, Economic Benefit to Australia, Public Good Benefits to Australia. Part B details the achievements during the funding period including: Economic Benefit and Commercialisation, Uptake of Research Results, Impact of Education Programs, CRC Operations.