Urban high-density construction sites and their surrounding community:issues encountered and strategiesadopted by contractors

Inner city developments are a common feature within many urban environments. Where these construction sites are not managed effectively, they can negatively impact their surrounding community. The aim of this paper is to identify and document, in an urban context, the numerous issues encounter and subsequent strategies adopted by on-site contractors and local people, in the mitigation of factors which negatively impact their surrounding community. The objectives in achieving this aim are to identify what effect, if any, an urban construction site has on its surrounding environment, the issues and resulting strategies adopted by contractors on the factors identified, and also what measures are put in place to minimise such disturbances to the local community. In order to meet the requirements, a mixed methodology is adopted culminating in a literature review, case study analysis, contractor and community interviews, concluding in the development of two specific questions for both perspectives in question. The data is assessed using severity indices based on mean testing in the development of key findings. The results indicate that the main forms of disturbance to the local community from an urban development include noise, dust and traffic congestion. With respect to a contractor on-site, the key issues include damaging surrounding buildings, noise control and off-site parking. The resulting strategies identified in the mitigation of such issues include the implementation of noise and dust containment measures and minimising disruption to local infrastructure. It is envisaged that the results of this study will provide contractors operating in such environments, with the required information which can assist in minimising disruption and therefore, avoiding disputes with the local community members. By consulting with and surveying those most affected, this research will illustrate to on-site management, the difficulties faced by those who accommodate such developments within their living environment.

Promoting innovation and exceptional performance in the Scottish construction industry

Demonstration Projects are an initiative developed in response to demands presented in the 1998 Egan Report. Scotland has witnessed an attempt to keep the momentum and the so called Demonstration Projects Team at the University of Dundee was introduced in late 2003. The team’s responsibility was to revitalise and restructure Scottish Demonstration Projects. These are now a major initiative within the newly established Scottish Construction Innovation and Excellence Centre, a part of Scottish Construction Forum that is an umbrella organisation funded by the Scottish Executive through Scottish Enterprise Glasgow.

Learning across business sectors: facets of innovation in aerospace and construction

Innovation is notoriously difficult to define and is invariably intertwined with issues of knowledge creation, continuous improvement and organisational change. An extensive literature classifies numerous types of innovation and militates against any simplistic attempt at definition. It is widely accepted that innovation is at least partly dependent upon the surrounding environment. Industry recipes and institutionally embedded practices shape the environment within which innovation occurs. Recent research directions have addressed the diffusion of innovation and its dependence upon social and institutional structures. In this respect, it is highly pertinent to compare the way that innovation is interpreted and enacted in different industrial sectors. The comparison between UK aerospace and construction is especially revealing because the two sectors are so different and therefore constitute radically different climates for innovation. Empirical research is reported based on semi-structured interviews with practitioners from both sectors. Interpretations of innovation are found to differ dramatically between aerospace and construction. Within the context of an ongoing struggle to define innovation, both industries are striving to become more innovative. The aerospace sector is found to emphasise technical innovation whereas the construction sector emphasises process innovation. An overriding cultural bias in Western economies towards technological innovation results in the common perception that aerospace is much more innovative than construction. The experienced realities of practitioners in the two sectors are much more complex.

A model for assessing and correcting construction project health

Abstract Maintaining the health of a construction project can help to achieve the desired outcomes of the project. An analogy is drawn to the medical process of a human health check where it is possible to broadly diagnose health in terms of a number of key areas such as blood pressure or cholesterol level. Similarly it appears possible to diagnose the current health of a construction project in terms of a number of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and key performance indicators (KPIs). The medical analogy continues into the detailed investigation phase where a number of contributing factors are evaluated to identify possible causes of ill health and through the identification of potential remedies to return the project to the desired level of health. This paper presents the development of a model that diagnoses the immediate health of a construction project, investigates the factors which appear to be causing the ill health and proposes a remedy to return the project to good health. The proposed model uses the well-established continuous improvement management model (Deming, 1986) to adapt the process of human physical health checking to construction project health.

Framework for measuring success of construction projects

The construction industry is dynamic in nature. The concept of project success has remained ambiguously defined in the construction industry. Project success means different things to different people. While some authors consider time, cost and quality as the predominant targets, others suggest that success is something more complex. The aim of this report is to develop a framework for measuring success of construction projects. A range of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), measured both objectively and subjectively is developed. The identification of KPIs helps set a benchmark for measuring the performance of a construction project and provides significant insights into developing a general and comprehensive base for further research.

Literature Review Value Alignment Process for Project Delivery

The objective of the project “Value Alignment Process for Project Delivery” is to provide a catalyst and tools for reform in the building and construction industry to transform business-as-usual performance into exceptional performance. The outcomes of this project will be beneficial to not only the construction industry, but to the community as a whole because a more sophisticated industry can deliver more effective use of assets, financing, operating and maintenance of facilities to suit the community’s needs. The research project consists of a study into best practice project delivery and the development of a suite of products, resources and services to guide project teams towards the best approach for a specific project. These resources will be focused on promoting the principles that underlie best practice project delivery, rather than on identifying a particular delivery system. The need for such tools and resources becomes more and more acute as the environment within which the construction industry operates becomes more and more complex, and as business and political imperatives shift to encompass or represent diverse stakeholder interests. To this end, this literature review looks at why it is essential to achieve transformation in the Australian construction industry in the context of its importance to the Australian economy. It seeks to investigate the concepts of ‘alignment’ and value’ as they pertain to construction industry processes and relationships. It comprehensively reviews drivers of project excellence and best practice project delivery principles and looks at how clients approach selection of project delivery systems. It critiques existing project delivery strategies and gives an overview of recent best practice initiatives. The literature review represents a milestone against the Project Agreement and forms a foundation document for this research project

The knowledge advantage (K-Adv): unleashing creativity and innovation

The K-Adv has been developed around the concept that it comprises an ICT enabling infrastructure that encompasses ICT hardware and software infrastructure facilities together with an enabling ICT support system; a leadership infrastructure support system that provides the vision for its implementation and the realisation capacity for the vision to be realised; and the necessary people infrastructure that includes the people capabilities and capacities supported by organisational processes that facilitates this resource to be mobilised.

Strategy for the development of investment decision-making framework for road asset management for queensland department of main roads

The aim of this project is to develop a systematic investment decision-making framework for infrastructure asset management by incorporation economic justification, social and environmental consideration in the decision-making process. This project assesses the factors that are expected to provide significant impacts on the variability of expenditures. A procedure for assessing risk and reliability for project investment appraisals will be developed. The project investigates public perception, social and environmental impacts on road infrastructure investment. This research will contribute to the debate about how important social and environmental issues should be incorporated into the investment decision-making process for infrastructure asset management.

International practices in investment decision making in road sector

This document provides the findings of an international review of investment decision-making practices in road asset management. Efforts were concentrated on identifying the strategic objectives of agencies in road asset management, establishing and understanding criteria different organisations adopted and ascertaining the exact methodologies used by different countries and international organisations. Road assets are powerful drivers of economic development and social equity. They also have significant impacts on the natural and man-made environment. The traditional definition of asset management is “A systematic process of maintaining, upgrading and operating physical assets cost effectively. It combines engineering principles with sound business practices and economic theory and it provides tools to facilitate a more organised, logical approach to decision-making” (US Dept. of Transportation, 1999). In recent years, the concept has been broadened to cover the complexity of decision making, based on a wider variety of policy considerations as well as social and environmental issues rather than is covered by Benefit-Cost analysis and pure technical considerations. Current international practices are summarised in table 2. It was evident that Engineering-economic analysis methods are well advanced to support decision-making. A range of tools available supports performance predicting of road assets and associated cost/benefit in technical context. The need for considering triple plus one bottom line of social, environmental and economic as well as political factors in decision-making is well understood by road agencies around the world. The techniques used to incorporate these however, are limited. Most countries adopt a scoring method, a goal achievement matrix or information collected from surveys. The greater uncertainty associated with these non-quantitative factors has generally not been taken into consideration. There is a gap between the capacities of the decision-making support systems and the requirements from decision-makers to make more rational and transparent decisions. The challenges faced in developing an integrated decision making framework are both procedural and conceptual. In operational terms, the framework should be easy to be understood and employed. In philosophical terms, the framework should be able to deal with challenging issues, such as uncertainty, time frame, network effects, model changes, while integrating cost and non-cost values into the evaluation. The choice of evaluation techniques depends on the feature of the problem at hand, on the aims of the analysis, and on the underlying information base At different management levels, the complexity in considering social, environmental, economic and political factor in decision-making is different. At higher the strategic planning level, more non-cost factors are involved. The complexity also varies based on the scope of the investment proposals. Road agencies traditionally place less emphasis on evaluation of maintenance works. In some cases, social equity, safety, environmental issues have been used in maintenance project selection. However, there is not a common base for the applications.

National practices in investment decision making in road sector

This document provides the findings of a national review of investment decision-making practices in road asset management. Efforts were concentrated on identifying the strategic objectives of agencies in road asset management, establishing and understanding criteria different organisations adopted and ascertaining the exact methodologies used by different sate road authorities. The investment objectives of Australian road authorities are based on triple-bottom line considerations (social, environmental, economic and political). In some cases, comparing with some social considerations, such as regional economic development, equity, and access to pubic service etc., Benefit-Cost Ratio has limited influence on the decision-making. Australian road authorities have developed various decision support tools. Although Multi-Criteria Analysis has been preliminarily used in case by case study, pavement management systems, which are primarily based on Benefit Cost Analysis, are still the main decision support tool. This situation is not compatible with the triple-bottom line objectives. There is need to fill the gap between decision support tools and decision-making itself. Different decision criteria should be adopted based on the contents of the work. Additional decision criteria, which are able to address social, environmental and political impacts, are needed to develop or identify. Environmental issue plays a more and more important role in decision-making. However, the criteria and respective weights in decision-making process are yet to be clearly identified. Social and political impacts resulted from road infrastructure investment can be identified through Community Perceptions Survey. With accumulative data, prediction models, which are similar as pavement performance models, can be established. Using these models, the decision-makers are able to foresee the social and political consequences of investment alternatives.

Decision support tools for concrete infrastructure rehabilitation (using FRP composites)

This report presents a summary of the research conducted by the research team of the CRC project 2002-005-C, “Decision support tools for concrete infrastructure rehabilitation”. The project scope, objectives, significance and innovation and the research methodology is outlined in the introduction, which is followed by five chapters covering different aspects of the research completed. Major findings of a review of literature conducted covering both use of fibre reinforced polymer composites in rehabilitation of concrete bridge structures and decision support frameworks in civil infrastructure asset management is presented in chapter two. Case study of development of a strengthening scheme for the “Tenthill Creek bridge” is covered in the third chapter, which summarises the capacity assessment, traditional strengthening solution and the innovative solution using FRP composites. The fourth chapter presents the methodology for development of a user guide covering selection of materials, design and application of FRP in strengthening of concrete structures, which were demonstrated using design examples. Fifth chapter presents the methodology developed for evaluating whole of life cycle costing of treatment options for concrete bridge structures. The decision support software tool developed to compare different treatment options based on reliability based whole of life cycle costing will be briefly described in this chapter as well. The report concludes with a summary of findings and recommendations for future research.

Final report implementation of relational management

Construction teams and construction organisations have their own distinctive cultures. There also exists an infrastructure, both social and contractual, which ensures that these projects within which the teams operate are completed successfully. It is these issues which this research has addressed. The project was instigated by Queensland Department of Main Roads, Public Works and John Holland Group in order to address how they might better implement relationship management (RM) on their construction projects. The project was devised initially in order to facilitate a change in culture which would allow the project to be run in a relational manner and would lead to effective performance in terms of the KPIs that the organisations set for themselves, described as business better than usual. This report describes the project, its outcomes and deliverable and indicates the changes that were made to the project during the research process. Hence, the initial premise of the project and the problem to investigate was the implementation of relational contracting: • throughout a range of projects; • with a focus on client body staff. The additions that were made to the project, and documented in the variations to the project, included two major additional areas of study: • client management and stakeholder management; • a live case study of an alliancing project. The context within which the research was undertaken is important. The research was driven by main roads with their desire to improve their operations by focusing on the relationship between the major project participants (however, stakeholder and client organisation management became an obvious issue as the research progressed, hence the variations). The context was initially focussed on main roads, public works and John Holland group organisations but it became clear very quickly that this was in fact an industry-wide issue and not an issue specific solely to the project participants. Hence, the context within which this research took place can be described as below: The deliverables from the project are a toolkit for determining RM needs in an organisation, a monograph describing the practical implementation of RM and the outline for a RM CPD and Masters course

Innovate now : Improving performance in the building and construction industry

Trying to innovate or wanting to? Making a start is the most difficult step on any journey. Whether trying to innovate for the first time, or seeking improvements on current performance, organisations are confronted with a plethora of options. Innovate now! makes action easier by presenting some of the key considerations for improving innovation performance. This guide has been based on the outcomes of a survey and case studies conducted between 2003 and 2005 in the Australian property and construction industry and therefore contains unique and up-to-date information, examples and suggestions tailored specifically to your industry needs. The large-scale industry survey and 12 innovation case studies on which this guide are based were carried out by The BRITE (Building Research, Innovation, Technology and Environment) Project as part of research for the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation. The stakeholders volunteering to take part in BRITE research included over 400 businesses, 14 government organisations, 8 industry associations and 4 universities.