Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Volume 17, Issue 3

ECAM Vol. 17 No. 3 has six papers from a total of 17 authors: the distribution of authors across these papers is three papers with two authors,one paper with three authors, and two papers with four authors.

The distribution of authors by country is four from China, three from Australia, two from Hong Kong, two from Canada and six from the UK. There is one paper that has been produced across more than one country involving Hong Kong and Australia. All this is evidence that ECAM is predominantly an international journal.

The range of topics in this issue is once again varied, including competitive factors in the real estate industry in China, clients’ financial incentives in large projects, barriers to women in construction, models for allocating budgets in bridge maintenance, the possible use of public-private partnerships in Hong Kong, and a study of which industry-specific factors influence the adoption of technology. All of these papers offer promise of developments that could influence the industry: this will need more work by the authors to push their research closer to adoption. The final test of research is:

• Did it work?

• Was it applied?

• Did it make a difference?

Looking at synergies, the paper on ranking methods for bridge maintenance budgeting is the closest to offering new technology – well, at least a new approach. The paper on industry-specific factors that influence technology adoption offers advice on how to get technology adopted. Perhaps there is a case for some joint work to build on the concept of technological development linked to get technology adopted. It would be challenging work but it would certainly be interesting and valuable.

The paper that intrigued me most was the one on clients’ financial incentives in projects, which provides the means for clients taking strategic decisions to manage their projects. I am sure this paper or its successors on this topic have a lot to offer.

The papers in this issue are as follows.

Sun, Fan, Zhou and Shi report on competiveness factors in the real estate industry in Beijing and Tianjin. The competitiveness factors that interest the authors are categorised as “productivity”, “demand constraint”,“structure of relevant supportive industries” and “horizontal competition”. The authors collected data from Beijing and Tianjin and analysed them using Porter’s “Diamond Model”,. This shows that related industries have the greatest influence on competitiveness in the real estate industry, followed by demand factors.

The authors believe that their work provides a more comprehensive understanding of the interactions between the competitiveness factors. The question it leaves me with is what can be done with this understanding? Can it be used to restructure the industry, to refocus in a way that will make it better, more efficient or more service-orientated?

Rose and Manley introduce us to the interesting topic of clients’financial incentives in construction projects. The authors examined four large Australian building projects commissioned by government clients between 2001 and 2005. This has produced, in effect, a set of guidance notes on how to apply financial incentives and to manage these financial incentives.

The paper focuses on the practical benefits of financial incentives.

This is a good area, and if the authors’ recommendations are taken up it would be good to receive a future paper reporting on that. Also, it would be interesting to learn of work in this topic from other countries. This seems to me to address issues of how clients manage and influence projects in a very practical way.

Worrall, Harris, Stewart, Thomas and McDermott address the barriers that lead to the under-representation of women in the UK construction industry.

Funded by “Construction Skills”, the authors explore the issues that women face and the potential positive impact of construction professional development. Data sources are 231 interviews, and nine focus group meetings drawn from a range of professional occupations.

The findings? Male-dominated organisational cultures and inflexible working hours remain the main barriers and this has been well established over many years and many studies, so this is a continuing problem. The authors therefore argue for a sea-change expansion of CPD opportunities for women.

I am tempted to argue that we need a sea-change and expansion of CPD for the male managers that predominate which would seem to be the problem.

Abu Dabous and Alkass take us into the field of bridge management. Bridges,being major capital assets, require continued investment to maintain their serviceability. The distribution of maintenance budgets is notoriously difficult, and usually relies on ranking methods. Weaknesses in existing methods have been identified so these authors propose multi-attribute ranking methods for bridge management. This is intended to allow for the inclusion of multiple and conflicting criteria to be incorporated. The authors proposed framework includes the development of a hierarchy structure defining objectives and decision criteria. The applicability is demonstrated using a case study.

This paper takes the proposed method as far as a case study but the real test is will it be used in practice. Hopefully the authors are working on the transportation departments to run their ranking models in parallel with existing procedures. A paper on that test would be welcomed.

Cheung, Chan and Kajewski address the issue as to whether public-private partnerships should be used in Hong Kong. The data source for this study was a questionnaire survey ranking 15 attractive factors and 13 negative factors for adopting PPP. The three economic regions included were Hong Kong, Australia and the UK.

The paper presents the results. What is interesting, at least to me, was the difference in views from UK respondents to the Hong Kong and Australia respondents. Overall the attractive factors scored higher. Based on this the authors conclude that PPP is a suitable means of procuring large public projects.

Well, I am not sure, this research has processed opinion and that very much depends on the respondents who provided that opinion. I wonder what a trend of opinion over years in the UK where PPP has been used extensively would reveal. I suspect that it would indicate a movement away from the enthusiasm for PPP. PPP bills come in the future and they are large, many now question the wisdom of deferring the cost of big projects to future generations – especially in a time of great national debt.

Henderson and Ruikar examine what industry-specific factors influence the success of technology implementation in construction organisations. The research method was semi-structured interviews.

The conclusion is that technology implementation within construction organisations is not so much a technological problem as a behavioural one. This means that it is a managerial problem. Management problems are more difficult to solve than technological ones. The authors should consider how to develop their findings into guidance as to how to implement technology. Technology adoption is a multi-organisational challenge usually touching many organisations and it is here that the biggest challenges lies. If any guidance is produced it should address the issues across the boundaries of many organisations.

Ronald McCaffer