This issue of the Management, Procurement and Law has four papers all which are likely to attract considerable interest from both the academic and practitioner communities. We have a mix of authors. On the one hand, we have both academic and practitioner authors while, on the other, authorship is international. There is a paper by three senior practitioners based on their experience in providing programme-wide logistics support for the highly successful delivery of the infrastructure projects for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. Three of the papers are from academics and employ both quantitative and qualitative research designs.
The paper that I found particularly interesting and timely is that by Shiplee et al. (2013), who report on the design and implementation of the project for providing site-wide logistics support for the delivery of the infrastructure projects for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. The paper traces the development of the methodology for the logistics project to December 2005 when, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), the project owner recognized the need for a logistics project to establish programme-wide arrangements for the management of logistics in relation to people, materials, temporary infrastructure, programme-wide issues around very daunting constraints of delivery time, existing infrastructure operating at design capacity, and contiguous residential communities. The paper describes the methodology that entailed: establishment of the aims of the logistics project; definition of workstreams and work elements; identification and analysis of the challenges of moving materials in and out of the site and designing appropriate responses; design of appropriate arrangements for moving the workforce, which at its peak was about 7000 strong in 81 Tier 1 contractors, 3000 Tier 2 contractors and their subcontractors and suppliers. Impressive innovations achieved demonstrate that, with appropriate leadership, the construction industry has the capacity to innovate.
A paper co-authored by a practitioner and an academic reports on a study into construction accidents in Rwanda (Cokeham and Tutesigensi, 2013). Most of the research literature on construction health and safety has been based on the construction industries in the developed world. This study is therefore a most welcome addition to the scant literature from the perspective of developing countries. It is premised on the view espoused by the International Labour Organization that the first step in any effective accident reduction initiative is to have relevant accident statistics. In response to the challenge of lack of such statistics on the construction industry in Rwanda, the authors carried out a survey of 130 construction workers in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, with the aim of discovering the primary causes and frequencies of construction accidents in Rwanda. The survey generated information on 482 non-fatal accidents and six fatal/serious accidents. A notable finding was that, as already reported in relation to the developed world, slips, trips and falls were found to have accounted for nearly one-quarter of all the accidents. A finding that many readers would find very surprising is that assaults were reported on 10 of the 23 projects surveyed. A major challenge encountered in this study that would be of interest of researchers in similar contexts concerned the administration of a questionnaire across different languages to illiterate research informants accessible only through constrained communications systems.
Effective collaborative working is probably most demanding in the area of the planning and control of projects which is shared by virtually all project participants. The extent of the challenge is demonstrated by high incidence of disputes concerning delay, identification of the organization responsible for it and quantification of its financial consequences. The paper by Francis (2013) has the potential to make some contribution to making planning and control information more visible to project participants in ways sensitive to the different information needs at different stages. It proposes a chronographic method of modelling project schedules designed to avoid the known limitations of existing graphical methods such the bar charts and networks. The practical operation of the model and its advantages over the existing methods are illustrated by its application to a sample project.
There can be no effective collaboration without appropriate information systems. The paper by Sheriff et al. (2013) identifies seven key lessons for effective information management (IM) from analysis of data generated by interviews with nine industry experts from architecture and engineering (A&E) organisations based on their experience of developing and implementing IM systems. Most previous studies into IM in the construction industry have been project-centric. The reported study departs from this tradition by focusing on the development and implementation of IM across multi-disciplinary A&E organisations and projects. Readers from the ranks of information managers and leaders of A&E businesses should develop some insights into the task of improving IM within their organisations.
Collectively, the papers engage with some of the current big issues in the construction and engineering industries: collaborative working arrangements, sustainability, health and safety and information management. I found them very informative and stimulating reading. I very much hope that readers of the journal will experience the same effect from reading them. The issue is rounded off with a discussion and three book reviews.
