The service‐led project is driven by the demand for long‐term service provision based on the output of a conventional capital good. The project management implications of the extended timeframe for such projects are considered and the added risks and uncertainties associated with planning for an unknown future business environment. Detailed case studies of three service‐led engineering projects in the context of port facilities, high‐speed trains and sludge treatment are examined. The findings indicate that service‐led projects exist within the context of a meta‐project that encompasses a consideration of critical activities beyond the normal remit of the project manager. Aligning project stakeholders around a vision for the meta‐project becomes a key task in the successful management of the service‐led project.
Cooperative arrangements, such as partnering, have received increased interest in recent years. Several studies show however that cooperative relationships are not easily achieved in construction. Implementation of cooperative relationships requires changes in several elements of the traditional procurement procedures. The purpose of this paper is therefore to propose and test a sequential model regarding clients' cooperative procurement procedures. We especially ask: what elements in clients' procurement procedures facilitate the establishment of cooperation and trust in their relationships with contractors? The model was tested through structural equation modelling. The empirical data required for the test were collected through a survey responded to by 87 Swedish professional construction clients. The empirical results show that cooperative procurement procedures are triggered by clients' wish to involve contractors early in specification, which has a simultaneous effect on procedures regarding bid invitation and compensation. Furthermore, these simultaneous effects breed a certain kind of partner selection based on task-related attributes, which also has a direct positive effect on trust and above all on cooperation in client-contractor relationships. Besides these implications from the model, the improvement of measurements for future modelling is discussed.
The design process has a significant impact on the performance and profitability of a housing project. Therefore, decisions made during the design process should take into consideration knowledge and experience from other processes in previously accomplished projects, specifically from the production phase. How to capture and use production experience in housing has not gained enough interest, possibly leading to sub-optimal improvements during the construction process. This motivates research on how onsite production experience from similar previous projects can be captured and used to improve constructability without risking customer values. Based on the concept of constructability, ’design for manufacturing and assembly’ and the theory of waste, the method ’design for construction’ (DFC) has been developed. The four-step model complements the conventional construction process, and consists of the following steps: (1) specify customer values and similar previous projects; (2) identify onsite waste and cost drivers in previous projects; (3) develop criteria to evaluate constructability; and (4) evaluate constructability of the design. The DFC method is exemplified and tested through a case study, in which it was shown that the method facilitated identification of all problems that were considered in the investigated project. The method also highlighted other project obstacles that potentially could have been solved to improve constructability. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Much has been written about the positive contribution made by the customer to innovation in bespoke and low-volume products like those of construction. Far less attention has been given to the potentially corrosive effects the client might have on innovation. Drawing on three construction case studies, this paper argues that strong client leadership may have negative consequences for innovation, including the suppression of innovation and an overly narrow focus on particular types of innovation. Given that innovation has a key role in the future competitiveness of any industry, it is argued that the role of the client in construction innovation requires more careful examination than it has thus far been afforded. © 2005 Taylor & Francis.
This article is a response to Lauri Koskela's recent piece in Construction Management and Economics (Why is management research irrelevant? 35(1-2): 4-23) which reflects on the relationship between academic research and management practice in business schools. In particular, Koskela asks why production management research and teaching has disappeared from the business school agenda and why management research has failed to produce a consistent body of knowledge that is of use to management practice. In this article, I try to provide some alternative perspectives on the present and past contexts of management theory and production research. I argue that production research, if not teaching, is alive and well and the site of theory generation, problem-focused research and innovation. I also question the veracity and wisdom of a creating body of knowledge in relation to management research and practice-even if it were possible, which I believe it is not. My assessment of the state of research in business schools, at least in the U.K. and the U.S. and notwithstanding a lack of consensus over how to approach management research, is that it is eclectic and vibrant and of much more use to practicing managers in that state.
The involvement of stakeholders in large scale urban sustainable development projects (LSUSDP.s) has proven difficult. The stakeholders are distributed across the geographical area, and they have stakes not only in the LSUSDP, but in the geographical location where the project takes place. To understand stakeholder management in “distributed projects”, we propose abandoning the “inside-out” perspective where the project is the point of departure, and focus on the emergence of stakeholders across time. Adopting such a performative, “outside-in,” perspective on the longitudinal and digital study of a LSUSDP, we are able to map how actors became stakeholders in the project through their actions. The paper makes four contributions. First, we reconceptualize stakeholder involvement by adopting a performative perspective, whereby “stakeholders” are envisaged as emergent and non-fixed. Second, we demonstrate how such a reconceptualization may be applied to the analysis of an empirical case. Third, we show that stakeholder involvement is not merely the result of stakeholder management but something that happens over time, through the material and discursive actions of those that become stakeholders. Finally, the paper contributes with an illustration of how the online, digital footprint, of a project may be useful to understand the emergence of a project.
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are joint ventures in which the private sector works in partnership with government bodies to deliver public sector projects with the intention to deliver them more quickly, efficiently and with better value for money. They are also one of the most contentious project delivery mechanisms to have been mobilised in recent decades. Research has demonstrated the lack of realised value within many such projects, yet construction management academics continue to examine ways of increasing, implementing and optimising this approach in practice, even encouraging its adoption worldwide despite growing social and political dissatisfaction. Here, we go beyond what we see as myopic construction management perspectives, placing our body of work firmly within wider economic, political and social contexts. We challenge uncritical academic compliance with a process that demonstrably contributes to economic inequalities, opportunism and exploitation. We confront the lack of criticality in construction management research of PPPs, and call for construction management academics to broaden their research focus and engage in more robust critique and analysis of construction systems, as they are realised in practice.