Built Environment Project and Asset Management

Issue 2.1 (Vol. 2 Issue 1) CONTENTS:

Contracting dynamics in the Competitive Dialogue procedure

Hans Voordijk, Mieke Hoezen, Geert Dewulf

Short-Line Railroad Management System for Bridge Prioritization

Robert Guyer, Jeffrey A. Laman

Energy Performance and Public-Private Partnership

Frederic Bougrain

Ghana’s Public Procurement Reform and the Continuous Use of the Traditional Procurement System: the Way Forward

Fan Yang, Z. Ren, P. Kwaw

Factors Influencing the Equity Share of Build-Operate-Transfer Projects

Giulio Mangano, Alberto De Marco, Xin-Yu Zou

Satisfaction Assessment in Construction Projects: a Conceptual Framework

Chinny Nzekwe-excel

Learning through Briefing: for Strategic Facilities Management in the Health Sector

Martin Loosemore, Venny Chandra

Issue 2.1 (Vol. 2 Issue 1) EDITORIAL:

MAKING A MARK AND CARVING A NICHE

My last BEPAM editorial was entitled "Overtaking Targets and Marking Milestones". Moving on to "Making a Mark and Carving a Niche" seems appropriate at this next stage of our BEPAM journey. Having made our mark, we have positioned ourselves better, for carving out the envisaged niche in our field. While focusing on our primary target of ‘interface issues between project management and asset management of building and civil engineering infrastructure’, as stated in our web-site ‘BEPAM also welcomes papers that may focus on either project management or built asset management issues’. Of course this is necessary to build bridges to link emerging issues in each area. Doing this under one roof (with apologies for mixing metaphors) or in one forum, enables identification of useful links, mutual benefits and overall synergies.

In moving on, we have also ‘graduated’ from our 2011 ‘new launch’ status in Emerald where we were nurtured by Valerie Robillard and Kieran Booluck, so BEAPM is now under the care of Publisher Stephanie Hull and Assistant Publisher Emma Steele at Emerald. Talking of Emerald, I also had a welcome opportunity to exchange ideas on some current common editorial issues with other Emerald editors from Asia and Australia at an Emerald Editors’ day’ forum chaired by the Publishing Director Rebecca Marsh last October.

Talking of contributions to BEPAM, we are grateful for the efforts and time spent by Authors, Reviewers and Associate Editors who have made the current issue what it is and helped to deliver it ahead of schedule, hence maintaining our track-record too.

On the above twin notes of passing milestones and recognising contributors to BEPAM, we have had the pleasure to arrange more BEPAM awards, i.e. after the two Conference Awards conveyed in my last editorial – at the June 2010 ‘Innovation in AEC’ Conference in USA in and the June 2011 ISEC-6 Conference in Switzerland. Since then:

(1) At the January 2012 Joint CIB W070, W092 and TG72 International Conference on Facilities Management Procurement Systems and Public Private Partnership’ in South Africa: The ‘Best Paper Award’ was won by Ganesh A. Devkar and Satyanarayana N. Kalidindi for their paper entitled ‘External Agencies for Supplementing Competencies in Indian Urban PPP Projects: A Perception Analysis’.

The ‘Highly Commended Paper Award’ was given for the paper entitled ‘Value Generation and Delivery in long-term Service Concession Projects: the role of Facility Management in Value Optimisation’, to Graham Brewer, Marcus Jefferies, Thayaparan Gajendran, Denny McGeorge, Steve Rowlinson and Andrew Dainty.

(2) The 2011 BEPAM Journal Paper Awards are as follows:

BEPAM Best paper Award 2011

• Performance of Mid-Project Reviews (MPRs): Quantification based on Fuzzy Recognition - Ming Xu, Colin Duffield, Jianqin Ma.

BEPAM Highly Commended Paper Awards 2011

• A real options framework to evaluate investments in toll road projects delivered under the two-phase development strategy - Baabak Ashuri, Jian Lu, Hamed Kashani.
• A Management Framework for the Built Environment: BEM2 and BEM3 - Thomas Madritsch, Matthias Ebinger.
• Impact of Flood Damaged Critical Infrastructure on Communities and Industries - Abhijeet Deshmukh, Eun Ho Oh, Makarand Hastak.

Outstanding Reviewers:

• Florence Y.Y. Ling, National University of Singapore.
• Pantaleo D. Rwelimila, University of South Africa.

In terms of marking milestones and making our mark, another item of general BEPAM news I should share is about our first BEPAM Special Issue. This is planned for mid-2013 and will be on ‘Public Private Partnerships in Transport: Theory & Practice’. The Guest Editors Athena Roumboutsos and Rosário Macário are already working on this.

Now focusing on the present, the current Issue 2.1 continues the BEPAM tradition in delivering to you an interesting package of papers covering a spectrum of topics within the common theme of built environment project and asset management (i.e. of building and civil engineering infrastructure).

Although topics range from ‘energy performance and PPPs’ in France to ‘satisfaction assessment’ in UK projects and ‘bridge maintenance prioritisation’ in the USA, common threads do inter-link and indeed criss-cross sub-groups. For example, ‘contracting dynamics’ when implementing more innovative ‘competitive dialogue’ protocols in procurement in the Netherlands, provide an interesting counterpoint to the difficulties in breaking out from ‘traditional procurement’ to the envisaged ‘public procurement reform’ in Ghana.

Other examples of common threads connecting different topics, scenarios and outcomes, include a sub-theme of PPP, in three papers from different European scenarios and PPP types – in France, Italy and the Netherlands, while the Health Sector case study in Australia also involves a ‘partnership’ project. Indeed the Australian paper particularly illustrates some potentially useful linkages BEPAM seeks to unveil, in this case connecting hitherto ‘downstream’ facilities managers to the front-end of upstream project management i.e. when developing the design brief, so that their facilities management strategies and mind-sets can also benefit from ‘cultural learning’ during the briefing process.

As in previous issues, the diversity of paper/ research study locations adds considerable value to the package. Country scenarios of the reported studies range from the USA to Australia, while including three countries in Continental Europe, the UK and one in Africa. Interestingly, there is no paper based in Asia in this issue, and regretfully there is still no paper from South America so far. On the other hand, the experiences of the authors extend even further, since some were previously and/or are now in countries other than those in which the papers are based, e.g. China, Indonesia, South Korea, Switzerland.

Finally, while we have already got one Special Issue in the pipeline and are discussing possibilities of another, our open invitation stands to any of you who have a bright idea for a topical theme relevant to our BEPAM thrusts, coupled with the dedication to shepherd a ‘Special Issue’ on this theme: you are welcome to submit a brief proposal in about 250 words, also indicating any previous editorial experiences as a Guest Editor or otherwise.

Mohan Kumaraswamy