Built Environment Project and Asset Management

Issue 2.2 (Vol. 2 Issue 2) CONTENTS:

Stakeholder Consultation Practices within Healthcare Infrastructure Planning: A Conceptual Approach to Strategic Asset Management

Sameedha Mahadkar, Grant Mills, Andrew Price

Stakeholder Service Delivery Expectations of Military Facilities Management

Abdul Rahman Jumat, Vaughan Coffey, Martin Skitmore

Quantitative Analysis of Defects in University Buildings: User Perspective

Abdul Lateef Olanrewaju

Adequacy of Incremental Construction Strategy for Housing Low-income Urban Residents in Ogun State, Nigeria

Eziyi Ibem, Egidario Aduwo, Obioha Uwakonye

Cost Overruns in Transport Infrastructure Projects in Asia: their Significance and Relationship with Project Size

Young-Ill Park, Theopisti Papadopoulou

A Contractor’s Perception on Early Contractor Involvement

Motiar Rahman, Aminu Alhassan

Governance issues in BOT based PPP infrastructure projects in India

Venkata Delhi, Ashwin Mahalingam, Seshanka Palukuri

System-of-Systems Approach for Assessment of Financial Innovations in Infrastructure

Ali Mostafavi, Dulcy M. Abraham and Joung Lee

Issue 2.2 (Vol. 2 Issue 2) EDITORIAL:

DIGGING IN AND DRILLING DEEPER

Moving on from the last editorial in Issue 2.1 that was entitled ‘Making a Mark and Carving a Niche’, we could say with the current crop of papers, that BEPAM is consolidating itself within its now established niche area, while continuing to delve deeper into specific issues. Of course this would be a generalised overview, since each paper is independent and earlier papers probed their own in-depth domains, while helping to map out our scope and range.

In terms of range, we found it useful to extend our reach to add value where needed, as set out in the last editorial: while an important BEPAM aim is to highlight interface issues between project management and asset management of building or civil engineering infrastructure, we welcome papers that may focus more on either project management or built asset management issues. As said, this is necessary to build bridges to link important common or connected issues in each area e.g. related to maintainability, operability, usability and/or sustainability. Moreover, grouping such papers in one forum, helps identify useful links and brainstorm on potential mutual benefits.

For example in this issue: Rahman and Alhassan’s paper on ‘early contractor involvement’ triggers thoughts on the benefits of extending this concept to ‘early operator/user involvement’; and not just on PPPs, where this is an expected inherent benefit. The paper on PPP infrastructure projects by Delhi, Mahalingam, and Palukuri focuses on governance issues across two major PPP interfaces – between public/private and project/societal stakeholders. Indeed, involving the latter sooner rather than later is clearly beneficial, but again not just in PPP projects. The paper by Park and Papadopoulou on cost overruns in Asian transport infrastructure projects unearths important procurement issues related to for example, project size and lowest bid. Such issues are worth probing in asset management too.

Unsurprisingly, some topical themes and critical threads continue to weave through successive BEPAM issues as well. For example, in the context of strategic asset management in the health sector, a paper in the last BEPAM issue (issue 2.1) by Loosemore and Chandra, probed ‘learning through briefing’ for ‘strategic facilities management’ in the Australian health sector. Some comparisons may now be drawn with the paper in this issue by Mahadkar, Mills and Price on ‘stakeholder consultation practices within healthcare infrastructure planning in the UK’. This in turn may merit some comparisons with the paper in this issue on another type of facilities – on ‘stakeholder service delivery expectations of military facilities management’ by Jumat, Coffey and Skitmore. Mostafavi, Abraham and Lee turn the spotlight to transportation infrastructure in the USA, probing much needed innovations in their financing, through an interesting system-of-systems approach for systematic assessments.

Olanrewaju’s paper points us to yet another large group of familiar infrastructure assets/ facilities -   university buildings, focusing on defects from the user perspective, which again also draws attention to the importance of connecting downstream users and operators to upstream project management. The other set of facilities probed and reported on in this issue is ‘housing for low-income urban residents’ in a developing country context. Ibem, Aduwo and Uwakonye report on the adequacy of an interesting ‘incremental construction strategy’ for this important group of built environment assets. Their importance is heightened by being not only, arguably, the most basic built environment assets, but also contributing significantly to the development of, less arguably, our most important assets – humans.

BEPAM continues to attract research manuscripts from diverse sources in terms of research study locations and author backgrounds. This is borne out not just from the papers published in Volumes 1 and 2, but also from those in the pipeline. Papers for our first BEPAM Special Issue are also in the pipeline. It will be on ‘Public Private Partnerships in Transport: Theory & Practice’ and is being ably steered by our Guest Editors Athena Roumboutsos and Rosário Macário, of the University of the Aegean, Greece, and the Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal, respectively.

We thank all the Authors, Reviewers and Associate Editors who have contributed to the current issue and helped us to continue to disseminate quality research and developments in a very timely manner. In the context of the growing BEPAM community, it is with deep regrets that I report the passing on after an illness of a founder-member of our Editorial Review Board. Dick Feast was a leading international expert in bridge asset management and his knowledge and advice has benefitted many, ranging from Europe to Asia. Dick’s passion for the civil engineering profession, for teaching and for developing excellent practices in his work, bubbled through whenever one interacted with him.

Mohan Kumaraswamy