ECAM ISSUE 18.2

An evaluation of construction skills in Tanzania

Geraldine John Kikwasi

Management efficiency performance of construction business - Australia data

Maria Balatbat, Cho-Yi Lin and David Carmichael

Coworkers' response to occupational health and safety: An overlooked dimension of group-level safety climate in the construction industry?

Helen Lingard, Tracy Cooke and Nick Blismas

Changing Roles of the Clients, Architects and Contractors through BIM

Rizal Sebastian

Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) Contracts in Practice - Case Study of a Private Office Development Project in Hong Kong

Daniel W M Chan, Patrick T I Lam, Albert P C Chan and James M W Wong

Theoretical Framework of Strategic behaviors in Thai contractors: an empirical case study

Arthasith Hastheetham and Bonoventura H W Hadikusumo

ECAM 18.2 has six papers produced by fourteen authors. This is a non-UK edition with no papers from the UK and it is almost a non-European edition with only one author being based in Europe. Our international authors for this edition are one from Tanzania, six from Australia, one from the Netherlands, four from Hong Kong and two from Thailand. There are two single authored papers, one paper with two authors, two papers with three authors and one with four authors. The paper with four authors is drawn from two institutions.

The topics in this edition are: the availability of construction skills; the management efficiency of Australian construction companies; the safety of co-workers; BIM's impact on the roles of clients, architects and contractors; a report on the successful implementation of a Guaranteed Maximum Price contract; and contractors' strategic behaviour in Thailand.

The research methodology predominating this edition is case studies with interviewing being the primary source of information.

An interesting aspect of one paper was the collaboration between a Business School and a Construction Department. There are clear advantages of bringing together the disciplines from these two domains. Traditionally construction management has grown up in civil engineering or building departments. That is construction management has remained close to its own industry and to its own technology. I believe that this has been to the great advantage of the subject of construction management giving it a clear focus. Other industrial sectors have their management needs served by a business school but as a result they tend not to have such a widespread academic support community and the profile that provides. However Construction Management does operate at the level of detailed knowledge and alliances with Business Schools can provide a strategic overview of wider business issues.

The papers in this edition are:

Kiwasi returns us to the subject of availability of construction skills  in this case it is focussed on Tanzania. The researcher's data was obtained by survey backed up by interviews and concentrated on management and supervisory skills. The most surprising statement in this paper is that '60% of employers neither enquire regarding the training background nor test the competence of skilled workers before engaging them'. If this is true the work required to raise the management skills in the Tanzanian construction industry is mind boggling and would require effort at all levels from Government through institutions, trade associations, companies, Universities and colleges. On the bright side it points to plenty of work for educational establishments involved in training. Perhaps this paper will inspire them to spearhead a training campaign.

Balatbat, Lin and Carmichael present Australian data on the management efficiency performance of construction businesses. The researchers' starting point is that construction businesses are perceived to have higher risk than other businesses and catalogue the reasons for this citing fluctuating workload as the predominate reason for investor anxiety. The research team examined publicly listed companies over the ten years 1998-2007 and computed nineteen management efficiency ratios including assets, debt, cash and safety.

The results presented indicate that construction companies perform as well and sometimes better than others. So the authors claim that the prejudice against investing in construction is misplaced.

This is an interesting paper drawing knowledge from the business school as well as the construction department.

Lingard, Cooke and Blismas examine issues of the safety of co-workers. The research was based on a safety climate survey of three organisations. The research showed that 'Co-workers' Actual Safety Response' demonstrated significant between-group variance and within-group consensus in two of the three organizations. No significant between-group variation was found for 'Co-workers' Ideal Safety Response.' Neither aspect of co-workers' safety response was consistently significantly correlated with workgroup injury rate.

The conclusion I have is that there are potentially some issues with regard to co-workers but it is not yet clear exactly what these are but they relate to assimilation of the different groups. So I'm sure that there will be a follow up to this by the research team or another interested in the same field.

Rizal addresses the changing roles of the client, architects and contractors driven by BIM ie Building Information Modelling and this has derived from a European Research Project. The research methodology is primarily case studies where the researchers investigated the changing roles. Central to the issues raised is the degree of collaboration between the various parties and the need for collaboration in order to create successful BIM.

The issues the paper addresses includes: product information sharing, organisational roles synergy, work processes coordination, environment for teamwork  and reference data consolidation. The paper finds that the implementation of BIM in hospital building projects is still limited due to commercial and legal barriers, as well as the fact that integrated collaboration has not yet been embedded in the real estate strategies of the healthcare institutions.

Gaining the benefits from collaborative work is an on-going issue and has been tackled by many researchers from many different viewpoints. This paper adds to that body of knowledge but we haven't yet reached the definitive end of investigations in how best to create collaborative working.

Daniel Chan, Lam, Albert Chan and Wong present an interesting case study of guaranteed maximum price contracts. Based on a real life case study this paper exams the operational mechanism, project performance, motives, benefits, difficulties and success factors of adopting a GMP contract. The data sources were from face to face interviews with the participants in the contract.

This was a successful project so all participants could point to success and these were underpinned by : implementation of partnering concepts;  reasonable share of cost savings;  early involvement of contractor in design development;  right selection of qualified subcontractors;  establishment of adjudication committee; and an open-book accounting arrangement.

It is good to have a success recorded and this description is capable of standing as an exemplar of good practice in achieving benefits from GMP.

But not all projects succeed and these lessons need somehow to be promoted amongst those engaging in GMP.

Hastheetham and Hadikusumo present case studies of strategic behaviour in Thai contractors. The researchers used nine case studies to gather their information and interviewed CEOs or senior executives, functional managers, senior project managers, and some of their clients regarding the development of their strategies. From this the researchers developed a theoretical framework to aid contractors align their strategies between the various competing demands including the business environment. The authors claim that strategic management is slowing gaining recognition and will develop in incremental steps.

Ronald McCaffer

www.mccaffer.com