ECAM Issue 19.1

Measuring Complexity for Building Projects—A Delphi Study

Bo Xia, Albert P.C. Chan

The Effect of Bidding Success in Construction Bidding

Bee Lan Oo, Hing-Po Lo, Benson Teck-Heng Lim

New Life-Cycle Costing Approach for Infrastructure Rehabilitation Mazen Farran, Tarek Zayed

Leadership - style, satisfaction and commitment: An exploration in the United Arab Emirates' construction sector

Kasim Randeree, Abdul Ghaffar Chaudhry

Capacity building of construction industries in Sub-Saharan developing countries a case for Malawi

Grant Keeble Kululanga

Human resource practices of contractors that lead to job satisfaction of professional staff

Jui Wee, Lewis Lim, Florence Yean Ying Ling

ECAM 19.1 as usual has six papers produced by thirteen authors from our international community. There are three authors from Hong Kong, two each from Australia and Canada, three from Singapore and one from Malawi and one from the UK. One paper has three institutions involved, two different Australian institutions and one in Hong Kong. One paper is joint between an academic and an industrialist. The distribution of papers by author are three papers with two authors, two paper with three authors and one paper with a single author.

The research topics in this issue include the complexity of building projects, bidding success, infrastructure rehabilitation, leadership style, capacity building and Human Resource practices. There is preponderance in the use of surveys to support the research work of many of these papers. This could make me nervous. I worry that surveys done at arm's length do not actually produce meaningful exchanges between the researchers and the practitioners that are being surveyed. Surveys need to be supported with face to face interviews and other means of contact to be confident that the data and views collected are valid. These papers have used the Delphi technique and face to face interviews to support their work. So I'm not nervous yet.

The papers in this issue are as follows.

Xia and Chan have attempted to measure complexity in building projects. Their data and information has come from three rounds of Delphi surveys. From this they have identified six key measures of complexity. Namely (1) building structure & function; (2) construction method; (3) the urgency of the project schedule; (4) project size/scale; (5) geological condition; and (6) neighbouring environment. The aim of this study is to help improve project planning and implementation. My view is that the study has not yet reached a level of detail where the practical help the authors envisage can be exercised. We will need one or two more steps to understand how each of these measures of complexity affects projects in order to improve the planning.

Oo, Lo and Lim have researched the effect of bidding success in construction. The authors identified bidding trends before and after a winning bid. The findings are that contractors are less competitive in time periods after winning a bid and that the behaviour pre- and post- a winning bid is driven by the capacity of the company. I enjoyed this paper for nostalgic reasons in my own PhD in the seventies one analysis I did was to study bidding behaviour  pre- and post- winning a winning bid. I managed to produce a saw toothed graph showing bid prices dropping until a win and then rising and, like the authors findings this was consistent across many contractors. In our much use construction company simulation MERIT (see www.MERITgame.com) we can observe the same behaviour in the bidding from the teams participating representing simulated companies. The question is what did we do with this knowledge. The answer is to try to monitor the capacity of your competitors to try to determine if they are seriously competitive and how should that influence your bid. My own view evolved away from the bidding decision to improving the accuracy of estimating on the grounds that in the equation 'bid=estimate+mark up' the much larger value was in estimating and that was where the bids were won and lost, or if won where profits or losses originated.

Farran and Zayed introduce us to what they describe as new life cycle costing for infrastructure rehabilitation. Their interest is in maintenance and rehabilitation of public infrastructure e.g. bridges, pavements, sewers etc. There approach is based on life-cycle costing which includes a deterioration mechanism and a search for the optimal rehabilitation profile. They claim that their approach has been found to be practical. I think a case study or two would help promote this approach with the practitioners. Maintenance of infrastructure is a huge subject and a task of an enormous scale and any help from the research community to tackle the issues that are presented in managing large maintenance programmes must be welcomed.

Randeree and Ghaffar have studied leadership, style, satisfaction and commitment in the construction sector of the United Arab Emirates. They explored how different leadership styles impacted on employee job satisfaction. Their data sources were a survey of a client, a consultancy firm and a contractor. They had 251 individual responses. The dominant leadership style was consultative and consensual. The leadership style influenced employee satisfaction and commitment to the employer. This finding adds to the view that the Arab culture nurtures consultative and participative tendencies.

But I always want to go further, can we use this work to develop a guidance note or manual for companies to ensure that the consensual leadership style is implemented and at all levels. Variations in leadership style within companies always seems to be a problem, if we know what is best can we ensure that it operates throughout the company.

Kululanga is interested in building capacity of the building and construction industries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper makes the case for a fundamental turnaround for construction developmental approach in developing countries and identifies levels which should be considered as instrumental for capacity building of construction industry in Sub-Saharan region a case for Malawi.

The data sources were prominent heads of section of construction in Malawi and sixty questionnaires were completed. This allowed the rankings of the variables of capacity building and provides an orientation for the industry.

Capacity building in developing countries is a big challenge for Governments, Funding Institutions and Aid Agencies. This work should be of interest ton these bodies and the author is well placed to advance the use of the research in Malawi. We wait for future papers on implementation.

Wee, Lim and Ling examines the Human Resource practices of contractors that lead to job satisfaction of professional staff. The data sources were surveys and face to face interviews. Results showed that contractors' professionals are mainly satisfied with their firms' HR practices.  The study found that these professionals have significant job satisfaction in terms of career opportunities, nature of their jobs and overall working environment, which is probably the reason that the HR practices meet with approval. It looks as if the survey has the views of a set of successful professional staff.

The data may be of interest to companies as they continue to review and update their HR practices.

The summer of 2011 saw the publication of the guidelines for the UK's seventh research assessment exercise, now called the Research Excellence Framework. There is one significant change from past practice which is worth commenting on and indeed welcoming. The three sections of the assessment are now 'Research Outputs', 'Impact' and 'Environment' with weights of 65%, 20% and 15%. The new section is 'Impact' replacing 'Esteem'. It is spelled out in detail that the impact that is being measured is the impact on the wider community that for us would be industry, government and society. It is emphasised that impact is NOT academic impact where an academic would quote citations and journal impact factors. The academic impact is addressed in the assessment of the research outputs and the 'Impact' section stands alone as the opportunity to display what impact the research of a University group has had on the wider community. The UK research assessment exercises have been slow to arrive at this clear identity that one main purpose of research is to change the practices of industry, Government and society.  This is the seventh such exercise and at last clarity on impact has been included. This is to be welcomed. As we have always held the view that the main purpose of research in a practical subject area of construction is the change the practices of construction then the opportunity to display this impact will be welcomed by our community at large. The successive research assessment exercises have influenced the management of Universities and Pro-Vice Chancellors and Vice Principals responsible for research have in most Universities implemented procedures that have ensured that staff all have published at least four papers in time for the next assessment. I think we are witnessing a point at which these practices will modify to include demonstrating the evidence of the impact of the research. In turn this will lead to changes in promotion criteria and academics will respond by concentrating on the implementation of their research work as well as the research. I see a more productive future for UK University research.

As this is the first issue of 2012 and although, as I write this, it is a sunny October day it is appropriate to wish all readers, reviewers and authors a Happy New and Productive New Year with the confidence that productivity is now being measured by impact!

Ronald McCaffer