ECAM 19.3

Improving Building Services Coordination at the Pre-installation Stage
Sammy K M Wan, Mohan M. Kumaraswamy

Client learning for successful architect-client relationships
Jessica Siva, Kerry London

Factors Affecting Contractor’s Business Failure: Contractors’ Perspective
Ibrahim A K Mahamid

Trust and the Project Management Body of Knowledge
Graham John Brewer, Scott Matthew Strahorn

Is Incentivisation Significant in Ensuring a Successful Partnered Project?
Deborah Jayne Hughes, Trefor Williams, Zhaomin Ren

Using stochastic frontier regression to estimate the construction cost inefficiency of prevailing wage laws
Kevin C Duncan, Peter Philips, Mark Prus

In this edition of ECAM the topics covered are the co-ordination of building services at the pre-installation phase, architect-client relationships, factors affecting business failures, trust in project management’s published literature, incentives in partnered projects and the cost of inefficient wage laws.

This is another rich range of topics from our international authors. The paper that made me think most was the paper on trust. It brought home to me how little research and publications had been fed into the body of knowledge for project management. If ‘trust’ and the issues it raises are not well understood, not well researched, not built into the ‘knowledge’ used to train and develop project managers then it is unlikely that trusting relationships will be sought or developed. I almost felt guilty that I had contributed so little to this issue. I do hope that this paper will inspire the formation of a body of researchers to respond and to develop the issues of trust that will feed into the training of future project managers.

These six papers took thirteen authors to produce. There is one single authored paper, three papers with two authors and two papers with three authors. One of the three authored papers is jointly between two academic institutions and a company. I enjoy joint papers especially with bodies external to academia, this brings an additional perspective.

As usual the authors are international with four from Australia, three from the USA and three from the UK, two from Hong Kong and one from Saudi Arabia.

The papers in this edition are as follows.

Wan and Kumaraswamy are focussed on improving the co-ordination of building services at the pre-installation phase. They argue that many conflicts involving the building services systems begin in the pre-installation stage. They set out identify the causes of production shortcomings traceable to this stage and the degree to which these conflicts contribute to higher volumes of construction debris and waste. The data sources were structured interviews with practioners analysed by deductive reasoning. The root of the problems identified were poor co-ordination amongst the different trades and frequent design changes. These researchers attempt to reduce the identified problems is to propose a model based on an intra-inter dependent teamwork concept, a dynamic co-ordination buffer and a building services co-ordinator. However the proof of the value of these proposals would be to see them applied. I am sure the researchers will be working towards implementation and we look forward to publishing a paper reporting the success of the proposed solution in practice.

Siva and London return us to a recurrent problem of architect-client relationships as they set out to examine client learning to improve the success of the relationships. Their study relates to private single dwelling projects on which 69% of Australian architects work at some time. The data sources were eight in-depth interviews supporting five case studies. The authors were trying to establish the extent to which clients achieved learning and to describe indicators of client learning. The researchers report that in all five case studies the clients achieved learning and this enabled them to contribute with greater competence. The argument is that client learning is a sign of a successful relationship. The indicators of client learning are: learning about the nature of the design/construction process; to enjoy the new environment; and learning about the architectural milieu. The authors worry about problematic architect-client relationships marginalising the profession.

I have pondered as to what this paper is saying and I think behind the issue of architect-client relationships is the competence of both parties. Now it is a fact that many clients are unfamiliar with the design/construction process and that they will benefit from learning. The architects in this relationship are the professionals and therefore should take the responsibility for educating their clients. Perhaps this paper is calling for this teaching to be done in a more formal, structured and hopefully efficient way. I would not worry about the architects being marginalised but I would worry about the uninformed clients not being supported well enough.

Mahamid takes the contractors’ perspective in examining the factors that affect contractors’ business failures. The location of the research is the West Bank of Palestine and the researcher surveyed 84 contractors considering 44 factors structured into financial, managerial and external groupings. The big issues that emerged that lead to business failures were: material price fluctuations; payment delays from the client; lack of experience of the contractor; low margins due to high competition; and limitations of the movements between the West Bank Areas.

This paper gives an insight to the difficulties of construction in an area that most of us would have little direct experience. Some of the factors that impact on contractors are experienced globally, such as material price fluctuation and payment delays but given the other pressures that this region suffers perhaps these are heightened.

Brewer and Strahorn examine ‘trust’ in the project management body of knowledge in so far as they try to identify which dimensions of trust are reflected in the functional description of the project manager’s role. The data source is the literature in which the trust dimensions are extracted and assembled into a theoretical framework which in turn drives a thematic analysis of the project manager’s role. The authors claim that the fourth edition of PMBOK (PMI 2008) is the first to make overt reference to ‘trust’ and that it is dealt with in general terms as desirable characteristics rather than specific facilitators or actions in the conduct of a project.

The authors claim that this is the first critical analysis of the project management body of knowledge in relation to trust and I believe them. I have read enough, over many years about project management, I have even written some material so when I saw the title my re-action was this will say that trust does not feature much at all and I felt a curious guilt at this omission. I think these authors have provided a wake up call. How can the industry complain about a lack of trust when the subject is barely recognised, talked about, written about or considered? Hopefully they will spark a whole new research and publishing effort on the subject of trust and project management. We need the body of knowledge that is clearly missing.

Hughes, Williams and Ren examine incentivisation in partnered projects. They borrow their hypothesis from Egan who claimed that an incentive of about 15% was required to achieve successful infrastructure partnering projects. The researchers studied two infrastructure projects in South Wales; neither was judged a success from the perspective of both parties. What was success to one was not a success to the other party. Egan’s assertion of the need for 15% is too simplistic. This paper explores partnering and incentives and presents the complexities well. It is a useful contribution to this topic. Perhaps trust is a missing element, as the previous paper indicated, how would trust and incentives work?

Duncan, Philips and Prus invite us to consider the cost of inefficient wage laws in public school construction in British Columbia. Using stochastic frontier regression the researchers have measured the effect of introducing and expanding prevailing wage requirements. The findings are that during the introductory phase the public school projects can be demonstrated to be less cost efficient. However after the introductory phase the same projects were no more cost inefficient than other projects. This research also demonstrates the methodology of stochastic frontier regression.

Ronald McCaffer

www.mccaffer.com