Nayanthara De Silva and P.L.I. Wimalaratne

OSH management framework for workers at construction sites in Sri Lanka

Adedapo Adewunmi Oluwatayo and Dolapo Amole

Characteristics of global architectural firms

Yang Liu and Yasser Mohamed

Modelling industrial construction operations using multi-agent resource allocation

Onur Dursun and Christian Stoy

Determinants of construction duration for building projects in Germany

Chong Heap Yih and Rosil Mohamad Zin

Selection of dispute resolution methods: Factor Analysis approach

Jeroen Bemelmans, Hans Voordijk and Bart Vos

Supplier-contractor collaboration in the construction industry.  A taxonomic approach to the literature of 2000-2009 decade

ECAM 19.4 took thirteen international researchers to produce the research that allowed these six papers to be written. Five papers have two authors each and one paper has three authors. There are two authors from Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Canada , Germany and Malaysia and three from the Netherlands. This is one of our rare editions with no papers from the UK.

The topics are varied covering health and safety, the characteristics of global architectural practices, modelling construction operations, construction durations,  dispute resolution and supplier-contractor collaboration.

The research methods are equally varied and include, surveys, interviews, modelling and literature searches. Together these papers offer an interesting contribution to the both the research and practicing communities.

De Silva and Wimalaratne  seek a management framework for health and safety on construction sites in Sri Lanka. The authors conducted a survey of experts in health and safety to identify the most efficient management strategies.. Using the mechanisms identified the authors developed a health and safety management framework. In undertaking this work the unsafe and unhealthy practices were identified together with 10 management mechanisms covering issues such as supervision, work place environment and control of workers.

The authors intend to apply their management framework on Sri Lankan construction sites. We wish them well in these endeavours.

Oluwatayo and Amole present their study on the characteristics of global architectural firms. The driver for this work was to understand what discriminated local Nigerian architectural firms from global ones. The key differences were  that the global firms were larger and under the control of a sole and experienced  principal. In communications the global firms used the internet to dialogue with other professionals but much less so with their clients. The global firms placed great emphasis on developing specialist expertise.

This is interesting in that it is an attempt to understand the difference between the international companies and the local ones and through that to assist the development of local companies. This work is at an early stage and will need further development before it can be translated into policy advice for local companies.

Liu and Mohamed have modelled industrial construction operations. They have attempted to create a structured approach representing resources and their allocation to different activities by using an agent –oriented modelling framework.

The researchers used a real case study of assembly operations of industrial modules. They then experimented with different optimization algorithms.

This is an attempt to use a different modelling approach and the authors limited their investigation to their case study. Further cases of perhaps more complicated construction operations will be needed to demonstrate the worth of this approach. These authors have made a good start to exploring this modelling approach.

Dursun and Stoy have explored the determinants of construction duration in Germany. Their main aim was to identify the variables of a descriptive model that would explain construction duration.

Based on 1695 observations with 30 quantitative and 4 qualitative variables the authors used multiple linear regression to provide them with their predictive models.

Gross floor area and cost of construction were the key variables with others being statistically significant.

I enjoyed this paper having spent some of my early years engaged with multiple regression analysis. As always the skill is interpreting the models suggested by the correlations that emerge.

Heap Yih and Mohamad Zin  return us to the issue of dispute resolution and this study is about selecting the method. Using factor analysis the researchers have attempted to comment on the behaviour during dispute resolution under different methods of resolution. The data sources were interviews and questionnaires and the differing dispute resolution methods were grouped by similarity and analyzed. The preferred approach of contractors and developers was the Alternative Dispute Resolution Method. Both arbitration and litigation were also accepted.

This is an interesting exploration in the murky world of disputes and throws some light on the preferences of the parties to disputes. However it is difficult to see, at this stage, how we use this information to improve the system or even better to avoid disputes.

Benmelmans, Voordijk and Vos explore supplier-contractor collaboration. The authors were anxious to gain insights in the existing knowledge and to establish gaps in the knowledge base. The authors conducted a literature search between 2000 and 2009. The main issues they identified were partnering, contracting and procurement including selection and performance characteristics.

This is a useful overview of contractor-supplier collaboration and informative for those who wish to acquire an understanding of the issues in this practice.

Ronald McCaffer

www.mccaffer.com