Changing collaborative practices through cultural interventions

After a parliamentary enquiry into construction industry malpractice, changes occurred in collaborative practices between clients and contractors in megaprojects within the Dutch construction sector. The enquiry meant that both clients and contractors were forced to acknowledge illegal practices of collusion and fraud. For those engaged in public–private relationships, a process followed of attempting to change collaborative practices. Three interventions in collaborative practices are recounted: (1) organizing personal networks between clients and contractors; (2) a competitive dialogue procedure; and (3) the right of withdrawal. These three interventions helped to change ‘first order’ practice, such as increasing mutual trust between client and contractor, supporting a mutual understanding of role positioning and dilemmas, and creating an understanding of the nature of the conflict but failed to change ‘second order’ practices. Two contributions to the understanding of project management are provided. New empirical data are presented on the challenges that public and private partners face in their attempt to implement new collaborative practices. It is shown how power is entangled in the emerging of new collaborative practices. The findings are based on a longitudinal ethnographic study of public–private collaboration in the Dutch construction industry in the period 2006–11.     

Towards an agent-based construction supply network modelling and simulation platform

The construction industry is being asked by more progressive clients to change its crude ways of working and to adopt more efficient business processes to improve its performance by adopting supply chain management (SCM) practices that have evolved in more advanced industries. This represents a major risk for many companies given the “one off” and complex nature of construction projects. The long-term aim of the work presented in this paper is to develop a modelling and simulation platform, which will provide an inexpensive and risk-free environment for organisations to experiment with emerging SCM practices prior to implementation. The wider adoption of such best practices has the potential to save the industry large sums of money. The case for the use of a multiagent systems framework for developing the platform is presented. A prototype system developed to explore the potential for the use of such an approach to model and simulate collaborative project supply network preplanning is presented. Future research work required to achieve the long-term aim is then presented.     

Re-engineering construction: a new management research agenda

Construction management as an academic discipline appears to be developing in an evolutionary way based on developments in practice which appear to be largely unaffected by mainstream management theories. There appears to be little two-way flow in construction management thought between theory and practice. There is an increasing range of customer-oriented theories emerging within the management discipline which is finding increasing acceptance and application within other management domains both from a theoretical and practical standpoint. Their application within construction appears to be delayed. This short note argues generally for a wider adoption of innovative, emerging management theories to construction. It specifically attempts to do this through an assessment and analysis of the implications of emerging principles of business process analysis based on information technology. Such an analysis results in an argument being made for the re-engineering of construction processes. Business process re-engineering has been portrayed as a revolutionary set of principles that can be used to achieve large-scale productivity and efficiency improvements. Analysing the place of some of its core principles within the way construction management research is evolving shows there to be many similarities. The contribution of the note is in the suggestion of a new research agenda for construction management and a clarification of the place and significance to construction processes caused by the way that information technology and construction management interact.     

Making sense of supply chain management: a comparative study of aerospace and construction

Current recipes for learning across business sectors too often fail to recognize the embedded and contextual nature of management practice. The existing literature gives little emphasis to the symbiotic relationship between supply chain management and the broader dynamics of context. The aerospace and construction sectors are selected for comparison on the basis that they are so different. The UK aerospace sector has undergone extensive consolidation as a result of the imperatives of global competitive pressures. In contrast, the construction industry has experienced decades of fragmentation and remains highly localized. An increasing proportion of output in the aerospace sector occurs within a small number of large, globally orientated firms. In contrast, construction output is dominated by a plethora of small firms with high levels of subcontracting and a widespread reliance on self‐employment. These differences have fundamental implications for the way that supply chain management is understood and implemented in the two sectors. Semi‐structured interviews with practitioners from both sectors support the contention that supply chain management is more established in aerospace than construction. The introduction of prime contracting and the increasing use of framework agreements within the construction sector potentially provide a much more supportive climate for supply chain management than has traditionally prevailed. However, progress depends upon an improved continuity of workload under such arrangements.     

建筑工程三维协同设计流程形式研究

BIM(Building Information Modeling)即建筑信息模型[1]。业界对于BIM在管理、技术和应用方面的探索方兴未艾,BIM的本质是实现建筑行业各个专业之间的信息充分互用,提高建筑信息的复用率,从而达到降低建筑成本, 提高生产效率的目的。我们结合实际工程,对BIM的概念及实施做了初步的研究和实践,并从设计院的工作内容和角度,对三维协同设计的工作流程进行了初步探索,对在三维设计模式下,各专业间及专业内的协同工作方法作了总结。     

A critical argument in favor of theoretical pluralism: Project failure and the many and varied limitations of project management

In project management, failure is often assumed to be evidence of deficient management: a problem that can be overcome by better management. Drawing on qualitative research within UK construction projects we examine how four different theoretical approaches (positivism, structural Marxism, interpretivism and actor–network theory) all challenge this managerial assumption. Each theoretical perspective enables a specific analysis of empirical data that critiques the notion that project failures are easily, simply, or largely, associated with the failure of project management. In so doing, our pluralist analysis reveals the social and political contextualization of performance in project management. We thus conclude by proposing that practitioner and scholarly concerns with project failure (and success), can actively contribute to attempts to reflect upon various matters of political concern as developed within the Making Projects Critical community, and by extension Critical Management Studies. Thus, we propose greater interaction between critical and mainstream project research communities.     

A ‘Strategy-as-Practice’ exploration of lean construction strategizing

A growing body of work emerging from the management and organizational studies literature is the ‘Strategy-as-Practice’ (SaP) perspective, which focuses on the ways in which strategy is actually enacted within organizational settings. This perspective is used to examine the diffusion of lean construction. In recent years lean construction has grown in prominence to become one of the primary performative improvement recipes for the construction sector. However, rather than providing a stable strategy around which more collaborative, intelligent and efficient project-based organizations develop, this research reveals how the lean concept transforms during its journey with unintended organizational consequences. An ethnographic case study, informed by SaP, demonstrates how a lean strategy and its effects on organizational practice and culture cannot be understood separately from material and embodied practices and power effects. As well as contributing to the examination of lean construction practice, the findings show how strategy is enacted within construction organizations and the ensuing effects of social power. A new trajectory is opened for research into strategizing within construction organizations, which provides ways to explore actual practices and spaces where strategizing occurs.     

高校土木工程学院新设立工程管理专业建设探索

分析了近3年工程管理专业的就业情况,针对土木工程学院工程管理专业的特点,提出了以就业为导向的指导思想,从专业方向设置、培养模式、课程设置、实践环节设置等方面探索专业建设模式,并对专业的长远发展提出了建议。     

Limits and potentials to deliberative engagement in highly regulated planning systems: Norm development within fixed rules

Planning practice requires ongoing interaction between regulatory “facts” and deliberative “norms”. Played out in local and strategic developments, “norms” are the agreed values and positions developed by advancing deliberative engagement of residents; while “facts” are the more rigid statutory procedures through which planning decisions are typically made. However, conflict arises between residents' groups and local government decision-makers when deliberative norms, now a key tenet of strategic planning processes, struggle to gain traction in the factual spaces provided by statutory planning regulations. A contentious planning process in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia (concerning the redevelopment of a car park into a commercial and public space) highlights the challenges to deliberative engagement in highly-regulatory planning systems. Drawing on this contested case, this paper examines how the broader formal and relatively fixed framework of regulatory-based decision-making fails to support participatory principles, undermining both the desired communicative ethos and enduring collaborative outcomes and norm development. Specifically, the paper problematises tensions between residents' growing expectations for greater transparency and participation in planning, arising from a growing regard for deliberation in strategic planning, and the hegemonic nature of statutory planning that preserves planning control within the formal domain of government and the private sector.     

基于Cloud-BIM的建设工程协同设计研究

为了推动协同设计理念在建设工程设计中的有效实施、提高各设计专业之间的协同效率,将云计算技术(Cloud Computing)与建筑信息模型(BIM)集成应用于建筑工程协同设计,构建了一个基于Could—BIM的协同设计平台,设计了其主要功能模块,包括BIM建模、任务划分与设计协同、设计者权限管理、冲突检测与消解、知识管理、基于BIM模型的扩展功能分析等六大模块,提出了该协同设计平台的实施方案,并通过一个实际工程案例分析了该协同设计平台的实施过程。研究结果表明,云计算技术和BIM有潜力支撑建设工程项目的协同设计。     

Collaborative practices of knowledge work in IT projects

While projects in the Information Technology (IT) domain have been studied extensively, not much is known about the practices of knowledge work that is needed for IT projects to be brought together and enacted as temporary organisational structures. Building on the knowledge-as-practice perspective, we set out to explore collaborative work, which occurs through dialogic practices across knowledge domains in IT projects. Drawing upon multiple case study research in the IT industry, we run a qualitative analysis based on semi-structured interviews with the management level staff of six IT organisations. Based on the insights on IT projects in the six case organisations that varied in size and the degree of knowledge structure we develop a practice-based understanding of the collaborative practices of knowledge work. We identify three main practices of knowledge work in IT projects: a) expressing differences, b) co-creation, and c) mutual alignment, directing domain expert knowledge work at the collective level and towards shared project objectives. The practices emerged in the form of collaboration and as a function of cross-domain multi-disciplinary teams’ alignment in IT projects. We offer novel insights into the essential role of the dialogue in collaborative knowledge work practices in IT projects, and their respective parent organisations.     

A comparative study on adopting human resource practices for safety management on construction projects in the United States and Singapore

Good project management outcomes include completing projects to an acceptable level of quality, within budget and on time. As construction accidents may cause project delays, safety management plays an important role in a project's timely completion. This study aims to undertake a comparative study of HR practices adopted for safety management on construction projects in the United States (US) and Singapore and to investigate the relationship between HR practices and construction safety management outcomes (severity and frequency of accidents). The research method included exploratory interviews and industry surveys of contractors in the US and Singapore by email and post. Data were collected using structured questionnaires. Compared to Singapore contractors, the results show that US contractors' project management practices place significantly more emphasis on highlighting organizational safety values to new workers and taking working experience into account during the selection process. On the other hand, Singapore contractors place more emphasis on providing appropriate rest areas for workers. Many HR practices are significantly correlated with safety management outcomes. These include: taking age into consideration during selection process and giving feedback to workers about their unsafe behaviour. It is recommended that project managers adopt relevant HR practices that lead to more effective safety management on construction projects.     

Managing collaborative space in multi-partner projects

Collaboration across company borders in multi-partner construction projects has proven to be challenging. An increasing number of projects aim to strengthen such collaboration by collocating project members from different companies in the same physical space. Yet we know little about the management practices required for taking advantage of such a collaborative space. To begin to remedy this shortcoming, we present an in-depth case study of a hospital construction project that applied a collaborative space and focus on the management practices influencing this space. With the help of affordance theory, we identified two types of management practices and show how they transform across project phases. These management practices included designing the physical elements of the collaborative space, and creating shared collaboration practices for the space. We contribute to the construction management literature by taking the first step in conceptualizing the connections between space, management and collaboration practices in the context of multi-partner projects. We suggest managers to consider carefully what kind of collaboration practices the space is expected to enhance and plan the physical and social space to support it.     

谈投标施工组织设计编制

结合工作实践,对投标施工组织设计的编制进行了阐述,总结了施工组织设计的主要内容及编制要求,并对标前现场踏勘、招标文件的响应性、防止废标、经营人员素质等作了说明,对指导实际工作具有重要意义。     

基于车行体验的公路沿线景观建构研究--以同三高速公路射阳连接段的景观控制性规划为例

"公路沿线景观的建构"作为目前一项正日益受到普遍关注的课题,拥有着以快速车行体验为媒介的大地尺度与动态特征.首先从指导原则、工作程序、关键环节等方面入手,探讨了沿线景观控制性规划的基本思路;随后又结合工程实践,展示了该方法在实际运用中的具体方式及其成果构成.     

Designing for construction workers’ occupational health and safety: a case study of socio-material complexity

Drawing upon an empirical analysis of the design and construction of a food processing facility, a theoretical understanding of the impact of design decision-making on the occupational health and safety (OHS) of construction workers is developed. It is argued that current policy and legislative approaches to Construction Hazard Prevention through Design (CHPtD) are inherently limited because they do not adequately reflect the socio-material complexity of decision-making in construction design. Specifically, the simplistic attribution of responsibility to a single socio-technical actor, ‘the designer’, does not reflect the multiple and disparate influences that impact upon OHS outcomes. Nor do existing CHPtD policy frameworks, management processes and tools recognize the manner in which the interactions and associations between relevant project stakeholders and various non-human artefacts shape (and are also influenced by) the evolution of design decisions. Drawing on actor-network theory (ANT) and using embedded units within a case study approach, the interactions between human actors and non-human artefacts are explored in relation to the design of four components of the food processing facility. The way in which design decisions unfolded and shaped OHS experiences during the construction stage of the project is revealed. The research highlights limitations inherent in current approaches to the management of CHPtD and the need to develop a more robust theoretically based approach to integrating OHS considerations into construction design practice.     

室内空间低碳化设计原则

借鉴绿色建筑设计中节地、节能、节水、节材、环保原则以及碳汇的概念,以办公建筑内部空间为对象,从室内设计专业的角度出发,提出了内部空间的低碳设计原则,以期发挥对室内设计实践的指导作用.     

On the nexus of changing public facilities management practices: purposive and co-creative actions across multiple levels

Building on a practice-oriented approach and the theoretical construct of institutional work, the organizational nexus of changing practices for public facilities management is conceptualized in a multi-level framework. To support the conceptual framework, changing management practices are illustrated with the help of real-life experiences gained in a case study of a strategy project in a Swedish public construction client organization with the goal of developing a strategic facilities plan. These real-life examples, captured through interviews and field observations, cohere with the research method of narrative inquiry. The framework envisions projective agencies of various actors, both human and non-human (objects), in change processes. Findings show how key actors, through collaborative co-creation processes, take different complementary roles when promoting new practices into a specific organizational setting. By jointly promoting a set of preferred arrangements they establish proto-institutions. In addition, various objects were attributed rhetorical agency to support new public FM practices in that these served as purposeful non-human actors, triggering and legitimizing actions taken. With focus on emerging institutions in the making and especially projective agencies for institutional change, this research contributes to furthered layered understandings on institutional work related to change in construction in general and specifically in public sustainable facilities management.     

公路工程施工机械的管理及维修

结合工作实践,就公路工程施工机械设备的档案管理作了论述,并从机械维修工作的特点及原则入手进行了说明,以期提高工作效率,降低维修费用,获得最大的经济效益。     

全省干线公路养护路面改造工程建设管理经验

结合工作实践,从路面改造工程的项目法人制管理、路面横向裂缝的防治、纵向裂缝的防治、横坡不达标的防治、推移的防治、片石混凝土矮挡墙质量通病和基层施工质量问题等多个方面,总结了对加强路面改造工程建设管理的经验,对指导公路养护管理具有重要意义。