The nature of the labour process in the British construction industry is different from that in Germany. The rationale of the British system is based on controlling costs through overseeing contract relations, themselves circumscribing a range of narrow, clearly defined and priced tasks. The...

The line of balance (LOB) method has long been used to model construction projects with repetitive units. Critics, however, indicate two major shortcomings of applying LOB in the construction industry: (1) it has not yet been adapted to numerical computation as readily as network methods; and...

In response to the increasing public concern over the effects of construction waste on the environment, a performance assessment system has been designed to provide an instant, online assessment of how well a construction site performs environmentally, e.g. measuring the level of pollution...

This note describes a model that measures the quality of the project service of a D/B firm using quality function deployment (QFD). This model is an add-on to a model developed previously by the authors to measure the corporate service quality performance of D/B firms. The project service...

A case study of one general contracting construction organization in Hong Kong was undertaken. The study illustrates the current state of corporate ethics management in the implementation of a corporate code of ethics. The overall process of developing the corporate code of ethics from planning...

A complete enumerative study was made of the repair and improvement work costs of the 1255 general sorting post offices throughout Japan in 2000. This paper analyses the 2000 expenditure figures from both the national enumerative survey and the survey of the five post offices being monitored for...

Over the course of the past three decades, facilities management has become the subject of an increasing number of research and development efforts. The main objective of the present research was to examine the efficiency of maintenance under alternative maintenance policies and different...

Housing associations are the main providers of social housing within the UK and a major force in area regeneration initiatives. They also have a pivotal role to play in promoting equality of opportunity since a large proportion of their clients are from black and minority ethnic (BME)...

The purpose of project organization is to create a cooperative environment. Contracts are the method by which the owner creates a project organization to employ resources to achieve their development objectives. Contracts should aim to produce a cooperative organization, aligning the...

China's housing reform has recently attracted notable academic interest due to the reform's crucial role in China's overall economic viability. Using nationally representative data, this paper examines predictors for ownership of commercial housing in urban China. This study confirms that the...