Public infrastructure owners are increasingly soliciting BOT arrangements to deliver needed infrastructure facilities. Such arrangements potentially preserve a public owner's capital capacity for allocation to projects that cannot support themselves by essentially 'pulling' projects from the...

Significant factors in the decision to bid process are identified and a pro-forma to elicit a numerical assessment of these factors is developed and validated using the bid/no-bid decision-makers from a UK construction company. Using the pro-forma, data were collected from the collaborating...

This paper uses real option methodology to compare the cost of a long-term contract with a price cap to that of spot purchases in construction material procurement. In construction, material procurements are usually short-term, project-based and subject to high price volatility. These...

While British contractors have one of the longest history and experience in the international construction market, Chinese contractors are relative newcomers where the global market is concerned. This study compares the performance of top British and Chinese contractors based on the OLI+S model,...

As in other industries, firms in the construction industry need to become more client- and market-oriented. In the last decade, several initiatives have been taken to change the construction industry in that direction. The changes, however, seem to be slower than other industries and less...

Construction projects are typified by the involvement of a number of participants. Each project team member has his/own expertise, and would contribute towards the success of the project. However, since their inputs are often interdependent, conflicts may arise in some circumstances. This is...

Estimates for various parameters in a whole-life costing (WLC) exercise are obtained from different sources each with its own level and type of uncertainty. A practical procedure is developed to handle statistically significant data and expert assessments within the same whole-life costing (WLC)...

Many architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professionals would like to use real option (RO) and decision analysis (DA) to evaluate alternatives in investment in the face of uncertainty. However, they have difficulty deciding which one to use and many are not aware of the subtle...

A 'Process Cost Model (PCM)' approach has been proposed previously (Aoieong et al., 2002) for measuring the quality costs of construction projects. The PCM is proposed because the traditional models on PAF (prevention, appraisal and failure) quality costs have been found to be unsuitable for the...

Claims by contractors for additional payments have been identified by commentators as a major source of difficulty in the industry. Ethnographic research with industry members reveals some key features of planning practices that underlie such events. Claims are sometimes planned at tender stage...