This article on partnering and family-resemblance makes two contributions to the debate about the definition of partnering in construction. The first is a distinction between general prerequisites, components and goals when discussing the concept. In order to understand what is specific about...

Conflicts between project participants have been identified in various construction industry reports as being one of the principal causes of poor performance on construction projects. These conflicts occur at the interface level in one respect because participants have different objectives and...

The 'traditional' managerial career model was based upon a clear division of labour. Typically, women stayed at home to raise children and manage household work while men acted as primary breadwinners. In this arrangement, relocation, long and inflexible hours of work and frequent travel were...

Reports abound of the detrimental effect of the construction skills crisis on the performance and future development of the UK construction industry. The industry's continued growth in output, coupled with its unpopularity as a career choice, has led to extreme pressure on its labour market...

Value management (VM) is widely accepted as an important tool in the management of projects. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, this paper attempts to add to the qualitative exploration of VM, by investigating the attitudes and experiences of VM facilitators within major UK cost...

Despite domination of the built environment professions (BEPs) by white men, there exists within it a small core of minority ethnic (ME) professionals who are becoming well organized and articulate within their professions. Based on a foundation of research conducted for the Construction...

Although a wide range of human and organizational factors have been found to be important in the operation of projects, those determined by cultural variables are less well defined. One such influence concerns the notion of 'project affinity', the commitment and attachment by stakeholders and...

In Ghana, the operating environment for construction firms is constantly changing in the face of a volatile economic environment, shifting political climate and a highly competitive market. Confronted with such instability, companies need strategic planning to combat the threat to their...

The assessment process of productivity and cost of bored pile construction is dictated by unseen subsurface obstacles, lack of contractor experience and site planning. These problems complicate the estimator's role in evaluating pile equipment productivity and cost. Current research discusses...

Genetic algorithms (GAs) have been introduced into site layout planning as reported in a number of studies. In these studies, the objective functions were defined so as to employ the GAs in searching for the optimal site layout. However, few studies have been carried out to investigate the...