A study of the management of promotion for competitive advantage in UK construction firms

This empirical research study focuses on the application of promotional management in UK construction firms. Relevant theories are reviewed and a model is developed. Promotion is seen within the context of the strategic and marketing management of the firm. The study provides an insight into the management organisation, processes and relative importance of promotional techniques for competitive differentiation through research involving construction firms and their promotional design and public relations consultants and advertising agents. The research examines the effectiveness of promotion, through surveys of client organisations and professional architectural, quantity surveying and other advisors. The combination of theoretical prediction and empirical research indicates an emphasis by construction firms on personal contacts and sales presentation across the design and management services offered, supported by other non-personal promotional techniques. Clients and their professional advisors rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from previous clients and to a much lesser extent on the promotion of construction firms. Problems of promotion identified in the research concern promotional material used as direct mail or in pre-selection presentations. These can be specified in terms of a lack of tailoring, targeting of efforts, and competitive differentiation through communication of specific benefits or the problem solving skills of the management team. Firms recognise the importance of good personal relationships with clients. However promotion is not given a sufficient priority in a highly competitive and dynamic environment

Development of Foreign Competitor Identification Index (FCII) in Malaysia

Most previous studies have dealt with foreign competitors in host country by considering how the contractors compete in international environment. The purpose of this study is to develop a foreign competitor identification index (FCII) by assessing the global orientation of international contractors in Malaysia using various characteristics. The exploratory study is based on the secondary data from Engineering News Record (ENR, 2013) and Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB, 2013) Malaysia. The sampling frame was from the ENR top 250 international contractors operating in more than 100 countries worldwide. Their involvement in international projects includes general building, manufacturing, power, water supply, sewerage/solid waste, industrial process, petroleum, transportation, hazardous waste and telecommunications. Six (6) measurements were used to develop the FCII mode which were based on number of years of experience and number of consecutive years operating in Malaysia, number of countries they are working outside Malaysia, number of projects and number of diversity of projects undertaken in Malaysia, and ranking in ENR. The data was analysed descriptively to make the comparison and establish the findings. Thirty eight (38) out of 250 top international contractors listed by the ENR have been operating in Malaysia. It was observed that that the most competitive contractor with the highest FCII score has more than 12 year of consecutive years working in Malaysia working on 99 projects, operating in more than 20 countries outside Malaysia and ranked at 17th place by the ENR (2013). The study used a sampling frame of population based on ENR. Therefore, the proposed measurements shall be further validated by the subject matter experts. The study will assist local contractors to recognize the foreign competitors in Malaysia and a competitive index model will be further developed to guide the local contractors to prepare themselves to compete with the foreign contractors in Malaysia. Neglecting to properly assess the foreign contractors’ characteristics can lead to poor performance in their local business ventures. This study intends to contribute to an improved understanding foreign contractor’s competitiveness in relation to the local contractors towards the development of the FCII model. Although there have been various models related to competitive index, there is currently no model that attempts to show the effects of foreign contractors on the local contractors

Enhancing Planning and Scheduling Program by Using Benefits of BIM-Based Applications

2D drawings are commonly being used to present the work process of 3D objects in the construction industry. The engineers require having sufficient knowledge to interpret these drawings for use in various areas of the work especially for providing planning and scheduling programs. In the construction projects, construction managers face many problems such as over budget projects, schedule errors, omission of some activities like safety tasks that originate from poor planning methods. Therefore, the study is going to examine alternative tools for better understanding of real project tasks sequences and procedures. One of the most reliable applications is introduced by the Building Information Modeling approach (BIM) that develops four-dimension model based on a combination of three dimension models with time. The benefits of BIM-based on 4D modeling not only improving the perception of planners and construction teams but also facilitate the procedure of planning and scheduling like automatically clash detection, introduce parallel activity and etc. .This study discusses the development and implementation of this innovative approach in construction planning. The research was carried out based on questionnaire survey within construction companies in Singapore. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis and been ranked with Average Index method. Keywords: Planning, scheduling, BIM-Based Application

Enhancing Planning and Scheduling Program by Using Benefits of BIM-Based Applications

2D drawings are commonly being used to present the work process of 3D objects in the construction industry. The engineers require having sufficient knowledge to interpret these drawings for use in various areas of the work especially for providing planning and scheduling programs. In the construction projects, construction managers face many problems such as over budget projects, schedule errors, omission of some activities like safety tasks that originate from poor planning methods. Therefore, the study is going to examine alternative tools for better understanding of real project tasks sequences and procedures. One of the most reliable applications is introduced by the Building Information Modeling approach (BIM) that develops four-dimension model based on a combination of three dimension models with time. The benefits of BIM-based on 4D modeling not only improving the perception of planners and construction teams but also facilitate the procedure of planning and scheduling like automatically clash detection, introduce parallel activity and etc. .This study discusses the development and implementation of this innovative approach in construction planning. The research was carried out based on questionnaire survey within construction companies in Singapore. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis and been ranked with Average Index method. Keywords: Planning, scheduling, BIM-Based Application

Evaluating the Existing Barriers in Implementing Constructability

In fact, constructability is facilitating the construction of a project through integrating knowledge and experience to achieve the overall and common objectives of the project in all stages of it, but practically there is still a significant gap between design, construction, and achieving the desired project objectives. Studies show that separating the design and construction processes and lack of presence of the contractor in the design stage, prevent the effective use of experiences and specialty of the contractor to improve and develop design processes. This issue results in increasing project time and cost, poor relationships, and also increasing project waste and duplication. The barriers to implementing this concept can have major differences with each other in different locations all over the world, due to the unity of the executive conditions in various countries. This paper evaluates the existing practical barriers to implementation of constructability in the construction industry. A comprehensive literature review has been performed by the authors through using the Meta-Synthesis method and findings were used to form research assumptions. Three case studies of Mass Housing project (MHP) in Tehran were instigated. Outputs taken from nine interviews with different experts in this industry working in diverse areas, including owners, consultants and contractors are then ranked after theoretical saturation compared using the NVIVO Software and through pattern and descriptive analyses. The concept of constructability is focused on the early presence of contractors in the initial stages of the project. So that, through integrating knowledge and experience, problems due to lack of their presence in the early stages of the project can be reduced. Comparing the existing barriers to implementing constructability in Iran with those of the wider world, presents some effective solutions to facilitate the presence of the construction contractors in the early stages of projects

Globalization and liberalization in the Malaysian construction industry

As a developing country, Malaysia has been gone through a lot of development works in the country. These activities give positive impact on the growth of the Malaysian economy. Globalization and liberalization have taken part in this growth by bringing in foreign direct investment (FDI) especially to the construction industry. As a result of the globalization and liberalization, the Malaysian government has signed free trade agreements (FTA) either the regional or bilateral free trade agreements. This paper which is undertaken via literature review aims at appraising globalization and liberalization in the Malaysian construction industry through the identification of the impacts of globalization and liberalization in construction industry by looking at the FTA signed by the Malaysian government from the perspectives of foreign contractors’ registration and project by foreign contractors. This paper shows the trend of the current foreign firm participation in the Malaysian construction industry of which the Malaysian government can promote various development programs for local contractors in giving positive competition to foreign firms in the Malaysian construction industry

Personal-organisational value conflicts and job satisfaction of internal construction stakeholders

This paper concerns the issue of value conflicts in construction organizations. This research was conducted in the Malaysian construction industry to fill the gap in the knowledge in areas of organizational behaviour in the construction industry in terms of the possible effects of conflicts on the job satisfaction of internal construction stakeholders. The conflicts considered are those rooted in differences between personal and organizational values. This research targeted professional project consultants identified as architects, engineers, and quantity surveyors as the internal construction stakeholders in Malaysia. The personal-organizational values and the level of job satisfaction of the stakeholders were assessed using a questionnaire survey. To achieve the research objective, comparative and hierarchical regression analyses were performed. The results generated by the analyses indicated a high level of value conflicts in the construction organizations which significantly and negatively affected job satisfaction of the internal stakeholders. Therefore this research, through investigating the potential effect of value conflicts on the stakeholders’ job satisfaction, reveals the importance of the interaction between personal and organizational values in construction organizations which contributes to the extant literature of organizational behaviour in construction.