Challenges to Embedding Social Value Act 2012 in the Strategic and Operational Processes of Public Sector Construction Projects

This research focuses on the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, which came into force in January of 2013. The Act appears to challenge the traditional perception of value and proposes to one that encompasses social, environmental and economic benefits to the communities these businesses operate. The Act has received some criticisms for being a soft touch as it essentially asks commissioners to ‘consider’ embedding the Act when making their procurement decisions and this flexibility has been attributed to the lack of its uptake by some Local Authorities. However anecdotal evidence suggests that some of these issues are stemming from strategic and operational processes with regards to how it is implemented in everyday practices. Therefore, this research seeks to investigate how the Social Value Act (2012) has been embedded into the strategic, operational and technical aspects of public sector construction projects. An explanatory case study approach, consisting of three case studies, specifically focusing on the Act’s applicability within a construction context, was used in this research. Facts and perceptions were collected from Local Authority policy documents and from senior managers representing four Local Authorities. Furthermore, a contractor’s perspective was also obtained from a specialist Social Value delivery consultant associated with one of the selected Local Authorities. Findings show that Local Authorities at the heart of this Act have welcomed the way in which it is not prescriptive. The flexibility of the Act was perceived to be an incentive and allows them to use the Act not just for procurement but other Local Authority functions. However, the Act is still surrounded by confusion with regard to specifications on delivery and this could be attributed to the lack of clarity on measuring Social Value outcomes

Proceedings of ARCOM Doctoral Workshop on 'Industry 4.0 and Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment': ARCOM Doctoral Workshop in association with CIB W120 - Disasters and the Built Environment

Disruptive innovations of the 4th industrial revolution are now starting to make an impact on construction. Although construction has lagged behind some of the other industries in embracing this revolution, recent years have seen a concentrated effort to drive change in construction processes and practices. The 4th industrial revolution is characterised by technologies such as digitisation, optimisation, and customisation of production, automation and adaptation; as well as processes such as human machine interaction; value-added services and businesses, and automatic data exchange and communication. In construction, the applications of Industry 4.0 include 3D printing of building components, autonomous construction vehicles, the use of drones for site and building surveying, advanced offsite manufacturing facilities etc. The application of technologies, processes associated with Industry 4.0 is seen to be already making an impact on construction, and reshaping the future of built environment. This new digital era of construction, fuelled by Industry 4.0, has significant potential to enhance disaster resilience practices in the built environment. Knowledge on resilience of the built environment including preparedness, response and recovery has advanced significantly over the recent years and we are now in an era where resilience is seen as a key constituent of the built environment. But the recurring and devastating impacts of disasters constantly challenge us to improve our practices and seek ways of achieving greater heights in our quest of achieving a resilient built environment. It is often proposed that the innovations associated with Industry 4.0 joined by IoTs and sensors can be exploited to enhance the ability of the built environment to prepare for and adapt to climate change and withstand and recover rapidly from the impacts of disasters. This integration of cyber physical systems through IoTs needs a holistic view of disaster resilience. Often, the focus is on benefits individual technologies can offer. However, the ability to integrate different aspects of disaster resilience using a range of new technologies promise to deliver wider benefits beyond and above what individual technologies can offer. For instance, an integrated digital twin allows to bring together advanced risk modelling, big data, cloud computing, internet of things, advanced off-site manufacturing, etc. together to deliver a resilient built environment. This requires careful planning and extensive research on the complexities surrounding disaster resilience related aspects and the use of related data. The ultimate objective of any new innovation, including Industry 4.0, should ideally be to benefit the society. The society that we live today is often disrupted by natural hazard induced disasters, whether it be floods, cyclones, earthquakes, landslides or tsunamis. The challenge that is in front of us is to effectively utilise new innovations driven by digital information to enhance disaster resilience in our buildings, communities, cities and regions. However, unlike earlier industrial revolutions, digital revolution is not easy to control. We must ensure that the fundamental values such as freedom, openness and pluralism are inbuilt in these new technologies. This is an uncharted territory for us. In addition to addressing complexities and challenges of using Industry 4.0 technologies, we also need to have policies and guidelines on the use of information. There should be a balance between innovation and regulation. We are confident that by bringing together researchers, practitioners and policy-makers alike from relevant disciplines we can deliver realistic benefits to transform our disaster resilience practices and policies, and make the built environment we live in more resilient

Are contractors' cost accounting practices up to the job of establishing improvement in site operations?

Construction industry clients and regulators repeatedly call for the industry to reduce the cost of construction projects. Real cost reduction requires improvement in site operations. However, much of the industry expends effort in merely buying more cheaply. If a main contractor is looking to a subcontractor to undertake improvement for the sake of the supply chain, they need to be able to assess this and motivate it by a payment process that passes on the reward. Research is described that explores whether current costing methods could account for improvements in work processes. It considers cost as information and explores how contractors derive and use it. A case study of a major main contractor and two subcontractors is described that involved semi-structured interviews and document reviews. The results show that firms recognised that the costing practices they were using had unintended negative strategic and operational consequences. The research concludes that information about cost, that would be useful in a programme that seeks to improve site operations, is hidden in layers of commercial assumptions and lost when it does not cross the boundaries between organisations. A key finding is that automation of current cost management methods in BIM will not improve construction site operations. It will only produce more convoluted details that do not reflect what people actually do

Risk Assessment and Risk Engagement in the Construction Industry Within Conflict Zones

Stakeholders throughout the construction industry deal with risks and uncertainties, which are particularly important where they lead to poor construction development. Very few studies have examined stakeholders` perception of risk in the construction industry especially in conflict zones. However, it is important to identify how risk is perceived and dealt with effectively in order to successfully implement different strategies of dealing with risks. To achieve this, an initial framework is developed from current practices, applied and then refined based on the data gathered. Data collection has been carried out in Palestine using semi structured qualitative interview. A range of risk variables were uncovered, including movement restrictions, limitations in the locations of construction and problems related to specific governmental policies. The findings also confirmed the significant influence of some existing theories: cultural, social and psychometric, and revealed others including the process of policy implementation and validation. The interviewees considered that risks relating to inappropriate implementation of policies is the main cause of poor achievement of construction development, followed by restrictions in movement and poor land management. Therefore, there is a need to provide stakeholders and policymakers with better knowledge of how risk is perceived and dealt with in order to enhance construction development in these risky locations

Understanding the polarized perspectives in BIM enabled projects

Successful implementation and use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) require consideration of people issues. Two polarised views of BIM are shown from the literature based on technology-centred or human-centred perspectives each of which acknowledges the other but subsumes this into their view. Indeed it is the way that each adopts the other that is problematic. This paper demonstrates that acknowledging these differences and working with them better addresses the management of the implementation of BIM. Empirical findings, from in-depth interviews in a multi-disciplinary engineering company, show that individuals use BIM but are confused by its role depending on their job and perspective. Given this, collaboration and development are held back by the un-expressed differences. It is argued that recognising these differences and using them in a balanced way is essential for the successful adoption of BIM

Leveraging Customer Satisfaction Using BIM: House Builders' Perspective

The UK housing industry is growing from the recent recovery of global and the UK economy. More homes are currently required to be built putting a strain on resources. Over the last fourteen years customer satisfaction has been a key performance indicator for the UK government and industry bodies to determine the quality and service that is being provided by house builders. As a result, house builders and professional bodies over these years have strived to improve the level of after sales customer satisfaction. This has led to increased customer satisfaction during the recession. However recent drive for increased productivity levels have reduced customer satisfaction levels; suggesting that the industry needs to use innovation to provide higher levels of customer satisfaction while maintaining productivity. BIM is a new way of working that enables digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of a facility. BIM intends to supply usable information throughout the lifecycle of a project. The housing industry is beginning to utilise BIM in certain aspects within the business. The implementation of BIM into customer care departments could be the innovation the industry so desperately needs to enhance customer satisfaction. This paper explores how after sale customer satisfaction is evaluated by the UK house builders and their opinion on how BIM can be used to enhance customer satisfaction

Establishing Descriptions of Building Work in UK

There is continual need to describe building work. Whether programming, estimating, issuing instructions, writing up a journal or other activity, it is difficult to conceive of project situations where such descriptions are not required. It is therefore surprising to find that there is no standard method of describing the physical effort of construction used in the UK. The descriptions in general use in the UK are derived from SMM/ NRM2 (1922-2013) and from quantity surveyors’ methods of working. Despite such descriptions being thought to inform about building work, those nine documents, spanning a century, state that labour and other items are not included, deeming that contractors must allow for them. Coupled with that situation, current tendency toward collaboration between designers and contractors at early stage of design increases the need for a means of communication between the parties which expresses financial consequences of designers’ decisions. This paper, via critical literature review and comparison of editions, exposes misunderstandings surrounding the use of SMM/NRM2, looking at why it is criticised for failing to do that which was never intended, how information which it is expected to provide may be given effectively, and how a system of dealing with that additional information can synchronise with the existing. The method of constructing such a system requires that ‘work’, and the products of that work are defined in a particular manner so that it may be observed and recorded. By document analysis and literature synthesis, the requirements for such definition are examined and suggestions given for further work in the field. It is hoped that development will pave the way for a comprehensive standard method of description of building work that takes all factors of contractors’ construction cost into consideration

Promotion of Diffusion of Innovation: A Study of BIM Adoption in Construction Industries

With well-known benefits, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is yet to diffuse widely in global construction. Diverse knowledge of BIM adoption from different perspectives has made synthesizing a challenge when devising strategies to promote BIM diffusion. Subjectivity of BIM adoption decision also restricts the generalized strategies. Addressing these problems, the study aims to develop a framework that can be used to efficiently study a context of decision to adopt BIM and inform change agents to help devising appropriate strategies for its diffusion. A Systematic Literature Review is used to develop an affordance-based review framework for BIM adoption decision. The framework is validated by mapping findings from one of the most cited BIM adoption studies to the framework

Challenges of Early Estimation of Infrastructure Projects within the UK: an Information Perspective

This research examines the challenges of early cost estimation of infrastructure projects within the UK with a focus on why cost overruns are such a persistent issue. The research was carried out by an investigation of existing literature surrounding early estimation in construction, characteristics of UK-based infrastructure projects and cost overruns within infrastructure projects. The data were collected through fourteen semi-structured interviews with estimating professionals who work predominantly on infrastructure projects across the UK. The key findings were that the early estimation process consists of an intricate system of hard and soft information exchange from the many involved parties due to the social and political nature of infrastructure projects; this provides many challenges for the estimator. This led to the idea that an estimate is actually a soft input itself and should not be taken as a hard numerical figure but something which requires human interpretation. Moreover, these challenges are heightened by the number of unknowns and uncertainties that are again part of the very nature of large scale infrastructure projects. This is difficult to address as it is the process of converting soft information into hard information and when soft information is hardened it will inevitably lose some of its information or context. Unfortunately, cost estimates have become to be accepted as hard information even when it is known to be soft information that requires interpretation and sense making

Achieving Decarbonisation Through Sustainable Smart City Technologies

The concept of Sustainable Smart City (SSC) has been promoted as an ideal model that promises to enhance the efficiency of city governance and improve sustainability by taking advantage of technological innovations. Despite the rise of SSC initiatives and research worldwide, it is difficult to establish whether SSC really delivers Decarbonisation solutions or is a techno-centric fantasy to control the effects of the environment with modern technology. The main problem of carbon emissions relates to excessive consumption behaviour, which hinges on the social lifestyle and wellbeing needs of urban citizens. In this research, we have considered Decarbonisation as a movement ingrained in the social fabric of society to address these behavioural issues. This study aims to assess the extent of SSC models' approach to Decarbonisation which stems from social behaviour problems that cause high carbon emissions. Based on selected keywords, a systematic literature review was carried out to understand the main themes within four publication databases. Upon screening, 115 papers were used for thematic analysis to evaluate the extent of social and behavioural considerations to reduce carbon emissions. The results revealed three overarching themes that mainly sought to define SSC, describe the pathway to achieve SSC, and understand the impact of SSC. Majority of the studies focussed on the conceptual definition and descriptive indicators to mark the way forward towards SSC. Only a small proportion (11%) of papers discussed about social engagement and participation to affect the necessary changes for SSC and had limited relevance to carbon reduction. The findings show a disconnection between the political ambitions of SSC models and the social demands of urban citizens that drive carbon emissions. This paper contributes new insight on the lack of focus on social behaviour in SSC models, specifically in achieving Decarbonisation solutions at a local level