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

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.

Entry Location and Entry Timing (ELET) Decision Model for International Construction Firms

This paper proposes a model for entry location (EL) and entry timing (ET) decisions to guide construction firms in accessing targeted international markets.  Neglecting to properly choose the right combination of the entry location and entry timing (ELET) decisions can lead to poor performance of the firms’ international ventures.  The sampling frame was from the Malaysian construction firms that have undertaken and completed projects abroad.  Survey questionnaires sent to 115 firms registered with Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) Malaysia, operating in more than 50 countries, achieved a 39.1 per cent response rate. Based on a comprehensive statistical analysis of survey data it was found that the mutually inclusive significant factors that influenced the firms’ ELET decisions were: the firm’s ability to assess market signals and opportunities, international experience, financial capacity, competencies and capabilities (project management, specialist expertise and technology), resources (level of knowledge based on research and development), experience in similar works, financial support from the home country banks, technical complexities of projects and availability of funds for projects.  Hence, the present research builds on and extends the literature on the ELET decisions in a more integrated way. Keywords: Entry location, entry timing, resource-based view, international markets, Malaysian construction firms

Strategies for international market expansion: Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat (SWOT) attributes of Malaysian construction firms / Che Maznah Mat Isa, Hamidah Mohd Saman and Christopher Nigel Preece

The competitive and saturated construction industry has led many domestic firms to expand internationally. Therefore, in today’s global industry, the construction firms must adopt a superior and an effective strategy to endure the increasing dynamics and uncertainties in the foreign markets. In the early stage of strategic planning, one of the basic but important steps is the need for firms to identify their strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (SWOT) attributes before they expand internationally. The aim of this study is to identify the important SWOT attributes to help the firms to manage and ease the inherent complexities and difficulties within international market domain. Survey questionnaires were sent to 115 Malaysian construction firms listed under Construction Industry Development Board Malaysia 2013 record resulted in 48.7 percent response rate. The relative importance index (RII) was used to rank the SWOT attributes. The findings revealed the following highest ranking of SWOT attributes: the ability to produce good quality products/services (strength), lack of research and development (weakness), mergers (opportunity), and policies, laws and regulations of host country (threat). The correlation analysis reveals a strong positive relationship between the opportunity and the threat attributes which indicates that the abundant opportunities are also accompanied by the inherent threats in the international markets. Thus, this study illustrates the identification of the most significant SWOT attributes related to the firms’ international operations. It is hoped that the findings would offer valuable information and practical guidance to construction firms in their preparatory works to internationalize

Development of OLI+S Entry Decision Model for Construction Firms in International Markets

The paper aims to provide a holistic approach to address how construction firms make decisions covering all three domains (location, timing and mode) across country, market, firm and project factors within the Ownership, Locational and Internalisation plus Specialty (OLI+S) paradigm. Questionnaires were administered to 62 project managers based on a sampling frame provided by the Construction Industry Development Board Malaysia. The findings provide empirical and theoretical insights on how the OLI+S model addresses firms’ entry decisions to penetrate international markets. It suggests that the ownership-entry decision factors focus on firms’ internal transferable advantages. The locational-entry decision factors emphasise attractiveness of certain locations where firms decided to invest and operate. The internalisation– entry decision factors emphasise the extent to which firms were able to manipulate their internal competitive assets (firm’s resources and capabilities). Finally, the specialty-entry decision factors emphasise on firms’ competency in project management and specialist expertise to handle complex projects based on their previous project experience. An example of construction firms’ unique characteristics, namely, specialty advantages based on the original Dunning’s OLI eclectic paradigm has been adopted. The established OLI+S entry decision model could be investigated to further refine other related internationalisation theory