This paper presents preliminary findings of a study to examine the relationship between site productivity, construction costs and the 'buildable score' of a buildable design appraisal system recently developed by the Singapore Construction Industry Development Board. The buildable score for a...

Construction costs in Nigeria are often high and unpredictable. The pattern of variability is not explained by inflationary indices of common goods and services, but rather it is reactive to boom-and-burst shocks that are triggered by oil price regimes. Pearson's correlation analysis is deployed...

This paper reports the outcome of an investigation into the construction costs in 11 motorway projects. The projects formed one length of road and were of identical specification; five of the projects were undertaken by a traditional design, tender, construct method, and five were undertaken by...

Unbalanced bidding is a serious problem for the construction owner because it may increase the cost of construction The most common way to mathematically unbalance a bid is frontloading where a bidder overstates the unit price of line items scheduled to be performed early in the project and...

As an economy approaches maturity, the relative importance of the construction sector would gradually decline. Without effective policies and strategies, the construction industry will suffer irreversably and this may trigger a knock-on effect to the overall economy. The experiences of selected...

The human resource management literature has covered the issues relating to labour market flexibility (LMF), and highlighted a trend in many sectors towards increasing reliance on peripheral workers. Construction has been cited as a model in terms of its ability to exploit the benefits of LMF in...

Women and ethnic minorities remain seriously underrepresented in skilled construction occupations despite European Union policy to overcome labour market segregation and despite their increasing participation in the economy-wide labour market. The paper seeks to account for differences in female...

It is difficult to request that all professionals implementing a construction project have intrinsic responsibility for the whole project from planning to construction and maintenance due to the dynamic environment and the intracompany transitions. In an attempt to understand the phenomenon of...

Surveys of the top 400 US contractors were conducted in 1979, 1983 and 1993 to identify the areas with potential for productivity improvement in the construction industry. The trends in the findings of these surveys are observed and interpreted. The results indicate that cost control,...

The role of construction in economic development is an important issue facing the construction research community, government and international development agencies. Based on empirical analyses, the complexities of the relationship between construction activity and stage of economic development...