International Construction firms have extensively used joint ventures as a vehicle to enter new construction markets in South East Asia since the early seventies. Despite its immense popularity, the failure rate of such ventures has been quite alarming. While extensive research has been carried out in the manufacturing and service industries in determining the factors that influence the perform...

The complex, dynamic, and continually changing nature of construction work has been recognized as an important contributor to the high rates of injuries and fatalities in the industry. Cranes are a central component of many construction operations and are associated with a large fraction of construction deaths; in fact, estimates suggest that cranes are involved in up to one-third of all constr...

It has been said that the effective performance of the Project Manager (PM) is the single most critical factor affecting successful project outcomes. Little is known, however, of the nature and extent of the hindrances to PM effectiveness in the Construction Industry (CI). This paper reports on the results of a worldwide survey of PMs concerning these issues and shows that they have the potenti...

Although many occupational safety programs are targeted toward large firms, the construction industry is dominated by smaller firms. This study examines the differential effect of firm size on the risk and the reporting of over 3000 serious and minor nonfatal elevation fall injuries in Danish construction industry trades (1993 to 1999). Small firms (<20 employees) accounted for 93% of all firms...

The guidelines for White Papers for Berkeley-Stanford CE&M workshop suggest deriving research needs from the practical needs of the industry. Generally, this is a sound approach. However, I would like to propose that at this particular moment, thinking in the opposite direction is as, or even more important. My vision is that during the next decade, the formation of a theory of construction wil...

The article discusses directions of utilization of mining industry wastes from the Murmansk region in the building industry. The Murmansk region is an industrially developed area and possesses a huge potential for production of local building materials. There is proposed a number of measures to improve methodological basis for evaluation of efficiency of wastes utilization and economic stimulat...

As Hong Kong is a compact city with limited available land and high land prices, the construction of high-rise buildings is prevalent. The construction industry produces a significant amount of building waste. In 2005, about 21.5 million tonnes of construction waste were generated, of which 11% was disposed of in landfills and 89% in public filling areas. At the present rate, Hong Kong will run...

The excessive wastage of materials, improper management on site and low awareness of the need for waste reduction are common in the local construction sites in India. Today, in most European countries, it is economically feasible to recycle up to 80–90% of the total amount of construction waste and most demolition and recycling technologies are generally easy to implement and control (Lauritzen...

The construction industry has been moving towards concurrent engineering for many years. However, in practice, the degree of success achieved through the application of concurrent engineering varies considerably. Organizational factors, especially with respect to information management methods and techniques coupled with different levels of training and experience of personnel, place considerab...