School of Civil Engineering

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

 

 

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Construction Management 2

 
 

Construction Management Research Group

Research by staff, research fellows, associates and postgraduate students of the Construction Management Group addresses the whole range of activities in the construction project management cycle. General areas of research range from project appraisal to whole life performance of assets, from value management to customer service and from marketing and ethics to technical design support. Recently the Group has expanded its interests to include more work on construction project management, including risk management, project financing and investment appraisal. The research is used to inform and develop postgraduate teaching and leads two of the School’s MSc programmes. The group currently has 8 members of academic staff, 2 senior research fellows and 13 research students registered.

Members research interests are:

  • Professor Steve Male - Head of the Group – business strategy, value management, partnering and supply chains;
  • Professor Nigel Smith - risk management, the private finance initiative and procurement;
  • Professor Denise Bower - incentive mechanisms, relational  contracting and risk management;
  • Dr Chris Preece - business development, strategic management, international business and procurement, management of complex projects
  • Dr John Tinker - sustainability, environmental impact and appropriate technology
  • Dr Alastair Watson - computer-aided engineering, digital information underpinning, product improvement, process integration, inception to recycling. (For further details on CAE please click)
  • Mr Ross Dixon - engineering ethics, ‘project briefing' stage of project life cycle and development of the construction industry in developing countries;
  • Mr Krisen Moodley - corporate responsibility, business development, sustainable construction;

Research highlights

  • Partnering Advisor on a $150m, 48 month development in Oman, (Zubair Corporation/Balfour Beatty International) using the new Association of Consulting Architects PPC 2000 partnering contract
  • Service Quality and Client satisfaction for design and build projects
  • A framework for foreign contractors to enter the Chinese construction market
  • A major review of the use of the Private Finance Initiative to provide transportation infrastructure, in particular light rail transit schemes
  • The increased safety and efficiency of the on-site construction process using process automation and elimination of handling heavy materials
  • Contributions to the achievement of product model based interoperability for steel structures (CIMsteel) and cladding (CIMclad), now starting to address concrete structures.
  • The establishment of a large scale database to support collaborative research (LANTERN)

Multi-disciplinary work

The Group is involved in a diverse range of high profile industrial and public sector projects. Projects have ranged in size from £1m to £1bn, are often complex, within high-technology, high safety and/or high-risk environments. This has included a series of Pathfinder projects for the Defence Estates wing of the MoD,  and,  PFI projects. Specialist experience in dealing with high profile and icon projects, requiring sensitivity in the handling of studies and teams to reflect this status, for example, 1997 – 2000: the Wembley Stadium,  the Woolwich Arsenal Urban Regeneration Scheme, the LUL Connect PFI Scheme, the £600m Railtrack Thameslink 2000 rail project. More recently, involved with the joint Highways Agency /industry consortium that prepared for the Public Enquiry on the Stonehenge World Heritage Site tunnel and road project, an in-depth review of BAA’s £1.2bn quinquennial investment strategy and Project Programme structure for London Heathrow, and, the restructuring of the flagship library project at the Open University.

Major Grants and Collaborators

  • Currently negotiating as PI a 500,000 euro, eighteen month SSA EU 6th Framework contract – design for disability, jointly with the University of Malta.
  • Completed in August 2004 £120k six month research contract with the Environment Agency to develop a National Asset Management Framework. The Agency has a £23bn replacement value asset base, and a £300-400m/annum  capital programme.
  • EU 5th Framework 33 month contract entitled “SAFETI” (GRD1-2000-25343/SAFETI); £170,000 + £30,000 extension to September 2004; led by Bouygues, France, to investigate improving site safety through the use of mechanisation to remove manual handling on-site, July 2001 – September 2004.
  • EPSRC IMI Funding £260,000 (University of Leeds),  for 6 month pilot and 24 month main study. Study entitled “A Study to Develop A Good Practice Framework for Retail Client Refurbishment Programmes”, joint with Professor John Kelly, Glasgow Caledonian University. Principal Investigator. Industrial collaborators: Halifax plc, Boots plc, Nationwide, Borders (UK), Pizza Express, Rubicon, Arcadia Group plc, 1999-2002.
  • Network of Expert Users of the FIDIC Conditions of Contract / EPSRC GR/S59505/01/ Co-Principal Investigator with Professor S Green, University of Reading, and Dr I Ndekugri, University of Wolverhampton, 3 years, Value 62.5k.  Commenced April 2004.
  • PROFIT (Private Operation and Financing of Trans-European Networks) RTD European Commission Directorate General for Transport Construction Framework 4. Value to 404,000 ecu. Worked in conjunction with Principal Investigator Professor A Pearman, Leeds University Business School, in conjunction with NEI, Holland and the Technical University of Athens. Completed with EU acceptance of research deliverables April 2001. 1999-2001

Key Publications

  • Bower, D. “Management of Procurement”, London, Thomas Telford, August 2003. 260 pages.
  • Bower, D., “Incentive Mechanisms for Project Success”, ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering, Vol 18, Number 1, January 2002.
  • Bower, D. and  Merna, A., “Alliance contracting – finding the optimal contractual arrangement for a small process site”,  ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering, Vol 18, Number 1 January 2002.
  • Kelly J R., Male S.P., & Graham D., Value Management of Construction Projects. Blackwell Publishing. Oxford. 2004. 373 pages.
  • Langford D. & Male S.P. Strategic Management in Construction. Blackwell Publishing. 2001. 256 pages.
  • Male S P., Kelly J R., Gronqvist M., Damodaran L., & Olphert W., Supply Chain Management for Refurbishment: Lessons from High Street Retailing. Publication from EPSRC IMI Contract. Thomas Telford. London. November 2003. 158 pages.
  • Preece C N, Moodley K, Smith P Construction Business Development; Meeting New Challenges, Seeking Opportunity, Butterworth Heinemann, 2003.
  • Smith, N.J., and Zhang, H., “Huaibei Power Station Case Study”, International Journal of Project Management.  July 2004
  • Xu, T. J., Smith, N. J. and Bower, D., “Development Strategies for Chinese Design Institutes” ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering, Vol 20, Number 2, April 2004.
  • Jason Underwood & Alastair Watson, (2003). An XML metadata approach to seamless document exchange., Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Volume 10, Number 2, pp128-145.
  • Emeka Agbasi, Chimay Anumba, Alistair Gibb, Abdulla Kalian and Alastair Watson, (2004). Cladding sector road map for realising the CIM vision”, Industrial Management and Data Systems, Volume 104, Number 6, pp. 526-532.
  • A.Kalian, A.S.Watson, E. Agbasi, C.J. Anumba, A.G.F Gibb, (2004). Modelling the building cladding attainment processes”, Business Process Management Journal. Accepted for volume 10.

Find out more about our postgraduate research degrees