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Purpose This study aims to develop a decision-making tool that assesses the economic feasibility of converting commercial and industrial buildings into rented residential accommodation. This tool also enables developers to provide high-quality rented residential accommodation that contribute to the gentrification of formerly industrialised inner city or developed areas. Design/methodology/approach The overarching epistemological approach adopted used inductive reasoning and a postpositivist philosophical design to structure the research problem and devise new theories about the phenomena under investigation. From an operational perspective, a two-phase “waterfall” research approach was adopted. Phase one used extant literature to identify development factors and variables for consideration, risks posed and conversion appraisal criteria. Two case studies formed the basis of a cross comparative analysis, namely, a new build and conversion of a former industrial building into rented residential accommodation. Phase two identified development appraisal criteria, conducted a cost analysis and premised upon the findings, developed a decision support appraisal tool as a “proof of concept”. Findings The research combined key decision factors and variables that assist property developers when evaluating whether to convert commercial and industrial property into rented residential accommodation. The appraisal tool’s functionality was validated via a focus group discussion with senior property developers to ensure that assessment criteria and development weightings were appropriate. Feedback revealed that the tool was suitable for purpose and should now be adopted in practice and refined as appropriate and with usage. Research limitations/implications The appraisal tool presented could yield a far more accurate means of decision-making which, in turn, could ensure that predicted investment returns are received (thus reducing errors and lowering risk for investors). Future work is required to robustly test and validate the tool’s accuracy in practice. It is envisaged that future projects will provide a rich stream of data for such testing. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work constitutes the first attempt to conceptualise a decision support tool for rented residential property development.

This research first contextualises curriculum development in higher education institutions (HEIs) before focusing specifically on construction management programmes in order to engender wider polemic discourse and new insights into current provisions. The overarching epistemology adopts both interpretivist and pragmatist philosophical stances, couched within inductive reasoning, to critically analyse extant literature as a secondary data source, with each publication representing a unit of analysis. Thematic groupings of research activity are then clustered and interconnections between researchers and research themes are identified using bibliometrics. The findings illustrate that while curriculum development in HEIs has received increasing scrutiny and attention, there is a notable lack of connectivity among the studies conducted. This lack of a cohesive body of knowledge is exacerbated by the prevailing academic notion of ‘individualism and self’ vis-a-vis the ‘collective team’. This leads to an emergent working hypothesis, namely, that bespoke curriculum development occurs within an ‘every person for themselves’ mentality. Cumulatively, these issues reported upon serve to illustrate a fundamental absence of a clear agenda for curriculum development in construction management programmes. In turn, this finding underscores the urgent need for a more prominent collaborative and global community of practice to optimise future educational provisions.

Purpose Housing completions in the UK have fallen to 125,000 annually, while government targets have risen to 300,000. This dramatic shortfall raises concerns as to whether current traditional construction approaches remain appropriate. This study aims to compare the traditional approach with modular construction, with a view to assessing whether a shift in construction systems offers the potential to alleviate the UK's domestic housing crisis. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive interpretivist review of the available relevant literature is undertaken on construction methods within the UK; advantages and disadvantages. A bibliometric analysis is conducted to extract trends and findings relevant to the comparison at hand. The database is Web of Science; the analysis software is the VOS viewer. Findings The research illustrates that the UK housing market is in a state of crisis. A toxic combination of a rising UK population combined falling rates of housing delivery has resulted in an ever-widening housing supply gap. The construction industry’s capacity to meet this observed dearth in supply is further exacerbated by a number of chronic factors such as: falling participation in the construction sector workforce; lowering skill levels; reducing profitability; time to delivery pressures; and cost blow-outs. Originality/value While much information on the various construction methods are available, including comparative material, this study is the first to assemble the various comparative parameters regarding traditional and modular UK residential construction in one place. Thus, this study provides a definitive assessment of the relative advantages and disadvantages of these forms of construction.

Purpose This study aims to investigate the behaviour of building users and how this impacts upon building energy performance. Specifically, the work examines the behavioural traits of able-bodied users of a large higher education building who erroneously access and egress the building using doorways intended for disabled users. Design/methodology/approach An inductive methodological approach is adopted that uses grounded theory to devise new insights into building users’ access and egress habits. Structured interviews are conducted to collect primary data from 68 building users of a large educational building over a four-week period. Responses to questions posed provide the basis for a tabularisation of behavioural traits. Findings Reasons for able-bodied building users’ preferences to using disabled access are identified and discussed; these are thematically grouped under the headings of apathy, convenience, emergency, ergonomics, ignorance and phobia. Building upon these findings, the research then offers insights into the approaches that could be adopted to change the erroneous behaviours. These approaches include education of building users on the impact their behaviour has upon building performance and environmental pollution, more stringent regulation to penalise repeat offenders and changes to building entrance design using obtrusive (i.e. radio frequency identification tags) and unobstrusive control measures (i.e. a second entrance doorway or slower opening mechanism). Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to investigate the rationale for able-bodied building users erroneously using disabled persons’ access and egress doorways within a building, which as a consequence, inadvertently reduces the building’s environmental performance.

Purpose The utilisation of emerging technologies for the inspection of bridges has remarkably increased. In particular, non-destructive testing (NDT) technologies are deemed a potential alternative for costly, labour-intensive, subjective and unsafe conventional bridge inspection regimes. This paper aims to develop a framework to overcome conventional inspection regimes' limitations by deploying multiple NDT technologies to carry out digital visual inspections of masonry railway bridges. Design/methodology/approach This research adopts an exploratory case study approach, and the empirical data is collected through exploratory workshops, interviews and document reviews. The framework is implemented and refined in five masonry bridges as part of the UK railway infrastructure. Four NDT technologies, namely, terrestrial laser scanner, infrared thermography, 360-degree imaging and unmanned aerial vehicles, are used in this study. Findings A digitally enhanced visual inspection framework is developed by using complementary optical methods. Compared to the conventional inspection regimes, the new approach requires fewer subjective interpretations due to the additional qualitative and quantitative analysis. Also, it is safer and needs fewer operators on site, as the actual inspection can be carried out remotely. Originality/value This research is a step towards digitalising the inspection of bridges, and it is of particular interest to transport agencies and bridge inspectors and can potentially result in revolutionising the bridge inspection regimes and guidelines.

This research explores the failure of competitively tendered projects in the UK construction industry to procure the most suited contractor(s) to conduct the works. Such work may have equal relevance for other developed nations globally. This research seeks to teach clients and their representatives that “lowest price” does not mean “best value”, by presenting a case study of a successfully negotiated tender undertaken by a small-to-medium enterprise (SME) contractor; SME studies are relatively scant in academic literature. By applying the “lessons learnt” principle, this study seeks to improve future practice through the development of a novel alternative procurement option (i.e., negotiation). A mixed philosophical stance combining interpretivism and pragmatism was used—interpretivism to critically review literature in order to form the basis of inductive research to discuss negotiation as a viable procurement route, and pragmatism to analyse perceptions of tendering and procurement. The methods used follow a three-stage waterfall process including: (1) literature review and pilot study; (2) quantitative analysis of case study data; and (3) qualitative data collection via a focus group. Our research underscores the need to advise clients and their representatives of the importance of understanding the scope of works allowed within a tender submission before discounting it based solely on price. In addition, we highlight the failings of competitive tendering, which results in increased costs and project duration once the works commence on site. These findings provide new contemporary insight into procurement and tendering in the construction industry, with emphasis on SME contractors, existing relationships, and open-book negotiation. This research illustrates the adverse effects of early cost estimates produced without first securing a true understanding of project buildability and programming. Our work concludes with a novel insight into an alternative procurement option that involves early SME contractor involvement in an open-book environment, without the need for a third-party cost control.

Today’s work environment, regardless of career, is experiencing an unprecedented number of generations working together. Specific to the construction management industry, in order to effectively manage a team in such a generationally diverse workforce, a construction manager needs to increase their awareness and empathy of the varying modes of communication. Working in teams, 29 undergraduate construction management students completed a quantity take-off estimating project where a series of communication constraints were implemented (simulation) within each team that mirrored the ‘preferred available mode of communication’ of different workplace generations. Likert scale questionnaires were administered throughout the course to collect data to determine if a student’s awareness and empathy of generational communication changed through the simulation experience. The results from the simulation indicate promotion in workplace generational communication awareness and the role of empathy within the construction industry. However, these promotions do not appear to have a statistically significant correlation with each simulation. Furthermore, while students generally favour their own generational ‘preferred available mode of communication,’ they overwhelmingly rate face-to-face communication as the most effective communication style in the construction management industry.

The construction industry is highly fragmented and is known for its adversarial culture, culminating in poor quality projects not completed on time or within budget. The aim of this study is thus to guide the design of quantity surveying (QS) programme curricula in order to help students develop the requisite knowledge and skills to work more collaboratively in their multidisciplinary future workplaces. A qualitative approach was considered appropriate as the authors were concerned with gathering an initial understanding of what students think of multidisciplinary learning. The data collection method used was a questionnaire developed by the Behaviours4Collaboration (B4C) team. Knowledge gaps were still found across all the key areas in which a future QS practitioner needs to be collaborative (either as a Project Contributor or as a Project Leader), despite the need for change instigated by the multidisciplinary revolution in building information modelling (BIM) education. The study concludes that universities will need to be selective in teaching, and innovative in reorienting, QS education so that a collaborative BIM education can be effected in stages, increasing in complexity as the students’ technical knowledge grows. This will help students to build the competencies needed to make them future leaders. It will also support programme currency and delivery.

In recent years, the construction industry has experienced the introduction of emerging technologies developed to improve project outcomes and labor productivity, including BIM. Construction companies feel the pressure to adopt these technologies and the importance that all project stakeholders have an understanding of the technologies and their impact on industry change. In many ways, BIM is the connection between these technologies and provides a single source of information for sharing within the project team and across the facility life cycle. As the digital transformation proliferates all aspects of the BE, higher education is challenged to prepare design, engineering, and construction students who are ready to enter the workforce. The challenge is complex as educators strive to meet the criteria set forth by their institution, policy decisions/regulation, accreditation standards, and industry expectations. While workforce requirements typically respond to the national economy, digital transformation in the construction industry is global.

This chapter explores how we create and support a digitally enabled, agile, competent, and ultimately, productive workforce and determines the key research questions that need to be addressed if Digital Built Britain (DBB) is to provide return on investment and succeed as the catalyst for evolving the manner in which we conceive, plan, design, construct, operate, and interact with the built environment. The proposed vision is a digital competency management ecosystem where interdependent stakeholders are incentivised to work together in coopetition to create, capture, infer, interpret, specify, integrate, accredit, apply, use, monitor, and evolve competence as a working (data) asset. This needs to be in a consistent, objective, explicit, and scalable manner, with end2end transparency and traceability for all stakeholders that overcome the challenges of competency management. Moreover, a core element must be an ecosystem organised around digital infrastructure of competency frameworks and other knowledge sources of competence, so that competency frameworks are in digital operation and dynamic context.

This paper proposes a novel interconnected financial management system based on Hyperledger fabric and chaincode solutions to address endemic problems with financial management practices adopted within construction projects. Increasingly complex construction projects have necessitated a corresponding evolvement of financial management tools and systems to augment security and control. A decentralised financial management system is introduced to deal with all financial tasks across various construction stages using blockchain technology. Under different delivery approaches and payment methods, the proposed system enables parties to record/invoke their transactions safely and automatically, with no third party involvement. Moreover, the proposed approach allows non-owner parties to control remaining financial rights during the Defects Liability Period (DLP) automatically through a pre-agreed endorsement policy. The proposed system is tested on a real-life case project, where results corroborate its ability and workability in providing a secure and scalable platform for all project parties.

Education of the built environment is moving towards more collaborative practices. The intent behind the collaborative approach of teaching is to encourage students to explore the unknowns and unravel the problems themselves with the professor acting as the facilitator. This chapter presents the case for collaborative pedagogical approaches that was adopted to teach students from two geographically distant universities. The occasion used was preparation of student teams for Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) student competitions. The underlying philosophy behind this initiative is to provide the context for the future leaders in the AEC to learn by doing in a safer and potentially rewarding environment.

A 30-month project is presented that is enabled through a knowledge transfer partnership government-funded initiative between the University of Salford and Links FF&E – a design, manufacture, and fit-out SME in the UK. The project is aiming to implement BIM as a catalyst for a lean transformation to streamline processes and operations through the adoption of a case study methodology on a design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) BIM implementation at Links FF&E. The findings highlight that the challenges for SMEs adopting disruptive technology could be mitigated with a business case that considers the changes on organizational processes and workflows by embedding technologies within the company with the focus on eliminating waste in the processes and adding value.

The client brief not being met by the final construction project could be due to a lack of clarity and collaboration causing substantial difficulties. As the final end-product on a construction project is most heavily influenced by decisions made in the earliest stages, there lies an important necessity on clients clarifying their requirements collaboratively with the project team from the start. The impact of collaborative work from the genesis of a project is stressed especially with the implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) on projects, particularly with the UK government mandate to adopt BIM level 2 by 2016 on all of its projects. The crux of enabling the realisation of BIM Level 2 lies in the clients and project team understanding how the Asset Information Model (AIM), 1 of the 8 Pillars of Level 2 BIM, is informed by the client requirements formed collaboratively with the team. This paper sets out the investigation of the collaborative development of information requirements for the AIM by the client and project team. This investigation is informed by the findings of a pilot study, involving 10 design firms, where qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted to determine designers' perceptions, attitudes and experiences of BIM implementation, especially at the early stages of the design process. This paper reports the results of the pilot study outlining challenges faced by designers in key thematic areas. Team-oriented challenges highlighted collaboration and clarity of client requirements as key problematic areas.

Building information modelling (BIM) has been proposed as an enabler for greater efficiency and effectiveness within the UK construction industry, providing digital management of construction data throughout the project life cycle. The potential benefits of BIM have been widely discussed in published literature but relatively less attention has been paid to the discipline/profession-specific challenges of wider industry adoption. Further studies, such as the authors' ongoing research, could help to remedy this.

The current practice of Tolerance Management (TM) is still very ad hoc and reactive, despite increasing calls for waste reduction and an improved quality of buildings particularly within industrialised construction. This paper aims to identify the root causes of tolerance problems, the reasons why current methods have not been as successful as expected and why the industry still struggles with this issue. Having reviewed and interpreted the existing literature, it is apparent that tolerance problems fall into two categories defined by intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Furthermore, the drawbacks of the existing methods for TM were analysed, and the findings show that none of the existing methods have been considered in a continuous and holistic process and they remain scattered.