Emerging Debates In The Construction Industry

This book provides readers with an insightful understanding of the various emerging issues in the construction industry, especially in the area associated with United Nations developmental goals, 4th Industrial Revolution, Health and Safety, Sustainability, Skills and Capacity development. The need for all practitioner to understand growing issues surrounding the various evolving concepts or technologies in the construction industry remain critical to stakeholders if any meaningful gains are expected. This book explains the importance of inclusion, health and safety, skills development, collaboration, pandemics, the fourth industrial revolution, capacity building, and green finance, among others. Thus, it provides an in-depth understanding of the issues mentioned in developed and developing countries for construction professionals, researchers, educators, and other stakeholders. The book can be adopted as a research guide, framework, and reference on the emerging concepts in construction practices.

This book seeks to critically engage with emerging issues and debates within the construction industry, but from the perspective of developing economies. Themes such as the 4th industrial revolution, management of pandemics, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, collaboration, skills development, and behavioural studies are at the cutting edge of research and development in developed countries, however, they remain problematic for industries and environments which are yet to understand the emerging growth patterns of their economies. The successful integration and diffusion of these themes into developing nations' environments and cultures must be synchronized with their current developmental agenda. By acknowledging and understanding the difficulty and diversity of construction administrations that exist in different countries, this book can help construction professionals in developing countries to adopt technologies, policies and products which are proving successful in developed nations. Useful reading for researchers and practitioners in both developed and developing countries alike, this book gives an insight and understanding of emerging areas in developing countries.

Drawing on empirical work and secondary analysis from the UK and Finnish construction industries, this book contributes a deep-rooted analysis of construction industry harms that originate from corporate-industrialstate processes. The UK context arguably represents a classic ‘neoliberal’ system categorised by privatisation of services and minimal regulation, whereas Finland broadly provides a ‘social democratic’ alternative with its relatively strong national regulation and public sector oversight of industry. These concepts interlink strongly with the notion of state-corporate crime, since this perspective shifts attention away from individualistic explanations for crime and harm towards symbiosis between states and corporations. This book argues that existing explanations based on organised crime and individual ‘rogues’ are insufficient to account for the wider range and subtlety of harms that occur in construction, and therefore offers a unique perspective into organisational, industry, and state dynamics in this sector. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, organized crime, and those interested in harms in the construction industry.

Developing countries face the challenge of maintaining economic growth and socio-economic development, at the core of which sits the construction industry. Considerable research on construction in developing countries took place in the 1970's and 1980's, but little since, a gap which this book fills. Including contributions from prominent academics and practitioners in Australia, China, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, and the UK, this is a truly international analysis of a subject of global interest. The most insightful and relevant of recent research on topics such as Millennium Development Goals, the informal construction sector, human resource development, technology, finance and social change, are all addressed in the context of the construction industry in the developing world. Also considered are other key aspects of construction industry development such as institution building, nurturing of contractors and consultants and championing of industry development programmes. While the challenge has grown and the needs have become even more pressing, the research to date has rarely presented effective solutions. Focussing on those aspects of the construction industry most crucial to development, this is a much needed up-to-date study that sheds new light on a variety of concepts and issues. This is essential reading for researchers, professionals and students interested in the construction industry in developing countries. Readers of this book will be interested in its companion volume; Contemporary Issues of Construction in Developing Countries.

The construction industry is currently experiencing accelerating developments concerning societal demands along with project complexity, internationalization and digitalization. In an attempt to grasp the consequences of these demands on productivity and innovation, this edited book addresses how innovation is likely to take place with a more long-term perspective on the construction sector. While existing literature focuses on organizational discontinuity and fragmentation as the main reasons for the apparent lack of innovation in the industry, this book highlights the connectivity of construction actors, resources and activities as fundamental for understanding how innovation takes place.Through 15 empirically grounded chapters, the book shows how innovation is part of construction processes on various levels, including project, firm and industry, and that these innovation processes are characterized by organizational and technological connectivity over time. Written by European business management scholars, the chapters cover empirical cases and examples from both a multi-organizational and a multi-international perspective in terms of covering the viewpoints of different industry actors and the contexts of several different European countries including: Sweden, Norway, the UK, Italy, France, Hungary and Poland. By illustrating how connectivity is part of innovation processes in the creation of single-product innovations, of various innovations within and across projects, as well as a fundamental aspect of the processes in which innovations cross nations, the book provides a new angle on how to understand construction innovation and where the industry might (or needs to) be heading next. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in construction management, project management, engineering management, innovation studies, business and management studies.

Making Sense of Construction Improvement provides a critical evaluation of the construction improvement debate from the end of the Second World War through to the modern era. The book offers unique insights into the way the UK construction sector is continuously shaped and re-shaped in accordance with changes in the prevailing political economy. This second edition brings the book up to date by including coverage of key trends from 2010–2023. The book has been substantially revised and reworked to include new material relating to the ‘age of austerity’ and the subsequent period of political uncertainty initiated by the Brexit referendum. Changes in the political economy are positioned alongside the rise of the sustainability agenda and the advent of ‘zero carbon’. Particular attention is paid to the ongoing skills crisis and the over-hyped advocacy of modern methods of construction (MMC) as the latest supposed panacea of industry improvement. Coverage includes the Farmer (2016) report Modernise or Die and the Construction Playbook (HM Government, 2020). However, perhaps the most important addition is a focus on the Grenfell Disaster (2017) and the subsequent revelations from the public enquiry. Further intermediate milestones include Building a Safer Future (Hackitt, 2018) and the Construction Sector Deal (HM Government, 2018). The emerging consensus points towards a systemic failure involving not only the construction sector but also the entire system of regulation and compliance. Tracing the failings back over time and scrutinising the role played by previous generations of policymakers, Stuart Green ultimately argues that Grenfell was a disaster entirely foretold. The insightful and critical analysis of the industry contained within these pages is essential and timely reading for anyone who wants to understand how the construction sector arrived at where it is today, and with that knowledge, give further thought to where it might go next.

Construction innovation is an important but contested concept, both in industry practice and academic reflection and research. A fundamental reason for this is the nature of the construction industry itself: the industry and the value creation activities taking place there are multi-disciplinary, heterogeneous, distributed and often fragmented. This book takes a new approach to construction innovation, revealing different perspectives, set in a broader context. It coalesces multiple theoretical and practice-based views in order to stimulate reflection and to prepare the ground for further synthesis. By being clear, cogent and unambiguous on the most basic definitions, it can mobilise a plurality of perspectives on innovation to promote fresh thinking on how it can be studied, enabled, measured, and propagated across the industry. This book does not gloss over the real-life complexity of construction innovation. Instead, its authors look explicitly at the challenges that conceptual issues entail and by making their own position clear, they open up fresh intellectual space for reflection. Construction Innovation examines innovation from different positions and through different conceptual lenses to reveal the richness that the theoretical perspectives offer to our understanding of the way that the construction sector actors innovate at both project and organizational levels. The editors have brought together here leading scholars to deconstruct the concept of innovation and to discuss the merits of different perspectives, their commonalities and their diversity. The result is an invaluable sourcebook for those studying and leading innovation in the design, the building and the maintenance of our built environment.