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There is a tremendous housing shortage in the world that can only be overcome by innovative designs and enlightened production management, such as lean construction. This paper presents a method for fast and low-cost erection of apartment housing units that have architectural flexibility, manufacturing flexibility, and erection flexibility. Flexibility is one of the fundamental aspects of lean manufacturing. The paper describes an innovative design using cam and nut jointing methods for large panel erection, and presents characteristics of an appropriate structural system to correspond to the mechanical jointing and quick erection needs. Current precast plants can quickly acquire capabilities to manufacture large panels as per the stated design using cam and nut. The cam screw and cam nut scheme is conducive to quick erection, besides being capable of withstanding all structural and natural loads. Erection speeds using this method are estimated to be about ten times as fast as conventional methods, thereby facilitating lean production. This paper presents an overall lean approach to the design, manufacture, and construction of this innovative housing system. It is believed that only through innovative systems can future technology needs of the world be met.

As construction projects emerge from the traditional delivery processes to modern fast-track forms, stress has developed in the interface between the design professional's delivery process and effective construction production. This is no greater evidenced than at the specialty contractor level. The current attempts at fast-track team type projects remain largely a time-compressed form of the traditional processes with respect to the design-construct production flow. While many of these projects are comprised of a pre-selected "team" of design and construction firms, in most cases the role of the specialty contractor is limited to pricing exercises and perhaps some traditional "value engineering" suggestions during the design phases. Substantial improvements in production workflow, if any, have been generally limited to the area of cooperative construction activity sequencing and scheduling. Problems arising from this situation are illustrated and research is proposed for testing possible solutions.

This study aims at ranking the construction information being needed by the general contractors. It is based on the study of Ndekugri and McCaffer (1988) who identified the seven sources of information for the general contractors. These sources are the six management functions being planning, estimating, cashflow forecasting, valuation, cost control and accounting, and the external parties. While they suggested that mapping out of the characteristics of the flow of the construction information produces the necessary step for information integration, this paper takes a further step to rank various forms of information to disclose their relationships in terms of importance level. This extends their contribution to provide more evidence of how to integrate the information at work. Not only allowing the general contractors to systematize and manage their flow of information, but also creating the foundation for further empirical research undertaken in this area.

The maintenance of health in industrial communities presents special problems and priorities, which are exacerbated in developing countries by socio-economic realities. Lifestyle, communicable diseases, alcohol and drug abuse are issues, which extend far beyond the boundaries of society, impacting on individuals' performance in the workplace.

The aim of health promotion is to persuade people to adopt and maintain healthy life practices, thus preventing ill-health and promoting health and overall performance.

Given the aforementioned, a descriptive survey was conducted among general contractors (GCs) to determine: the extent of health promotion; the extent to which employees would benefit there from, and the perceived holistic benefits. The findings indicate that little or no health promotion is undertaken in South African construction. However, GCs perceive that health promotion would benefit employees, the benefits including improved health and project performance manifested in, inter alia, lower absenteeism, and improved productivity and quality.

Civil engineering academics are caught between a science-based university culture on one side, and on the other, the expectations of students and practicing engineers in industry who want practical knowledge for immediate application. The science-based culture primarily measures faculty by research projects and funding, Ph.D. students produced, and by papers refereed primarily by academic peers for publication and citation in scholarly journals. There are strong pressures to produce these outputs, which are duly quantified for tenure and promotion decisions but the system does not directly reward time spent gaining practical experience in full-time or part time jobs prior to academic employment, or later in summers or sabbaticals, or in solving problems through consultations.

This paper will address the balance between academia and practice, and focus on the residential building sector of the design and construction industry as one that is largely neglected by engineering programs. In particular, it will show where the design and construction of residential structures can provide opportunities to enhance engineering education and open new avenues for broad, interdisciplinary research that are different from those where engineering academics normally venture. In conclusion, it will focus on academics who successfully bridge the realm of academia and the world around them.

In groundwater construction projects, many variables affect construction schedule and cost overruns. This paper aims to examine and evaluate the relative importance of the main factors that cause delay and cost overruns in groundwater construction projects. In order to identify these factors, a questionnaire survey was conducted. Questionnaires were sent to professionals involved in groundwater construction projects in Ghana. The data was analyzed and ranked, based on the profession of the respondents and their roles in the industry (i.e. owners, contractors and consultants). The questionnaire survey consisted of 49 factors which were grouped into nine major categories, and the level of importance of the categories was measured and ranked by the relative importance weights. The percentage agreements in ranking among the three groups were measured. The results shows that: (1) the surveyed groups generally agreed that the project financing category is the main reason for groundwater construction delay and cost overruns, whereas the labor category is the least; (2) owners, consultants and contractors substantially agree on the ranking of the major categories of delay and cost overruns factors. The paper concludes that all the three groups felt that project financing, micro-economics, natural conditions and materials factor categories play a predominant role in causing delay and cost overruns to groundwater construction projects.

Though there is a general belief that the investment in information technology (IT) will improve the productivity of the construction industry, the extent to which the construction industry has used IT for strategic advantage has been limited. This study investigates the differences in the use of IT in three major participants of the construction industry in Hong Kong: engineering firms, architectural firms, and quantity surveying firms. In addition, an in-depth interview was carried out with a leading firm in each of the professions for studying the scope of use of IT in Hong Kong's construction industry. The findings reveal some interesting facts that are useful to managers of the construction industry in making decisions on investment in IT.

Despite the popularity of motivation research in the latter half of the twentieth century, little empirical evidence exists of the factors influencing the motivation of different occupational groups within the construction industry. Furthermore, no significant attempt has been made to compare the job motivation level difference of the employees working in large companies or small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This research attempts to fill these knowledge gaps by exploring the motivation of members of three occupational groups (professional engineers, skilled trade-craft workers and unskilled or semi-skilled general operatives), working for a variety of SMEs and large sized businesses. The findings reveal that professional employees are predominantly motivated by intrinsic reward, which contrasts markedly with unskilled workers who demonstrate a desire for extrinsic rewards. However, company size does not appear to affect the motivation of any of the groups studied significantly.

The factors that affect the quality of building construction projects in Gaza Strip are identified. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) was used at the preliminary stage to identify these factors and to assist in developing a questionnaire to identify and rank these factors and the associated sub-factors. 65 contracting companies and 24 consulting offices participated in responding to the questionnaire. Using factor analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis, the most important factors affecting the quality of the building construction projects were identified and modeled. Among the most significant factors identified are: characteristics of site layout, experience of site staff, consistency of design documents, the financial power of the contractor, availability of construction materials, subcontractors, political environment, and the control systems used.

The often volatile behavior of the Hong Kong housing construction activity is analysed using an annual econometric model for 1975 through 1999. Theory suggests that an increase in house prices leads to a rise in the housing stock, whereas an increase in interest rates leads to a decrease in the housing stock. However, the DiPasquale and Wheaton (1996) model does not seem to work for Hong Kong. Therefore, this study develops and uses an alternative model to show that the long-run equilibrium housing construction is constrained by total space absorption.

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the construction industry in four practices. The study uses construction statistical data and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers for the analyses. The study covers the construction industry and practices in the context of economic outlook, procurement trends, licensing, construction and housing data, etc. The analyses show the comparison of the practices in detail. It also presents the effects of macro and micro economic factors in overall construction industry performance.

In the Developing Countries (DC), it is often very difficult to gather sufficient financial resources to lead a project of construction until term. It is thus advisable to adopt a methodology of suitable planning in the construction industry. This paper is interested in the manner of programming the rare resources to achieve the goal of construction. We propose for that the Sub-Structure Chaining Diagram (SSCD), which is an approach consisting in breaking up the budget into sub-budgets, each one corresponding to a precise sub-structure. The programming of the sequences of construction will be dictated at the same time by technical constraints and the availability of resources.