Editor’s Note

“Contractor as Trust Initiator in Construction Partnering—Prisoner’s Dilemma Perspective”: Because of the recent recognition of significant advantages to successful construction partnering, there has been a surge of research and studies on the aforementioned process. In a study by Wong, Cheung, and Ho, motivating trust in construction partnering is described with the classic framework of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which suggests that a trust cycle can be kick-started if construction partners put cooperation before competition. The authors report a study that is designed to suggest a suitable candidate for the trust initiator. The “performance” and the “permeability” of the two partners are often found to be the two most critical trust factors.

“Concessionaire’s Financial Capability in Developing BOT-Type Infrastructure Projects”: Xueging Zhang indicates that the strong financial capability of the concessionaire is an essential prerequisite to the successful development of a BOT-type project. A common set of 35 financial criteria is identified through a systematic research approach, and their relative significances are determined on the basis of worldwide expert opinions solicited by a structured questionnaire survey. By using statistical analysis, the author makes several important conclusions that are based on the responses to the survey.

“Constructing Relationally Integrated Teams”: The need for more effective teamworking is increasingly critical in the context of complex multiparticipant construction projects. Kumaraswamy, Ling, Rahman, and Phng draw opinions on recent approaches to promoting trust and cooperation through basic teambuilding techniques, partnering, and creating alliances in construction projects. The authors then focus on analyzing the views of Singapore-based contractors as derived from a survey to elicit previously hypothesized factors facilitating and hindering teambuilding.

“Reconstructing Cultures for Relational Contracting”: Although previous research has pointed to potential performance gains through relational contracting (RC), reservations remain because of perceptions of its value and viability. Even those who wish to use RC need guidelines for introducing it, specifically, where it clashes with prevalent project cultures. Kumaraswamy, Ling, Rahman, and Phng evaluate a consolidation of the perceptions of 60 respondents to a questionnaire survey in Singapore to indicate the evident readiness of the Singaporean contracting industry to embrace collaborative working practices. The authors then make judgments about on previous hypotheses regarding the facilitation of relational contracting adoption on the basis of survey responses.

“Relational Selection for Collaborative Working Arrangements”: Rahman and Kumaraswamy collect international data from 17 countries through a questionnaire survey, after which a statistical analysis is performed. The study aims to examine the importance of a single set of different factors for selecting consultants, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, and clients for collaborative working arrangements, as well as to assess the relative importance of various factors and strategies for building collaborative working arrangements. The study confirms that trust and business ethics-related factors and strategies are more helpful for collaborative working arrangements than some other factors.

“Application of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) in Tunnel Construction”: The theory of inventive problem solving provides a unique approach for structuring the development of innovative solutions for technical problems and has the potential for substantial results in construction innovation if it is used properly. Mohamed and AbouRizk describe TRIZ and introduce its tools through applications in the field of utility tunnel construction. The authors describe how TRIZ tools can be used to generate conceptual solutions to a number of tunnel construction problems. A further assessment of the practicality of TRIZ shows that the use of TRIZ in tunnel construction applications, while advantageous in theory, requires further research and supporting tools to facilitate its day-to-day use in the construction industry.

“Determination of Most Economical Scrapers Fleet”: Scrapers’ production rates vary widely, since they depend on the equipment performance, operation’s travel time, and haul-road conditions. Determining the most economical selection of the size, model, and number of scrapers is a rather tedious process that involves repetitive calculations. Eldin and Mayfield present a spreadsheet application created to facilitate such calculations and select the most economical scraper from the list of available equipment for the job under consideration.

“Time-Cost Optimization of Construction Projects with Generalized Activity Constraints”: According to authors Chassiakos and Sakellaropoulos, existing methods for time-cost analysis have not adequately considered typical activity and project characteristics, such as generalized precedence relationships among activities, external time constraints, activity planning constraints, and bonuses or penalties for early or delayed project completion that would provide a more realistic representation of actual construction projects. The present work aims to incorporate such characteristics in the analysis and has developed two solution methods, an exact one and an approximate one. Evaluation results indicate that both methods can effectively simulate the structure of construction projects.

“Can Design Improve Construction Safety: Assessing the Impact of a Collaborative Safety-in-Design Process”: Weinstein, Gambatese, and Hecker analyze the impact of a large-scale safety-in-design initiative during the design and construction of a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the Pacific Northwest. Drawing on multiple data sources, the authors identify 26 potential design changes on the project and assess different characteristics relating to the changes. The authors further consider whether adopted design changes would have occurred in the absence of the safety-in-design initiative and whether the accepted design changes ultimately affected construction site safety.

“Diffusion of Computer Aided Design (CAD) Technology in Architectural Design Practice”: Authors Kale and Arditi study the factors that influence the spread of computer aided design technology innovation in the context of Turkish architectural design practice. The paper empirically tests the propositions of the innovation diffusion theory by using three mathematical models. Research findings point out that the mixed influence model has the highest exploratory power and show that the diffusion of CAD technology in architectural design practice is primarily driven by internal rather than external influence factors.