There are many business opportunities for international architectural, engineering, and construction firms to work in Southeast Asia (SEA) due to its high volume of construction demand and its growing economy. Before entering the region, these industry practitioners need to decide on the appropriate market entry modes and business strategies. The objectives of this research are to investigate the effective market entry modes and business management strategies that industry practitioners can adopt for SEA projects. The research method is based on a structured questionnaire. The study found that the most effective market entry modes are: setting up wholly owned foreign subsidiaries and forming project joint ventures with local firms. The most effective business strategies are: providing a superior product or service and paying great attention to client satisfaction. It is recommended that industry practitioners place emphasis on customer satisfaction by considering all aspects of the client’s requirements and the proposed project’s usage throughout its intended life cycle, to differentiate itself from its competitors.

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) 2000 requires that students participate in a major design experience prior to graduation. A well-planned senior design capstone program will satisfy this criterion while meeting the Criterion 3 (a–k) program outcomes. Seattle University has an industrially sponsored, year-long, senior design program that has been in existence for the past 20 years. In addition to applying the knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering to solve a real-life engineering problem, students develop the soft skills such as project management, leadership, team work, written and oral communication, and professional networking which are important for a successful career. This paper describes the program within the Civil and Environmental Engineering department, lists the various tools used to assess the program outcomes, and includes assessment of the program by sponsoring agencies, alumni, and reflection by faculty.

The Manhattan Bridge is one of the first examples of an urban bridge whose design was impacted by partisan politics and a desire for a more, in the eyes of some, esthetically pleasing suspension bridge. It was the third bridge to be built across the East River and its design resulted in a battle between Leffert L. Buck, his associates R. S. Buck, and O. F. Nichols and Gustav Lindenthal, the Commissioner of Bridges in New York City, appointed after the preliminary design of the bridge had been completed. This paper is about that battle.

The construction industry faces several technical, social, financial, political, and cultural challenges. Developments such as the growing volume of activity, increasing number of active stakeholders, advancement in technology, more intense global competition, and demand for fast-track completion, have created many distinct challenges for construction professionals. Consequently, there is a need to equip the professionals with hard (technical) as well as soft (management and leadership) skills. Construction professionals invariably work in teams and often assume leadership roles as the design manager, construction manager, procurement manager, contracts manager, or project manager. They deal with various project stakeholders and often get involved in sensitive decision making and dispute resolution processes. There is a broad sentiment in the industry that today’s new graduates are not adequately trained to deal with the soft issues on complex construction projects. In particular, academic programs do not prepare professionals with an appropriate blend of hard and soft skills. In this paper, it is argued that in order to develop competent professionals who have strong leadership skills, the universities, the construction industry, professional organizations, and the government need to form a broad collaboration. A conceptual model of this potential collaborative relationship is presented, and specific roles for the universities, the industry, professional bodies, and government in the lifelong professional development of the industry’s human resources are discussed.

Industry, educational institutions, government bodies, and academic accreditation entities have all stressed the need to incorporate sound assessment techniques into educational programs. However, many of the items listed in the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology 3(a–k) criteria are not commonly addressed in engineering programs. Literature has shown that case study methodology is an effective way to bridge this gap, particularly with regard to improving higher-cognitive skills. In this paper we discuss the various approaches to assessing cognitive improvements when case study methods are implemented in classrooms, along with a literature review, and the various methods are illustrated with examples. The limitations of these methods are examined and the paper concludes by stressing the need to conduct further research to identify the optimum way to assess the effectiveness of the case study methodology in engineering classrooms.

The Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 introduced statutory based adjudication into the United Kingdom. Since then there has been a volume of case law regarding enforcement of adjudication decisions and clarifications of procedural issues. This paper looks at the fundamentals of adjudication under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act, trends in adjudication case law, and certain procedural clarifications from recent case law.

Adjudication is increasingly seen as the preferred means of resolving many construction and consumer disputes. As one party in dispute observed in a personal communication to the writer “It is a forum to finally express my woes. One can often feel helpless . . . in this situation and the process of adjudication has proved cathartic.” However, the differences between construction adjudication and consumer adjudication are not often understood or appreciated. This paper, first, explores some of those differences using, as an illustration of consumer adjudication, the Communications and Internet Services Scheme (CISAS) administered by IDRS Ltd. for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and approved by the Office of Communication which is the regulator for the U.K. telecommunications and Internet industry. Second, it looks forward to how the advantages of both may be combined to produce more effective dispute resolution with consistently high standards for resolving differences between parties, ensuring disputes are always effectively and efficiently investigated while streamlining procedures so that they are easy to use, transparent, and cost effective.

Hong Kong (under the “One Country Two Systems” Policy, Hong Kong, although an administrative region of the PRC operates a separate legal system, whose roots lie in the English common law system) has a justified reputation for being at the forefront of developments in techniques to avoid and resolve disputes in the construction industry. [This is illustrated by the adoption of the UNITRCAL Model Law by the Arbitration (Amendment) Ordinance 1996, specific powers given to Arbitral Tribunals under the Arbitration Ordinance (Cap. 341) including powers to consolidate, and the development of the dispute resolution adviser system. See the genesis, development and future use of the dispute resolution adviser system by Colin J Wall, Hong Kong Society of Construction Law dated November 17, 2004]. However, it has not, to date, seen the widespread adoption of adjudication as a means of resolving disputes. This article examines the history of the use of adjudication in Hong Kong, current trends, and offers some possible reasons for the limited adoption of adjudication.

Good ideas are often overtaken by great events. That happened to adjudication. Originally envisaged as a single concept applying across the United Kingdom, it has been overtaken by more significant constitutional change. This paper takes a look at that process. Something of a parallel could perhaps be drawn with the individual states in the United States each introducing a similar form of legislation. The possibility exists, of course, of each area adopting a different approach but the indications are that certain communality is developing in adjudication and it is, perhaps, a measure of the success of the concept of adjudication that it is being voluntarily adopted in other dependency areas such as the Isle of Man.

The sources of construction delays include engineering, construction, financial/economic, management/administrative, and force majeure. This paper presents a knowledge-based expert system dedicated to engineering-related delays. Three categories of engineering-related delays are considered in the proposed system. These are: (1) design development; (2) workshop drawings; and (3) project parties changes delays. The knowledge of the system is acquired from literature, Federation International des Ingenieurs-Conseils (FIDIC) contract forms, domain experts, as well as a questionnaire survey. Three classes of participants (consultants, contractors, and employers) have been approached to get their feedback on the cases of engineering-related delays. The design of the questionnaire and criteria for selecting participants are described. The feedback of the participants is analyzed to draw the main causes of engineering-related delays. The proposed system’s built-in rules utilize the procedure of FIDIC contract forms for both design-bid-build and design-build projects. In addition, it provides flexibility in utilizing other customized procedures. The system advises on the claim entitlement, responsibility, and compensability of claims. A case study is presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed expert system.