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- Badenfelt, Ulrika, 1970
(författare)
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Trust and control in the early phases of target cost contracts
- 2007
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Ingår i: ARCOM 23rd Annual Conference, Belfast, 3-5 September 2007. - 9780955239007 ; 1, s. 23-32
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Target cost contracts entail the use of open book accounting, giving the client full access to project costs. Since comprehensive cost control is expensive, other less costly control mechanisms might be better for the client. Moreover, the ambiguous connection between control and trust and the negative impact of control on the collaboration climate is well known. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the variety of control mechanisms used by the client in the early phases of a target cost contract and give a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between trust and control. A case study approach is adopted, which demonstrates the control mechanisms used by the client in a construction project in order to guarantee that the contractor behaves in a trustworthy way. The case is a large laboratory project with a target cost contract, where the empirical data were gathered through interviews and non-participant observations. Based on previous experiences the client considered the contractor as reliable and believed that a rigorous control of project costs might hurt the relationship. However, the client’s opinion was that trust is fragile and must be continuously preserved. Therefore the client analyses the contractor’s response to project changes as a measure of contractor reliability. For instance, if there are any strange features in the contractor’s response, or if the contractor behaves in a suspicious way, the client might find it necessary to expand control, even if it might impact negatively on the collaboration climate.
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| 2. |
- Nyström, Johan
(författare)
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The naivety of partnering assessments
- 2006
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Ingår i: Assoc. Res. Constr. Manage., ARCOM - Procs Annu. ARCOM Conf.. - 0955239001 - 9780955239007 ; , s. 435-443
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Construction managerial literature often argues that gains are to be made by using partnering in terms of reduced cost, reduced delays and/or increased quality. Voices have been raised to approach partnering in a more critical perspective i.e. to look at both advantages and disadvantages when investigating the concept. This paper is an attempt to go in that direction. In order to assess the effects of partnering in a valid way, the evaluation needs to (i) be based on project facts and not personal perceptions, (ii) make a comparative analysis including both partnering and nonpartnering projects and (iii) control for other variables that affect cost and quality in order to extract the unique effect of partnering. The existing partnering evaluations, divided into surveys, case studies and comparative studies with many observations, does not fulfil all three conditions. Instead partnering should be evaluated by a quasiexperiment or with a regression analysis and focus on quality and cost, the variables that creates value.
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| 3. |
- Sardén, Ylva, et al.
(författare)
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Industrialisation as tool for reducing uncertainty in construction
- 2006
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Ingår i: Twenty-second annual conference 2006, September 4-6, UCE, Birmingham. - Reading : Association of Researchers in Construction Management. - 9780955239007 ; , s. 229-238
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Construction projects are complex and have become more so during the late 20th century. This complexity is due to the failure of planning mechanisms and the apparent inability of plans to represent the reality of on-site construction. The occurrence of unpredictable events disrupts site processes and site conditions sometimes approach that of chaos. One strategy to deal with chaotic site conditions is to increase industrialisation, i.e. a controlled construction process following a predicted plan. The Swedish government suggests that increased competition could be obtained by an augmented use of timber in housing construction through developed building systems for multi-storey houses, and by using the knowledge of single family house manufacturers as catalysts for increased industrialisation in housing. Timber is a relatively 'new' frame material in Swedish multi-storey housing. Hence, the knowledge, techniques and business relations needed for timber housing are lacking in many aspects. The increased competition and the absence of knowledge, techniques and business relations, together with a focus on industrialisation, gives the construction sector a great opportunity to develop general construction activities by engaging in timber frame projects. The case study results presented in this paper provide a broad view of the use of different prefabrication strategies used in the Swedish timber housing market and how these strategies decrease the uncertainty experienced by many stakeholders when choosing a 'new' material such as timber for their facilities. The aim was to examine the possibility to use industrialisation as a tool for reducing uncertainty in construction. To manage this, three Swedish, multi-storey timber projects that have adopted a high degree of industrialised production were studied. The conclusion is that the novelty, and uncertainty, of Swedish, high-rise timber housing do not lie in the material, but in the new products, new techniques and new actors. Introducing prefabricated system components with a high degree of built-in knowledge concerning design and assembly may reduce uncertainties. If these components can be industrially produced, e.g. controlled and standardised, the uncertainty can be reduced even further.
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