| 1. |
- Aldenlöv, Jens
(author)
-
Exploring Public Procurement of Swedish Railway Infrastructure Maintenance
- 2019
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In 2002, Sweden started to outsource its railway infrastructure maintenance. Through gradual exposure (i.e. outsourcing one contract area at a time), the Swedish Transport Administration has developed its competence of being a client towards its contractors. The last contract was outsourced in 2014. In the last decade, the development of governance techniques and maintenance cost has not matched the increase in traffic. Due to an increased awareness in environmentally friendlier transportation, traffic is only expected to increase further in the coming years. Governance techniques and maintenance cost ultimately depends on the client-contractor relationship through public procurement. Hence, there is a need to understand public procurement of railway infrastructure maintenance. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge of public procurement of railway infrastructure maintenance. Three separate studies were conducted. Study 1 was a literature review to explore and determine the state-of-the-art for the field of public procurement of railway maintenance. Study 2 was a linear regression analysis to examine the relationship between contract design and the output of maintenance in Sweden. Study 3 was an interview study in Sweden that explored what factors that supports or hinders collaboration in railway maintenance.The main results of these studies are that asset knowledge is important for both the client and the contractor. Through reliable asset knowledge, incentives and contracts can be designed to support governance and collaboration. Today, railway infrastructure maintenance is dominated by informal relationships that lack the support of formal partnering activities. When an informal relationship is supported by a formal structure it provides a basis for innovation. This formal structure should be centralized around gaining and sharing asset knowledge. By establishing such a system to increase the asset knowledge and supporting collaboration, public organizations of maintenance can provide a basis for the improvement of maintenance.
|
|
| 2. |
- Granheimer, Klara, 1989-
(author)
-
Public procurement of engineering services : Task characteristics, control modes and effects on adaptability
- 2022
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Previous research has emphasized the importance of engineering services and adaptability in the early stages of construction projects. Public clients usually procure engineering services from private companies, which makes their procurement strategies important in creating incentives for adaptability and innovation for the service providers. Due to the high uncertainty and clients’ lack of understanding of the tasks they procure, the procurement of services is argued to be challenging – especially for public clients. Despite this, studies on the procurement of engineering services are scarce, as is research on the effects on adaptability. The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to increase the understanding of organizational control in the public procurement of engineering services, by focusing on task characteristics, control modes and their effects on adaptability.A single case study of the Swedish Transport Administration was analyzed using the three models developed in the appended papers, i.e., the expanded control model, the procurement model for services and the classification model. The empirical data, consisting of interviews, observations and documents, were analyzed using visual mapping and flexible pattern matching.The findings illustrate that uncertainty is the task characteristic that differs between the early phase of construction (i.e., physical planning) and subsequent stages (i.e., tender document), while knowledge of the transformation process is the task characteristic that differs between a standard contract and an environmentally sustainable contract. Thus, when procuring engineering services including carbon reduction goals where new solutions are needed, new procurement strategies are necessary. In order to cope with the high uncertainty and low knowledge of the transformation process, social control is preferable. In addition, using social control will enhance the service providers’ willingness to adapt. These findings are important in the procurement of engineering services because uncertainty and the client’s understanding of the tasks are two of the main aspects that make engineering services difficult to procure.By combining task characteristics, control modes and their effects on adaptability, this thesis illustrates the importance of focusing on the entirety of organizational control. For example, even though process control and social control both incentivize the service provider to adapt to change, process control is less suitable for a public client when uncertainties are high. In addition, when choosing control modes related to the specification and reward system, it seems more efficient to provide the same incentives (i.e., process control may be combined with social control), whereas output control should not be combined with any other control mode. This shows the importance of combining the three variables and that the three main models of this thesis can be important tools. This knowledge and the models may therefore be useful to academics as well as practitioners. The results contribute to the scarce research on the procurement of engineering services for construction projects, as well as to the control literature.
|
|
| 3. |
- Candel, Melissa, 1994-
(author)
-
Co-Developing Sustainability Requirements : Exploring client and municipal perspectives in housing development
- 2020
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Construction has major environmental, social and economic impacts. Improving sustainability both during and after the construction process is widely discussed among a slew of practitioners, governments and researchers. Construction clients, such as housing developers, are considered key actors for change and innovation because of their position to set requirements when procuring construction projects. The process of developing project requirements has therefore mainly been studied during the construction clients’ procurement process. At the same time, municipalities use their position as land owners to drive sustainable development. Land allocation agreements allow municipalities to set project-specific sustainability requirements for construction projects on municipal land. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how municipal sustainability requirements affect housing developers when planning and designing their projects.The research is based on a single empirical case study of an urban development programme comprising multiple parallel and sequential housing construction projects. In this study, the municipality’s and housing developers’ perspectives are explored. The results demonstrate that the housing developers perceive several barriers to implementing municipal sustainability requirements. The three main barriers that were identified are reduced flexibility coupled with uncertainty, conflicting interests coupled with reduced autonomy and interdependencies, and a lack of trust and transparency coupled with interdependencies. The municipal sustainability requirements are initially developed by the municipality for the land allocation agreement. They are then co-developed further by the municipality and the housing developers together through negotiations before being finalised in conjunction with the developers’ procurement process.The study is focused on the period following the housing developers’ signing of land allocation agreements with the municipality and before starting their procurement process. During this period, the housing developers attempt to negotiate municipal sustainability requirements that they anticipate will increase costs, risk and uncertainty and decrease the value of their final product. Negotiations between the housing developers and the municipality can be viewed as value co-creation processes stimulated by functional conflict. These findings build on three papers that are included in the thesis.Contributions are made to literature on the role of construction clients and their perceived barriers to implementing and developing sustainable construction solutions and practices and barriers to change in general. Theoretical contributions are also made to literature on value co-creation in construction by illustrating how clients engage in the co-creation of value with municipalities and other clients. Finally, the theoretical link between value co-creation and functional conflict is studied and developed.
|
|
| 4. |
- Candel, Melissa, 1994-
(author)
-
Public Land Development for Sustainability-Profiled Districts : A value co-creation perspective
- 2022
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Swedish municipalities are developing sustainability-profiled districts incollaboration with private actors to achieve their public sustainability objectives.These districts are comparable to developments found in many other Europeancountries and the wider world. They are intended to model sustainable urbandevelopment and act as testbeds for collaborative innovation and urbanexperimentation. To initiate and govern the districts, Swedish municipalities areusing public land development, which provides them with more options to influencehousing development and increases their leverage during land use planning. It alsoforms exchange relationships between the municipalities and housing developers.Although previously acknowledged, there is a lack of research investigating thispractice in-depth. In the Swedish context, land ownership has a substantial influenceon the structure of the development process and collaboration betweenmunicipalities and housing developers, which are considered two key actors fordriving sustainable urban development. In sustainability-profiled districtdevelopments, these public and private actors collaborate during the municipal landallocation process, an important part of the public land development process, inorder to develop and implement new sustainable solutions and practices. Thiscollaboration during the land allocation process is investigated in the dissertation.The purpose of the dissertation is to increase the understanding of municipal landallocation processes in sustainability-profiled district developments by applying acollaborative perspective to public-private exchange. Municipal land allocations insustainability-profiled districts are first analysed and interpreted as public-privatevalue co-creation processes specifically intended to generate sustainable innovation.This is complemented with theories on conflict management, project relationships,and public value capture. The utility of using municipal land allocations for framingpublic-private collaborative innovation is then evaluated using value co-creationtheory. A single and multiple case study approach was employed to investigate indepthmunicipal land allocation processes in sustainability-profiled districts at thedistrict- and building project-level. Focusing on the perspectives of municipalitiesand housing developers, interviews and documents were used to reveal complexprocessual and relational dynamics mired in conflicting value creation objectives.The research is focused on sustainability-profiled district developments in Swedento gain an in-depth understanding of the intricacies and influences of this nationalcontext. The findings are then discussed in relation to public land developmentpractices in other European countries.The results reveal that the possibilities for municipalities to co-create public valueusing public land development are ultimately determined by housing developers’ ability to implement municipal sustainability requirements and co-create privateproject value. These municipal sustainability requirements are included in landallocation agreements and are negotiable throughout the rest of the land allocationprocess. Thus, the potential for public value creation is determined by the ability ofmunicipalities and developers to co-design sustainability requirements forimplementation during the land allocation process, in order to translate municipalsustainability requirements into developer procurement requirements. Areoccurring theme in the dissertation is that problems are rooted in inter-actor valueconflicts, which are central drivers for value co-creation processes betweenmunicipalities and housing developers.The dissertation contributes to public land development research by introducing apublic-private value co-creation framework to describe and explain collaborativeexchange and innovation between municipalities and developers. It also provides indepthknowledge of public land development, and more specifically municipal landallocation processes, in sustainability-profiled district developments, which differfrom more typical developments in regards to innovation ambitions. Finally, thedissertation contributes with a micro-level analysis of municipal land allocationprocesses, at the district- and project-level, in the Swedish context. Building on theanalysis and evaluation, recommendations for enhancing private project value andpublic value creation in sustainability-profiled districts are provided. Thedissertation ultimately illustrates how collaboration between public and privateactors aimed at achieving divergent and oftentimes conflicting sustainable urbandevelopment objectives is shaped by the specific planning processes and systemsthey are embedded in.
|
|
| 5. |
- Hedborg, Susanna
(author)
-
”It’s in the between” : Inter-Project Organising in Project Ecologies
- 2022
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The word project is used to describe everything from mundane tasks tomajor government-initiated structural changes. Projects are also thefocus of a growing research field that seeks to understand how society isorganised. On the back of this ‘projectification’, projects are becomingincreasingly entangled with each other, both in and betweenorganisations. This means that it is not only important to understandsingle projects, but also the interdependencies between projects in multiprojectcontexts. There is a call for a deeper understanding of multiprojectcontexts as interdependencies between projects can influenceproject work and outcomes widely, even though the interdependenciesare not visible in formal relationships. This thesis applies the concept ofproject ecologies to explore interdependencies that go beyond strategic orformal relationships. Inspired by a practice perspective, the purpose ofthis thesis is to increase the understanding of multi-project context,through investigating inter-project practices in project ecologies.In this thesis, urban development and construction projects are studied togain insight into inter-project practices in project ecologies. Spaceinterdependencies are multiple when parallel and sequential constructionprojects are carried out in a confined urban development district, and theactions of construction clients in this setting are studied using interviews,meeting observations and project documents. Routine dynamics are themain analytical framework, and the emergence of inter-project routines isused to study inter-project practices and how interdependencies becomerelationships through joint action.The findings show that construction clients commencing projects in anurban development district must apply both an intra- and inter-projectfocus. As project ecologies have low levels of formal management,construction clients must take actions to handle space interdependenciesbetween projects, i.e., actions patterned into routines between projects.These actions are not steered through principal-agent relationships, butstem from self-organising to a large extent. In project ecologies, the maincomplexities lie between projects, but benefits can be achieved if theactors can overcome issues relating to skewed power relationships, trust,and resource allocations. In the case of urban development, these benefitscan include the creation of new neighbourhoods and sustainability.The focus on the space between projects and on inter-project routinessuggests that the concept of project ecologies would benefit from an interprojectlayer running horizontally between projects. This layer, whencoupled with the routine dynamics framework, could help move theconcept of project ecologies beyond identifying actors, projects andorganisations in networks, to following the actions and actors’ practicesthat emerge in a project ecology.This thesis contributes to project studies by exploring organising that isboth inter-project and inter-organisational, moving beyond programmesand megaprojects as concepts explaining complex project organising.More specifically, it contributes to the literature on project ecologies byextending the understanding of organising in project ecologies throughexploring actions between projects. By using organisational routines tozoom-in on the actions between projects, the current definition of projectecologies as centred around a single project and firm is scrutinised.Moreover, this thesis contributes to the construction managementliterature by redirecting the focus away from contractual relationships toshowing how construction clients’ roles are influenced byinterdependencies between projects and by having to perform intra- andinter-project practices in parallel.
|
|
| 6. |
- Högberg, Lovisa, 1983-
(author)
-
Building Sustainability : Studies on incentives in construction and management of real estate
- 2014
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis summarizes the results from several studies with connection to sustainability in construction and management of real estate. Here, the concept sustainability includes environmental, social and economic dimensions and focus is on the actors with the best possibilities to impact real estate, namely the real estate owners and the developers. The thesis consists of six papers. Real estate owners’ perception of and incentives and strategies for sustainability was studied in four ways: incentives for energy efficiency and other sustainability issues in connection to renovation (papers I and II), factors that characterize firms with an ambitious approach to energy efficiency (paper V) and economic incentives for energy efficiency (paper VI). Developers’ behavior and impact on sustainability was studied in two ways: how developers’ planning and construction methods may influence energy consumption for future residents (paper III) and how developers relate to requirements for building environmental certification levels (paper IV).The first paper aims to clarify how housing firms see and treat energy efficiency matters in connection to renovation of multi-family buildings constructed during the 1960’s and 70’s. Interviews with housing firms resulted in four ideal housing firm types illustrating that housing firms have more or less incentives to improve energy efficiency. The second paper aimed to study a model for renovation of buildings in a residential area in peripheral Stockholm and to assess how it considers environmental, social and economic sustainability as well as technical concerns.Paper V builds on the results in paper I and aims to identify factors, on a firm level as well as in the surroundings of the firm, that characterize housing firms who own multi-family buildings from the 1960’s and 70’s and who have an ambitious approach to energy efficiency.Paper VI uses information from energy performance certificates to study whether better energy performance increases the selling price of single-family homes, which would increase owners’ incentives to improve energy efficiency.Paper III takes its starting point in an indicated shift in developers’ planning and construction practices for laundry facilities in owner-occupied multi-family buildings. The paper aims to clarify whether a shift has actually occurred from communal laundry rooms to in-unit laundry appliances and to illuminate the impact this could have on residents’ energy consumption for laundry. Paper IV reports the study of how developers who have adopted the environmental certification system LEED relate to the requirements for specific certification levels and how updated requirements risk undermining developers’ incentives for sustainable construction.
|
|
| 7. |
- Järvenpää, Anna-Therése
(author)
-
How to promote innovation from an organizational control perspective : A case study of a public infrastructure client
- 2022
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Within the infrastructure sector, a public client can have various roles and responsibilities that extend beyond its own organization, such as stimulating and supporting innovation. As an infrastructure project is seldom standardized, the client needs to procure each contract based on the relevant uncertainties and complexities for that specific context. To encourage a contractor’s compliance with the client’so bjectives, the client employs some degree of organizational control. When a public client procures all its infrastructure from contractors, it also needs to find ways of eliciting innovative solutions from the suppliers. Therefore, a public client needs strategies to both promote innovation by the contractors and direct and oversee the contractors’ work to ensure the deliverables meet the project’s objectives. The demands for increased innovation in the construction sector in general needs to be handled concomitant with the client’s need to check that the contractor delivers accordingly to the client’s objectives and demands. The overall purpose of this thesis is to explore the relationship between organizational control and promoting innovation by a public infrastructure client. More specifically, it explores how a public client can promote innovation by its contractors from an organizational control perspective. The theoretical background is provided by an organizational control framework (Ouchi, 1979; Aulakh et al., 1996), i.e. a client can manage and steer an agent via three different control systems: process, output, and social. The empirical data is derived from 47 semi-structured interviews, complemented by observations, from10 different infrastructure projects. The client (The Swedish Transport Administration; STA) is the same for each project, but the contractors differ. Two types of contractor are represented: contractors that have not worked with the STA before (“unfamiliar contractors”), and contractors that have worked with the STA before (“familiar contractors”). A majority of the contract type is design-build. Four appended papers, each presenting a public client perspective, provide the basis of the thesis. Previous findings that the client’s role is important for promoting innovation is explored further in this thesis from an organizational control perspective, emphasizing the role of the public client. It is important that during the procurement phase the client tries to find the right balance between achieving the intended objectives and creating space for innovation. Ex-ante planning is important, because how the client writes the control mechanisms into the procurement documents, and later the contract, has a direct effect on the opportunities for innovation by the contractors.In addition, the client has to manage the project in a way that does not cause irritation of frustration for the contractor, or hinder their work, thus supporting the view that organizational control should be enabling instead of coercive, so that the client’s input encourages innovation rather than creating obstacles. In addition, when adding a relationship history perspective on organizational control, an unfamiliar contractor (i.e. a contractor that has not worked with the client before) can find process control unsuitable and social control confusing, which means output control is probably the most appropriate approach to take when working with unfamiliar contractors. However, just relying on procurement strategies such as a design-build (DB)contract in combination with strict functional demands is not enough to promote innovation. Furthermore, a collaborative setting only seems to lead to innovative solutions if the client regards innovation as a mutual task and utilizes the collaborative setting for innovative co-creation. From the client’s perspective, the practical and managerial implication of this thesisis the importance of finding a balance between giving the contractor space to be innovative in the execution of the contract, and at the same time making sure that the requisite end product is delivered. The results of this thesis suggest that the client does not hand over the “how” to the contractor when it comes to executing the project, as would be expected in a DB contract. From the contractor’s perspective, the responsibility for innovation within a DB contract can be confounded by the client’s use of social control, by which the client may encourage discussions and collaboration regarding innovative solutions but blur the line over responsibilities. This could explain why social control often fails to have a positive impact on innovative output.
|
|
| 8. |
- Thunberg, Micael
(author)
-
Developing a Framework for Supply Chain Planning in Construction
- 2016
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Supply chain management (SCM) has been stressed as a remedy to many of the underlying issues in the construction industry. However, the positive examples where SCM has been successfully utilised and diminished the lingering issues in construction is scarce. The question is why. Previous studies have stressed the importance of planning both the construction project as such but also the supply chain and the logistics. As an important part of SCM, supply chain planning (SCP) focuses on planning different aspects of the supply chain through involving different members of the supply chain in the planning process. SCP in construction is scarce as the planning of the logistics in general. Failing to plan the supply chain, involving supply chain members in the planning, and integrating the processes of planning the supply chains and the construction project can be one reason for the low numbers of successful SCM adoption in construction. In improving the SCP in construction, this thesis develops a SCP framework for construction that involves the main contractor, subcontractors, and suppliers. The aim is to improve SCP, collaboration, and eliminate many of the common problems in construction through a SCM and SCP perspective.The developed framework is based on an existing planning framework for sales and operations planning. This framework is generic and synthesises planning in general. It consists of identifying/developing: outcomes, input, organisation, process, key performance measurements, and IT-tools. It is thus necessary to investigate what these aspects means in a construction context. Four research objects will be fulfilled:Objective 1. Identify common logistical problems and linkages between themObjective 2. Develop a SCP processObjective 3. Develop a SCP organisationObjective 4. Identify performance measurements
|
|
| 9. |
- Vass, Susanna
(author)
-
An Organizational Perspective on the Business Value of BIM
- 2015
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is often characterized by low productivity, poor quality, slow IT adoption and a low rate of innovation. Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been addressed as an IT based potential solution to many of the industry´s problem and BIM has received much attention in both industry and academia. However, most research has focused on the technical and normative perspectives of BIM, leaving the organizational perspective overlooked. Lately, the term “business value of BIM” has emerged in the industry. However, the term has not been clearly defined or explained neither in industry nor in research. Yet, it is a term that has been referred to by many industry and governmental agencies, as well as by researchers. Overall, there is a lack of research that explores how the business value of BIM implementation is perceived among BIM users and that explores what organizational challenges that can arise when implementing BIM for business value. The purpose of this licentiate thesis has been to study BIM implementation in the AEC industry by elaborating on the still rather vague concept of business value of BIM and by exploring the organisational challenges of implementing BIM for business value creation; applying an organizational perspective on BIM implementation. Thus, this licentiate thesis has addressed the gap in research on the lack of the organizational perspective of BIM. The respondents manly perceived the business value of BIM in negative terms, such as for example extra costs. The positive perceptions about the business value of BIM were future desired positive effects not yet realized due to the many intra and inter- organizational challenges of implementing BIM, for example, challenges in changing work processes and work routines, demanding BIM in procurement and providing incentives tied to BIM. In particular, the organizational challenges related to implementing BIM for business value creation was creating and managing organisational change. This licentiate thesis has emphasized how the perceived business value of BIM implementation in the AEC industry not only is characterized by often negative effects, but that it also is capsized by many organizational challenges that are perceived as hinders towards the potential positive effects. This licentiate has argued for the need for more studies on the organizational perspective of BIM, and in particular, on the organizational challenges of implementing BIM for business value, and thus provided a foundation for future research.
|
|
| 10. |
- Vass, Susanna, 1988-
(author)
-
The Business Value of BIM : Elaborating on Content and Perspective
- 2017
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The expectations on digitalization and Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) are high. The high expectations are reflected in an increasing interest for the term business value of BIM. However, the practical and theoretical understanding of its content and perspective is characterized by rationalism and positivism commercially promoted by industry. This thesis aims to reflect on, problematize and extend the theoretical understanding of the content and perspective of the business value of BIM. Perceptions about business value of BIM, the associated challenges and costs and the role of the business of BIM in a wider socio-technical context are examined among Swedish and international AEC industry actors and a large Swedish public infrastructure client. To extend the understanding of the content and perspective of the business value of BIM, the rational and process-oriented theories on the business value of IT are combined with the more interpretive and hermeneutic socio-technical systems theory. A social and cognitive dimension is thus added to the understanding of the business value of BIM and business value of IT. By combining the two research fields and contributing with the socio-technical perspective to the theoretical understanding of business value, this thesis contributes with theory development of the understanding of business value BIM and business value of IT. For practitioners, the thesis shows the complex, multi-dimensional and challenging aspects of implementing BIM for business value. The journey of perspectives in this thesis from positivism towards increased interpretivism also sheds light on the implications of when different perspectives exert influence on a research field (hegemony) and wishes to provide a contrast and balance to the rational and positivistic perspectives in BIM research. It also wishes to inspire future BIM research to broaden the theoretical perspectives.
|
|
