Böcker i Spon Research-serien

This book showcases a number of effective applications of risk management tools and techniques across product and service life in a way useful for practitioners, graduate students and researchers.

Improved efficiency and effectiveness in the construction industry provide huge potential savings. Various forms of relational contracting such as partnering, alliancing, public private partnership (PPP), and joint venture are good examples of this. This work presents the principles of relational contracting, practicalities and case studies.

Novel research in construction management is often distant from existing practice. This collection of reviews intends to bridge this gap under three major themes: innovation, organisation and human behaviour, and methods and tools. It outlines a series of successful collaborative projects between industry and the academic and research communities.

Conventional air conditioning is not a sustainable solution to the challenge of a hot or humid climate. This book explores the complex relationships between climate, buildings and plants, especially in urban heat islands. It is useful for researchers and professionals such as architects, architectural science, and landscape architects.

Concurrent Engineering (CE) is a systematic approach to the integrated and concurrent design of products and related processes, including aspects as diverse as manufacture and support. This book presents construction professionals and academics with the issues and technologies important for CE's adoption.

Buildings and infrastructure represent principal assets of any national economy as well as prime sources of environmental degradation. This book incorporates the results of a major research programme by members of the Australia Co-operative Research Centre for Construction Innovation and its global partners.

Shows how the concept of knowledge can make sense in the construction industry, an industry which can be viewed in essence as being engaged in the material transformation of 'nature into buildings'. This book explores different businesses including a medium sized construction firm, and Wingardh Architecture, Sweden's prestigious architecture firm.

Using the construction industry as the subject of research, this book traces the development of the literature on organisational culture and business effectiveness. It investigates the culture-performance link using an objective measure of company performance and an evaluation of organisational culture, which is largely behaviourally-based.

Provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on interpersonal communication and delivers a critical review of various research methods previously used in and outside the construction management field. This text investigates the link between successful projects and the effectiveness of communication.

Sets out social science and business-oriented thinking derived from a major EPSRC research project. This work's interdisciplinary approach draws together industry and research.

Performance-Based Optimization of Structures introduces a method to bridge the gap between structural optimization theory and its practical application to structural engineering.

The main risk-minimisation strategy in the construction phase is trust, which plays a major role in the success of key working relationships across the construction industry. This book investigates this phenomenon, and goes on to show that once developed, trust outshines all other risk minimisation strategies and is essential for project success. Drawing on many years of empirical research involving project managers working internationally, Trust in Construction Projects also provides strategies to minimise information asymmetries in order to build trust, and ensure the success of construction projects.

This wide-ranging study of crucial procurement issues includes international historical context, collaboration and risk management, with a focus on sustainable procurement approaches. The international significance of public-private partnerships and relationship-based procurement approaches is reinforced with case study examples from the UK, Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific regions.

This important work sets out cutting-edge social science and business-oriented thinking derived from a major EPSRC research project. Its interdisciplinary approach draws together industry and research, and is international in its relevance.