Recently asset owners have been investigating alternative delivery models for construction projects that offer improvements in value for money and project delivery time. One of these methods is the early contractor involvement (ECI) strategy. In this strategy a contractor is engaged before commencement of the construction work to give input during design. After the design, the construction work is negotiated with the contractor. Implementation of this new delivery strategy can raise issues with involved parties in the industry. To find these transitional issues, expectations and opinions were collected from practitioners from the three involved parties—owners, designers, and contractors—who had experience with ECI. The results show that all parties agreed in expecting improvements in quality and innovation and that the costs needed to adopt this system were not significant. Owners and contractors opined that the design phase could be expedited; however, the designers argued that any time savings were negated by increased collaboration and negotiation between the parties. There was also disagreement on risk allocation during construction. Contrary to the other parties, the contractors did not perceive the allocation of risk to them to be greater than with traditional procurement systems. Finally there was disagreement about whether the necessary collaborative culture was present in the construction industry for adopting “open book” costing, often practiced in ECI. It is recommended that for successful implementation of ECI, objectives in the areas of disagreement should be clarified between parties as they work through a transitional phase in adopting the ECI procurement method.

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Digital technologies are increasingly used to support safety management in the construction industry. Previous efforts were made to identify digital technologies for safety in the construction industry. However, limited research has been done to conceptualize the roles played by digital technologies in safety management and accident prevention. This paper surveys state-of-the-art research between 2000 and 2016 in order to categorize digital technologies for construction safety, identify research trend, and analyze their roles in accident prevention. The research employs a systematic process to review the existing literature on digital technologies in the area of construction safety. Five academic databases, Science Direct, Taylor & Francis, the ASCE Library, Engineering village, and Web of Science, were selected for the survey due to the comprehensive coverage of relevant academic papers. The survey identified 15 digital technologies: real-time location system and proximity warning, building information modelling, augmented reality, virtual reality, game technology, e-safetymanagement-system, case-based reasoning, rule-based reasoning, motion sensor, action/object recognition, laser scanning, physiological status monitoring, virtual prototyping, geographical information system, and ubiquitous sensor network. Three emerging safety functions claimed and/or promoted by DTs were discussed: enhanced safety planning, real-time hazard management, and safety knowledge engineering. It is concluded that DTs have great potential to improve safety performance by engineering resilience and adaptiveness at the individual level, while how DTs embody safety values and how safety values in turn influence the adoption of DTs remain an open question.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to synthesise critical success factors (CSFs) for advancing post-disaster infrastructure recovery and underpinning recovery authorities in decision making when facing future disasters. Design/methodology/approach The seismic recovery after the Canterbury (NZ) earthquake sequence in 2010-2011 was selected as a case study for identifying CSFs for an efficient recovery of infrastructure post-disaster. A combination of research approaches, including archival study, observations and semi-structured interviews were conducted for collecting data and evidences by engaging with participants involved at various tiers in the post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. The CSFs are evaluated and analysed by tracking the decision-making process, examining resultant consequences and foreseeing onwards challenges. Findings Six salient CSFs for strengthening infrastructure recovery management after disasters are identified. Furthermore, the study shows how each of these CSFs have been incorporated into the decision-making process in support of the post-disaster recovery and what difficulties encountered in the recovery process when implementing. Practical implications The proposed CSFs provide a future reference and guidance to be drawn on by decision makers when project-managing post-disaster recovery operations. Originality/value The value of the paper is that it bridges the gap between managerial contexts and technical aspects of post-disaster recovery process in an effort to rapidly and efficiently rebuild municipal infrastructure.

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