Project and program alliances have been an accepted form of project procurement for public infrastructure engineering projects in Australia and New Zealand (Australasia). Alliancing often provides best value and superior value for money when compared to traditional approaches such as Design and Construct, however considerable debate continues about its success and applicability. This paper reports on three studies of completed construction project alliance performance in 2008, 2010 and 2012. Consolidated findings are presented on 61 project alliances, data is analysed and emerging trends discussed. Recent government policy changes in Australia at Federal and State level have led to a decline in the number of project alliances, however, while the volume of alliance activity is declining it still represents billions of dollars of infrastructure construction work being undertaken. Results also revealed that communication and trust between the executive leadership and operational management teams was a major factor contributing to the functioning of the alliance. Furthermore, the research identifies several key factors that were necessary preconditions for successful alliances.Paper Type: Research article

Construction health and safety (H&S) is usually managed using a top down approach of regulating workers' behaviour through the implementation and enforcement of prescriptive rules and procedures. This management approach privileges technical knowledge over knowledge based on workers' tacit and informal ways of knowing about H&S. The research aimed to investigate the potential for participatory video to: (i) identify areas in which formal policies and procedures do not reflect H&S as practised by workers; (ii) encourage creative thinking and elicit workers' ideas for H&S improvements; and (iii) provide an effective mechanism for capturing and sharing tacit H&S knowledge in construction organizations. Interviews were conducted in two case study organizations (CSOs) in the Australian construction industry. The results suggest reflexive participatory video enabled workers to view their work practices from a different perspective. Workers identified new hazards and reflected about the practical difficulties in performing work in accordance with documented procedures. Workers were able to re-frame their work practices and develop new, safer ways of working. Workers described how the participatory video capturing the way they work enabled them to have more meaningful input into H&S decision-making than they had previously not experienced. Workers also expressed a strong preference for receiving H&S information in a visual format and commented that video was better suited to communicating H&S 'know how' than written documents.

This study demonstrates that keeping patients and their families informed has a more positive effect on patient satisfaction than any other variable studied even in the setting of increased census and wait times.