In sustainable construction/production, the social dimension regarding owner and community satisfaction has received the least focus. To promote social sustainability, the multilevel strategies of contractors should be developed for owner and community satisfaction. However, a literature review shows that there are few studies on how multilevel strategies influence such satisfaction. Hence, this study aimed to analyze such influences. A survey was conducted to gather data from the Thai construction industry, and these data were then analyzed by a structural equation model (SEM). The results, for the first time, highlight that corporate strategy influences business strategy (direct influence = 0.98), which in turn influences functional strategy (direct influence = 0.93). Additionally, only functional strategy influences owner (direct influence = 0.84) and community satisfaction (direct influence = 0.66). Furthermore, parenting, cooperation, and equipment/machinery substrategies obtain the highest weights within the management levels of corporation, business, and function (regression weights = 0.49, 0.48, and 0.55), respectively. The work productivity and site organization indicators have the largest weights for owner and community satisfaction (regression weights = 0.47 and 0.57), respectively. The findings provide a guideline that helps contractors allocate their available resources to substrategies according to their regression weights, enhancing owner and community satisfaction.

Understanding the relationships of construction project manager, engineer and foreman skills can be used by contractors to develop project performance. Although there are widely discussed on construction individual skills, the relationships between individual skills having on others’ skills have not been examined in previous studies. Thus, this study examined such relationships. The questionnaire was used to collect data on the important range of skills of the individual to evaluate the relationships among them. The data were then analyzed using structural equation modelling (SEM) to determine the relationships of construction manager, engineer and foreman skills. The final SEM model shows regression weights in parenthesis that construction manager skills have influence on engineer skills (0.65) and engineer skills have influence on foreman skills (0.84). Additionally, the regression weight presents that knowledge management is the most important skill for a construction manager (0.64). Problem-solving is the most important to engineer (0.59). Regarding foreman, physical skill is the most important (0.67). The findings can be used as a guideline for contractors in developing their staffs to increase project performance.

Consistent arrangement of contractor business competencies and project team’s competencies helps improve project operation efficiency. Key participants in the project team are project managers, engineers, and technicians. However, a review of existing literature reveals a lack of research on the causal relationship between project teams’ competencies and business competencies. Therefore, this study attempted to identify the relationship through survey contractors’ opinions. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results suggest the regression weighs presented in parenthesis that business competencies are influenced by the competencies of a project manager (0.50) and engineer (0.49). The study also discovered the influence of competencies among project teams; that is, technician competencies influence engineer competencies (0.87), and engineer competencies influence project manager competencies (0.55). With the causal relationship between the project team’s competencies and business competencies, contractors can suitably allocate human resources for increasing their project operation efficiency.

Under the current circumstances of highly competitive business operations, contractors should allocate their resources to develop the project team competencies, then leading to the improvement of the contractors’ business competencies. A question is how the contractors’ limited resources should be allocated to develop the project team competencies and thus maximize the contractor's business competencies. A literature review shows that few research works have addressed this question, showing a knowledge gap that should be filled. Therefore, this research aimed to answer this question by developing a linear programming model that suggests optimal resource allocation to improve the project team competencies. A survey case study in the Thai construction industry was used to illustrate the model application. The results of the model application show that the optimal proportion of resource allocation to develop the project team competencies should be as follows: physical health (32.80%), communication (16.30%), knowledge (15.60%), decision-making (10.60%), relationship management (9.80%), systematic construction work (9.80%), and systematic management (5.20%). These results can be used as a suggestion for the contractors’ optimal resource allocation to develop their project team competencies and maximize contractor business competencies.