Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in Malaysia have been inundated by various controversies and criticisms from the very beginning. Many of the constraints that occur in PPP projects is due to the failure in tendering stage. Bidding or tender for a PPP project is usually much more complex than a traditional public-sector project involving the appointment of top advisers and designers at a great fee in the preparation of detailed design, comprehensive planning, extensive bid documentation, and lengthy clarifications. These problems as being the reason behind several high-profile withdrawals during the early PPP tenders, resulting in some preferred bidders being selected by defaults as other competitors withdrew. Base on the above premise, this study attempts to propose PPP tendering process improvement in Malaysian construction industry. This paper aims at providing an overview about literature on tendering process in PPP/PFI. The objectives of the research are to identify and understand the PPP implementation practices in Malaysia; to determine issues and challenges in PPP tendering stage; and to propose PPP tendering improvement. The approach is based on the analysis of the pertinent publications on the theme. Three main interest areas can be found in the literature which is; tendering procedure, issues and challenges, and strategies that could be enhance PPP tendering process in the Malaysian construction industry.

The construction of highway projects involves many types of risks throughout the various stages of itsproject life cycle. Those risks are especially significant due to their impact on the project performance and objectives, mainly in terms of costs and time. Several factors of projects risk had been determined and well explained in the paper. Major risks involved in highway construction in Malaysia are cost risk, safety risk and time risk. Due to lack of opinion from the contractors regarding the critical factors that influencing the project risks mentioned, this studyaims to evaluate the contractor’s perspective towards the important factors of risk particularly the cost and time risks in highway construction in Malaysia. The methodology used in this study is by using quantitative method.Questionnaire survey was developed by taking into consideration the factors influencing the cost risk and time risk that had been explained in the literature. The respondents were chosen by purposive sampling which enables the researcher to collect the data comprehensively. Results from this study confirmed that the construction risks and financial risks are most often occurred in highway projects. This research identifies potential factors influencing both cost and time risks that have a possibility to occur in highway projectsin Malaysia from the perspective of contractors. Among the key findings of the factors that highly influenced the cost risks in the highway projects in Malaysia include service relocation, removal and replacement of material,design changes, additional works, environmental issues, and price fluctuation. On the other hand, the main factors influencing time risks which mostly related to time overrun/delay are permit approval, weather condition, low workers’ productivity, slow preparation and drawings approval, design changes and error, and shortage of worker. This study contributes to the current body of knowledge by providing researchers and practitioners with a set of important factors related to time and cost risks that need to be consider in improving the performance of highway projects. It is hoped that this study would help the industry to promote project success of highway projects in Malaysia.

Construction joint ventures often used as a strategic platform to facilitate learning and acquire knowledge associated with individual partner skills and capabilities, and further integrate the new knowledge into their own system and structure. Although previous literature has highlighted many benefits of joint ventures, in reality it does not work well as people are often hesitant to share their knowledge and experience. Furthermore, the nature of construction projects and temporary setting of joint venture organisations often results in difficulty to retain the knowledge of each project member once the project completed, and the joint venture dissolved. Such problems become more critical in the local-foreign joint venture projects where knowledge has to be shared across different organisations and national culture. This research paper aims to assess the barriers for knowledge sharing practices by using cross-case analysis of joint venture projects as case studies. This research took a qualitative approach with a multiple-case study method adopted to perform exploratory case studies into construction joint ventures in Malaysia. Qualitative data were collected using the semi-structured interview techniques with 20 interviewees from two case studies. The primary data was analysed using content analysis and cognitive mapping techniques. The research findings revealed several barriers to knowledge sharing practices within joint venture project settings such as the cultural barriers, lack of loyalty and project continuity, language barriers, unwilling to share and learn; and lack of time. The Malaysian construction industry is taking initiatives to improve its current project performance through capacity development which is one of the strategic thrusts outlined in CIDB Construction Revolution 4.0 (CR4.0). The capacity development can be done by encouraging the collaboration between construction participants. It gives a very significant justification for undertaking this research focusing on improving the collaboration and project performance of joint venture project settings through effective knowledge sharing.

In recent year, there have been an increasing market of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP)/Private Finance Initiative (PFI) for the development and operation of public infrastructure projects in Malaysia. The aim of PPP/PFI is to encourage greater participation of private sector in delivering public services. However, due to lack of knowledge on PPP/PFI procurement bring it being criticized especially in tendering process. Some PPP/PFI projects are the subject of lengthy political debate before they go to tender, causing further delay in their execution. Though, very little empirical studies have been conducted in the area of its overall implementation and tendering process. Therefore, the objectives of the research are to identify and understand the PPP/PFI implementation and practices in public infrastructure project in Malaysia; to determine issues and challenges in PPP/PFI tendering stage; and to propose PPP/PFI tendering improvement. The overall research process and methodology is divided into three phases: The first phase starts with extensive literature search on the current state and issues regarding to tendering in PPP/PFI public infrastructure projects and analysed the relevant documents of PPP/PFI. Based on these searches appropriate problem statement, research aim and objectives are established. The second phase deals with questionnaire survey. The study mainly focuses on concessionaires who are involved in PPP/PFI projects in Malaysia. The third phase is to synthesize the data collected from the literature review, document analysis and questionnaire survey. Finally, is to report the findings, conclusion, recommendation and further research based on the final outcomes. Expected outcomes from the research project are to provide new insight on the theoretical perspectives on tendering for public infrastructure project through PPP/PFI implementation.

Sustainable construction is significant to implement, especially in Malaysia since many environmental issues have become worst lately. All parties or stakeholder need to take a high responsive action to enforce sustainable construction due to passive movement is undertaken by certain parties, primarily developer. Developers is the most sought out play a critical role in the development of sustainable construction. Green procurement is one of the initiatives introduced to improve sustainability. However, green procurement is still very new and has not widely adopted in the Malaysian construction industry — while the challenges that hinder developers from taking green procurement merit detailed investigation. Therefore, this study aims to reveal the potential problems faced by developers that resist green procurement implementation in the construction industry. Its objective is to identify the current practices of green procurement implementation in the construction industry and determine the developer’s challenges in the performance of green procurement in the construction industry. Data collection was done through a mixed method of research, which is quantitative by questionnaire survey and the qualitative approach by semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was done after collected data information from the interview and questionnaire session. The findings from this research will provide a valuable reference for assisting relevant developers in mitigating the green procurement challenges in real estate development throughout encouraging and pointing to increased awareness, practice, and implementation of green procurement by practitioners in Malaysia. It envisaged that the study would provide the basis for future research into green procurement practices for construction projects in Malaysia and beyond.