Transaction costs occur when a good or service is transferred across a technologically separable interface, and include the costs of drafting, negotiating and enforcing an agreement, and also the costs of governance and bonding to secure commitments. In the complex and high risk environment of a construction project, questionable decisions can be made in the planning and design phase, and disagreements, conflicts, disputes, change orders, and claims can occur in the construction phase. These problems contribute to an increase in transaction costs. Transaction costs at the pre-contract phase of a project are different from the transaction costs at the post-contract phase. However, there is no consensus on a standard definition of transaction costs in construction projects. In this study, a detailed literature review focusing on transaction costs in construction project management is presented. The factors that affect transaction costs are identified and categorized under the headings of the owner’s and contractor’s roles in the transaction, project management efficiency, and the characteristics of the transaction environment.

Idiopathic, post-infectious and immunodeficiency constitute major bronchiectasis aetiologies in Guangzhou. Clinical characteristics of patients between known aetiologies and idiopathic bronchiectasis were similar. Ethnicity and geography only account for limited differences in aetiologic spectra. These findings will offer rationales for early diagnosis and management of bronchiectasis in future studies and clinical practice in China.

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Record rainfall and severe flooding struck eastern China in the summer of 2020. The extreme summer rainfall occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in China in early 2020 and spread rapidly across the globe. By disrupting human activities, substantial reductions in anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols might have affected regional precipitation in many ways. Here, we investigate such connections and show that the abrupt emissions reductions during the pandemic strengthened the summer atmospheric convection over eastern China, resulting in a positive sea level pressure anomaly over northwestern Pacific Ocean. The latter enhanced moisture convergence to eastern China and further intensified rainfall in that region. Modeling experiments show that the reduction in aerosols had a stronger impact on precipitation than the decrease of greenhouse gases did. We conclude that through abrupt emissions reductions, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed importantly to the 2020 extreme summer rainfall in eastern China.

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Determining the relationship between conflict factors and performance of international construction projects", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 21 Iss 4 pp. 369-382 http:// dx.If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Transaction costs arise from economic exchange rather than production activities. However, the term "transaction cost" is not consistently defined in the construction industry because the concept of transaction cost is not universally accepted by all stakeholders in construction projects. As a result, empirical studies are few and conflicting because accessing data on transaction costs is problematic, and the interpretation of the data is difficult. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the transaction costs borne by the owner in a construction project from the perspective of transaction cost economics and construction project characteristics. Design/methodology/approach -A questionnaire survey was administered to construction owners. The factors that impact transaction costs were analyzed in the context of human-related issues (the owner's and the contractor's positions in the transaction), and environment-related issues (the transaction environment, and project management efficiency). Statistical analyses were conducted to compare the transaction costs incurred in the pre-vs post-contract phases of a project relative to the private vs public sector, different project delivery systems, different procurement methods, and different types of contracts. Findings -The owners surveyed believe that transaction costs may be reduced if the owner and the contractor follow some basic guidelines (e.g. experience in similar projects, prompt payment, good relationship with project participants, no irregularities in bidding, and only few material substitutions and claims), if the project is well-run (e.g. technical competency, strong leadership, prompt decision-making, effective communication, and fair/speedy conflict management), and if the transaction environment is favorable (e.g. fair risk allocation, early contractor involvement, and complete design documents). The findings of the survey also indicate that post-contract transaction costs are much higher than pre-contract tran...

Sustainability has recently been acknowledged as a crucial issue in infrastructure projects. Developing a model to evaluate project sustainability according to sustainability indicators plays a major role in promoting the sustainable development of water environment treatment public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Traditional sustainability assessments are mostly based on the triple bottom line (economic, social, and environmental) and lack a more integrated indicator system. To connect the research gap, this paper identifies 27 factors that affect the sustainability of water environment treatment PPP projects from five dimensions: economy, society, resources and environment, engineering, and project management using exploratory factor analysis. The fitting degree between the model and original data is verified by confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that the fitting was successful. This paper makes two contributions: first, it provides a comprehensive sustainability evaluation indicator system from five aspects, laying a foundation for the evaluation of project sustainability. Second, this study defines a methodology to evaluate and rank factors, identifies the indicators that show the most significant impact on project sustainability in the five dimensions, which provide a reliable reference for the public and private sector to take appropriate measures to improve the sustainability level of water environment treatment public-private partnership projects.