Late payment is a recurring issue in the UK construction industry. Whilst the existence of the problem is well known, there is a dearth of quantified evidence on the extent of the problem from a subcontractor point of view. This research sought to quantify the extent of late payment and late release of retention and their effects on construction subcontractors in the UK. A research design including the analysis of payment data of 30 selected projects (355 payments) from a case study subcontractor and a supplementary questionnaire survey with 21 subcontractors were used to investigate the issues. Late payment was observed in most of the case study subcontract projects (77%) and nearly half of the payments (46%), suggesting it is common practice. Statistical analysis showed that whilst there was no statistically significant link between payment delay and contract sum, subcontractors are likely to experience longer payment delays in projects with a higher number of payments. It was found that the
Purpose This paper aims to investigate how digital capabilities associated with building information modelling (BIM) can integrate a wide range of information to improve built asset management (BAM) decision-making during the in-use phase of hospital buildings. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive document analysis and a participatory case study was undertaken with a regional NHS hospital to review the type of information that can be used to better inform BAM decision-making to develop a conceptual framework to improve information use during the health-care BAM process, test how the conceptual framework can be applied within a BAM division of a health-care organisation and develop a cloud-based BIM application. Findings BIM has the potential to facilitate better informed BAM decision-making by integrating a wide range of information related to the physical condition of built assets, resources available for BAM and the built asset’s contribution to health-care provision within an organisation. However, interdepartmental information sharing requires a significant level of time and cost investment and changes to information gathering and storing practices within the whole organisation. Originality/value This research demonstrated that the implementation of BIM during the in-use phase of hospital buildings is different to that in the design and construction phases. At the in-use phase, BIM needs to integrate and communicate information within and between the estates, facilities division and other departments of the organisation. This poses a significant change management task for the organisation’s information management systems. Thus, a strategically driven top-down organisational approach is needed to implement BIM for the in-use phase of hospital buildings.
LIQUEFACT was a EU H2020 funded project to investigate earthquake induced liquefaction potential across Europe and develop a series of tools to understand better the impacts that earthquake induced liquefaction disaster events have on the resilience of built assets and communities. A resilience assessment and improvement framework was developed to provide the theoretical underpinning for the LIQUEFACT project and to provide practical guidance on the assessment of built assets to Earthquake Induced Liquefaction Disaster events through the LIQUEFACT software tool and built asset management planning framework. This paper outlines the theoretical basis to the resilience assessment and improvement framework and built asset management planning framework and presents the results from a validation exercise through their application to a hypothetical healthcare scenario. The paper also describes the different stages of the research that led to the definition of the resilience assessment and improvement framework and built asset management planning framework. To this end the paper concludes that the resilience assessment and improvement framework and built asset management framework provide a longitudinal, holistic view of disaster vulnerability and resilience that can inform the selection of ground improvement mitigation actions to improve business continuity and resilience planning.
As cities become larger and more densely populated the impacts of major earthquake events on city communities become more severe. Improving community resilience to earthquake events relies on the complex relationships that exist between different community stakeholder groups (citizens, businesses, community groups, emergency services, critical infrastructure providers, politicians etc.). This paper reports results from a major EU funded study (LIQUEFACT) that developed a tool for assessing community resilience to Earthquake Induced Liquefaction Disaster (EILD) events. The tool is based on a customised version of the UNDRR Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities. The paper reviews alternative approaches to measuring community resilience and describes the process used in the LIQUEFACT project to develop and validate the customised scorecard. The paper presents the results of a questionnaire survey to identify the best generic approach to measure community resilience and a series of semi-structured group interviews to define a range of specific metrics for assessing community resilience to EILD events; and the results of a validation workshop to assess the effectiveness and usability of the customised scorecard. The paper concludes that it is possible to develop a customised version of the UNDRR Scorecard at an appropriate level of granularity to support improved community resilience to earthquake induced soil liquefaction disaster events. The paper also presents key lessons that could assist those developing similar customised versions of the UNDRR scorecard for use in different geographical settings or against different disaster scenarios.
In the UK, healthcare built environment design is guided by a series of long established design standards and guidance issued by the Department of Health.More recently, healthcare design focus has broadened to encompass new approaches, supported by large bodies of credible research evidence. It is therefore timely to rethink how healthcare design standards and guidance should be best expressed to suit 'designerly ways' of using evidence, to improve their use and effectiveness in practice. This research explored how designers use performance and prescriptive approaches during the healthcare design process.Three in-depth healthcare built environment case studies were used to explore how designers employed such approaches during the design of selected exemplar design elements. Results show that design elements in the pre and conceptual design phases significantly employed performance based approaches, and due to project-unique circumstances, prescriptive solutions were often significantly modified based on performance criteria. For design elements in the detailed and technical design phases, there was significant use of solutions based on prescriptive approaches, whilst performance-based criteria were used to evaluate design solutions. This research proposes a performance-based, specification driven healthcare design with supplementary prescriptive specifications provided for optimum healthcare environment design.Keywords: healthcare built environments; evidence; designing; performancebased specification; prescriptive specification IntroductionHospital design has traditionally focused on efficiency, cost and clinical functionality (Gesler et al., 2004). Similar to many elements of the built environment, the healthcare design process draws on various sources of evidence including but not limited to formal education, personal and colleagues' knowledge and experience, common sense, intuitions and personal interpretations (Hamilton, 2003, Tetreault & Passini, 2003, Lawson, 2004, Martin & Guerin, 2007 as well as more formal design guidance (Lafratta, 2006, Hignett andLu, 2009) This paper presents an empirical examination, drawing on three case study projects, of how healthcare designers draw on evidence, through designerly ways, in the process of healthcare built environment design. Evidence within this study is considered as either based on experience, found within formally produced design guidance or more explicitly grounded in academic research findings, or indeed a combination of all three, creating a naturally broad and inclusive definition which enables the process of design to be explored in depth. It is hoped that in taking a practice-based approach with due recognition of designerly ways, this research can contribute to improvements within the process of healthcare design, and also provide useful insights to help develop an 'ideal balance' of prescriptive and performance specification within this specific built environment context.
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