Previous research in various industrial contexts has shown that companies needs to achieve both exploitation of current knowledge, and exploration of new knowledge to be successful in changing conditions. In the construction sector exploration activities are sometimes conducted in demonstration projects. The project based nature of the sector is, however, argued to be one common obstacle to exploitation and diffusion of knowledge and innovation. In Sweden, the government has financed different demonstration projects, through The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, in order to facilitate development and diffusion of new knowledge. This paper sets out to compile the results of a previous study of 11 conducted demonstration projects and establish a framework and research questions for a follow up study of the demonstration projects six years after their completion in order to assess the extent of knowledge diffusion. The previous study is based on interviews with the clients’ project managers and document studies of reports published from the demonstration projects. The tentative findings show that the projects involved product, process, organizational/contractual and financial/revenue innovations. The result also shows that the investigated projects were reported as successful and therefore could serve as base for diffusion of new knowledge. In the second step the study will investigate if and how knowledge was diffused from the demonstration projects among the involved actors.

Assessing the economic and environmental life cycle impacts of long-lasting construction projects presents numerous methodological challenges. Three advances over established methods are presented for the life cycle evaluation of construction projects. First, future uncertainty during the project life or study period is explicitly accounted for. This involves moving from a deterministic approach requiring precise data to a probabilistic approach where uncertain variables are defined by ranges. The outcome of life cycle evaluation is then given by probability distributions, generated by Monte Carlo simulation. Second, flexible strategies are considered that allow for adaptation to changing conditions during the project life. Flexible strategies (also modelled by Monte Carlo simulation) incorporate specified ‘life cycle options’ which are exercised if it is advantageous to do so, otherwise they remain unexercised. Third, cost-based life cycle costing (LCC) and environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) are linked in a single LCC+A evaluation tool. There are still differences between cost and environmental evaluation, but the use of a shared framework enables the two aspects to be compared systematically. The two-dimensional ‘ecoportfolio’ diagram presents one way of analysing results. The innovations are demonstrated in a case study that assesses both economic and environmental impacts while accounting for future uncertainties.

Byggbranschen beskrivs ha begränsade möjligheter att utveckla av materialoch produktionsstyrningsstrategier på grund av temporära projektorganisationer och försörjningskedjor. Operativa strategier, som exempelvis val av produktionsmetod och material, kan ge betydande konkurrensfördelar. Idag mäts det emellertid inte i så stor utsträckning på aktivitets- eller processnivå där mått som ledtid och produktivitetsnivå kan bidra till utveckling. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka förutsättningarna för att mäta materialflöden på byggplatsen. Avslutade och pågående byggprojekt har studerats med avseende på olika byggmaterial för att undersöka om skillnader i materialstyrning fanns. Ett problem med informationshanteringen var den bristfälliga dokumenteringen och spårbarheten, exempelvis saknades dokumentation för flera ton armering. Olika typer av mått inom organisation, tillverkande industri och byggprojekt presenteras. Dessutom presenteras ett alternativt mått, lagerperioder, som mäter tiden material ligger på byggarbetsplatsen innan inbyggnad. Datainsamling är ofta tidskrävande och fokus bör läggas på att kunna registrera tidpunkter för den operativa rapporteringen av händelser som sker kontinuerligt under ett byggprojekt framför att mäta och beräkna specifika mått. Avslutade projekt bör sparas i en databas med så låg aggregering som möjligt av projektdatan för att i efterhand kunna avgöra önskat aggregeringsnivå. Detta för att möjliggöra analyser på aktivitets- och processnivå.

Purpose: To identify client perceived barriers to a change towards increased client influence on the end result of the construction process. Additionally, the variables of size of clients' markets and the extent of external project management are investigated in order to see how they influence the perceptions concerning important barriers to change. Methodology/approach: Empirical data was collected through a survey responded to by 87 Swedish construction clients. Findings: Identified barriers are divided into three types: attitudinal, industrial and institutional. Attitudinal barriers (adversarial attitudes, lack of ethics and morality, focus on projects instead of processes, and a short-term focus) and industrial barriers (traditional organization of the construction process, conservative industry culture, industry structure, and traditional production processes) were perceived to be important, whereas institutional barriers (standard contracts, laws, and traditional procurement procedures) were not perceived to be critical. Each different type of barrier was tested against the use of internal or external project management and the sphere of activity of the client. Attitudinal barriers were perceived as being more critical by clients using external project management. ‘Nearness' in terms of the sphere of activity (e.g. how large is the client's market?) also had an effect on how clients perceived the barriers. Locally active clients did not consider attitudinal barriers to be as influential on the end result of the construction process as nationally active clients. Research limitations/implications - Since the empirical results are based on data collected only from Swedish clients, international generalizations should be made with caution.Practical implications - Clients wishing to act as change agents need to be aware that their use of internal versus external project management affects their chances to influence the other construction actors and implement change and innovation. Large national and international client organizations, which due to their size have significant opportunities to influence the industry, rely heavily on external project management, which may hamper their change agent role. Hence, such clients should make careful and purposeful selections of project management companies. Another more influential alternative is to strengthen their organisation and rely less on external project management. Originality/value - This paper presents a unique investigation of the connections between the use of internal/external project management and perceived barriers to change.

The building stock in Europe accounts for over 40% of the final energy consumption in the European Union. Moreover, the construction sector is one of the largest producers of industrial waste contributing 40-50% of landfill in some EU countries. A common way of creating a forward planning for resource efficiency in construction project is to apply Life Cycle Cost (LCC - cost evaluation) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA - environmental evaluation) procedures in the decision process. There are, however, difficulties in current LCC and LCA tools and it is challenging to combine data from those two types of tools since there are poor linkages between them. The EU funded 7th framework project CILECCTA sets out to develop a LCCA (Life Cycle Cost and Analysis) that combines life cycle cost with environmental affect and supports the determination of the costing and sustainability of project alternatives.Current LCC software can assist the decision making process in simulating different alternatives for the design, construction, maintenance and demolition of assets - allowing the client, designer and builder to select the most favourable alternative. Through linking LCC and LCA methodologies, the CILECCTA project will go one stage further by enabling an assessment of the impact of the entire project on the environment and by estimating its sustainability. It will also include probabilistic analysis and the recently developed new generation methodology which applies real options principles analysis for construction industry decision making. This paper sets out the strategic that should lead toward establishing a framework for developing a modular LCCA engine integrating asset-related data from price banks and life cycle inventories.

According to Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean Production and Six Sigma literature, companies should develop organisational arrangements that foster learning from experience and base decisions on facts, since continuous improvements require continuous experience feedback in some form. In Sweden every construction project is checked in several inspections, and data about defects are collected in paper-based “punch lists”, but what happens to these data after the defects have been corrected and the building is delivered to the client? This study describes the current inspection regime in terms of the scope it provides for collecting experience feedback in the Swedish construction industry, and evaluates the extent to which Swedish construction companies recognise this scope. Empirically, it is based on a survey of the views of field superintendents in medium-sized to large building/construction contractors regarding the use of inspection data as a source of experience feedback in their respective companies. The results show that contractors are generally aware that inspection data can provide valuable information for experience feedback and constant improvements, but currently they do not have systems or processes for feeding back experience from inspections. The possibility of replacing paper-based punch lists with a digital system to process and access inspection data is discussed, which it is proposed could provide a means for improving organisational experience feedback-based learning among construction contractors.

Mobility, project orientation and the set-up of new organisation in every project are characteristics of the construction industry. The products are one of a kind and seldom develop beyond the prototype phase. This is often suggested as reasons for the low development of productivity in the construction industry, and continuous improvement and experience feedback becomes harder to accomplish from project to project. The production results are handed over from contractor to client through different inspections. The inspector creates a "punch list" with all detected defects, and the contractor then is to fix these before the construction work can be finally accepted. These often lengthy lists on documented faults are full of information that can be useful for the contractor company’s learning and experience feedback process. A previous study shows that contractors acknowledge this potential use, but they may need some sort of IT system to support the inter-project management of the inspection information collected. The aim of this study is to identify benefits for different project roles in a construction project from an inter-project inspection information system (IPIIS), e.g. what kind of information or data they would like to be able to extract, in order to enhance learning and feedback in their organisations. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with professionals representing different common project roles of construction projects, and regulatory demands for inspection as a part of project handover in Sweden has been studied. These results are analysed to form recommendations to the design of a future IPIIS. The requirements of a digital IPIIS are analysed, both from a regulatory point of view and from the perspective of making the inspection data useful for knowledge mining.

Denna rapport beskriver en kartläggning av byggherrarnas insats i ett antal genomförda bostadsprojekt inom ramen för Byggkostnadsforums verksamhet. Syftet är att kartlägga de faktorer som har varit väsentliga i genomförda byggprojekt och som hindrat respektive gett stöd för byggherrens ambitioner att utveckla och effektivisera byggprocessen. Byggherrens två beskrivna roller, som ansvarig för byggprocessen och som förändringsagent, diskuteras och belyses inledningsvis. Framförallt lyfts skillnaderna i de två olika roller fram. Skillnader som kan vara av betydelse i diskussionen kring vad byggherrens roll skall vara. Vidare belyses de faktorer som byggherrarna själv upplever som problematiska för en förändring av byggprocessen. Resultatet visar att bristen på närvaro av byggherren i yggprocessen påverkar framförallt de individuella agerandena. Avslutningsvis presenteras resultat av intervjuer med byggherrar som deltagit i genomförda pilotprojekt. Resultat av studien visar på att projekten upplevs som lyckade, men däremot är orsakerna till framgången inte lika väl beskriven. Fokus i avrapporteringarna ligger på att beskriva produkten som framtagits, vägen dit (processen) är inte i samma utsträckning redovisad. Skall byggherren kunna agera som en förändringsagent behöver byggherrarnas mentala bild av byggprocessen förändras mot ett mer processorienterat synsätt.