• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.550-557
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• 2009

The concepts of 'sustainable development', 'sustainable construction' and 'green building' have been elevated to priority levels in all types and phases of construction project development worldwide. Consultants and contractors are now required to seriously consider the impact of their operations on the natural environment and the society, and consequently adopt sustainable construction practices in the development process to minimize and mitigate the negative impacts of their activities. However, existing sustainability rating tools apply to the design, post-construction and operation phases of a building; no tool exists for the rating of the performance of the contractor or the project team at the construction phase. This study aimed to develop a model for evaluating the sustainability of construction operations, drawing on the global best practice standards on sustainability. Practical applications of the model were carried out through case studies to evaluate the performances of fifteen construction firms in New Zealand. The developed model and the outcomes of the case studies were presented, including potential areas of weaknesses, strengths, constraints to achievement or adoption of sustainable construction practices and areas for improvement in the operations of the firms. The successful application of the developed model in practice shows its usefulness and ease of application. It is therefore recommended for adoption as a simple but effective system for measuring and reporting on sustainability performance or sustainability of construction operations of firms in New Zealand and elsewhere.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.169-182
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• 2012

In the past, a strategic management of work demands has been increasingly challenged to design-build (DB) firms. Such a management is capable of providing sufficient profitable impact of a project on them. Total project profit is mainly related to actual resources, work completion time, amount of rework, and costs. The degree of recycling work packages in the DB project delivery system is used as a measure of the quality of the performed work. However, there are few models available to evaluate the impact of a demand management strategy on the DB firms and to predict its behavior. We propose a decision-making support model as an aid for assessing the amount of rework and for predicting project profit resulting in a convincible demand management strategy. This model is constructed by using a dynamic feedback approach that can analyze the problems arising in complex managerial systems. For the purpose of illustration, widely acceptable strategies were applied into the model to explore their impacts on the DB firms. The results indicate that the model is helpful for the managers in selecting the most appropriate demand management strategy for successfully achieving their objectives.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.47-64
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• 2011

In the IT(Information Technology) service, which supply the solutions related to business management and IT, network construction and application trends, the related service business are increasing according to the enlargement of project scope and the diversity of project types as the need of service customers. In this paper, I propose the significant effect factors on the network management of IT service firms. The key findings are from the analysis result about 94 IT service firms as follows. For implementation the high performance of network management in the IT service firms, the strategic elements in the process of network construction are more conceived highly than the basic element in them. Also the perspective of project objectives are considered than the nominal perspectives in the partner selection process. The competency of partner firms', the cooperation process between the partner firms', network relation operation management and network relation structure management are the significant effect factors of network management.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.1023-1029
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• 2009

Intellectual capital is one of the most valuable assets of any enterprise. This empirical investigation examines the causal relationship between intellectual capital and the performance of architecture firms. More than 100 architecture firms across Taiwan have each been assessed for the levels of human capital, structural capital, relational capital, and business performance. The results suggest that the architecture firms exhibit higher levels of relational capital. However, the firms indicate relatively low levels of human capital. Additionally, the results from the correlation analysis suggest that all the four measures (human capital, structural capital, relational capital, and business performance) are highly correlated. The findings from the path analysis also indicate that human capital may influence the performance of architecture firms via structural capital and relational capital.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.124-132
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• 2019

Notwithstanding the crucial contribution of international construction industry in the national economy, previous studies on international construction contracts had mainly focused either on trend investigation or market share analysis at a point of time. Fundamentally, the international construction industry is fragmented due to its project-based nature, is heterogeneous that has to involve different firms from diverse fields, and tends to be dynamic according to macroeconomic conditions. Therefore, the combination of static and dynamic analyses is necessary to understand its underlying structure. This study analyzes the market structure of international construction contracts using the data of 9,173 projects awarded by Korean construction firms from 2000 to 2017. Industry-level performance data is analyzed both in static (market concentration) and dynamic (market mobility and instability) methods, and detailed methodology is also provided. Consequently, the static analysis result shows that the competition among Korean construction firms has been more intensified, and the dynamic analysis result indicates that market positions of Korean construction firms are unstable and vulnerable in most of the regions and the sectors. The combination of static and dynamic indices is found to be helpful to understand the underlying aspects of market structure and can be utilized as an effective strategic reference in the highly competitive market.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.381-386
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• 2020

Global construction and engineering consulting (E&C) firms are actively seeking entry into overseas markets based on loan projects from multilateral development banks to provide a basis for entry into overseas markets and sustainable growth. Bids on these projects are competitive between global top firms in terms of the technical level and price due to the limited number of projects; thus, developing a successful partnership to complement competence has become an essential element to win bids. In this regard, many studies have analyzed enterprises through characteristic analyses or the derivation of influential factors from the past social networks based on social network analysis (SNA). However, few studies have been conducted to reflect the process of changes to analyze collaborative relationships. Thus, this study aims to identify dynamic changes in past social networks and develop a model that can predict changes in the relationships between E&C firms based on similarities or differences between firms, presenting a methodology to target firms for appropriate collaboration. The analysis results demonstrate that the sensitivity of the developed prediction model was 70.26%, which could accurately predict 163 out of 232 actual cooperative cases.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.93-100
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• 2011

As the construction management(CM) market has grown, so has the CM competition in the market place. Consequently, competent construction managers become a core part of CM firms' competitiveness. The objective of the study is to identify and discuss core competencies of construction mangers based on literature survey, Delphi Method and AHP. Among various competencies required for construction managers, skills for problem solving, trust and negotiation skills were identified as the crux of construction managers' competencies. A better understanding of construction managers' core competencies is very critical in terms of CM firms' training of construction managers and continuos self-improvement for construction managers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.199-203
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• 2009

After the construction participants system is abolished, expectations are high for its consequences such as liquidating paper-companies, holding back low price contracts, and improving multi-stepwise subcontract structure. However, the professional construction firms have been took responsibilities and obligations as businessmen employing the chief workmen and construction workers. For this reason, it is expected that they will be charged a great deal of expenses such as increase in labor management services and laborers, the occurrence of an retirement grants, insurance fees, etc. Since the hold on power of field managers are getting weaker toward the construction workers, it is most likely to have loss in efficiency of production in the long term. Therefore purpose of this research is to analyze difficulties and the point at issues with which professional construction firms are undergoing after abolishing the construction participants system by investigating on the actual condition in the field management. For this research, we got a grip on the actual condition and analyzed the rise of a primary factor on reinforced concrete construction.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.149-156
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• 2011

The performance measurement of construction firms is considered as a competitive advantage to develop and improve their performance to have place in the market and stay able to face the continuous challenge. Egyptian construction firms (ECF) started recently to adopt quality management system (QMS) as a way to develop and improve their performance as previous studies showed. However, measuring that performance to include all the firm's aspects in a competitive way is a crucial process for the ECF's culture. The research is trying to indicate the role of the QMS implementation in measuring performance (MP) through developing a model for measuring performance on the organization level, and explore its impact on the organization that adopt quality management system. This model is based on specific elements and their related indicators which have been derived from national approaches and models of measuring performance (benchmarking, quality awards and six sigma).Elements determination and the status of their real practice has been investigated through a questionnaire to a representative sample of ECF. This model determines the performance level (PL) of the organization that measured by a mean of a point system. Weights of the elements in the point system considered both the elements' importance in the international models and its real practice in the Egyptian construction firms. So, the final outcome of the model reveals the level of firm performance that helps the firm to identify the weak points against the strong ones, Confirm the priorities and identify new opportunities for developing, and Check the position of the company in the market among the others. Another questionnaire has been developed to be distributed on a group of Experts on measuring performance for the purpose of model validation. The majority of surveyed experts agreed that the proposed model can be applied effectively.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.122-130
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• 2013

As the level of competition has increased in the construction management market, it becomes a critical issue for CM firms to secure competitive edges. The objective of the study is to investigate elements of competitive strategy as perceived by CM firms and to discuss key features and implications. Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy Model was used as a framework to analyse the elements under three strategy categories. A major finding includes that Differentiation Strategy is generally perceived most important strategy category but, depending on the group to which a CM firm belongs, there exist a gap in the perception. However, regardless of the group, Cost Leadership is commonly considered least important strategy category. In particular, lowest-bidding strategy element showed the least importance. Understanding CM firms' perceptions on elements of competitive strategy provides an insight into CM firms' current strategy directions and can be useful for future tuning in a firms' own strategy.