Construction procurement selection: comparative study of public sector vs. private sector

Construction procurement selection has been a major research area in recent past. Lots of researches have considered procurement selection by considering the overall construction industry as a one unit. Almost all the previous studies have identified the factors affecting procurement selection but a client wise consideration has not been carried out (Public sector vs. Private sector). Eg: Love et al, (1996), Masterman, (1992), NEDO et al, (1985), Luu et al., (2003), Chan et al, (2001). Since public sector and private sector play equally important roles in the construction industry, factors affecting procurement selection should be separately identified for each sector. Major reason for that is, although there are lots of procurement selection parameters have been identified, the importance level of those factors to the public sector selection may differ from private sector selection. That importance level can be very vital in selecting different types of procurement. Three rounds of Delphi surveys were conducted, to extract a set of exclusive factors and their levels of influence on public sector and private sector and to identify the suitability of available construction procurement options for each sector, with participation of a panel of experts who are engaged in procurement selection in the construction industry

Economies of off-site concrete construction with BIM

Off-site concrete construction (OSC) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) are certainly not new to the construction industry. However, current construction trends, increasing awareness in efficient construction, the emerging interest in BIM featured technologies and the growing effect of off-site concrete construction have caused many practitioners to consider more on it. The BIM technology is still not properly practiced in Sri Lankan construction industry. In spite of the benefits of off-site concrete construction method, several problems and challenges have been unsolved in this regard and it costs extra money and time to be spent. This paper analyses the problems in off-site construction and the available BIM featured solutions to overcome these challenges. The research was carried out through interviews with stakeholders with different type of contribution to the off-site construction industry. The major problems and challenges identified from the interviews have analysed with the available solutions from BIM featured technology. The results revealed that, BIM has already provided solutions for most of the problems in off-site construction. There are possibilities to solve even more issues if BIM is used with add-on features. Still some problems regarding off-site construction remain unsolved