Embarking on a construction project means taking a risk. Project risk management (PRM) provides an effective approach to improve decision making and minimise project risk. Project risks may not possess the same level of significance for different countries, markets and projects. Current research on PRM in China has been rather theoretical, addressing technology issues. Considering the current practice in the Chinese construction industry (CCl), the PRM needs understanding and support from the industry and a mature market environment. This research aims to establish PRM strategies for identifying and adopting the best practice to provide practical guidelines for the CCl, thus improving the PRM, motivating the reform of the Chinese construction market, and enabling the CCl to function in the competitive environment of globalisation. An extensive literature review and a number of case studies for construction projects in China have been conducted, addressing issues closely related to the research. A systematic analysis is employed and developed for project planning and decision making. Contractual risks are considered as the first step and catalyst for improving the PRM in the CCl. Built on the findings from the case studies and analysis, the research puts forward a framework of contractual risk management to study the concept, identification and classification of contractual risks. Contract interfaces are analysed for contractual risk management under various project procurement routes (PPRs). The potentially large improvements to the PRM and reform of the Chinese construction market from the introduction and application of innovative PPRs and their contractual conditions are addressed. Two mathematical models -a probabilistic analysis model and an effective information entropy model for key contractual risks -are presented. The validity and applicability of the models are demonstrated with sample data for the CCl. Detailed recommendations and guidelines for the implementation of the proposed strategies are suggested.

For many years, government backed reports have continued to deplore the poor performance of the construction industry with many projects failing to exceed or live up to the expectations of clients. There is a common belief that the culture of the construction industry is one of the factors that has an impact on its performance. The culture of the construction industry at the project level is often associated with such attributes as fragmentation, antagonism, mistrust, poor communication, short-term mentality, blame culture, casual approaches to recruitment, machismo and sexism. These attributes are in turn associated with project outcomes like litigation, poor health and safety performance, and inferior quality. Whilst such associations are helpful to the extent that they focus attention on the failings of the industry, and point to aspects that need to be improved, they are arbitrary and often based on no more than anecdotal evidence, and as such do not provide a systematic basis for assessing the real impact of culture on performance. This research was thus undertaken to look for empirical evidence of a relationship between cultural orientations and project performance outcomes. Adopting social cognitive theory and defining culture as the unique configuration of solutions – embodied in attitudes, behaviours and conditions – that a construction project organisation and its members adopt in dealing with problems at the project level, a quantitative research methodology was employed in investigating the culture within the project coalition, also referred to in this thesis as the construction project organisation (CPO). CPOs were profiled to determine their cultural orientations. Several project performance indicators were also assessed and the relationships between these performance measures and the cultural orientations were examined. Analysis revealed five principal dimensions of culture along which project organisations differ. These dimensions are workforce orientation, performance orientation, team orientation, client orientation and project orientation. With the exception of performance and client orientation, the other dimensions of culture were found to be significantly associated with project performance outcomes. These associations were modelled using multiple regression, and from these models it can be inferred inter alia that projects with higher workforce orientation have better participant satisfaction and innovation and learning outcomes. Projects with higher team orientation have better participant satisfaction and health & safety and quality outcomes. Likewise projects with higher project orientation have better health & safety and quality outcomes. Although causality cannot be assumed, these findings support the thesis that culture matters. It is therefore recommended that project participants – and in particular contractors, devote more effort and resources towards improving the orientations of their CPOs in respect of the dimensions of culture identified as having significant association with project performance outcomes, particularly workforce, team and project orientations.

Modem construction projects, characterised by severe fragmentation from both geographical and disciplinary perspectives, require accurate and timely sharing of information. Traditional information management systems operate on a textual basis and do not always consider the meaning of information. Current web-based information management technology supports information communication to a reasonable extent but still has many limitations, such as the lack of semanticawareness and poor interoperability of software applications. This research argues that Semantic Web technologies can enhance the efficiency of information management in construction projects by providing content-based and contextspecific information to project team members, and supporting the interoperation between independent applications. A Semantic Web-based Information Management System (Sams) for construction projects was created to demonstrate the above concept. The approach adopted for this research involved creating a new framework for Semantic Web-based information management. This extensible system framework enables the system to merge diverse construction information sources, ontologies and end-user applications into the overall Semantic Web environment. The semantic components developed in this research included a project document's annotation model, a project partner's user profile model, and several lightweight IFC-based ontologies for documented information management. This supports intelligent information management and interoperation between heterogeneous information sources and applications. The system framework, prototype annotations, and ontologies were applied to a concept demonstrator that illustrated how the project documents were annotated, accessed, converted, categorised, and retrieved on the basis of content and context. The demonstrator (named SwiMS) acts as a middleware, which mediates between user needs and the information sources. Information in project partners' documents were mapped and accessed intelligently. This involved the use of rule-based filtering and thus prevented the users from being overwhelmed by irrelevant documents or missing relevant ones in heterogeneous and distributed information sources. It also enabled the adaptation of documents to individual contexts and preferences, and the dynamic composition of various document management services. Evaluation of the system framework and demonstrator revealed that the system enhances the efficiency of construction information management, with the three most beneficial areas being project knowledge management, collaborative design and communication between project team members. The Swims annotations, ontologies and deductive rules are important technologies provide an innovative approach to managing construction information. These enable the information in construction documents, both structured documents and un-structured documents, to be interpretable by computers. This ensures the efficiency and precision of construction information management.

Presently, within the human resource management (HRM) genre and including the construction management discipline, the identification and development of appropriate performance measures is seen as the only viable means for validating and engendering managerial excellence. There is also a growing awareness that appropriate predictive modelling practices can help engender the identification and development of these measures. Against the background that project-based sectors of the construction industry in developing countries need to adopt a proactive approach towards recognising and embedding performance measures in HRM practices, this thesis addresses the development of a model for predicting the performance of project managers (PMs) in mass house building projects (MHBPs) in Ghana. A literature review of the significance of performance measures in the HRM genre is first presented including an evaluation of the methodologies for measuring the performance of PMs. This is followed by a review of research and development in the management of human resources in the construction industry in developing countries including Ghana. Informed by the literature, an appropriate theoretical framework is adopted which draws on the organisational psychology theory of job performance, the conventional wisdom in project success criteria and an emerging framework of project lifecycle. Subsequently, a competency-based multidimensional conceptual model is developed. The conceptual model reflects both the elements of performance behaviours and outcomes in predicting the performance of PMs at the conceptual, design, tender, procurement, construction and operational phases of the project lifecycle. Adopting positivism as an appropriate research paradigm, structured questionnaire survey is used to elicit the relevant data from property developers in Ghana for the construction phase of the project lifecycle. Subsequently the data is analysed using one-sample t-test, factor analysis and multiple regression analysis (stepwise). From a broad range of competency-based measures used as independent variables, it is found that, the best predictors of the PMs’ performance at the “construction phase” of MHBPs are: job knowledge in site layout techniques for repetitive construction works; dedication in helping works contractors to achieve works programme; job knowledge of appropriate technology transfer for repetitive construction works; effective time management practices on the house-units; ability to provide effective solution to conflicts while maintaining good relationships; ease with which the PM is approachable by works contractors; and volunteering to help works contractors solve personal problems. These independent variables explained 74.4% of the variance in the model (at p < 0.0005). Validation of the model confirmed its goodness of fit and hence predictive accuracy. The findings suggest that at the construction phase of MHBPs, PMs who exhibit these behavioural competencies are likely to achieve higher levels of performance. Accordingly, PMs who aspire to achieve better managerial performance outcome on MHBPs should strive towards developing and improving these competencies. It is contended that the developed model could be used by property developers for the selection and recruitment of potential PMs and also for developing appropriate training requirements towards best practice improvement in the implementation of MHBPs. While the study focuses on Ghana, there is the potential for the model to be adopted for use by other developing countries towards the advancement of improved HRM activities in project management practice.