published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

Briefing, where a construction client conveys his / her needs and aspirations to the design team, is described as the first and most important step in the process of delivering a building or other physical infrastructure. Due to the significant commitment of resources, it is recommended that clients carefully define and examine their needs in terms of project requirements, before and during briefing. Nevertheless, briefing is subject to many practical limitations. Many clients may overlook important aspects of briefing and various problems such as delays and cost overruns may ensue. Although the literature shows a substantial amount of studies that have addressed some briefing problems, briefing is still reported to pose continuing problems in the construction industry. Given the importance of improving the conceptualisation and implementation of briefing, a 'collaborative briefing approach' was developed in this study to improve the briefing process and its outputs, with particular reference to large-scale infrastructure projects, which involve multiple interfaces with many stakeholders. The above approach is designed to empower the traditionally mobilised briefing team to work collaboratively with a large group of multi-disciplinary stakeholders as an integrated briefing team in the form of a virtual organisation through a shared digital workspace created on a computer network. The workspace enables all members to work together remotely and asynchronously so as to achieve greater stakeholder participation in briefing. Since stakeholders contribute in bringing professional knowledge, experience and creativity to briefing, the enhanced stakeholder participation will increase their inputs and result in more fruitful briefing outputs. In this study, a comprehensive survey was first conducted to investigate and compare the strengths and weaknesses of common briefing practices in the Hong Kong construction industry, so as to establish a theoretical foundation for the research. An ‘Integrated Collaborative Briefing Methodology’ (INTERCOM) was developed to translate the described approach into a set of actionable methods and job plans for practical use. The INTERCOM comprises of five components: (i) a value based briefing methodology, (ii) a collaborative briefing job plan, (iii) an integrated briefing team, (iv) a collaborative briefing platform, and (v) facilitation service. The first four components were developed and validated by a group of well experienced multi-disciplinary industry practitioners. The fifth component merits a separate research and development exercise. The validation results reveal that the concept of collaborative briefing approach and the design of the INTERCOM methodology were well supported by the practitioners. In addition, it was concluded that the methodology would contribute to improve the briefing process by facilitating team management, enhancing requirement definition and promoting consensus building. It also improved requirement comprehensiveness, decision transparency, decision reliability, and decision satisfaction, as well as the value and quantity of the requirements specified in the brief. The validation also highlights some practical limitations including potential political barriers, time constraints, specialist facilitator and resources limitations. Moreover, the net benefits of the developed ‘collaborative briefing approach’ are concluded to be very worthwhile, both in principle and for practical purposes. The additional significance of this study is that it researched and developed a "panoramic view" of briefing practices from a practical perspective, linked the knowledge of briefing to the domain of collaboration through a “collaborative briefing approach” and developed the framework for a new generation of ICT systems for supporting and substantially improving the briefing process. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

Opinions from society have become increasingly important in the development of public infrastructure projects as governments and organizations place greater emphasis on public consultation and engagement efforts. With a developing trend around the world (including in Hong Kong) towards greater public involvement in the decision-making processes for public infrastructure projects, it is imperative that decision-makers give sufficient consideration into the needs and concerns from different sectors of society. Inability to do so can lead to project delays, protests and litigation. Existing public consultation and engagement exercises often attract those with the loudest voices or with special interests / motives (political, financial, etc.). Moreover, comments and feedback collected from public consultation and engagement events are often not systematically organized and codified for use as reference in future projects. This leads to the loss of potentially valuable lessons when preparing for new projects. Public engagement, addressing the needs of society and social capital are mostly looked at from the social sciences perspective. Research in these areas focusing on infrastructure development and construction remain limited. Furthermore, there is currently no comprehensive approach and strategy on addressing the needs of society to continuously capture the lessons learned from previous projects. Previous research work on stakeholder engagement in construction focused on analyzing and resolving conflicts between stakeholders; stakeholder identification and prioritization of engagement items based on ethical practices; and integration of project management and asset management teams for providing better feedback on end-user needs. However, these studies did not address some fundamental problems in stakeholder engagement such as the lack of participation from a larger, more representative audience; the need to proactively engage certain groups or sectors of society that are most severely impacted by a project; and identifying the connection between the public and other construction stakeholders to illustrate how the rest of society can contribute and relate to a public infrastructure project. This Study aims to: i) develop an Integrative Approach that can help decision-makers of public infrastructure projects better anticipate, consider and subsequently address the needs and concerns of society when planning and designing public infrastructure projects by empowering stakeholders with knowledge and lessons learned from previous experiences; ii) demonstrate how a broad range of project stakeholders, including the public and various groups in society, can be embraced and connected through mobilization and utilization of social capital; and iii) illustrate the facilitation of knowledge exchange between the various stakeholders of a public infrastructure project. Through a comprehensive research process involving a combination of literature review, interviews with relevant experts, observations at public engagement events in Hong Kong, organizing a public engagement event in collaboration with an NGO, conducting an empirical case study and hosing a workshop with construction industry experts, the Integrative Approach to Addressing Societal Needs was developed, which consist of a Stakeholder Knowledge Transfer (SKT) model, a Relational Knowledge Base (RKB), as well as a set of Strategies and Implementation Measures for putting the SKT model and RKB into practice. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Also available online.

Inefficient industrial policies in the 1970’s led to the growth of privatization since the late 1970’s. Apart from the general trend of privatization worldwide, budgetary distress (1999-2003) after the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-8) obliged the Hong Kong government to adopt extensive privatization of public assets and services to increase income and reduce expenditure, including privatizing the construction, ownership and management of infrastructure projects. However, obstacles to efficient privatization abound, and it is suggested that incentive conflicts in privatizations may result in poorly performing or even failed transactions. Following a literature review, it is suggested that inefficient privatization seem to be present in complex and highly asset specific projects. The review suggests that asset specificity could also be an obstacle to efficient transactions. In project finance, however, it has been shown that asset specificity could be used strategically to manage agency incentive conflicts. It is thus argued that highly specific fixed assets privatization transactions may be incentive inefficient if incentive conflicts are unchecked. Since asset specificity has been used particularly in the project finance field to manage agency incentive conflicts, this study investigates the effect of high asset specificity in facilitating incentive efficient privatization of highly specific fixed infrastructure assets. The proposition that high asset specificity contributes significantly to incentive efficient privatization of fixed infrastructure assets is examined using the case study methodology. Incentive efficiency is taken to mean clear identification of incentive conflicts, clear measures taken to manage the conflicts, and clear measures taken to “minimize” costs incurred in managing such conflicts. A fourth concept, a transaction's "internal coherence" is a subjective consideration of the mutually reinforcing functioning of these measures whilst drawing on asset specificity for additional effectiveness. An exploratory case study, the Western Harbour Crossing (WHC) Build Operate Transfer privatization, a highly specific cross harbour tunnel in Hong Kong, was analyzed. Evidence was sought through desk research of published secondary case material, aimed at confirming or otherwise the proposition. Three major sources of information, namely the concession agreement and allocation of property rights, corporate structure and financing and operational matters, were considered, following a structured transaction analysis framework. Incentive conflicts and corresponding management mechanisms are pointed out, and it is discovered that asset specificity has salient effects on the management of incentive conflicts in WHC. Since asset specificity was used strategically in the design of transaction governance mechanisms, asset specificity contributed substantially to enforce property rights and monitor incentive conflicts. Furthermore, the three concepts of incentive efficiency seem well coordinated. Thus it was argued that transaction governance in WHC was internally coherent. The presence of the four concepts of incentive efficiency was considered convincing evidence to conclude that high asset specificity contributes significantly to incentive efficient privatization of fixed infrastructure assets. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Master / Master of Philosophy

While regional infrastructures are being actively pursued by the Hong Kong governments in recent years, the impacts brought by the cross-boundary infrastructures have not been comprehensively scrutinized. This study is aimed to fill in the research gap by examining the interrelationships between regional planning, transport planning and real estate economics. As concerns on accessibility and transport convenience are key factors determining the price of a flat, transport improvements made to the residential area should lead to an increase in residential property prices. On the other hand, as regional infrastructures are often justified with their impacts in fostering further economic development, retail rental prices in the service coverage areas should experience positive impacts. Therefore, changes in price gradient of residential properties, and that in transaction prices of commercial properties will be both taken into consideration in understanding the impacts of regional infrastructures. When examining these impacts, an additional dimension will be incorporated to investigate the impacts across the initial stage, planning stage, post-feasibility stage, construction stage as well as the post-project completion stage of the projects. Hedonic pricing models will be applied in this study for assessment. The empirical case will focus on the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Western Corridor (SWC) project and the associated areas of Tin Shui Wai, Yuen Long and Tusen Wan, to obtain the relevant data to understand the interrelationships across the different stages of the SWC project. In the research finding, as far as residential property sales are concerned, it is observed that a general decrease in property prices has been experienced from the commencement of the SWC, as a result of the combination of factors such as construction pollution and catchment problems. While for the retail rental prices within the study scope, a contrasting uprising trend has been instead generally observed, attributed to the differences in the accessibility to the areas and the availability of business opportunities experienced in the focus area during the various stages of the project. The empirical results reveal that cross-boundary cooperation in coordinating time of infrastructural project completion is exceptionally crucial. If the coordination of the infrastructures bridging the two sides of the borders are not coordinated well, the problem of SWC in the early stage of commissioning will happen again, causing the unavailability for areas connected to the border to enjoy the business opportunities, economic and spatial efficiency in the area. Also, the residential property prices may even be driven down by the cross-boundary infrastructure, which is considered to be strategic in fostering economic development and enhancing transport efficiency upon regional integration of the Pearl River Delta cities. Therefore, careful planning and regional coordination are needed to enhance the efficiency of the cross-boundary infrastructure, so as to achieve its objectives to facilitate economic growth, social harmony and environmental sustainability. / published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning