The UK government has set ambitious targets for the construction industry to maintain global competitiveness. It aims to remove barriers, increase productivity, improve competition, at the same time benefiting the customers by lowering water bills. Through the water industry regulators, Ofwat, Defra and DWI, the privatised water industry saw competition opened for business and non-household water customers in 2017. Knowledge has become known as the major resource organisations must have to maintain a competitive advantage. Management of this organisational knowledge, commonly referred to as Knowledge Management (KM), creates business value generating competitive advantage, enabling creation, communication and application of various knowledge to achieve business goals. Although the UK water industry is information and knowledge rich, there is limited research in the KM subject within this industry. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore, examine and understand how knowledge is being managed in the UK water industry. A qualitative case study was used for the collection and analysis of data with the results obtained through review of water company supply chain processes, documents, observations and semi structured interviews. Organisational culture and the need to maintain and retain business competitiveness was the major drive for implementation of KM, as found in this study. The water industry and its supply chain are changing their goals and objectives to align them with KM practices, identifying needed knowledge, creating KM resources, sharing and fostering knowledge through information technology tools. The study concludes that the knowledge rich water industry has put in place measures and processes fundamental to KM and will eventually take the next step for its full implementation. Organisational leadership and management were the initiating and driving positive KM cultures, placing knowledge as the major project resource. The current drive to create, foster and provide resources for KM through organisational culture changes and making use of information technology should continue to be invested in. This will allow organisations to maintain, sustain and increase competitiveness, improve productivity whilst meeting business goals. The advancement of information technology should also be taken advantage of as an enabler for implementing of KM strategies.

The construction industry has been notoriously known for being a male dominated industry with no room for change. As years have passed by, the industry has sparked a revolution of an increase of women joining the ranks. However, the industry is still known for its inequality and lack of diversity. The aim of this research was to investigate equality amongst ethnic minorities (EM’s) in the construction industry, in particular female EM’s, and establish the root causes of the lack of diversity. The sample of respondents consisted of construction professionals from all levels, comprising of 15 UK companies ranging from public to private sector firms, large, medium, and small companies. The findings showed 15 challenges and barriers faced by EM women in the UK. The main challenges were personal perceptions of negative treatment but a positive view on the collective of EM’s women, EM’s still believe that they are not treated equally in comparison to their white colleagues, the ingrained stigma of construction still being considered as a ‘man’s world’ and cultural pressure and opposition from families that still exists in ethnic communities. It was also found that EM’s have differing views on treatment and perceptions of the industry. Nevertheless, it was found that the construction industry has made changes. However, it needs to continually improve in order to open up the way for a more diverse workforce that is inclusive and fair for women from all walks of life.

Investing in construction projects is not without risks. Risk management is considered an important aspect when making decisions in the construction industry—as it determines whether the construction project will be successful or will fail. Effective decisions are made based on certain predetermined criteria such as investigating the construction project in detail, generating good alternatives to manage risk, exploring the best options, etc., whereas, decisions can fail when the best suitable alternatives to manage risk are not made clear at the onset of a construction project, or logical assessment of project-specific criteria are not considered part of the process. As a result, risks can possibly have an adverse effect on the delivery of construction projects with respect to its objectives. Therefore, this chapter will present the numerous tools and techniques that are available to support the various phases of the risk management process in construction projects.

The importance of the construction industry in Saudi Arabia cannot be overemphasised as it provides the infrastructure required for other sectors of the economy to grow, thus reflecting the level of economic development in the country. However, in Saudi Arabia, the construction industry is recognized to be the one of the most hazardous with high levels of accidents and fatalities. This research aimed to examine construction Health and Safety practices in Saudi Arabia, and to identify means of facilitating improvements within the practices. It also discusses about safety climate. The research adopted a quantitative approach in which a survey questionnaire was distributed and returned at 60% response rate. The survey data was analysed through descriptive statistics using the SPSS statistical software. The findings showed that the Saudi construction industry has made improvements in Health and Safety standards, however there are opportunities for further improvements. There are on-going efforts to maintain reasonable Health and Safety standards of employees on-site, their conditions off-site particularly those of migrant employees on fixed term contract labour are difficult. Unpaid wages and lack of welfare facilities contribute to physical and psychological stresses that are linked to impaired on-site performance, lack of motivation, lack of productivity and a lack of interest in adhering to Health and Safety guidelines. The study concludes that it is possible to improve construction Health and Safety through effective enforcement of existing Health and Safety laws, enacting legislation for off-site Health and Safety for migrant workers, maintaining a fund for social security and improving regulation of commercial and contractual transactions. This study contributes to knowledge in the areas of government policy and decision making in health and safety implementation for the construction industry.

The Building Information Model concepts includes a range of IT tools supporting the collaborative processes in an organisation. This approach allows all stakeholders to have an integrated system in which editing and retrieving up to date information on shared models will become easier changing the businesses processes. This paper will be presenting a review of research on the Building Information Model in practice. The Building Information Model has been around for some time and is becoming more popular as of its mandate in the UK back in April 2016. This research is based on case studies on BIM in practice in the transport infrastructure sector. The methodology for this research is a case study on a Tier 1 contractor in the UK who are using BIM as one of their processes. A brief overview of BIM will be explained and the key findings in the research will be highlighted identifying the business value of BIM, the results will demonstrate how BIM is being practiced within the organisation and to improve design management, the challenges with the implementation of the new processes will be outlined, this paper will also show how the construction company have utilised the adoption of BIM to mitigate and manage communication issues within their projects. Research has shown that the key communication and management problems such as loss of documentation, poor communication and quality can be mitigated with the use of BIM. Finding out these challenges will allow the issues found along with the potential of BIM to be outlined and allows the conclusion that BIM is the future of construction. This research allows professionals and academics to understand the process of the Building Information Model and how it can benefit the infrastructure sector. The research will provide challenges faced by the case studies which will enable readers to overcome these challenges as they are aware of what to expect, hence finding solutions.

The UK Government BIM implementation 2016 target for all public projects formed the major driver for the construction industry to upskill and learn new ways of working. The water industry is a private sector that has no mandate to implement BIM and would also benefit from its use. Research has identified that fragmentation and inefficiency still existed in the water industry project delivery processes. These issues can be addressed by harnessing the collaboration that BIM brings by using emerging information technology. The UK water industry has had little research in the use of BIM in the project delivery processes over the years. Therefore, the aim of the research is to explore and examine BIM use in the water construction industry, as well as understand the challenges faced and how they are being addressed to improve project delivery processes. The qualitative case study approach was adopted for the collection and analysis of data which was carried out by undertaking observations, document reviews and semi structured interviews. A water company and a design and build contractor on a framework formed the research sample. The design and build contractor was also part of other water industry frameworks. The research findings identified that there are similarities between the water industry and the other infrastructure sectors in the use of BIM realizing benefits of collaborative working. These benefits included improved information quality, cost reductions, shorter programme durations and greater collaboration. However, BIM was yet to be fully understood and used which led to challenges of overcoming and changing organizational cultures, developing levels of BIM expertise, data and information control, interoperability and data entry. The research also identified that the water company was lagging in BIM use despite noticeable benefits shown by its supply chain. The paper concludes by identifying that the water industry supply chain has taken positive steps and started to benefit from BIM use. However, more needs to be done as BIM is still in its infancy facing challenges associated with changing organizational cultures. The research recommends that the water industry and its supply chain should continue to invest more resources in implementing BIM to achieve the benefits realized by other sectors with NBS and CITB becoming more visible. This should include staff training, creating standardized approaches, processes to harness the collaborative nature of BIM.

Smart governance is a key factor when considering the successful implementation of smart cities strategies. Smart cities create an extensive variety of issues and challenges that often poorly organised to deal with by their respective governments as they grow in size and complexity. Therefore, developed countries are creating their infrastructure on the basis of smart governance and sustainable development to improve the quality of life for more than a decade now. This paper explores through a systematic review of the key challenges and issues that governance of smart cities is facing on this network performance by focusing on the governance models, with a particular interest on how these can contribute to successful smart city network governance. However, the government departments seem not to engage the public in every activity they do. Sometimes due to security and political reasons they try to maintain a distance from the public; this shows the issues within the existing smart cities governance model. This paper concludes that although there are considerable smart city dossiers in literature, their governance model and structural variations development across regions is lacking.

The implementation and usage of Building Information Modelling (BIM) on construction projects affects procurement and the supply chain activities. BIM process is changing the traditional modus operandi of the construction industry where many projects have failed to achieve its objectives due to ineffective stakeholder management. An on-going PhD study explores how to mitigate delays and conflicts between stakeholders on BIM implemented projects in the UK. This paper is based on critical literature review and primary data collection through semi-structured interviews. Findings from the literature review show that BIM publication such as PAS 1192-2:2013, Employers Information Requirements (EIR) and BIM Execution Plan (BEP) sets out clear requirements for the coordination and collaboration process for the BIM model production. This provides a huge potential to enhance and facilitate communication among stakeholders. This helps in mitigating conflicts among stakeholders. The findings from the interviewees shows that BIM can help project teams to proactively satisfy stakeholders by engaging them early on in the construction process and seek solutions to avoid or minimise delays and conflicts. The paper concludes that it has culture, trust, people, technology, communication and structures are at its core for managing stakeholders within BIM projects.

The study aims to establish a risk assessment methodology to improve the performance of building construction projects especially in developing countries. A survey of randomly selected samples to evaluate risk factors experienced by construction practitioners was conducted based on the likelihood of occurrence and impacts on projects. A response rate of 53% comprising 305 contractors and subcontractors and 38 clients was received. Risk Acceptability Matrix (RAM) was used to rank/prioritise risk factors in order to determine critical risks that could affect building construction projects especially in developing countries. Bayesian Belief Network was then constructed by structural learning and used to appreciate the relationship amongst the risk factors. Results showed that critical risks affecting building construction projects were mainly improper construction methods, poor communication between involved parties, supplies of defective materials, delayed payment in contracts, fluctuation of materials prizes and unsuitable leadership style.