Editorial

Citation

McCaffer, R. (2003), "Editorial", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 10 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ecam.2003.28610faa.001

Editorial

This issue (Vol. 10 No. 6) brings to an end the first decade of ECAM in which 280 papers have been published. These have been truly international drawn from all around the world. This edition is no different and we have six papers produced by 13 authors. The authors are from the USA, South Vietnam, Australia, Denmark, South Africa and Hong Kong, and if my memory is correct, only for the second time in ten years do we have an edition with no UK papers.

My interest in multi-institutional and multi-country papers is highlighted as we have one paper from two US institutions and one paper from Vietnam and Australia. Otherwise we have three single-authored papers, two three-authored papers and one four-authored paper. These are:

Carley, Goodrum, Haas and Borcherding assess the potential of multiple skills in one or more trades. As construction develops and traditional craft skills merge multi-skilling is seen as the way forward. The authors surveyed 700 non-union craft workers in the USA, 79 per cent were interested in learning more skills, 57 per cent were interested in learning the skills of other trades. The motivation was higher pay and continuous work. This is useful data in planning the labour supply for our future construction industry.

Tran, Malano and Thompson bring together the critical decision in asset management of asset renewals with the analytical technique of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). AHP has been used in many decision-making processes and this extends its application. The authors demonstrate how they used the technique to evaluate renewal priorities, in irrigation assets using the case of the La Khe irrigation scheme, Vietnam.

Koch explores the joining of IT and human resources to support the production of knowledge. The author's research studied two consulting engineering companies which has adopted knowledge management (KM).

Both companies KM strategies have a strong IT component. The paper presents a useful contrast between a large and medium-sized company as they develop the DM approach and this will be useful to others embarking on the same journey.

Karam claims that there is general sentiment against marketing amongst architectural professionals. This may be so in South Africa but it seems very pervasive elsewhere. The author surveyed architects in the Western Cape and reports on their marketing portfolio.

Attoh-Okine wishes to improve the estimates of productivity of equipment by the use of "rough set theory". As most are unfamiliar with "rough set theory" the author takes time to explain it and offers this paper as exploratory research into its application.

Palaneeswaran, Kumaraswamy and Ng argue that "best value" is a key objective in public sector projects and that this cannot be achieved without sound selection strategies. The authors present examples of "best value" procurement through the selection of contractor and consultant. They also present a structured "best value" based contractor selection framework. The selection of contractors and consultants is a recurring issue and this is the latest contribution as construction seeks the definitive best selection process.

Ron McCafferEditor