Editorial

Citation

McCaffer, R. (2006), "Editorial", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 13 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ecam.2006.28613caa.001

Editorial

Volume 13 Number 3 of ECAM is almost the North American edition, with ten of the 14 authors that produced the six papers coming from either Canada or the USA. The breakdown is six authors from Canada, four from the USA, two from the UK, one from Zambia and one from Australia. One of the Canadian papers has an industrial author together with academic colleagues, and one paper has two institutions involved in Zambia and the UK.

The range of topics is widening to include high-level finance and the recurring theme in two papers is flexibility. The march in the use of information technology also features in internet-based management systems and the automation of permits, and finally I think we have a new word – at least for ECAM – “psychophysics”.

Muya, Price and Edum-Fotwe argue that the development of sub-Saharan Africa is a great challenge facing the global community, and that one of the key elements in achieving the development goals is the development of human resources skills in an effective and sustainable way. The authors use Zambia as a country case study and survey the quality and availability of construction craft skills. This work provides information and advice for policy makers and for construction companies and is a valuable contribution to development strategies.

Moselhi and Alkass alert us to the latest developments in project control by attaching project control to an internet-based database management system. Project control depends on the availability of data, and as the technology of databases evolves so does project control: the critical advantage of an internet database is that the database can be easily and remotely accessed.

Abroleda and Abraham tackle the strategic issue of capital investment in infrastructure projects. The authors articulate a methodology for the evaluation of flexible strategies in determining capital investments. Underlying the approach is deterioration curves of infrastructure systems and real option analysis. This is a rare paper for ECAM, as it is not often that finance issues at this level are addressed.

Ford and Bhargav argue in favour of flexible strategies in the form of options to increase project value in uncertain conditions. The authors are pushing at the frontier of project managing under uncertainty by using and valuing options with different levels of project management quality. The managerial and research implications are discussed. This is a subject under development and may attract other papers in the same area.

Al-Hussein, Kumar, Sharma and Mah offer us a knowledge-based automated development permit approval process in the housing industry. The authors successfully argue that despite great steps forward in the technical side of residential housing development and the size of the spend on housing, the permit approach system is still traditional and manual. This is not an uncommon experience, as legal processes worldwide trail well behind technical advances and the use of information technology. The authors explore the key issues and propose a methodology for automating permit approval using expert systems, database management and computer aided design. This looks like a suggestion that is well overdue.

Forsythe introduces us to the concept of psychophysics, which is the conversion of consumer perceptions into physical tolerances. Trialling of the approach was based on tiling in 50 residential properties. Amongst the findings was that joint width can vary by up to 70 per cent before it becomes unacceptable to the consumer. This is a topic worth developing, and is of value to developers and contractors. The fact that the trial was based on tiling was particularly interesting to me in that I have just had one bathroom re-tiled in the last month and I have taken time to measure the joint width and there is almost no variation, the width being controlled by plastic spacers. I am about to have another bathroom re-tiled and will be in a position to have informed discussion with my tiler.

Ronald McCaffer