Editorial

Citation

Akintoye, A., Davis, P. and Holt, G. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, Vol. 17 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jfmpc.2012.37617caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, Volume 17, Issue 3

Welcome to issue number three, of volume 17 of the Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction (JFMPC ) – the final issue of 2012 and the last to include any papers that were not originally submitted via our ManuscriptCentral submission portal[1] that was launched at the start of this year.

The new submission process is working well and helping the editorial team to:

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  Encourage an increasing number of submissions, covering as broad range of the journal’s editorial remit as possible, from a diverse mix of countries.

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  Support a rigorous reviewing regime (that at this juncture means blind review by at least two expert referees) and provide authors constructive critique.

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  Encourage and manage a growing base of reviewers, as diverse as possible in terms of geographical location and expert specialisms; and perhaps most importantly from our potential authors’ point of view.

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  Facilitate as efficient reviewing process as possible that encourages shortest decision times and timely publishing of papers.

The latter aim will also be facilitated by our publishing papers on the journal web site from this issue forward using EarlyCite, well before each hard copy of the journal is printed and distributed.

While the new submission system has only been running for six months (at time of writing this Editorial), we thought it might be of interest to contributors, to offer some approximate data emanating from it. These must be viewed with caution, due to the short period of operation from which they were drawn.

ince the beginning of the year, we have attracted authors from Australia, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the UK. 80 per cent of submissions were classified as a “Research paper” and of these, 5 per cent were accepted; 75 per cent were invited to resubmit after minor or major revision; and 20per cent were rejected (some of the 75 per cent are under second round review, so this may mean overall rejection rate will increase). The remaining papers were classified as “Case study” (4 per cent of the total submitted); “Conceptual” (12 per cent); and “Genera review” (4 per cent). Among the last three categories combined, decision ratios were major/minor revision 60 per cent, accept 20 per cent and reject 20 per cent. A similar comment regarding re-review, equally applies to the latter. We repeat the earlier qualification regarding these being “preliminary” statistics, but hope they demonstrate our commitment to authors and reviewers outlined above. Of course, this time next year, we will be able to produce more reliable, but similar metrics. We can also report a pleasing upturn in the number of submissions with a property focus and it is hoped that this trend continues.

And so to the studies, authors and papers making up issue 17(3). This issue contains five papers, three relating to financial aspects of construction, one to the funding of construction (infrastructure) and one to the financial aspects of property.

In the first paper, Odeyinka, Lowe and Kaka visit the problem of cost flow forecasting. As the authors confirm at the outset, effective management of cost (or“cash”) flow is fundamental to construction company survival. Within Europe particularly, the present economic climate is very difficult and construction’s intrinsic link to the economy (UKCG, 2009), means that effective cashflow management takes on even greater importance at this time. In studying significant risk factors involved in construction cost flow forecasting, the authors conclude that their multiple regression models can yield insight for variability between forecast and actual flows. But, due to non-linearity of the problem, additionally identify that there is scope to extend the research using alternative modelling techniques.

The second paper by Masu, Gichunge and K’Akumu is concerned with component ratios of new building costs in Nairobi, Kenya. One stated beneficiary of their work will be contractors who are tendering for work in this region, from increased understanding of the typical ratios between principal cost components such as labour, materials, plant – and somewhat unique to this study – profit. The latter averaged 10 per cent among their sample; which is certainly a lot higher than that found among general construction contractors within the UK sector.

De Silva, Ranasinghe and De Silva contribute the third paper which deals with building maintenance under tropical conditions. The ten factors of maintainability studied were analyzed using a case study. The authors proffer that the impact of theirfindings hold potential benefit to designers who might minimize maintenance costs by awareness of these “critical risk conditions”. In contrast to the first two papers in this issue that looked at finance predominantly from the contractor’s perspective; here the emphasis is arguably that of the building owner who will maintain the asset through its life span. The study also has an intrinsic link to health and safety in terms of how design can impact maintenance activities.

The fourth paper by Badu, Edwards, Owusu-Manu and Brown explores application of innovative financing methods to help address the need for infrastructure development in Ghana. The term innovative in this context embraces many funding mechanisms, some of which appear “hybrid” in character and includes the application of “traditional” funding streams being utilised in new or innovative ways. Notwithstanding the geographical focus of their research, the findings should be of interest globally in addressing the challenge of infrastructure (refurbishment and new build) deficit, with particular relevance to developing economies.

The issue concludes with a paper from McCluskey, Davis, Haran, McCord and McIlhatton. Their study departs somewhat from the earlier papers’ theme of cost, alternatively focussing on value and the mass appraisal of residential property. Researchers from many fields of study will recall the excitement a few years ago that was afforded the artificial neural network (ANN) method, for its potential to solve intelligent tasks (Yegnanarayana, 2004) across a host of subject fields. Of particular interest to this study, is the fact that multiple regression techniques outperformed ANN – not only in terms of predictive capacity, but also because of their “transparency” in a practical context.

Akin Akintoye, Peadar Davis, Gary Holt

Note

1. Submissions are now made using ManuscriptCentral direct via: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jfmpc. For further information please visit the journal web site: www.emeraldinsight.com/jfmpc.htm