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As we move into a knowledge economy, employee skills are fast becoming an organization’s most valuable asset. Fundamental to successfully completing the complex range of tasks presented by construction projects is bringing together individuals with the correct balance of skills. No one individual has the complete set of skills to do everything themselves, which makes the team only as strong as its weakest link. Sponsored by a leading UK‐based engineering design consultancy, a specification for a technologically driven skills management system was developed. It allowed the organization, its teams and the employees, to better measure, manage and develop their skill capabilities effectively. Key issues addressed by the paper include how skill ability can be measured, how skills can be structured, and how these measurements and structure can be combined to generate skills reports. The development of a prototype application, based on the above mentioned specification, tested the validity of the specification, and demonstrated to the sponsor the benefits that can be achieved by a systematic and practical approach to capturing, reviewing, planning and managing employee skills. It also highlighted the important business rationale for using such systems.

As a mechanism to make a company's strategies, actions and achievements more transparent, sustainability reporting (SR) enables companies to communicate performance, develop a reputation for responsible behaviour and gain competitive advantage, yet it remains largely voluntary. A scant evidence base suggests that the construction sector lags behind other industries on SR; the purpose of this paper is to clarify the current status and define a research framework for future development of SR in construction.

This paper examines standards for disclosure, scope and content vehicles for disclosure, transparency and assurance, voluntary vs mandatory reporting, and integrated reporting, through a review of literature, reports and standards.

SR can drive change, offer competitive advantage and reputational capital, but this is contested ground, academically. A critical examination of SR in construction contributes to the debate by identifying challenges around data durability, stakeholder engagement, reputation management and the nature of the sector. A novel framework, research questions and recommendations are presented.

This study is based on literature, standards and guidance documents, so has not yet been subject to scrutiny via empirical research; recommendations for such are, however, outlined clearly within the paper.

Construction companies have to balance commercial drivers with demands for high‐profile sustainable buildings and enhanced corporate sustainability; this is a generally under‐researched area. This is the first paper to argue that SR offers a new lens on corporate sustainability in construction and considerable scope for novel research.

Organisations must continually innovate to remain competitive. A by‐product of innovation is new knowledge. In a knowledge economy, an organisation's ability to manage its knowledge can mean the difference between commercial success and failure. A key aspect of being able to manage knowledge is the ability to identify and capture it. This paper aims to present the development of the knowledge‐capture report (KCR) and the results of its use at the third TeamWork demonstration event for collaborative working.

Quantifying the number of discrete pieces of knowledge captured in the KCR and categorising the type and quantity of knowledge captured demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the KCR in a dynamic multidisciplinary design team environment.

The different approaches that were observed and adopted by the participants using the KCR highlight a number of key issues that need to be considered when attempting to capture knowledge in a constantly evolving design environment.

The use of the KCR by a wide range of industry practitioners demonstrates a quick, effective and low‐cost approach to capturing project knowledge and events. It could be adopted easily by the engineering and construction (AEC) industry as an entry point to managing knowledge, particularly in complex, multi‐disciplinary design environments.

Professions involved with the construction industry need to become more aware of disaster risk management (DRM) activities if lessons are to be learned from the past and a resilient built environment attained in the future. This study aims to focus on identifying which construction‐associated stakeholders should be involved with DRM initiatives in the UK, and when these stakeholders should be involved. This research is thereby unique and a key step in the longer‐term aim of identifying how stakeholders should be involved and what issues they need to address regarding the integration of DRM into construction decision making.

This paper presents the findings of a UK‐wide questionnaire survey, semi‐structured interviews and a validation exercise involving a range of professionals from construction, planning, insurance, emergency management and local/national government agencies.

This research identifies the key construction stakeholders that should be responsible for ensuring that resilience issues become integrated and ensuring the key stages of the design‐construction‐operation process where their inputs are required.

The finding presented are an important and logical step in the longer term aim of identifying how stakeholders should be better involved and what issues they need to address regarding the integration of DRM into construction decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to identify a set of critical success factors, which ensure the effectiveness of knowledge management initiatives, with particular focus on the effect of people‐oriented success factors.

A comprehensive review of knowledge management literature, substantiated by ten qualitative interviews with leading academics and industrial representatives in the field of knowledge management in the construction industry.

The research suggests that organisations need to consider several key areas, in particular, the processes and practices undertaken to understand and define knowledge management, the implementation of dedicated champions, the integration of the initiative into the business, and effective communication of its benefits to members of staff. Each of these factors will have a direct bearing on the level of effectiveness reached by an organisation's knowledge management initiative.

The industry‐based interviewees were all strategic‐level managers. This means that, in relation to the application of knowledge management initiatives, they adopt primarily managerial roles. Further interviews with the practitioners of these initiatives would be beneficial in reflecting the more “hands‐on” perspective of knowledge management implementation.

A holistic overview of the best‐practice for maximising the effectiveness of a knowledge management initiative by addressing the issues, which concern the people involved with its implementation.

There is a need to proactively address strategic weaknesses in protecting the built environment from a range of hazards. This paper seeks to focus on the mitigation for flood hazards in the UK; particularly in understanding the extent of the problem, collating key guidance and legislation related to flood hazard mitigation, identifying who the key construction decision makers are and the most opportune stages of the Design‐Construction‐Operation Process when they need to make their key decisions.

A pluralistic research design was adopted for the study, which included a UK‐wide questionnaire survey and a set of semi‐structured interviews involving a range of professionals from construction, planning, insurance, emergency management and local/national government agencies was undertaken.

Despite the publication of a range of guidance on flood hazard mitigation in the UK there is still insufficient evidence that key construction stakeholders are playing an active role in mitigating flood risk. The pre‐construction phase of a building's life cycle is identified as is the most critical stage when key stakeholders need to adopt flood hazard mitigation strategies. The socio‐institutional constraints to the proactive attainment of built‐in resilience are highlighted as are recommendations as to how these constraints can be addressed.

The paper reports on the provisional findings of an ongoing project but these findings nonetheless provide essential foundations for the latter development of the PRE‐EMPT toolkit and also raise some important considerations about flood resilience in the UK.

The findings presented reveal how stakeholders should be better involved, and what issues they need to address, regarding the integration of built‐in resilience into construction decision making.

Process mapping can lead to a more holistic understanding of how an organisation works. This paper seeks to discuss how an engineering design consultancy, which had developed a series of process maps on the design of steel frame buildings, developed a powerful management tool, the Management Briefing Sheet which has yielded numerous additional benefits enabling practice to be improved and quality procedures more easily accessed.

To maximise the knowledge and expertise of its supply chain partners and to better understand how it designed steel‐framed buildings, the engineering design consultancy undertook a process‐mapping exercise. Various techniques for documenting the process were considered, but a modified IDEF notation was chosen for its ability to capture the iterative nature of the design process and its methodical approach for deconstructing complicated activities.

Process‐mapping exercises can change the way organisations work and make them more efficient, but to do this the changes that would lead to improvements need to be implemented successfully. Carrying out a process‐mapping exercise in isolation from the end‐user can lead to complications.

The key obstacle to implementing change identified by the engineering design consultancy, with whom the MBS was developed, was delivering the knowledge acquired from the process analysis in a format that end‐users could understand easily and adopt effectively.

This article will be of significant use to any organisation wishing to maximise the knowledge and expertise of its supply chain partners and identify inefficient working practices.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the extent to which major contractors are delivering what can be termed “considerate construction”, using case studies of housing and education projects in the UK, identify areas for improvement, particularly in the area of community engagement practices used by contractors.

A list of key themes relating to community engagement is developed and used as a framework for case studies of projects being built by a major, multi‐disciplinary contractor that routinely registers projects with the Considerate Constructors Scheme.

This research found evidence of a range of effective practices, but there is still scope for improvement. Seemingly better examples were found in projects in which the contractor took a partnered approach with both client and community, retained community relation expertise on staff, and took appropriate, timely action.

The case studies are based in the Southeast of England and focus on housing and educational projects, so the lessons learned may not apply in all instances. Practices may also vary from one contractor to another.

The findings have implications for community engagement procedures used in construction projects. There are specific recommendations relating to the professional training of construction project managers, who need to be better equipped to deal with the local general public.

The research complements the existing academic and industry literature on considerate construction and makes both strategic and practical recommendations to enhance on‐site community engagement practices. Thus it is of interest to both researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to examine two rival narratives regarding the nature and evolution of money with reference to metaphor.

The article draws on theoretical literature on money. Post-Keynesian perspectives are given consideration due to the particular attention that this school has given to money.

A crucial divide in the understanding of money is interpreted in terms of two different narratives. We conclude that the narrative of money as credit has greater explanatory power, but that the commodity narrative, which is metaphorical in nature, is easier to comprehend and conceptualize.

This study has been qualitative in nature; further research would require specification of a linguistic methodology, including selection and analysis of a corpus. A process for detecting metaphors within a selected corpus would also need to be established. Moreover, the discussion of the commodity metaphor as a normative theory has not considered the moral aspects of different views on debt and credit.

Study of metaphor should shed light on basic assumptions behind public policy choices. This should enhance the general understanding of related debates, for example on public spending (i.e. austerity versus stimulus).

This article examines a familiar debate in economics using the methods of linguistics. The approach may also serve a function as a pedagogical tool.

In this chapter the potential to use water-based Trombe walls to provide heated water for building applications during the summer months is investigated. Design Builder software is used to model a simple single-story building with a south-facing Trombe wall. The effects of using different thermal storage mediums within the Trombe wall on building heating loads during the winter and building cooling loads during the summer are modeled. The amount of thermal energy stored and temperature of water within the thermal storage medium during hot weather conditions were also simulated. On a sunny day on Toronto, Canada, the average temperature of the water in a Trombe wall integrated into a single-story building can reach ∼57°C, which is high enough to provide for the main hot water usages in buildings. Furthermore, the amount of water heated is three times greater than that required in an average household in Canada. The results from this work suggest that water-based Trombe walls have great potential to enhance the flexibility and utility of Trombe walls by providing heated water for building applications during summer months, without compromising performance during winter months.