Qian Chen, Daniel Mark Hall, Bryan Tyrone Adey and Carl Thomas Haas
Managing stakeholders' reciprocal interdependencies is always a challenging issue. Stakeholders need to find out different ways to communicate information and coordinate material…
Abstract
Purpose
Managing stakeholders' reciprocal interdependencies is always a challenging issue. Stakeholders need to find out different ways to communicate information and coordinate material flows during the supply chain processes. Many recent studies have advanced construction supply chain coordination from multiple perspectives. However, the field still lacks a comprehensive analysis to summarize existing research, to explicitly identify all the possible enablers for coordination and to investigate how the enablers can be carried out at the supply chain interfaces. To fill the gap, this study aims to conduct a systematic review in order to examine the relevant literature.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic literature review process was conducted to identify and synthesize relevant publications (published in the past 20 years) concerning the coordination of construction supply chain functions. These publications were coded to link main research findings with specific enabler categories. In addition, how these enablers can be used at the interfaces across supply chain processes was reviewed with an in-depth analysis of reciprocal communications between stakeholders at design-to-production, production-to-logistics and production-to-site-assembly phases.
Findings
The coordination enablers were classified into three categories: (1) contractual enablers (including subtopics on relational contracts and incentive models), (2) procedural enablers (including subtopics on multiagent knowledge sharing systems and the last planner system) and (3) technological enablers (including subtopics on linked databases for design coordination, design for manufacturing software platforms and automated monitoring technologies). It was found that interfacing different functions requires a certain level of integration of stakeholders for quick response and feedback processes. The integration of novel contractual forms with digital technologies, such as smart contracts, however, was not adequately addressed in the state of the art.
Research limitations/implications
The scope of the systematic review is limited to the static analysis of selected publications. Longitudinal studies should be further included to sharpen the inductions of enablers considering organizational changes and process dynamics in construction projects.
Practical implications
Different enablers for coordination were summarized in a concise manner, which provides researchers and project stakeholders with a reinforced understanding of various ways to manage reciprocal interdependencies at different supply chain interfaces.
Originality/value
This study constitutes an important input for research on the construction supply chain by illuminating the thematic topic of coordination from inductively developed review processes, which included a holistic framing of the emerging coordination enablers and their use across supply chain functions. Consequently, it closes some identified knowledge gaps and offers additional insights to improve the supply chain performance of construction projects.
Details
Keywords
Bryan Tyrone Adey, Nam Lethanh, Andreas Hartmann and Francesco Viti
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of the impact hierarchy and the optimization model to determine the optimal intervention strategy for a road link composed of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of the impact hierarchy and the optimization model to determine the optimal intervention strategy for a road link composed of multiple objects. The paper focusses on the results of a case study of intervention project on A20 road link in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was a case study research. It describes briefly the impact hierarchy and its link to the optimization model, and then focussed on analyzing the results obtained from running the model. In order to understand the influence of various factors affecting the results of optimization, sensitivity analysis was performed.
Findings
The proposed hierarchy is suitable to be used to support the determination of optimal intervention strategies (OISs) for public road. From the case study, it was also realized that optimal intervention strategy can be changed due to not only intervention costs incurred by the owner, but also due to the setup of traffic configuration during the execution of interventions since the impacts incurred to users, directly affected public, and indirectly affected public are significantly different from one traffic configuration to the others. The optimal intervention strategy also depends greatly on the factors of deterioration during the operation of the infrastructure objects.
Research limitations/implications
In the impact hierarchy, some impact factors are difficult to be quantified, e.g., the long-term economic impacts on the region where having intervention projects. The use of only exponential function for impacts could be oversimplified the actual behavior of the impacts. Other functional form should be investigated to be used within the framework of the optimization model.
Practical implications
The proposed hierarchy and the optimization model could be used in practical situation for determination of OISs for multiple objects within a road link.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the body of knowledge of stakeholder analysis in the field of infrastructure asset management. It also gives a guideline and tool for infrastructure administrators to select the OISs for their infrastructure network.