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There is a paucity of recent literature on the influence of project strategic, site related and design related variables on the cost of construction. This paper seeks to redress this omission by presenting the results of an investigation into the influence of 41 independent variables on both construction cost and client cost. Data were collected from 286 construction projects in the United Kingdom and correlation and test for differences were used to determine the relationships that exist between the dependent and independent variables. The analysis both confirms the strong relationship between construction cost and client cost and between those two measures of cost and GIFA, and establishes other relationships which exist within the data, confirming many of the relationships that had been anticipated from the literature. It also established the ordinal sequence of several nominal variables. These data, therefore, can be confidently used to develop models of the total cost of construction.

This paper seeks to redress the omission in recent literature on the influence of project strategic, site related and design related variables on the cost of construction. It presents, in part, the results of an investigation into the influence of 41 independent variables on both construction cost and client cost, concentrating on design related variables. Data were collected from 286 construction projects in the United Kingdom and correlation and test for differences were used to determine the relationships that exist between the dependent and independent variables. The analysis ascertains the cost ranking of many design related variables and establishes other relationships which exist within the data, confirming many of the relationships that had been anticipated from the literature. It also established the ordinal sequence of several nominal variables. These data, therefore, can be confidently used to develop models of the total cost of construction as verified by the development of both regression analysis and neural network cost models

In this paper, the dominant techno-rational view of studying delays in projects is challenged. In so doing, the purpose of this paper is to urge for more attention paid to studying the intentionalities of the planners involved in planning the schedule for projects.

In this paper, the authors take a critical approach to review a range of literatures related to the concept of project delays. Through this review, the authors render the relative absence of acknowledging intentionality in the study of delays problematic. Therefore, the authors inject fresh insights into how intentionality can play a crucial role in advancing the understanding of project delays.

Prevailing research tends to assume the primacy of the project plan and conceptualise delays as a consequence of flawed execution. The review offers three possibilities for reconceptualising delays as a consequence of flawed plans. In so doing, the authors refocus the attention on how intentionality could play a crucial role in shaping “inaccurate” plans, which in turn could lead to the creation of delays.

As a consequence of this review paper, the authors invite scholarship into project delays to move away from finding “cause-and-effect” mechanisms to attend more closely to the role intentionality plays in creating delays, whether intended, unintended, or imagined.

This paper brings intentionality to the fore to challenge the assumptions over the nature of delays. In so doing, the review expands the understanding of project delays by incorporating unintended, intended, and imaginary perspectives.

The standard forms of construction contract are receiving greater attention in the management of projects scholarship as they probably influence the project success and project disputes. The extant literature suggests that the standard forms of construction contract are one of the top sources of disputes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of the standard forms of construction contract, FIDIC and NEC, in reducing disputes in the Palestinian construction industry.

The researchers have used qualitative methods to collect data and more specifically have undertaken 12 semi-structured interviews.

The study reveals that the standard forms of construction contract can be a tool to minimise disputes, but certainly not to eradicate them, and NEC appears to be more capable than FIDIC to do so.

This study contributes to knowledge by bringing an industrial perspective into the role of standard forms of contract in disputes creation and avoidance. The interviewees, recurrent users of FIDIC contract, criticised certain features and expressions and proposed some solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to help project management (PM) game designers and educators in simulating complexity in PM games and in assessing the effect of simulated project complexity levels on students’ learning experience. To achieve this aim, the authors attempt to design and evaluate two computer-based project crashing games (PCGs) with different complexity levels, namely project crashing game (PCG) and program crashing game (PgCG).

A literature review is conducted to identify serious games design principles. These principles are then manifested in the design of PCG and PgCG. The latter is a more complex version of the first. Students’ reaction after playing both games are then analyzed quantitatively.

The authors discover that students’ learning experience is affected by how complex the simulated project is. The more complex the project is (i.e. as in the PgCG), the more realistic the game is perceived. Nevertheless, the authors also discover that the less complex game (PCG) offers significant value to students, particularly to teach basic PM principles to those with minimum or no practical experience. This game is perceived as better in increasing students’ learning confidence as its content is perceived as more relevant to their existing knowledge.

The authors adopt a project complexity perspective when designing and evaluating the games.

The Hebrews of old were promised a land “flowing with milk and honey,” a description which, in the opinion of the biblical writer, expressed every desirable quality. Many excellent persons consider that we are the Lost Ten Tribes. If that be so we have little reason in certain respects to congratulate ourselves on change of habitat; with regard to milk the opinion of the British Medical Association is worth consulting, as well as a perusal of current police court proceedings. With regard to honey there is well known classical as well as scriptural authority which is justification for the belief that honey as a naturally formed substance is a wholesome food. This belief, fortified to some extent by experience, is undoubtedly held by the ordinary purchaser and consumer of honey. Whether at breakfast or at tea in dining room or nursery—especially the latter—he expects to get a liquid with a characteristic taste and smell primarily obtained by bees from the nectaries of flowers. Like all foods it is a complex with chemical constituents and physical properties varying between certain limits. It has a dietetic value of its own. There is no substitute for it. The mel depuratum of the British Pharmacopœia is also assumed to be genuine honey, not materially changed in nature, substance, or quality by the treatment it receives as a preliminary to its introduction as a constituent of various pharmaceutical preparations. It may be reasonably assumed that this conception of what honey is or should be is held by members of the medical profession, by pharmacists, and by students of dietetics alike. It is impossible to imagine that any of these would seriously think that any artificial product could adequately replace honey. Yet so‐called honey substitutes have been on the market for years past and are still sold. With some vague implication—usually expressed in small print on a label—that it is not the genuine thing. This as a rule conveys little or nothing to the mind of the housewife who, buying it in a closed glass container, is guided by the colour and also influenced by the price of her purchase. Taste and smell being excluded under the conditions of the ordinary “over the counter purchase,” she is left to discover its other virtues when it appears on the family meal table. The Ministry of Food seems to give an implied sanction to this form of commercial enterprise by defining the term “imitation honey” (The Sugar and Preserves (Rationing) Order, 1945) as meaning “any manufactured product, whether containing honey or not, which is made up to resemble honey in appearance, consistency and flavour.” It is unfortunate that imitation honey should be officially acknowledged as a legitimate trade product, for it is surely no more a substitute for the genuine product of the hive than is a faked half‐crown for the real thing. The sale of imitation “honey,” which may contain no honey at all, is a matter in which the demands of public health and fair dealing should receive priority over trade expediency. Nor is it easy to see how the delicate and characteristic flavour of honey is to be successfully imitated. It has been said that food manufacture is more and more assuming the character of a branch of industrial chemistry. Imitation honey is surely an exemplification of that statement if for the moment it be regarded as a food. We are, however, by no means inclined to think of it as anything of the kind. It may not be positively harmful, but in our submission a genuine food consumed under ordinary circumstances by the normal person is and must be positively good. The alleged value of this stuff cannot be expressed in terms of merely negative qualities. On the contrary, it is pretty effectively damned by them. It is in fact mere gut lumber of no dietetic value. In addition to this, it would seem to have a fairly wide and perhaps an increasing sale. At the present time everyone who can do so is being very rightly urged to grow more food in personal and in national interests. There seem to be few indications that the present state of things will be bettered in the near future. Allotment holders and smallholders are being increasingly recognised as important contributors, within their limits, to the national food supply. Honey is a food. It should form a cheap and wholesome addition to the ordinary meal. Bee‐keeping is not only well within the range of the small‐holder's activities, but seems in many ways to be peculiarly adapted thereto. Many organisations, official and otherwise, exist with the avowed object of instructing allotment holders and smallholders how to keep bees, and encouraging them to do so. A ready market will be a measure of their success. We believe that such a market exists and that it would grow if people were assured that a supply of home‐made honey at a reasonable cost could be had. The interests of neither producer nor consumer are served by a market in process of being glutted by imitations masquerading as substitutes for the real thing.

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was the explicit base for the politically shared, though tenuous, internal government of Northern Ireland. This ensuing process has highlighted the centrality of the national police, as a country or state attempts to shift towards a contemporary, pluralistic democracy. To clarify, the police force, which was previously an instrument of control, must now become an organization that strives for the consent and support of the public. Using Mawby’s models of policing as an organizational framework, this article focuses attention on the policing paradigms of Northern Ireland over the course of its social history. It puts forth the argument that, despite some strategic changes, it is only upon the heels of the Good Friday Agreement and the consequent governmental change that the police force has begun to shift its operational paradigm away from the colonial model toward an Anglo‐Saxon paradigm.