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We explore the design risk factors and associated managerial practices driving collaborative risk management for design efficacy in green building projects. By illuminating project design risk as an important project risk category in its own right, the study contributes to our understanding of optimising design efficacies for collaborative project risk management.

The study comprises exploratory interviews conducted with 27 industry project practitioners involved in the design and delivery/implementation of Green Star-certified building projects in South Africa.

The findings discursively highlight seven sources of design risk. We also identify seven specific collaborative risk management practices for design efficacy emerging from a consideration of how risk environments vary in the Green Star-certified projects, each with its own project design risk implications.

The study advances our understanding of how collaborations emerging from particular relational yet context-specific practices can be optimised to strengthen project risk management.

Critics of claims about building information modeling’s (BIM’s) capability to revolutionize construction industry practices describe it as overhyped, fallacious and therefore suggest that there is need for a more critical examination of its change impacts. Others have posited that the changes BIM induces are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In this vein, the purpose of this paper was to undertake a careful analysis of the nature of such changes to distil actual changes that happened, and the type of agency that brings such changes about.

Drawing from appropriate qualitative research strategies, data was collected through key informant interviews from consulting organizations in South Africa that have implemented BIM within their organizations and on projects.

Changes in organizations’ work practices were evident in their workflows, formal/informal methods of interaction, norms, leadership and authority structures, remuneration and the way work was conceived or conceptualized. Furthermore, changes in organizational work practices do not solely occur through the direct agency of the BIM tool’s implementation. Instead, BIM-induced change occurs by delegated, conditional and needs-based agency – which are not mutually exclusive.

The nature of changes in professional work practices could be misconstrued as being solely because of the actions of agents who actively participate in implementing BIM. The discussion in the literature has, therefore, been advanced from general to specific theoretical understandings of BIM-induced change, which emphasize the need for construction stakeholders to actively participate in developing the innovations that drive change in the industry rather than hand the power to drive change to BIM authoring and management application developers who have less stake in the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, using fine-grained exploratory multi-case studies, organisational learning practices – and associated constraints – impacting the performance of four small- and medium-sized project organisations which deliver energy efficiency projects in South Africa and whose learning practice mixes are of wider significance for the emerging project society in the region.

The unit of analysis is the Energy Efficiency Demand Side Management (EEDSM) programme; a US$104m grant funded the initiative directed at supporting energy efficient retro-fit projects across local municipalities in South Africa. Thematic analysis is undertaken, based on multiple exploratory interviews with project practitioners working for small- and medium-sized EEDSM project organisations.

Recognising the criticality of tacit knowledge as a focus for learning, within unstructured, novel, non-routine and technically specialised learning contexts in particular, the widespread lack of organisational harnessing through linkages to strategy and performance are noted, and advocacy is offered for the development of appropriate learning cultures linked to communities of practice that bring specialists together from across regional project societies.

The socio-political context of the EEDSM programme, although briefly addressed for its organisational cultural implications, was not given detailed consideration in the exploratory interviews. This would have enhanced the idiographic complexity of the findings, while also reducing prospects for distilling generalisable organisational learning improvement opportunities for emerging project societies. However, the study does not seek to provide evidence for specific learning practice effects on performance as this was not something the interviewees felt able to comment on in significant detail.

Learning practice studies for small- and medium-sized project organisations remains sparse, so are studies of business environments within developing countries, in general, or sub-Saharan Africa, in particular. Looking beyond narrow individual project views of performance, the present study’s project society-based business environment is theorised as both constraining and benefiting from the project-learning practices discussed by the respondents.

The purpose of this paper is to present the design and implementation of a genetic algorithm (GA), using a large language model (LLM) for optimizing the delivery scheduling process in warehouses of third-party logistics (3PL) companies, within the context of a simplified case study, and to highlight the main directions for implementing this methodology in business realities.

Using a simplified case study of an international 3PL company, this study applies a GA developed in RStudio by LLM to generate test scenarios and input data. The GA was optimized to minimize the time and distance of movement in the process of preparing goods for shipment, demonstrating its effectiveness in improving warehouse delivery scheduling.

The study confirms that the GA, supported by LLM, significantly improves the delivery planning process in the warehouse. Specifically, the implementation of the GA led to notable improvements in scheduling efficiency and a reduction in the distance traveled within the warehouse. These enhancements enable more efficient generation, evaluation and optimization of logistic scenarios. Additionally, the use of LLM greatly facilitates the creation and refinement of complex algorithms like GA, through automation and innovative approaches in logistics.

The study highlights limitations related to data quality, the dynamic nature of logistic operations, computational complexity and the need for generalization of results. It also points out the lack of research in business realities that demonstrate the effectiveness of combining the benefits of LLM and GA in practice.

This paper makes a significant contribution to the literature by demonstrating the capabilities of advanced technologies such as GA and LLM in 3PL logistics. It presents an innovative approach to optimizing logistic processes, offering perspectives for further innovations and automation in supply chain management. It also indicates new opportunities for 3PL companies in terms of improving operational and cost efficiency, emphasizing the importance of continuously seeking innovative solutions in the face of increasing market demands.

The poor quality of design documentation has been identified as a significant contributor to delays, rework and cost overruns on construction projects in South Africa. Despite this, limited research has been undertaken to specifically investigate the quality of design documentation. This in turn hampers efforts aimed at improving the quality of the design documents. The aim of this study is to identify the key quality attributes of design documentation and determine the extent to which the design documents issued on South African construction projects are perceived to incorporate the quality attributes.

A survey questionnaire was distributed among civil engineering design consultants and contractors in the South African construction industry. Responses to a total of 120 completed questionnaires were statistically analysed. The relative importance and extent of incorporation of the quality attributes was determined based on the mean scores.

It emerged from the study that the two key quality attributes of design documentation were legibility and coordinated design documentation. Attributes with the least importance were relevancy and certainty. Regarding the incorporation of the quality attributes, the design documents were rated highly with respect to their legibility and clarity. The quality of the documentation was deemed inadequate in terms of accuracy and certainty.

The findings provide valuable insight to stakeholders involved in developing initiatives aimed at improving the quality of design documentation and as a result construction project performance.

The study provides empirical evidence and extends the literature on design documentation quality especially from the perspective of South Africa, a developing country.