Salman Tariq and Xueqing Zhang
Top-down pressure from donors, public sector inefficiencies and fund deficits have steered the introduction of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in sub-Saharan Africa. However…
Abstract
Purpose
Top-down pressure from donors, public sector inefficiencies and fund deficits have steered the introduction of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in sub-Saharan Africa. However, PPP activities in the water sector have been quite insignificant compared to other infrastructure sectors in this region. In addition, a number of water PPPs have encountered great difficulties and subsequent failures. This study aims at unveiling the underlying reasons behind failures.
Design/methodology/approach
This study has classified the failure types of water PPPs and reviewed the development of water PPPs in sub-Saharan Africa to identify failed ones. Eight failed case studies are completed through the rigorous approach of event sequence mapping.
Findings
Nine root causes of water PPP failure are identified through a thorough examination of these failed water PPP cases and the interrelationships between these failure causes are established. The failure causes are further generalized through literature focusing on water PPP failures in developing countries and problematic issues that hinder the implementation of successful water PPPs across different Sub-Saharan African countries. Recommendations are provided for future improvements in carrying out water PPPs in Sub-Saharan Africa by learning past lessons and drawing experiences.
Originality/value
This is the first case study on water PPP failures in Sub-Saharan Africa from a construction management perspective. This study will help governments and the private sector in developing stronger future water PPPs.
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Zhen Hu, Shu Chen and Xueqing Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to study the key influential factors and their impacts on the value for money (VFM) of projects developed through public-private partnerships (PPPs…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the key influential factors and their impacts on the value for money (VFM) of projects developed through public-private partnerships (PPPs) with an objective to improve the VFM assessment of PPP projects.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper has studied the key influential factors and their impacts on VFM of projects developed through PPPs with an objective to improve the VFM assessment of PPP projects.
Findings
There are large variations in the VFM of PPP projects in many countries due to a number of factors affecting the setting and attainment of the VFM. This paper has identified the key factors that influence the VFM in PPP projects in Japan and evaluated their impacts on the VFM.
Originality/value
Outputs of this study would provide some insights on the improvement in the VFM assessment of PPP projects, in terms of determining a suitable VFM for a particular PPP project in accordance with its specific operational environment, balancing the interests of both public and private sectors, and promoting the participation of the private sector in the timely provision of necessary public works and services.
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Yan-Chun Zhang, Wu-Zan Luo, Ming Shan, Dong-Wen Pan and Wen-Jie Mu
The aims of this study are to conduct a systematic review of public–private partnership (PPP) studies published from 2009 to 2019, to compare the results with Ke et al. (2009) who…
Abstract
Purpose
The aims of this study are to conduct a systematic review of public–private partnership (PPP) studies published from 2009 to 2019, to compare the results with Ke et al. (2009) who reviewed the PPP literature published from 1998 to 2008, and to trace the evolution of the PPP knowledge in the past two decades. This study also presents the possible directions that the PPP research may go towards in the future, arguably.
Design/methodology/approach
This study carried out a top journal-based search to identify the quality PPP articles published from 2009 to 2019. A total of 12 top-tier construction journals were systematically searched in the database of web of science (WOS), from which 279 PPP articles were identified for review.
Findings
The number of the identified articles, the titles of the journals, institutions, the most cited papers, and prevalent research methods were analyzed and compared. The existing PPP studies in construction journals were classified into seven streams. Through analysis of the PPP research status and gaps, five future research directions were revealed.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the current body of knowledge by revealing the research trend of PPP from 2009 to 2019. It presents the change of PPP development trend in the past decade through comparison with Ke et al. (2009). It also reveals the major research streams and points out the directions that the PPP research may go towards in the future. Moreover, this study is helpful to the practice as well. It can enhance the practitioners' understanding of the PPP development in the past decade. In addition, it identified the research institutions contributing the most in the area of PPP, which may serve as valuable reference for practitioners to locate the best institutions for consultancy or collaboration.
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Florian C. Kleemann, Andreas Glas and Michael Essig
Faced with reduced budgets and rising service expectations, public authorities are increasingly cooperating with private businesses. This paper examines an alternative…
Abstract
Faced with reduced budgets and rising service expectations, public authorities are increasingly cooperating with private businesses. This paper examines an alternative procurement- and service delivery concept, Performance-based Logistics (PBL). It has been introduced by the US and UK armed forces. However, other nations, such as Germany, are still reluctant to follow. This article has two aims: First, to identify the conceptual characteristics of PBL, and second, to analyze potential reasons why although PBL is popular in some nations, others are so reluctant to introduce it. This will be done using a mixed method approach. The concept of PBL will be introduced by deductively developing a conceptual model of PBL using a business model framework. The analysis of PBL application will be performed using an in-depth case study from the German defense sector. This will be framed by a literature review and concluded by managerial recommendations.
Xueqing Zhao, Min Zhang and Junjun Zhang
Classifying the types of fabric defects in the textile industry requires a way to effectively detect. The traditional textile fabric defects detection method is human eyes, which…
Abstract
Purpose
Classifying the types of fabric defects in the textile industry requires a way to effectively detect. The traditional textile fabric defects detection method is human eyes, which performs very low efficiency and high cost. Therefore, how to improve the classification accuracy of textile fabric defects by using current artificial intelligence and to better meet the needs in the textile industry, the purpose of this article is to develop a method to improve the accuracy of textile fabric defects classification.
Design/methodology/approach
To improve the accuracy of textile fabric defects classification, an ensemble learning-based convolutional neural network (CNN) method in terms of textile fabric defects classification (short for ECTFDC) on an enhanced TILDA database is used. ECTFDC first adopts ensemble learning-based model to classify five types of fabric defects from TILDA. Subsequently, ECTFDC extracts features of fabric defects via an ensemble multiple convolutional neural network model and obtains parameters by using transfer learning method.
Findings
The authors applied ECTFDC on an enhanced TILDA database to improve the robustness and generalization ability of the proposed networks. Experimental results show that ECTFDC outperforms the other networks, the precision and recall rates are 97.8%, 97.68%, respectively.
Originality/value
The ensemble convolutional neural network textile fabric defect classification method in this paper can quickly and effectively classify textile fabric defect categories; it can reduce the production cost of textiles and it can alleviate the visual fatigue of inspectors working for a long time.
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Yunfeng Liu, Xueqing Wang, Jingxiao Zhang and Sijia Guo
Early termination of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in China is caused by various risk factors, resulting in significant losses. This study aimed to clarify the key factors…
Abstract
Purpose
Early termination of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in China is caused by various risk factors, resulting in significant losses. This study aimed to clarify the key factors and identify the causal relationships among these factors.
Design/methodology/approach
Social network analysis (SNA) was used to analyze 37 risk factors that were summarized from 97 early terminated PPP cases and to identify the relationships among these key risk factors. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) was conducted to explore the causal relationships. Data were collected from case documents, questionnaires and interviews.
Findings
A total of 17 key risk factors were identified and distributed in a hierarchical structure with six tiers. Among these key risk factors, the root causes affecting the early termination of PPP projects were government oversight in decision-making, local government transition, policy and law changes and force majeure. The direct cause was insufficient returns. Furthermore, local government and private sector defaults were essential mediating factors. Local government transition and the low willingness of the private sector were highlighted as potential key risks.
Research limitations/implications
The cases and experts were all from China, and outcomes in other countries or cultures may differ from those of this study. Therefore, further studies are required.
Practical implications
This research provides knowledge regarding the key risk factors leading to the early termination of PPP projects and guidance on avoiding these factors and blocking the factors' transmission in the project lifecycle.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the knowledge of risk management by emphasizing the importance of local government transition, the low willingness of the private sector and project cooperation and operation, whose significance is ignored in the existing literature. The proposed ISM clarifies the role of risk factors in causing early termination and explains their transmission patterns.
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Xueqing Gan, Jianyao Jia, Yun Le, Tingting Liu and Yutong Xue
Relationship conflict between the owners and contractors is inevitable, which could induce negative consequences. Yet, the existing literature mostly focused on its direct effects…
Abstract
Purpose
Relationship conflict between the owners and contractors is inevitable, which could induce negative consequences. Yet, the existing literature mostly focused on its direct effects on project performance and ignored the process by which relationship conflict gradually deteriorates cooperation as well as corresponding managerial approaches. Given the fact that relationship conflict originates from interdependent tasks, the proposed theoretical model is intended to measure relational behavior as an instant outcome of relationship conflict, and explore the buffering role of contract enforcement approach.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops the conceptual model based on the literature review. Then the questionnaire survey was conducted. The dyadic data obtained from 168 Chinese construction project professionals were analyzed by the Partial Least squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique.
Findings
The results show that relational behavior partially mediates the link between relationship conflict and project performance. Besides, three types of contract enforcement approaches are found to differentially change the negative link between relationship conflict and relational behavior. Rigid contract enforcement can worsen the adverse effects of relationship conflict on relational behavior, whereas flexible contract enforcement can alleviate these negative effects. The level of mitigation hinges on whether compromising behaviors or obliging behaviors are chosen.
Originality/value
The study extends the knowledge of conflict theory and contract theory in the construction field. Based on the proposed conceptual model and PLS-SEM results, this study contributes to the understanding of relationship conflict’s consequences between the owners and contractors and enriches conflict management approaches in the construction field.
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Na Xu, Yanxiang Liang, Chaoran Guo, Bo Meng, Xueqing Zhou, Yuting Hu and Bo Zhang
Safety management plays an important part in coal mine construction. Due to complex data, the implementation of the construction safety knowledge scattered in standards poses a…
Abstract
Purpose
Safety management plays an important part in coal mine construction. Due to complex data, the implementation of the construction safety knowledge scattered in standards poses a challenge. This paper aims to develop a knowledge extraction model to automatically and efficiently extract domain knowledge from unstructured texts.
Design/methodology/approach
Bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT)-bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM)-conditional random field (CRF) method based on a pre-training language model was applied to carry out knowledge entity recognition in the field of coal mine construction safety in this paper. Firstly, 80 safety standards for coal mine construction were collected, sorted out and marked as a descriptive corpus. Then, the BERT pre-training language model was used to obtain dynamic word vectors. Finally, the BiLSTM-CRF model concluded the entity’s optimal tag sequence.
Findings
Accordingly, 11,933 entities and 2,051 relationships in the standard specifications texts of this paper were identified and a language model suitable for coal mine construction safety management was proposed. The experiments showed that F1 values were all above 60% in nine types of entities such as security management. F1 value of this model was more than 60% for entity extraction. The model identified and extracted entities more accurately than conventional methods.
Originality/value
This work completed the domain knowledge query and built a Q&A platform via entities and relationships identified by the standard specifications suitable for coal mines. This paper proposed a systematic framework for texts in coal mine construction safety to improve efficiency and accuracy of domain-specific entity extraction. In addition, the pretraining language model was also introduced into the coal mine construction safety to realize dynamic entity recognition, which provides technical support and theoretical reference for the optimization of safety management platforms.
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Xiaojuan Li, Zhou Zhang, C.Y. Jim, Jiyu Lai and Xueqing Chen
This paper aims to establish a model to evaluate the benefits of building information modeling (BIM) from the owners' perspective. The model analyzes the correlation between five…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to establish a model to evaluate the benefits of building information modeling (BIM) from the owners' perspective. The model analyzes the correlation between five secondary benefit indicators and their subsystems: product, financial, organizational, management and strategic. The final key factors of BIM benefits provide a decision-making basis for owners to raise the efficiency of BIM application.
Design/methodology/approach
Firstly, the authors combed 31 BIM-related literature and interviewed experts to identify 15 preliminary benefit indicators. The authors established a BIM benefit evaluation system based on relevant concepts, including two primary indicators, five secondary indicators and 15 tertiary indicators. Secondly, the authors analyzed the indicators by the extension theory of matter element analysis and a questionnaire survey of expert opinion. Finally, the new method was applied to a case study of a large shopping center in east China for empirical verification.
Findings
A BIM benefit evaluation model, including a three-tiered hierarchy of primary, secondary and tertiary indicators, was constructed through literature review and expert opinions. The model determined the critical factors of BIM benefits, enhanced understanding of owner benefits and improved BIM application under the owners' leadership.
Originality/value
At present, most studies focus on specific project stages or benefit indicators. This study developed an integrated BIM benefit evaluation system that targets owners. The findings could foster the development of China's construction industry, promote owner-led BIM application and advocate adopting the benefit evaluation method.