| The construction procurement process has been heavily criticised for
its fragmented approach toward the procurement of construction projects.
This has affected project effectiveness inasmuch as current procurement
practices do not effectively encourage the integration, co-ordination and
communication between the project team. To overcome such difficulties researchers
have embraced the concept of Concurrent Engineering (CE) as a potential
method for procuring construction projects. Advances in information technology
(IT) have driven most CE based research in construction, with limited research
addressing the organisational infrastructure that needs to be place to
enable its effective implementation. Without appropriate structures and
processes in place, the potential of IT to improve decision-making and
communication in projects will be lost. In an attempt to provide an infrastructure
for IT, this paper presents an organisational structure for stimulating
CE practices in construction. Using a semi-structured questionnaire construction
industry practitioners' attitudes toward the model and CE-based design-and
build are then presented and discussed. The findings indicate that almost
all practitioners sampled supported a CE-based design-and-build procurement
approach. However, it was perceived that this approach could only be used
on certain project types. The paper concludes by recommending a strategy
for implementing CE-based design -and- build in construction. |
