Amos Darko

Barriers Affecting the Adoption of Green Building Technologies

AbstractGreen building (GB) is gaining increased acceptance in the construction industry as a viable solution for meeting the growing demand for environmentally friendly or healthy buildings. Howev...

Corrupt Practices in the Construction Industry: Survey of Ghanaian Experience

Across the globe, corruption presents a major risk that reduces construction project performances by inflating costs and reducing the quality of the infrastructure commissioned. In developing countries, corruption stifles economic development and engenders social inequality. Using a structured questionnaire survey to elicit direct knowledge and lived experiences of construction practitioners, this study uncovered the prevalence and forms of corrupt practices within the developing country of Ghana. Research findings illustrate that habitual corruption and unethical behavior prevail among public officials, contractors, and construction professionals during the bid evaluation, tendering, and contract implementation stages of a construction contract. This research proffers that corruption is driven by a toxic concoction of high political connections, excessive and reckless sole sourcing of public construction projects, lack of commitment by construction companies in addressing corruption, and the inherently idiosyncratic operational environment of the construction sector. The top five forms of corruption frequently encountered, in descending order, are kickbacks (extortion), bribery, collusion and tender rigging, conflict of interest, and fraud. This research presents a rare glimpse of construction industry corruption in a developing country and provides polemic clarity geared to intellectually challenge readers in government and industry. Future work is required to explore and develop appropriate countermeasures to address corrupt practices and behaviors.

Effect of Motivation and Owner Commitment on the Delivery Performance of Green Building Projects

The delivery of green building projects is often more difficult than non-green building projects thereby resulting in low project performance. In order to overcome the difficulties and improve the delivery performance of green building projects, there is need to explore the perceived relationship between motivation and owner commitment (OC) based on the self-determination theory (SDT) of motivation. However no previous research has empirically tested this relationship in the context of green building delivery performance. Therefore this study evaluated this relationship using survey data from 150 project owners of green building projects in the Australian building sector. Data obtained was analyzed using both confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis of eight hypotheses (H1-H8). The SEM results reveal that OC has direct positive relationship with traditional delivery performance (TDP). Additionally, only the internal motivation (INT) of project owners has direct positive relationship with sustainability delivery performance (SDP), and this relationship is partially mediated by OC. The external motivation (EXT) has no direct positive relationship with OC, and neither TDP nor SDP. The study concludes that OC helps to improve the TDP of green building projects, while the INT of project owners is required to increase their commitment (OC) towards improving the SDP of green building projects. In addition, the EXT of project owners is not effective to increase their commitment (OC), as well as not contributing to improve TDP and SDP of green building projects. Theoretically, the application of SDT of motivation helps to contribute to the knowledge of how to improve the delivery performance of green building projects in the field of construction management and engineering. Practically, this study will help project owners to contribute to improve the delivery performance of green building projects. This study also provides the direction in which policies for encouraging the development of green building projects and associated practices should take in both Australia and the US henceforth.

Critical Risk Factors of Transnational Public–Private Partnership Projects: Literature Review

AbstractThe importance of transnational public–private partnership (TPPP) has accelerated over the last decade, and the critical risk factors (CRFs) of TPPP have gained increasing attention from bo...

Review of application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in construction

ABSTRACT The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has gained increasing attention in construction management (CM) domain as a technique to analyse complex situations and make sound decisions. However, AHP per se or its potential applications on CM problems are ill-defined within extant literature. The present paper reviews 77 AHP-based papers published in eight selected peer-reviewed CM journals from 2004 to 2014 to better define and delineate AHP application areas and decision-making problems solved within CM. The findings indicated that risk management and sustainable construction were the most popular AHP application areas in CM. It was also revealed that AHP (1) is flexible and can be used as a stand-alone tool or in conjunction with other tools to resolve construction decision-making problems; and (2) is widely used in Asia. In addition, the most prominent justifications for using AHP were found to be small sample size, high level of consistency, simplicity and availability of user-friendly software. This paper provides a useful reference for researchers and practitioners interested in the application of AHP in CM. Future research is needed to compare and contrast between AHP and other multicriteria decision-making methods; such work could reveal which techniques provide optimized solutions under various decision-making scenarios.