Juha-Matti Junnonen

Proactive Contracting in Finnish PPP Projects

Public‐private‐partnership projects are long term, complex and very challenging contractual arrangements and relationships. They bring new roles for public sector and also for private sector in terms of construction and services. This paper will go through some features of the Finnish PPPs. Proactive law focuses in practical views as regards contract law and contractual issues. The main target is to prevent problems instead of confronting them. This paper will clarify what proactive law is about in terms of contract law and contracting especially in PPPs. For instance, 20--40 years’ partnership relation with PPPs brings up also dozens of different risks into the picture. This paper will discuss the risks and risk management in terms of proactive law and after that, focus on PPPs in Finland.

Modelling structure of customer satisfaction with construction

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build a tested model and framework for describing the structure and factors influencing customer satisfaction in the construction industry.Design/methodology/approach – The paper introduces a structural equation model illustrating the interdependencies of the factors influencing customer satisfaction. Data for the model are based on 831 assessments obtained from project customers with regard to the successfulness of the project.Findings – The results show that customer satisfaction in construction is a complex phenomenon in which various factors have a different impact on the quality as perceived by the customer. Management and factors related to skills have a different impact on the factors describing the end result and methods of the project. According to this study, the contractors ability to cooperate is divided into two directions: managing changes and communication. The result emphasises the significance of communication in project production. In order to i...

Classifying and clustering construction projects by customer satisfaction

Purpose – Construction is often a long‐term project described as a dynamic and complex entity. This is one of the factors making the assessment of construction quality so difficult. The actors in the field of construction need versatile and systematic data about the quality of the construction process and the building in order to be able to operate in a customer‐oriented manner and develop their own operations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the typical factors in a construction project as regards customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approach – The cluster analysis differentiating between projects in this paper is conducted with a total of 831 construction projects.Findings – The paper reveals seven similar but nevertheless different clusters. What the best clusters as regards customer satisfaction has in common is that the managements professional skills and the cooperation methods are successful when compared to other areas of the cluster. Additionally, good cooperation methods predict goo...

The role of multi-firm satisfaction in construction project success

Construction project success depends on the multi-firm project organizations involved working together satisfactorily. Yet, satisfaction within multi-firm relationships has rarely been examined as a determinant of construction project success. A pioneering study is carried out to evaluate the extent to which construction project participants’ perception of each other’s performance reflects on the owner’s perception of project success. The data represent 580 performance evaluations carried out among the project owners, project consultants, main contractors and designers. The owner-evaluated performance factors related to the project goals form a dependent variable called Project Success. Dependencies between Project Success and the various performance factors are identified based on Pearson’s correlation coefficients. Dependencies were discovered between Project Success and all owner-related relationships and all but one of the non-owner-related relationships. Preliminary sets of discipline-specific and evaluator-specific success factors are identified. The results support the proposition that satisfaction within both owner-related and non-owner-related relationships is reflected on success. Therefore, researchers and practitioners are encouraged to consider project success in terms of multi-firm satisfaction and to engage with multi-firm performance measurement to better understand the heterogeneous performance factors contributing to multi-firm project success.

Factors affecting service innovations in FM service sector

Purpose – The purpose is to clarify the concept of service innovation in the context of FM service and to map the factors that are critical for service innovations in the FM service sector. The research questions are: how can service innovations be classified in the FM service sector and what are the factors that create requirements and barriers to the service innovations in the FM service sector?Design/methodology/approach – The nature of this study is qualitative. The data were gathered from two specialist workshops and from semi‐structured interviews. The people interviewed worked for the largest service provider companies in Finland and their customers.Findings – Results yielded by this study comprise the classification of service innovations and the factors that create requirements and barriers for the service innovations in the FM service sector.Research limitations/implications – This study focuses on examining the innovation process and its development and on developing innovation activity in larg...

Embodied and Construction Phase Greenhouse Gas Emissions of a Low-energy Residential building

Abstract Climate change is one of the biggest sustainability challenges of our time. In the context of the built environment, the emphasis is on increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, whereas other building life cycle phases are generally considered less important. However, in recent research it has been suggested that more attention should be given to construction phases, including emissions embodied in materials. They occur in early life cycle stages whereas a large share of use-phase related emissionsoccur outside the existingclimate change mitigation target years, and, due to development in energy sector,might significantly deviate from what is projected today. In this study, by using the life cycle assessment (LCA), we assess the greenhouse gas emissions related to the materials and construction of a low-energy multi-storey residential building in Finland. We depict how the emissions are allocated to the different building systems and look for opportunities to reduce the emissions from this perspective. The novelty of the study arises from two factors: (1) we utilize the wide assessment scope that enables depicting the importance of the boundary decision and (2) not many construction-phase LCA studies of modern low-energy residential buildings exist.

Trust and Places - Case Interorganizational Product Development Project

Practitioners and researchers are of constant quest for a more accurate understanding of the places ability to support functionality and building performance to be able to create places that support the functions intended by the purpose of a place. Interorganizational product development, focus on ideation phase, is one of the most intriguing areas due to its vital importance of company competitiveness. The role of trust and the quality of the place are continuous interaction. The importance of trust in ideation phase and the characteristics of a place to support ideation phase are studied with the aspiration to gain more understanding about the relationship between trust and place.The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the importance of trust in ideation phase of an intraorganizational product development project and study, what kind of physical and virtual spaces support that phase. More precisely the aim is to study trust in connection with participants willingness and ability to do his or her responsibilities in that phase, the willingness and ability to listen and resolve conflicting objectives, willingness to support all the participants, so that the project is successful in accordance with the objectives of all parties and the ability to detect and take into account the essential objectives in terms of the overall goals. How to describe the relationship between the importance of trust and requirements for the place in ideation phase of an intraorganizational product development project?Methods, face-to-face interview for 10 participants was conducted and the answers analyzed with content analysis.The conclusion of this study is that a space supporting idea generation on interorganizational product development process, should support creative, visual and energetic teamwork, whether the platform is physical or virtual. A place supporting ideation phase was described to be informal and open, shared between team members. It should have elements that support democracy among the team members. It should support the communication and formation of shared language, values and goal. Trust for team members having good will towards each other, affect based trust, was considered more important as the cognition based trust. In ideation phase there was an emphasis towards trust supporting team work and space supporting team interaction.The practical implications can be drawn to guide managers in campus development and developpers of innovation

Urban densification in Finland: infill development and building extensions with timber based solutions

Urban densification is one of the pan-European environmental aims along with the 2020 targets for tackling climate change. In Finland, the striving is supported by both temporary regulations and concrete actions, including plans for infill development of town centers. The paper presents and discusses identified barriers and opportunities for the use of timber based solutions for building extensions and infill development in Finland. It is based on the analysis of 13 architectural and engineering master theses published during the past 5 years. The focus is on selected architectural and structural solutions. Environmental, social and economic impacts of the designs are also discussed. The geographical boundary is the Finnish context which is mirrored against European experiences.

Stretching risk management standards: multi-organizational perspectives

Purpose – Standard frameworks for project risk management (RM) are currently mostly focussed on single-firm organizations, whereas in practice, construction project RM involves multiple organizations. The purpose of this paper is to identify and systematically maps practical processes that bridge the gap between single-organizational RM standards and multi-organizational RM (MORM) needs. Design/methodology/approach – This case study covers three large construction management (CM) projects in Finland. The 35 interviews with project owners, project management consultants, design groups, and contractors identify the participants’ positions on RM roles, integration within organizations, and further development requests. Findings – Most (16 of 21) of the identified RM practices are multi-organizational; i.e. they involve two or more organizations. Compared to single-organizational standards, MORM practices involve less emphasis on detailed risk analysis processes but highlight both participant selection and ma...