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Extensive research on the importance of collaborative working (CW) and aligning stakeholders’ interests in construction has been widely conducted. But often the practice of commercial actors during CW has often been overlooked, particularly within the UK setting, where scholars have lamented on the lack of industry-wide collaboration. This study aims to explore the factors affecting commercial actors in CW, specific to the UK construction industry.

The research used a context-based approach to seek stakeholders’ perspectives on the key factors affecting commercial actors in CW within the UK. Semi-structured interviews with individuals (contractors, cost consultants, designers among others) from construction and infrastructure organisations were conducted, using multiple case study investigations. The collected data was analysed using a case study approach, and principles of inductive thematic analysis to identify the key factors.

Findings from the analysis identified “institutional” factors such as transactional cost economic influence, the prevailing construction model influence and professional related drivers. Key drivers within these factors include commercial background and training, custom and practice, misaligned interests in projects, clients’ perception of consultants, cost-driven environment, conventional procurement protocols and bureaucratic functions.

In conclusion, these factors continue to affect CW with undue influence on commercial actors in the UK, thus preventing performance improvement demanded by successive UK Government reports. The context-based approach applied in this study is expected to provide some insight in construction management research, especially from a commercial perspective in the UK, to gain an understanding of how these factors are manifesting.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how the newly emerging UK practice of “collaborative planning” (CP) for construction project delivery aligns with the advocated principles of the global last planner system (LPS) of production planning and control.

A mixed, qualitative, exploratory approach was adopted for the study. This entailed qualitative data through three techniques, namely: semi-structured interviews, documents analysis, and structured observation. In total, 30 in-depth interviews were conducted over a 12 month period with lean construction consultants, clients, main contractors, and subcontractors drawn from the building, highways and infrastructure and rail sector. In all, 15 projects were visited where practices were observed.

The study reveals that the current practice of CP in the UK partially aligns with the LPS principles. Where practitioners have heard of the LPS they believe it to be the same practice as CP.

This study is limited to 30 interviews, observation of 15 projects and document analysis. The aim of the study is not to generalise the findings, however, since the study examined top construction companies and practitioners in the UK and the findings were consistent across the sample, some conclusions could be made. The study is also limited to examining the construction phase only, future studies should incorporate the design phase.

A clear identification of the elements of current practice compared to the components of the LPS provides a contribution to the future practice of project production planning and management in the construction industry.

The study highlights a continuing resistance to collaboration within the industry. This resistance is subtly embedded within implemented practices even though they are based on collaborative working for their success.

This is among the first studies in the UK that comprehensively examines and reports the application of LPS/CP practice in construction across the major construction sectors. Future studies could build on the findings from this work to develop an approach/methodology to improve the current practice.

The purpose of this paper is to present the current knowledge surrounding social value (SV) and show how lean approach supports SV realisation in the delivery of construction projects.

A critical literature review was adopted, to gather the current knowledge surrounding SV from mainstream management sciences, construction management and lean literature. A total of 70 studies were critically reviewed.

The study establishes that the current level of awareness on SV is still low and there is a dearth of scholarly publications on SV especially in the construction management literature. The investigation reveals the potentials of lean approach in supporting the delivery of SV on construction projects.

This study conceptualises the community and the physical environment around where the construction project is executed as customers using lean production approach. It shows that the transformation, flow and value view supports smooth workflow, which enhances the achievement of SV objectives. This creates a new insight into how SV can be realised in construction project delivery.

This study extends the on-going debate around the need for SV in construction project delivery and contributes to construction management and lean construction literature on SV. Future studies could build on this to obtain empirical data and develop an approach/method that would support the evidencing of SV delivery on construction projects.

Green specifications are some of the most important strategies for energy saving and describe the best practice in the field of sustainable construction. They have great effects on resource saving and environmental protection. The demand of sustainable construction has spurred the emerging and development of green specifications. However, there are many factors that affect the adoption of green specifications in China. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that affect the adoption of green specifications in China.

Based on the comprehensive literature review, a questionnaire survey has been conducted to with major stakeholders in construction area to identify issues concerning the adoption of green specifications in China. In total, 18 variables that affect the adoption of green specifications in were summarized. Then this study uses factor analysis and mean score method to analyze 18 variables which the authors get from the questionnaire.

Using the rank analysis and factor analysis, the variables have been ranked, analyzed and categorized into five independent factors. They are summarized as: green technology and techniques; awareness and attitude; policies and regulations; market; and economics. This study provides a variable reference for policy makers to put forward focused policies and incentives for green specifications implementation and industry practitioners to better understand of green specifications adoption in China.

This paper makes a contribution to the understanding of the factors that affect the adoption of the green specifications in China. The results can also contribute to better adoption of green specifications in other developing countries.

The construction industry has been subject to substantial criticism for its short-term “hit-and-run” relationships which are focussed on win-lose situations. Despite the wide recognition of these problems the industry persistently resists the radical demanded of it. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to investigate why this might be the case by reviewing the governance problem confronting clients and decision makers in construction procurement, as conceptualised in transaction cost economics (TCE). Second, to critically analyse and question the efficiency and effectiveness of various safeguarding approaches, which are taken for granted and commonly practiced in construction, from a lean perspective.

The analysis of this paper is based on an in-depth critical review of 76 construction procurement and contractual-related articles, ranging from 1994 to 2016, using theories of Lean construction and TCE as an analytical lens.

Findings reveal that clients and decision makers often tend to safeguard their project-specific assets, against opportunism and exploitation, through the deployment of formal contractual arrangements and governance structures. These arrangements and structures typically dominate the management of the project delivery often to the detriment of the project itself; but because there is a belief that interests are safeguarded, clients and decision makers feel they have taken the best course of action. This goes a long way to explaining the coherence of the current construction model.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to demonstrate the usefulness of using principles of Lean construction in association with TCE when analysing construction-procurement-related issues. In particular, the use of a “lean” lens helps to expose the impact of procurement governance arrangements on process flow. The study also provides a potential research agenda that can lead to the development of prescriptive conceptual frameworks for causal analysis of institutionalised waste in construction.

The paper attempts to expose to clients and decision makers the amount of waste (and unnecessary cost) they embed by adhering to prevailing unfit-for-purpose contractual governance approaches. It also helps decision makers to consider alternative procurement arrangements and organisational techniques that could be of value and support collaborative ways of working.

The study contributes to the overall understanding of waste in construction by providing insight into various imperfect procurement and contractual arrangements, which are taken for granted and impede efficiency and improvement efforts in construction. The findings presented provide a theoretical anchor and rationale for developing alternative approaches to the design and delivery of capital projects.

The paper identifies the broad environmental issues and legislation affecting the construction industry in the UK and goes on to place the environment firmly on the construction agenda, highlighting the major issues for concern. This paper summarizes work undertaken in five pilot studies. The work reveals that the consideration of environmental issues within a framework related to the construction process facilitates the allocation of management responsibility within the construction team. The illustrative representation of this framework forms a prototype decision‐making strategy for use in construction procurement and methods for incorporating environmental issues into every day construction management are proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the common perspective of value for lean construction (LC) researchers and practitioners. Thus, this paper aims to generate a future discussion in the construction sector about the huge impact of construction projects over the entire society and, consequently, to underline the need of an expansion of current value perspectives moving from a local context (project level) to a global context (society).

The paper critically reviews the concept of value from LC perspective. As such, literature review has been conducted as a main task.

LC value perspectives lack in a common idea to be applied in the construction industry as a whole. Customer‐focused construction practices, where satisfaction of customer requirements predominates over societal welfare.

The work described forms part of a larger study intended to expand common value perspective to the wide society. Therefore, a future global model of value should be proposed and validated through an interactive workshop with participation of relevant actors in construction industry.

Construction industry should reformulate current practices and governments, as representative of the society, should promote construction regulation policies based on delivery of value including environmental and social issues.

The concept of value is placed in a global context, changing common LC perspective. Thus, this paper gives the opportunity to continue discussing the contribution of construction industry to the cure of environmental and social issues.

The purpose of this paper is to develop two hypotheses explaining the role of commercial management in the lean business model: lean construction is a viable choice of commercial strategy; and lean commercial management is an integral part of lean construction system subordinate to the project delivery. This is completed as a part of conceptualisation of the lean commercial management discipline in construction on the abstract level and followed by deriving its main principles.

The research is based on the direct observation of the companies pursuing lean strategy in construction as well as of those following non‐lean business models, review of case studies and literature.

Traditional commercial arrangements do not comply with the lean construction requirements and may hamper the exploration of its full potential. Lean commercial management differs in the way that its primary role is to support the production process thus it is subordinated to it.

This research would benefit from links with the existent field of social and economic studies where deeper reasoning to substantiate the theory might be found. Experiments with lean companies in the construction sector are also necessary for theory validation.

The approach offered in this paper vectors the way of dealing with the commercial decisions within lean enterprise. This potentially can further enhance benefits from lean construction.

The paper builds upon the related research and papers, further advancing the topic of lean construction.

The attention on sustainability issues within value management (VM) practices is uncertain due to the scarcity of information on this subject in the available literature. As a value enhancement technique, VM should incorporate sustainability issues as they would affect the quality of the outcome. By exploring VM as a means to uplift sustainability issues at the early construction stages, it shall shed light to its potential and current practices and thus stimulating wider attention to this field in the future.

This paper begins by presenting the underlying concept of integrating sustainability within VM. The potential of VM to uplift sustainability issues is highlighted and the relationships between these two are discussed. Field studies were conducted to investigate the existing practices of VM and its practitioners’ attitudes towards sustainability.

It is confirmed that sustainability consideration is already inherent in the VM workshops but the level of attention varies between workshops. There are gaps in current practices, indicating rooms for improvement. The identified barriers to integration are believed responsible for these gaps.

Any strategy to promote sustainability consideration in VM in the future must address the impediments to integration.

The attention on sustainability issues in VM remains an untapped area due to scarcity of information. Theoretically, the intrinsic capabilities and the positive relationships between these two heighten VM position as an effective means for sustainability improvement. However, in practices, sustainability attention requires improvement to bridge the gaps and overcome the existing barriers that impede current integration.