Khalfan, M M A; Anumba, C J and Carrillo, P M (2001) Concurrent engineering readiness assessment of sub-contractors within the UK construction industry. In: Akintoye, A (ed.) Proceedings of 17th Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2001, Salford, UK.
Abstract
A vital part of the corporate strength of any organization is the ability to respond to changing market needs rapidly, and effectively. Time-to-market has become a crucial measure of an organization's business performance. Increasing demands for accelerated deliveries at a lower cost has put pressures on projects and processes within most industries. Therefore, with increasing competition, companies that want to survive in the market place have to improve in four key areas: product costs, product quality, time-to-market (from order to delivery), and customer satisfaction. One way to do this is to adopt a Concurrent Engineering (CE) approach to project delivery. CE is a way of working which enables the delivery of better, cheaper, faster products, using right-first-time methods and team working to enable concurrent consideration of all key lifecycle issues. It is evident that by adopting CE, the software and manufacturing industries have significantly improved their business processes. There is also increasing awareness of the benefits of adopting CE in the Construction Industry. CE has the potential to make construction projects less fragmented, improve project quality, reduce project duration and reduce total project cost. For a targeted and effective implementation, it is recommended to carry out a readiness assessment of an organization prior to the adoption of CE. Therefore, this paper discusses the adoption of CE within the construction industry, highlights the need of CE readiness assessment, and presents the details of the assessment of sub-contracting organizations within the UK construction industry using a new CE readiness assessment tool for the construction industry, the 'BEACON Model'.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | concurrent engineering; readiness assessment; sub-contractors |
| Index terms: | project delivery, duration, construction industry, implementation, readiness assessment, lifecycle, sub-contractor, business performance, competition, customer satisfaction, concurrent engineering, construction project, sub-contracting, product quality, project cost, manufacturing industry |
| Subjects: | industry analysis, quality assurance, market analysis, project controls, service delivery, production management, performance measurement, economics, engineering methods, contractual arrangements, project delivery, practitioner, risk assessment, organization |
| Topics: | Supply Chain Management, Quality Management, Time Control, Cost Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Project Management, Risk Management, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Procurement |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here