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The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Department of Building and Real Estate

BRE581 – International Construction Projects (2021-2022)

ASSESSMENT FORM FOR TAKE-HOME ASSIGNMENT (SECTION A)

Programme Name Student Name Student ID No

MSc/PgD in Project Management Wang Tat 19012107G

Question No: 
 Q1  Q2 Overall Grade : ______________
A+ Exceptionally B+ Very Good C+ Wholly D+ Barely Adequate
Outstanding Satisfactory
A Outstanding B Good C Satisfactory D Weak
A- Excellent B- Wholly C- Barely Satisfactory F Inadequate
Good

Assessment Criteria for Take-home Assignment

A A A B B B C C C D D F
+ - + - + - +
Relevant focus and depth Irrelevant & superficial
Effective use of theory Ineffective or none
Good analysis of practice Poor or none
Creative Thought Lacks originality
Wide range of sources Restricted scope
Appropriate length Inappropriate length
Competent Communication Incompetent
communication
Sources accurately cited Plagiarism
Correct referencing Incorrect or none

Comments:

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BRE581
BRE581 International Construction Projects
Take Home Assignment Section A
Student: WANG Tat (Hugo) Student ID: 19012107G

Masterman (1992) defined “building procurement system” as “the organisational

structure adopted by the client for the management of the design and construction of a
building project”. As observed by Nahapiet (1985), there is no one best contractual
arrangement for building projects and the most appropriate choice of procurement system
depends on the individuality of particular project and its client. Therefore, the key to
successful procurement system is the identification of the clients’ objectives and project
characteristics. In a rational means, the most appropriate procurement system should match
the clients’ objectives and project characteristics.
In a context of international construction projects, it normally involves a large-scale
development with tremendous cost and long schedule, that the external condition of projects
can be changed from time to time and induces high risk on overbudget and delay of project
completion, that the scale and extent of the overbudget and delay can be unexpectedly high if
it is not well planned, identified, and seeking the controlling and management measures in
early stage.
Early determination of procurement approach in international construction projects,
should be treated as a systematic practice to identify the current situation, trends and
therefore the risks on different perspectives of projects in the particular local context where
the project is to be implemented. The local external factors that may affect the projects
include political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal aspects, which
would induce risks on the projects including financing, payment, design, construction
method, labour resources and so on in different stages of the projects, including procurement,
design, manufacturing, supplying, construction, selling / renting / operating stage. Therefore,
provision of suitable contractual arrangement which can minimize and manage the risks
effectively. At the same time, depends on the strengths and weakness of the involved /
possibly involved parties in the local context, suitable procurement approach and strategy
shall be varied from case to case, in order to facilitate suitable allocation of risks to suitable
party involved, including the clients, consultants, contractors, suppliers and facility operators.
At the same time, especially for international construction project, if it is found that
the procurement approach is not suitable to the project to fulfil its objectives in later stage,
the costs to change the procurement approach can be tremendously high by raise of cost,
aborted efforts, wasted time and so on, that can be the key factors to determine the
successfulness of projects.
It is also observed that, by the nature of long schedule of international construction
projects, the stakeholders, parties involved and even the inhouse management staffs can be
changed from time to time, which induces the problems on efficient succession of execution
and management of the projects. The early determination of appropriate procurement
approach can form a clear guideline to the later joined parties and staffs to fulfil the
objectives and criteria of project successfulness.
It is observed that in a context of international construction projects, the diversity of
clients’ objectives and the variety of project characteristics, can be highly deviated from case
to case, and there shall be no unique formula can be pre-set for selection of a successful
procurement system for particular project. By the nature of highly uncertainty of external
factors in early stage of international project, experts’ input to address the clients’ objectives
on the determination of procurement approach is highly demanded to increase the certainty of
selection of appropriate procurement approach. At the same time, the successfulness of
projects objectives is usually a combination of degrees of successfulness of different projects

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BRE581 International Construction Projects
Take Home Assignment Section A
Student: WANG Tat (Hugo) Student ID: 19012107G

perspectives. In this sense, multi-attribute procurement selection model can be a systematic,

disciplined and more objective means to aid the clients on early determination of appropriate
procurement approach. An example of multi-attribute procurement selection model is the
application of Delphi method in selection of procurement systems for construction projects
by Chan and Yung (2001).
According to Chan and Yung (2001), Delphi technique was used to justify the utilities
of every key factor subject to the available procurement approach by the inputs from experts.
In Chan and Yung’s model, four rounds of Delphi were conducted for the above-mentioned
purpose.
In order to conduct the Delphi by suitable experts, list of panels of experts on
procurement approach selection were invited to conduct the Delphi. The panel of experts
included practitioners who have extensive working experience in the local construction
industry, which is Hong Kong in the Chan and Yung case, and who were currently, recently
or directly involved in the management of construction project in local, and also must have
detailed knowledge of all the procurement options.
In the first round of Delphi, criteria which can be the key factors of project
successfulness were gathered from the members of panel of experts, by requesting every
expert to provide at least five selection criteria of procurement system.
Then, by tabling the quoted criteria into different categories (suggested by more than
50% of experts / suggested by 10 to 50% of experts / suggested by less than 10% of experts /
suggested by other interviewees), the experts rated the criteria gathered by very important,
important and not important, in order to state the importance of each of criteria, in the second
round of Delphi, in order to refine the selection criteria. The result of round two was sorted
by percentage of experts who stated the criterion as either very important or important, and
only criteria which are considered as “very important” and “important” by more than half of
experts, were included in the third round of Delphi.
In the case of Chan and Yung, the key factors considered in selecting procurement
approach includes price competition, time availability, time predictability, availability of
competent contractors, ability to state clear end-user’s requirements, complexity, certainty of
cost without fluctuation, flexibility for changes, risk management, responsibility, and
familiarity.
In the third round of Delphi, the experts were asked to indicate the degree of
suitability of each procurement approach. In Chan and Yung case, the procurement
approaches which the experts were asked to indicate the degree of suitability included
traditional sequential system, traditional accelerated system, competitive design and built
system, enhanced design and built system, novation and management contracting system. The
experts were asked to enter a score from 10 to 110, which 10 was low suitability and 110 was
high suitability, to rate the suitability of each procurement approach. By Kendall’s
concordance analysis, which is to measure the internal agreement of the rating score by the
experts, only criteria with p-value of less and 0.05, which means there was high internal
agreement of score of the experts, were included in the model.
In the fourth round of Delphi, the experts were asked to re-consider the scores of
utility factors of the criteria which decided to include in model, and see whether they would
adjust them. The result is then further analysed by Kendall’s concordance analysis, in order to
self-validation of results in the third round of Delphi. By the above-mentioned Delphi

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BRE581 International Construction Projects
Take Home Assignment Section A
Student: WANG Tat (Hugo) Student ID: 19012107G

technique, the utility factors of each criterion included in model to every assessed
procurement approach were determined and tabled for the further assessment of procurement
approach selection.
At the client side, a questionnaire was conducted with client to rate the relative
importance from 1 to 5, which 1 being the least important and 5 being the most important, for
the key factors included in the procurement approach selection model, so that the priority of
the factors was captured from clients’ point of view and formed a rating to the key factors,
which therefore the desired project objectives was transformed into form of clients’ rating on
the attributes of key factors. This priority rating was multiplied with the utility factors derived
for each procurement approach in order to find out the score of each procurement approach
subject to the key factors considered and the results was entered into the corresponded
column of procurement selection assessment table.
At the end, the total score for all factors of every procurement approach was obtained
by summation of scores of each key factor. The total scores of each procurement approach
were compared, and ranked in descending order, and the highest scored procurement
approach was considered the most appropriate procurement approach by the experts’ input to
meet the clients’ objectives.
By the case of Chan and Yung, in Hong Kong context, it was observed that when the
most important criteria are availability of competent contractors and familiarity, traditional
form of procurement shall be the preferred procurement approach. When the most important
criteria are responsibility, risk management, certainty of cost, time predictability and price
competition, competitive design and built system shall be the preferred procurement
approach. When the most important criteria are ability to state clear end-user’s requirements
and complexity, enhanced design and built system or novation system shall be the preferred
procurement approach. When the most important criteria are time availability and flexibility
for changes, management contracting shall be the preferred procurement approach.
Therefore, in Chan and Yung case, the significance of effectiveness and reliability of
multi-attribute procurement selection model on addressing clients’ multi objectives, was
revealed.

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BRE581 International Construction Projects
Take Home Assignment Section A
Student: WANG Tat (Hugo) Student ID: 19012107G

References
1. Masterman, J.W.E., Masterman, D.J., & Masterman, J. (1992). An Introduction to
Building Procurement Systems (1st ed.). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203474150
2. Nahapiet, H., & Nahapiet, J. (1985). A comparison of contractual arrangements for
building projects. Construction Management and Economics, 3(3), 217-231.
3. Chan, A. P., Yung, E. H., Lam, P. T., Tam, C. M., & Cheung, S. (2001). Application
of Delphi method in selection of procurement systems for construction projects.
Construction management and economics, 19(7), 699-718.
4. Wandahl, S., & Bejder, E. (2003). Value-based management in the supply chain of
construction projects. In The 11th annual conference on Lean Construction,
Blacksburg. Edt.: Martinez and Formoso.
5. Ahsan, K., & Gunawan, I. (2010). Analysis of cost and schedule performance of
international development projects. International journal of project management,
28(1), 68-78.
6. Fink, D. (2010). The succession challenge: Building and sustaining leadership
capacity through succession management. Sage.
7. Smith, N. J., Merna, T., & Jobling, P. (2014). Managing risk in construction projects.
John Wiley & Sons.
8. Rastogi, N. I. T. A. N. K., & Trivedi, M. K. (2016). PESTLE technique–a tool to
identify external risks in construction projects. International Research Journal of
Engineering and Technology (IRJET), 3(1), 384-388.

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