Given the global financial crisis and other plummeting market conditions in 2008, the international construction market moved from boom to recession. Although this recession is expected to be completed soon, many international contractors still have difficulty deciding on the strategies that are more effective during volatile market conditions. Korean contractors have already experienced one recession in recent times, instigated by the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and two boom economies before and after this recession. To investigate more effective strategies used in the overseas construction market, this study evaluates 31 Korean contractors’ international performance over the different periods (boom, recession, and reboom) and analyses the effects of diversification, localization, strategic alliance, resources cost allocation, and financial soundness by using 14 key variables. The results showed that regional diversification had a profound effect on overcoming the recessionary periods. Locali...

Numerous countries have established policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and have suggested goals pertaining to these reductions. To reach the target reduction amounts, studies on the reduction of carbon emissions have been conducted with regard to all stages and processes in construction projects. According to a study on carbon emissions, the carbon emissions generated during the construction stage of road projects account for approximately 76 to 86% of the total carbon emissions, far exceeding the other stages, such as maintenance or demolition. Therefore, this study aims to develop a quantitative decision making model that supports the application of green technologies (GTs) to reduce carbon emissions during the construction stage of road construction projects. First, the authors selected environmental soundness, economic feasibility and constructability as the key assessment indices for evaluating 20 GTs. Second, a fuzzy set/qualitative comparative analysis (FS/QCA) was used to establish an objective decision-making model for the assessment of both the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the key indices. To support the developed model, an expert survey was performed to assess the applicability of each GT from a practical perspective, which was verified with a case study using two additional GTs. The proposed model is expected to support practitioners in the application of suitable GTs to road projects and reduce carbon emissions, resulting in better decision making during road construction projects.

Interest in clean energy has led to increased international demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG), and the development of LNG plants as megaprojects is also expected to rise. In these megaprojects, the procurement phase is crucial in terms of costs and ripple effects in subsequent phases. If unexpected problems with supply vendors arise, then redesign, reprocurement, and reconstruction are often needed. Although many studies have been conducted on vendor selection, most have focused on identifying evaluation criteria from a general perspective. Existing models are still lacking a comprehensive approach that combines both quantitative and qualitative content to extract the priority level from a pool of candidate supply vendors, particularly for LNG plant projects. Seven evaluation criteria that reflect the uniqueness of LNG plants are identified in the literature and expert interviews. The suggested model can consider multiple scales for each criterion, as well as uncertainty in experts’ opinions,...

In recent decades, international construction projects have grown to mega scale and are in need of a more complex process with higher technical requirements. However, rewards from the projects have been decreasing because of the intensive competition in the international market. For this reason, constructability assessment needs to improve the performance during the pre-construction phase. Constructability is a kind of management technique to reduce the re-work or conflict in the construction phase based on a review of the risks of the precedent phase, and influences factors to improve construction performance. To this aim, this paper developed a constructability assessment model between the design and construction phases for international construction projects. The proposed model contains the relationships between 8 latent variables and 34 observed variables based on structural equation model techniques with statistical significance test. As a result, the relationships were analyzed by direct/in-direct effects to assess the constructability of a project, and defined the priorities of each variable. Consequently, if the project manager uses the proposed model with their own experience and knowledge during the set up of the construction plans or management points, then constructability and project performance will be enhanced.

Despite the large demand for natural gas (NG) that is needed to produce clean energy and resource sufficiency, entry into the NG-related construction market is limited by the inherent risks. Especially, the early stage of projects, such as planning or feasibility study, is more crucial on the uncertainty perspective than other following stages, such as engineering or construction. Thus, it is necessary to implement a project screening model in the early stage of a project. This study proposes a project screening model for gas plants that incorporates two analysis aspects: market environment analysis and gas field analysis. Market environment analysis evaluates a country's political stability and the stability of the project from the market perspective. Gas field analysis evaluates technical property, participant stability, and the stability of the target project from the project perspective. Finally, a case analysis is performed using the gas field project in South Africa. The case analysis uses documents of actual gas field development and interviews with site managers. Thus, the gas field site manager validated the proposed model and confirmed its usability. When user integrate their own expertise and experiences with this model, the model will be able to support reasonable decisions.