The building industry is blamed for consuming enormous natural resources and creating massive solid waste worldwide. In response to this, the concept of circular economy (CE) has gained much attention in the sector in recent years. Many pilot building projects that implemented CE concepts started to appear around the world, including Taiwan. However, compared with the pilot projects in the Netherlands, which are regarded as the pioneer ones by international society, many CE-related practices are not implemented in pilot cases in Taiwan. To assist future project stakeholders to recognize what the key CE-related practices are and how they could be implemented in their building projects in Taiwan, this study has conducted a series of case studies of Dutch and Taiwanese pilot projects and semi-structured interviews with key project stakeholders of Taiwanese pilot projects. Thirty key CE-related practices are identified via case studies, along with their related 5R principles (Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle) and project phases. Suggestion on CE-related practices, their 5R principles, project items, and phases to implement in building projects in Taiwan is also proposed while discussion on differences between two countries’ pilot projects is presented.

The high variability of construction environments results in high construction-cost variation, especially in material costs. Inadequate planning may cause material shortages that delay the project schedule or, alternatively, a substantial increase in inventory costs by producing or supplying materials earlier than they are needed at the construction site. In order to solve these problems, this paper studies steel rebar production and supply operations and establishes an optimal model that minimizes the integrated inventory cost of the supply chain. Based on the optimal model, this paper develops a decision-support system to generate a production and supply plan for a supplier and buyers of steel rebar. After utilizing the decision-support system to create the supply and production plan, this paper analyzes the results to study the influence of transaction constraints on inventory cost. This paper also discusses cases of global optimization of the inventory cost for the entire supply chain and compares them with cases of local optimization for individual members.

The global expansion of public-private partnerships (PPPs) has generated interest in establishing national PPP units for implementing or analyzing PPPs. Despite the good intentions for establishing such units, results have been mixed. Unless its role is clarified, a national PPP unit cannot be successful because it lacks adequate authority to respond appropriately to the changing environment. However, relevant research in construction journals is too limited to provide policymakers with constructive suggestions. This study aims to improve this situation by aligning a theoretical model with empirical data. The PPP activities can be analyzed as a game between the host government and private promoters trying to maximize their respective payoffs; thus, in accordance with new institutional economics (NIE) theory, a national PPP unit can be considered an endogenous equilibrium outcome of a game. On the basis of this perspective, three game (four consensus) theoretical models are constructed to find equilibriums...

The application of network techniques of project scheduling to repetitive projects has been criticized for the inability of network techniques to help maintain work continuity. Moreover, current network techniques require a large number of activities to represent a repetitive project and presume that there is only one logical sequence. This makes schedules time consuming to develop as well as maintain. Further, the logic chosen by the planner might be far from the shortest possible duration. This paper, utilizing the soft logic sequencing principles developed by Fan et al., develops a system which provides an easy input module in addition to scheduling and work-continuity-maintenance modules. The system eases the network generation and update processes, which in turn provides the shortest possible duration logics and the start and finish dates required to maintain work continuity.