Subcontracting is a common practice in the modern construction industry. The performance of construction projects will be adversely affected if the relationships between main contractors and subcontractors are not properly managed. Therefore, the relationships between main contractors and subcontractors are becoming more and more important to the success of construction projects. Based on a comprehensive questionnaire survey in the Hong Kong construction industry, the relationship between main contractors and subcontractors was studied. Main contractors in the local industry can be classified into four clusters according to the nature of their relationship with subcontractors, namely, adversarial, coopetitive, collaborative, and partnering. Furthermore, the impact of these relationships on main contractor competitiveness and the critical factors affecting collaborative/partnering relationships and main contractor competitiveness were also explored. The findings of this research reveal that good relationships with subcontractors are positively and advantageously associated with main contractor competitiveness. A long-term partnering relationship, based on win-win principles, is more likely to benefit both parties in construction practice.

Purpose: – Top managers who possess outstanding leadership competence make significant contributions toward achieving project success. The relationship between the top managers’ leadership and infrastructure sustainability (IS), one of the most important project success criteria, is empirically researched in this study. The purpose of this paper is to explore relationships between top managers’ leadership competence of intellectual competence (IQ), managerial competence (MQ), and emotional and social competence (EQ) and to explore relationships between leadership competence and IS. Design/methodology/approach: – Based on 246 obtained responses to a questionnaire survey across infrastructure projects in the context of the Chinese urbanization process, the analysis of the relationships between top managers’ leadership and IS was performed using a structural equation model (SEM). Findings: – Results indicate that top managers’ leadership competence, with MQ being the main determinant, followed by IQ, directly drives the entire life cycle of an infrastructure project toward accomplishing IS. Through positively influencing the moderate variable of MQ, EQ competence is found to have an indirect influence on IS. Practical implications: – In terms of practical implications, the outcomes of this research will provide criteria for the selection of top managers for infrastructure projects to realize IS during the process of Chinese urbanization. Originality/value: – The established SEM improves the leadership competence framework of IQ, MQ, and EQ in the respect of reflecting the context of infrastructure projects and promotes the research and development of leadership theory in the construction area.

Decision-making of the project delivery system (PDS) is an important link in the entire lifecycle of a project and is one of the critical factors leading to project success. Traditionally, PDSs are usually chosen based on the decision-makers’ experience and knowledge and the project’s information, without exploring the inherent dependencies between influencing factors and the PDSs. Presently, the researches on the factors affecting the choice of PDSs are primarily concentrated on the owner’s characteristics, the project’s characteristics, and the project’s external environment. This paper mainly aimed at the owner’s characteristics and researched the key factors affecting the decision-making of the PDSs; other two aspects will be studied in the subsequent research. Twenty-two influencing factors of owner’s characteristics are summarized through a literature review, and 14 relatively important and high frequency factors with high frequency are chosen after discussion with specialists. Based on this, the owner’s characteristics information from 76 Chinese construction projects, collected through questionnaires, is taken as the research sample. Then, rough set method is applied to reduce the redundant factors and result indicates that (1) responsibility, (2) the owner’s willingness to be involved, (3) the owner’s in-house technical capability, (4) risk allocation, and (5) the owner’s willingness to control overdesign are the owner’s five most key characteristics factors affecting PDSs decision-making. The research result provides a valuable reference for owner choosing appropriate PDSs and enriches the research methods in the field of PDSs. Although design-build (DB), design-bid-build (DBB), and engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) are deeply studied in the research reported in this paper, the other PDSs such as turnkey, construction management, and project management (PM) would be taken into consideration in further researches.