The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) provided a great forum for researchers and academics from around the world to present their work amongst peers in Sydney. David Chandler reported on the event. CLICK HERE TO READ PUBLISHED ARTICLE
Renowned construction guru and former CEO of Fletcher Construction Group’s Australian, New Zealand, Pacific and North American operations David Chandler OAM is more cautious. While in theory, off-site processes should be less costly compared with traditional on-site construction, Chandler says, questions about whether or not prefab is indeed less expensive are not straightforward and depend upon the benchmarks used. CLICK HERE FOR PUBLISHED ARTICLE
David Chandler's Keynote address to RICS 2015 COBRA Conference Today I will be making the case for “a new industry focused collaboration” to become a defining theme for construction across our region. I will be presenting a proposal to establish a Modern Constructors Network involving 10 universities from around the Asia Pacific Rim. READ CONFERENCE PAPER
Construction is pump priming the post mining boom economic hole, so it’s perhaps useful to reflect on what Australia actually makes that goes into projects these days. A huge case is made about the economic benefits of construction. That’s true, but the reality is that a good deal of Australia’s construction expenditure now stimulates a lot of other economies as well ... READ ARTICLE ON SOURCEABLE
The current enquiries into Construction Materials and Building Certification are a shambles and they don’t appear likely to serve the public or the construction industry well. It’s a national problem and one that cannot be left to the states, the industry associations or CFMEU to fix. READ FULL ARTICLE
Detractors of BIM say claims about its cost and productivity benefits remain unsubstantiated, while advocates point to the need for better client education and application of the right level of detail. Christopher Byrne, BIM teacher at Swinburne University of Technology, concedes that the critics of BIM have a valid case in certain circumstance. CLICK HERE FOR PUBLISHED ARTICLE
Lend Lease CEO Steve McCann has called for greater risk to be shared by government on infrastructure projects. This suggests that once turning to the private sector to “achieve more for less” in the delivery of public projects may have come the full circle. Is it now back to the future? READ MORE
Hardly a week goes by that I am not approached by two or three organisations to either appraise a new construction product or to describe how Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) might redefine their enterprise. Its clear that there is widespread discontent with current construction methods and contracting. READ MORE
This month’s ACTU conference could be a bit like the last group hug on the Titanic if unions do not take what Secretary David Oliver said in his speech to this week’s National Press Club in Canberra seriously. Oliver warned that the union movement is threatened by the rise of disruptive technologies and could face a Kodak moment if it does not engage with a new generation of workers. For
But are the benefits of their being too big to fail now being outweighed by ignoring their cost and impact on the wider industry? It’s amazing that the Reserve Bank Governor continues to describe the Sydney and Melbourne markets as the nation’s property hot spots, without any reference to the blanket impact of construction wage agreements and their cost across the whole industry. CLICK HERE FOR PUBLISHED ARTICLE
