Barry Gledson

Barry Gledson
Northumbria University · Faculty of Engineering and Environment

BSc (Hons), PG Cert, PhD, MCIOB, MAPM, SFHEA.

About

61
Publications
163,602
Reads
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722
Citations
Introduction
Barry Gledson holds a PhD in Construction Project Management (CPM), which is where his primary research interests lie. As Associate Professor of CPM at Northumbria University, he is the Head of Subject (HoS) for the Construction Project Management (CPM) Subject Group. Barry is a Chartered Construction Manager (MCIOB), Full Member of the Association for Project Management (MAPM), Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). His research was returned in REF 2021 for UoA 12 Engineering.
Additional affiliations
January 2010 - present
Northumbria University
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
January 2010 - present
Northumbria University
Position
  • Lecturer
January 2010 - present
Northumbria University
Position
  • Lecturer
Description
  • Good experience teaching at all HE levels across a range of UG and PG Construction Engineering programmes, usually as lead module tutor. Current position is Programme Leader for the MSc Project Management Framework of programmes.

Publications

Publications (61)
Article
Full-text available
Purpose – Exploratory research was undertaken focusing upon an innovation adoption decision taken by a regional UK division of a large international contracting organisation implementing building information modelling (BIM) into their project delivery processes. The purpose of this paper was to gain new insights through observations of the process...
Article
Full-text available
More than half of construction projects exceed their agreed time schedules. Attempts to remedy this have been monitored over a number of years in the UK using standard industry KPI measurement data. The aim of this research was to investigate how contracting organisations have adapted their existing construction planning practices by using 4D BIM t...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility of using 3D simulation transfer processes to streamline the environmental assessment of buildings that have been designed digitally using building information modelling (BIM). The case study presented relates to a competition (“Build Qatar Live”) in which one of the winning team’s ob...
Article
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a unique conceptual framework for integrated asset management strategy that includes making use of available facility assessment methods and tools such as BREEAM In-Use, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED); and highlights proposes areas of commonality between these and the use o...
Article
Full-text available
A particular problem for productivity in engineering construction projects is poor front-end planning, in particular, the lack of attention to resource-loaded schedules. In such projects, resources are highly specific and constrained, resulting in conflicts that can compromise planned durations and add cost. There are many techniques available for...
Article
Full-text available
Learning from past project failures presents opportunities for firms working within the construction sector to ‘build back wiser’ because, if lessons from these experiences are absorbed, they offer benefits such as mitigation against future failures, and enable the development of resilient project teams. However, instead of using sector-wide perspe...
Article
Full-text available
Construction Design Management (DM) involves the coordination of design processes and activities to ensure quality project design, yet it involves many challenges. This study reports on a collaborative Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project with a Case Study Organization (CSO) that tackled several issues faced by construction design managers....
Preprint
Full-text available
Construction Design Management (DM) involves the coordination of design process and activity to ensure quality project design, yet it involves many challenges. This work reports on a collaborative Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP) that tackled several challenges faced by construction design management practitioners. Employing a design science resear...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Against a background context of Construction 4.0, this study aims to explore what digital leadership in construction firms is, why it is necessary and what considerations it involves. It provides a digital leadership considerations framework to aid organisational digital transformations. Design/methodology/approach To address the research...
Article
Full-text available
For decision-makers in construction organisations, it is imperative that persuasive business cases are formulated on matters of digital transformation. In fact, a link has been established between the low adoption of digitalisation in construction organisations and poor business case formation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the...
Book
The purpose of Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) is to assess a building’s performance at key stages and throughout the entire life cycle of the building. BPE takes a holistic approach towards building operation. It is used to evaluate designs, test buildings prior to occupation, during occupation and post occupation. How BPE is used Where rel...
Article
Full-text available
The shift towards digitalisation has been empowering growth in the construction industry, especially in the past decade. Construction stakeholders are offered myriad benefits by embracing digital advancements to achieve efficiency. However, the exploitation of digital opportunities is bounded by the need for a practitioner skillset that aligns with...
Article
Purpose The purpose of this study is to establish an enhanced model of the innovation-decision process (IDP), specifically for construction. An enhanced model of the innovation-decision process (IDP), specifically for construction is established. As context, innovation diffusion theory (IDT) is concerned with explaining how some innovations success...
Article
In their 2011 paper titled “Managing the Institutional Context for Projects” Morris and Geraldi raised the importance of the institutional context in the management of projects. Building on that, this study proposes the conceptualisation and understanding of project-related failure and success through an institutional perspective. This is based on...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose In his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”, Maslow suggested the “Hierarchy of Needs” as a classification system that described the stimuli for human behaviour. Presently, project behaviour research, which inspired this work, encourages undertaking research on behavioural aspects within and across organisational and project settings....
Chapter
Calls for the digital transformation of the construction sector in part revolve around a need for productivity improvements, with a focus upon project time and cost enhancements. The purpose of this work is to provide a state-of-the-art analysis of design management (DM) usually employed to oversee design quality by coordinating design information,...
Article
Growing concerns over the importance of reducing the embodied carbon (EC¹) of buildings have led to a greater focus on EC-related research and policymaking. Nevertheless, the Sri Lankan building sector is currently lagging behind on this issue. While a few studies have been conducted on the EC impacts of different buildings, further research is nee...
Chapter
The implementation of BIM in construction organisations requires various strategic and change management processes. The effect of organisational culture, manifested through external survival issues, internal integration issues and underlying assumptions, on BIM adoption are absent in the literature. This paper aims to illustrate that a focus on the...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Project Based Organisations (PBOs) are established to optimise project delivery. Unfortunately, as failures still occur on projects, the anticipated performance enhancements of PBOs have not lived up to expectations to date. This has led to interest in how PBOs learn from project-related failures. Regrettably, despite considerable financial investm...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The uptake of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been increasing, but some of its promoted potential benefits have been slow to materialise. In particular, claims that BIM will revolutionise facilities management (FM) creating efficiencies in the whole-life of building operations have yet to be achieved on a wide scale, certainly in compariso...
Conference Paper
Projects are distinctive, time-constrained, undertakings meant to generate benefits for their stakeholders. They are delivered by Project-based organisations (PBOs) whose various actors separately consider achievement in relation to a project's outputs, outcomes, and impact. For example, contracting organisations typically consider projects that fa...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Good pre-construction planning efforts are a vital part of the effective management, and delivery, of construction projects. In order to prepare more accurate schedules and cost calculations, realistic productivity rates, to improve precision, are required. Use of focused simulations, that help model elements of the construction processes can also...
Article
Full-text available
Construction simulation is a versatile tech­nique with numerous applications. The basic simulation methods are discrete-event simulation (DES), agent-based modeling (ABM), and system dynamics (SD). Depending on the complexity of the problem, using a basic simulation method might not be enough to model construction works appropriately; hybrid approa...
Presentation
Full-text available
Initial early findings from literature review (2 months after project start)
Poster
Full-text available
Poster outlining the research problem, methods anticipated to be used, and early findings from literature review activities.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Productivity for any Project-Based Organisation (PBO) is crucial for its profitability and client satisfaction, essentially its survival. Additionally, 'failure' is a common occurrence on projects though it is rarely discussed due to the negativity attached to it. However, research has shown that organisational learning and indeed learning from pro...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Even with the increasing attention on reduction of Embodied Carbon (EC) emissions in the global built environment sector, yet most of the developing countries focus only on reduction of Operational Carbon (OC) through improved operational energy performance. The significance of EC estimation and reduction in buildings in these countries are yet to...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Construction project delivery is considered successful by contracting firms if scope, time, cost, and quality outputs are attained, with any shortcomings in one or more of these representing a failure of sorts. Focusing only on the criteria of 'time', it is noticeable that more recent research efforts have been concentrated on poor time predictabil...
Conference Paper
The coordinated management of construction project information across separate actors within temporary project organisations remains largely unsystematic. Even on small-scale projects, the volume of people, companies, and interfaces that contribute to the project delivery process add to levels of project complexity. To ensure more effective collabo...
Article
Real-time prediction of flooding is vital for the successful future operational management of the UK sewerage network. Recent advances in smart infrastructure and the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), presents an opportunity within the wastewater sector to harness and report in real-time sewer condition data for operation management. This...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Labour is a crucial resource for construction projects. More risks are associated with this than with other resources, such as materials and equipment. Contractors need tools to make more precise estimations concerning labour productivity that will allow them to minimise these risks and manage labour resources in the most efficient way possible. To...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose British construction industry KPI data collected over recent years shows a trend in projects exceeding their time schedules. In 2013, the UK government set a target for projects timeframes to reduce by 50%. Proposed interventions included more rapid project delivery processes, and consistent improvements to construction delivery prediction...
Conference Paper
Prominent concerns of the SEEDS research community revolve around the intentions, ethics, behaviours and standards of designers, constructors and users of our built assets. One way of examining such 'approaches' is through the application of well-considered vignette type questions embedded within appropriate research instruments. The vignette techn...
Thesis
The construction industry suffers from a time predictability problem. To address this, previous research has investigated various improvement strategies, including the exploitation of innovations. An innovation is some ‘thing’, unfamiliar to an entity, which can facilitate product, process or systemic improvements. Innovation diffusion theory (IDT)...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The UK construction sector of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has received criticism for a perceived lack of desire to innovate. Previous research has identified attributes such as company size and levels of research and development expenditure as being significant and causal variables determining this response. The purpose of th...
Chapter
This book charts the path toward high-performance sustainable buildings and the smart dwellings of the future. The volume clearly explains the principles and practices of high performance design, the uses of building information modelling (BIM), and the materials and methods of smart construction. Power Systems, Architecture, Material Science, Civi...
Data
Full-text available
Conference Paper
Traditional teacher-led methods in higher education such as the customary use of lectures can result in passive learning behaviour being adopted by students. Academic theorists consider alternative approaches that encourage active learning more desirable. This paper reports on the use of a simulated virtual project designed to introduce project-bas...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The well-known (probably the best known) objective of the UK Government’s 2011 Construction Strategy was for ‘fully collaborative 3D BIM (with all project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic) as a minimum by 2016’. This deadline has passed, and a number of reports have followed, commenting on how far the construction indu...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
UK Government created a strategic deadline of 2016 for the adoption and use of Level 2 BIM on all centrally procured projects. A shift from Computer Aided Design (CAD) to Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been driven by the need to improve the way that the industry delivers projects. It is believed that BIM better facilitates opportunities f...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
UK Government has ambitions for improvements in construction project time predictability. Better management of construction innovations into use could help with this aspiration, but despite a recent drive advocating Building Information Modelling (BIM) innovation adoption, the construction industry is still perceived to have low innovation levels i...
Chapter
Full-text available
Environmental, economic and social issues present local housing associations with many challenges in terms of management of their existing housing stock. Multiple problems arise from poorly insulated properties, and the twin foci of this research regards the performance of residential external wall insulation (EWI), and identifying the additional b...
Conference Paper
Environmental, economic and social issues present local housing associations with many challenges in terms of management of their existing housing stock. Multiple problems arise from poorly insulated properties, and the twin foci of this research regards the performance of residential external wall insulation, and identifying the additional benefit...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
UK Government regularly applies challenging strategic targets to the construction industry, chief amongst these are requirements for more rapid project delivery processes and consistent improvements to the time predictability aspects of on-site construction delivery periods. Latest industry KPI data has revealed a recent increase across measures of...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The 2013 UK Government construction strategy, presented at its 'Construction Summit' set targets for 50% faster project delivery and reductions in the overall delivery time for new build and refurbished assets. Despite the best efforts of constructors, who have considerable in house experience, skills and knowledge in project delivery, more than ha...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and collaborative techniques have been identified as solutions to the problem of managing construction project information and data. However the implementation and success of BIM may stagnate due to issues associated with unsatisfactory technological interoperability, which can impede the flow of info...
Chapter
Gledson, B. (2014) Construction (with Capper, G., Johansen, E., Jowsey, E., Kirk, M., Maudsley, C. and Weirs, J.), chapter in Real Estate Concepts – A Handbook, editor E. Jowsey, Routledge, London ISBN: forthcoming.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study into the experiences and perspectives of large and SME construction contractors towards the implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) within their organisations. Results of the survey were statistically analysed to test for similarity and significant variations between the two gro...

Questions

Questions (3)
Question
Although aware of different dissertation types (traditional, work-based, and 'literature review') in my discipline 'construction project management' the first two types are much more prevalent. This field mainly employs social sciences research into management issues, or natural sciences research into materials. Therefore it is rare to see any dissertation without primary research. I'd be interested in opening this up for discussion to see a) in which fields is this approach more frequent, and b) what the key success criteria for dissertations that do not employ primary research would be? 
Question
I was teaching a research methods class recently when the topic turned to the construction of Vignettes as part of a possible research instrument. I was able to provide some quality examples in the area of Project Management from this publication:
Loo, R. (2002), “Tackling ethical dilemmas in project management using vignettes”, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 20 No. 7, pp. 489–495.
Since then I am further interested in exploring the use of Vignettes in this area either for teaching or research purposes. Whilst I will obviously do my own digging, I just thought I'd also try to crowd-source this for any notable examples of well constructed or prominent vignettes within project management or related fields.
Question
I am reviewing some work where the researcher has performed the Pearsons R test using 6 cases. The sample size certainly 'feels' too small for this to be a valid test, however unlike other tests (Spearmans, Kendalls) where the texts clearly identify the minimum sample size necessary to perform a valid test I can find no such number for Pearsons R, hence the need for this question. 
Any thoughts?

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