Paulo Vaz-Serra

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• PhD
• Senior Lecturer in Construction Management at University of Melbourne

In construction procurement, novation is a strategy aimed at enhancing project outcomes by more closely integrating the design and construction phases. However, challenges arise when roles and expectations are unclear, leading to projects that don’t always meet quality standards. Our study scrutinises novation through the lens of the Royal Institut...

Energy efficiency in social and affordable housing remains a critical issue for occupiers, with rising energy costs forcing families to choose between thermal comfort and essential expenses like food and clothing. As rents rise, affordable housing tenants face increasing difficulty, particularly aging populations with fixed incomes. These challenge...

In Australia, the construction industry relies on building inspections conducted by statutory building surveyors and/or independent building inspectors to ensure regulatory compliance with the National Construction Code. Despite the essential role of these inspections, there is growing concern about the effectiveness and evidence of compliance. Thi...

Stakeholders and the public often confuse the terms "quality" and "compliance" when discussing the significance of building regulations. This misunderstanding can permeate the supply chain and infiltrate educational settings, where the responsibility for ensuring technical adherence to building standards falls under the purview of building regulati...

Over the past decade, numerous buildings have collapsed, resulting in catastrophic consequences, including the loss of hundreds of lives and substantial material costs. These collapses were often due to structural failures linked to problems arising during construction, such as uncontrolled design changes or inadequately inspected works. Despite nu...

The higher education shift to remote learning due to mobility restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to improve the student learning experience using more active learning models. One model is peer assessment. Despite positively impacting student learning, peer assessment uptake remains low, partly because designing e...

Collaborative procurement methods such as alliancing and its variants are becoming increasingly popular in delivering large-scale transport infrastructure projects. The systematic design of the Project Alliance Agreement (PAA) provides the basis for stimulating collaborative behaviors to be enacted, which contributes to ensuring best-for-project de...

In the practice of the building industry, Novated Design and Construct (NDC) contracts have gained widespread usage and are well-established in the Victorian market across many building classifications. This study draws insights from a comprehensive approach that includes interviews, desktop research, transcript analysis, and key takeaways from ong...

Peer review assessment feedback practices are part of the contemporary trend of active learning methodologies to improve student engagement in learning and assessment activities. With the increasing importance of active learning and the challenges posed by remote learning due to COVID-19, this research offers valuable insights into crafting efficie...

This protocol presents a systematic approach for conducting exploratory modelling and analysis (EMA) to identify robust policy mixes for clean energy transitions. It explores the effects of diverse policy alternatives and multiple uncertainties within energy transitions through computational experiments. The protocol comprises diverse steps, includ...

Building construction projects encounter various uncertainties in achieving their objectives because of a wide range of causes, such as finance, technology, weather. The effects of these uncertainties on the project objectives are different during each stage of its life cycle (design, construction, and operation). However, due to the high level of...

For rural bridges in Australia, a common design practice is pouring in-situ concrete on top of beams in order to tie all the beams together and distribute load. However, pouring concrete on-site creates more risk and contractors prefer to avoid it. Another method is using transverse post tensioning to tie beams. This article investigated the behavi...

One of the definitions of rework is reported to be 'the unnecessary effort of redoing a process or activity that was incorrectly implemented the first time'. Construction rework contributes to time and cost overruns in building projects. The costs of rework in building projects can be calculated using different ways looking at construction contract...

Academic institutions have faced substantial issues and difficulties since the novel coronavirus disease became pandemic. Traditional class attendance-based pedagogy rapidly became compromised, and universities were forced into alternative ways of delivering learning to students who themselves faced restrictions, even to the point of not even being...

Quality and buildability are important issues in construction, and both emerge at the earliest stages of design. However, neither are well-defined concepts. Our premise is that behaviour, values and culture impact on quality and buildability in the design stage, but these are also vulnerable to precise definition and difficult to investigate within...

Developments in nanomaterial technology have generated a strong research interest in the construction industry aiming at enhancing the properties of concrete. Many studies have explored the use of engineered nanomaterial such as nano-silica, carbon nanotubes (CNT) and nanofibers in cementitious composites. Recently, nanomaterial studies have focuse...

Learning curve theory has been adopted for investigating the relationship between technological learning and technology cost developments. The aim of this paper is to explore the impacts of public investment in clean energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) on future technology cost developments by using a two-factor learning curve ap...

Remote communication is not new for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry and academia. Organisations started using what was common, called “conference rooms” with sophisticated technological equipment prepared for “conference calls” when face-to-face meetings were not possible, and the industries culture and work practices...

Purpose Price reliability for complex and highly complicated infrastructure projects is problematic. Traditional project delivery approaches generally fail in achieving targeted end cost reliability. However, integrated project delivery (and particularly Alliancing), develop a far more reliable and robust project delivery plan and outturn time-cost...

This paper discusses on issues, challenges and opportunities to engage with circularity and the circular economy in the property construction and infrastructure sectors. In particular when looking at procurement delivery methods in which operational expenditure (Opex) can offset higher upfront expenditure (Capex). Opportunities are here discussed f...

Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements are perceived as compelling alternatives to traditional infrastructure development to raise finances and improve efficiency. However, with the substantial improvement in the provision of services through traditionally developed infrastructure, the benefits of PPP implementation need to be continually ev...

The adoption of innovative technologies in the construction industry has provided significant benefits to the industry. In Australia, the use of innovative construction technologies has grown increasingly over the past decade and received a significant increase in the level of adoption in construction site activities due to the recent pandemic. One...

This paper discusses on issues, challenges and opportunities to engage with circularity and the circular economy in the property construction and infrastructure sectors. In particular when looking at procurement delivery methods in which operational expenditure (Opex) can offset higher upfront expenditure (Capex). Opportunities are here discussed f...

Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements are perceived as compelling alternatives to traditional infrastructure development to raise finances and improve efficiency. However, with the substantial improvement in the provision of services through traditionally developed infrastructure, the benefits of PPP implementation need to be continually ev...

The Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry is increasingly called upon to adopt more efficient methods. While modular volumetric components and conventional construction techniques have been compared, the evaluation of alternative modular but non-volumetric strategies to improve construction efficiency have attracted less research...

Design/methodology/approach Research, using focus group workshops with a convenience sample of construction professionals, was carried out to test the validity of a Project Early Stage Complexity Assessment Tool (PESCAT). The PESCAT concept brings together selected complexity theories and uses subjectively-based measures for assessment. Purpose Com...

This study is focussed on how some complex Australian engineering infrastructure projects are delivered through an alliancing process. It draws upon a body of research into alliancing projects and integrated project delivery approaches, undertaken over the past 20 plus years, and insights gained from interviews with five practitioner experts in thi...

Project complexity, as a sub-field of complexity science, is under-researched in terms of what factors contribute to it; how they can be assessed; and what can be done to deal with them. This research proof-tests the concept of a project early stage complexity assessment tool (PESCAT), based upon complexity theory, that uses project differentiation...

Researchers and engineers are delving into the best construction practices and technologies that are quick, less material and labour extensive, cost-effective, and most importantly sustainable and environmentally friendly. As a result, prefabrication/modular construction has emerged as a popular method of construction which is innovative as well as...

Purpose Knowledge management presents a problem for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, largely because of the industry’s fragmented structure and project-driven nature. Construction companies may be involved in a variety of projects in different locations, each having its own knowledge requirements. Companies are also ex...

The construction industry is embracing new management challenges to deal with the ever-increasing needs for collaboration, environmental and social responsibilities. Improvements in construction project management competencies are essential to helping the construction sector to embrace the new challenges. Building engineering management capabilitie...

Within Australia, the construction industry is one of the largest contributors to the Australian national economy. Yet despite the economic significance of the sector, and the need for graduates of Master’s level programmes entering the construction industry to have the skill sets and competencies required to meet industry requirements, there has b...

A clear understanding of procurement methods for built environment professionals is paramount. The current building process continues to evolve for both, governments and private sector clients and in cases also for combined public-private concessions. Over the last 25 years clients have become more knowledgeable on procurement, project finance and...

The influence and presence of politics in projects have broadened from a traditional perspective of matters of public governance to one that includes many private sector influences. The two viewpoints are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and neither is static. Political influence on projects thus arises in many spheres, and these expand and mult...

Once physical activities have commenced for the delivery phase of a project, it is important to monitor the risks that have been identified and the response and treatment decisions that have been made for them. To neglect or ignore this process would not only be poor project risk management, negating all that has been done so far, but would also me...

Context establishment is an important first stage in the systematic cycle of project risk management. Contextualisation is the process of setting or exploring something in its particular surrounding and connecting environment. Projects have internal and external contexts. Internal project contexts describe the project itself and the aspects of it t...

Complexity is a relatively new field of scientific investigation, and project complexity has yet to be fully defined and measured. Conceptual models of complexity have been developed. Of these, two may be useful for assessing complexity in projects. One considers the estimated level of uncertainty in a project and relates this to the extent of the...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of project risk management. Besides offering an easy-to-follow, yet systematic approach to project risk management, it also introduces topics which have an important bearing on how risks are managed but which are generally not found in other books, including risk knowledge management, cultural risk-shapin...

Strategic management is always in service of something, and contemporary organisations typically use it as a defining approach to engaging in continuous processes of planning, organising, monitoring, analysing, and evaluating the fulfilment of their objectives. High‐level strategies are formulated as policies for all the areas of management (existi...

The objective of all communication is to achieve congruency and shared meaning through the exchange of messages and information. Effective communication is essential for effective project risk management. Risk communication takes place at several levels: intrapersonally, interpersonally, intra‐organisationally, inter‐organisationally, and extra‐org...

Implementing a project risk management system (PRMS) is a project in itself and is therefore also vulnerable to threat risks and open to opportunity risks. In many industries, the existence of a PRMS is a pre‐qualification requirement for eligibility to engage in the bidding process for projects and to undertake project work. The PRMS must be strat...

As all organisations are influenced by internal and external cultures, so too are project risks shaped by those cultures, which may exert positive or negative influence. Since risks are perceived and experienced by people, our perceptions are influenced intellectually and emotionally by our world views, and by our beliefs and values. These views, b...

Traditionally, projects have been mainly associated with physical development in the context of engineering, infrastructure, and building projects. Construction is known as a ‘project‐driven’ industry. Physical ‘hard’ projects are also found in other industries, but recent decades have seen ‘soft’ projects emerging in fields such as finance, inform...

While aspects of risk knowledge management permeate other chapters in the book, this one explores it at a much deeper level. A theoretical framework for defining knowledge is considered together with knowledge transformation and knowledge creation processes. A design architecture for risk knowledge management systems, at the project and organisatio...

As a project proceeds from the planning and design stage towards an actual delivery or implementation process, the management of risks focuses more and gfmore upon what should be done about them. Decisions about responding to and treating project risks are influenced by the attitudes we hold towards them and the risk appetites we exhibit. There are...

The severity of identified threat risks should be assessed in some way. Risk analysis may be carried quantitatively or qualitatively, paying particular attention to the assessment of uncertainty. This may relate to factors such as the likelihood of occurrence of a risk event, and the nature, magnitude, and occasion of its consequences. A project st...

Chapter 2 provides an overview of risk, with definitions and concepts. People directly involved with risk management need to share a common understanding of what risk actually means for their projects. Risk is defined as the effect of uncertainty upon objectives. It is a ‘psychosocial construct’, since it is perceived and managed by people. Percept...

If it is to be effective, project risk management must be systematic, following a consistent and organised set of principles and processes. A project risk management system (PRMS) should operate proactively as far as possible, yet also be capable of being used reactively if unforeseen project risks emerge. While several national and international s...

Good risk identification is crucial for effective risk management, since unidentified risks cannot be managed systematically, yet they remain risks. Following the establishment of the relevant contexts for the project, in the risk identification stage the project stakeholder essentially interrogates the proposed project in order to consider what co...

Brainstorming, used in small‐workshop environments at appropriate times in the project life cycle, is the basic technique employed for project risk identification; it is generally most effective when applied in a suitably structured manner within an appropriate project management tool. Examples are given, using some of the techniques categorised in...

While threat risks are concerned with the adverse effects of uncertainty upon project objectives, opportunity risks relate to the potentially beneficial effects associated with project uncertainties if they are exploited. Systematic project risk management focuses heavily upon managing threat risks, since project objectives must be protected and ex...

While risk is a psychosocial construct experienced and dealt with by people, several aspects of project risk management can be computerised. Before embarking upon the purchase of expensive risk management software applications, an organisation needs to carefully consider its needs and wants. Thorough strategic thinking should be undertaken. Various...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the nature of request for information (RFIs) on construction projects by using data analytics to understand the frequency of RFIs, when they occur on projects, and the relationship between project characteristics and frequency of RFIs and between project characteristics and RFI turnaround time. Design/...

The concept of design for manufacturing and assembly (DfMA) is gathering momentum in the high-rise construction industry. The construction of tall buildings is well-suited for the adoption of processes that optimize the off-site fabrication of sub-systems. This paper analyses the reception of DfMA principles in the Australian construction industry...

The construction industry is one of the most important economic activities in the world, and research in this field has identified a positive relationship between project management skills and the success of construction projects. This research project systematically reviewed more than 380 documents in 14 academic journals from the construction and...

Using data collected from 168 projects, researchers calculated that the average cost of processing RFIs on a project in Australia and New Zealand is around AUS$910,000, and AUS$337,400 respectively per project on the average, which could represent a significant erosion of a contractor’s profit margin. But they found considerable variations in RFI m...

The selection of the “right” construction contractor has been a topic of continual interest within academia and industry, with attention focused on both the selection of the optimal procurement method and the process of tender evaluation. As a consequence, the bidding process, as well as how a tender is conceived and developed, has now been recogni...

Cities around the world are growing fast and some without proper organisation and urban planning. The number of people who, by choice or forced by economic or social conditions, are forced to live in big cities without a permanent home is increasing. Rural unemployment and temporary works requires that a significant number of people need to live in...

The construction sector is associated with significant environmental impacts, being a major consumer of raw materials and energy, and generating a lot of pollution. Therefore, it is essential for the industry to move towards more sustainable construction practices. The selection of building materials is a relevant factor in sustainability, neverthe...

Risk management is important for contemporary construction organisations and is a vital constituent of project management education. Before learning about the processes of systematic risk management, construction and project management students need to better understand risk concepts and their own attitudes towards risk. Risk is a psycho-social con...

Buildability has been a perennial issue in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, with advocates arguing for positive benefits related to cost, time, quality and safety in project development. Evidently, buildability has been seen to offer broader industry gains and efficiencies, and its assessment has been encouraged as a c...

The challenge of Knowledge Management (KM) can bring new innovative solutions, competitiveness advantages, reduced response times and increased control risks. For the Design , Engineering and Management (DEM) companies, identification, capture, dissemination and reuse of knowledge is a priority and, therefore, one their most valuable assets. Howeve...

The work-life balance of construction managers is precarious due to long work hours and high levels of work-family conflict (WFC). The impact of mobile communication technologies (MCT), such as the mobile phones and tablets, on WFC has not been researched in construction. Research suggests that their use contributes to the blurring of work and non-...

In inner cities worldwide, there is limited availability of large land parcels apt for high-rise development. Yet, given the seemingly global trend of “superslim” architecture, this limitation does not preclude building skyscrapers on smaller sites in city centers. Considering the Phoenix Apartments, a super-slender tall building completed in Melbo...

Resumo Dada a crise do sector da construção caracterizada pela forte recessão do mercado e a elevada concorrência existente, torna-se prioritária a procura de soluções que promovam auxílio na tomada de decisão, ao mesmo tempo que reduzem custos e tempos de resposta, permitindo trazer vantagens competitivas nas organizações deste sector. Para tal, a...

Each construction project is unique in terms of how specialist professionals manage and use project documents. Construction sites use and generate a large body of documents containing valuable information across project participants. Therefore, the efficient deployment of construction projects depends partly on effective communication among project...