Browsing by Author "Wilkinson, Suzanne"

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Enhancing multi-hazard resilience to tsunami through evacuation simulation : a case study of Napier City : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Construction Management, School of Built Environment, Massey University, New Zealand. EMBARGOED to 11 July 2026.
(Massey University, 2023-09-12) Fathianpour, Azin
Climate change has intensified the risk of natural hazards, especially tsunamis. This fact has led emergency management decision-makers to question their emergency planning and make coastal cities resilient. Evacuation has been identified as the best course of action in response to tsunamis. Regarding tsunamis, a resilient city must have a resilient evacuation plan. An evacuation plan can be called resilient once all the related infrastructures are resilient and people know how to use them. Based on the literature, simulation has been identified as a reliable source of assessing the resiliency level of infrastructure. Therefore, this doctoral thesis aims to create an evacuation simulation tool that evaluates the resilience of evacuation infrastructure. Recognising the importance of understanding the resilience of the evacuation process in terms of disaster management, current research and practice continually highlight the significance of simulation outputs concerning tsunami responses. Previous evacuation simulation tools primarily focused on monitoring pedestrian movements, neglecting interactions between pedestrians and vehicles. Furthermore, many studies did not consider factors related to human behaviour and decision-making during crises. This study aims to provide fresh insights into evacuation management by incorporating multiple behavioural and spatial factors into the simulation. The outcomes of this research generated realistic evacuation simulation results and translated them into policy and planning protocols.
The impacts of building code amendments in New Zealand : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Construction, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2021) Nwadike, Amarachukwu Nnadozie
The performance of buildings during earthquake-related disasters in the New Zealand built environment indicates that the New Zealand building code needs improvement to ensure that impacts of future earthquakes would be minimised. The level of destruction has triggered building code, standards, and compliance document amendments to improve building resilience against natural disasters such as an earthquake and other related extreme loading conditions. The building code has been amended; however, using the revised building code, standards, and compliance documents comes with its unique challenges to the entire system. This thesis explores the impacts of building code amendments in New Zealand's built environment. Before this study, there is no previous research on the impacts of regular building code amendments, their advantages, unintended consequences, compliance and ways of improvements with adequate recommendations in New Zealand. The thesis proposes to address the impacts of building code amendment by identifying and exploring the benefits, effects of innovative techniques, compliance and unintended consequences of building code amendment. The thesis also investigates the factors that contribute to building code compliance challenges, the amendment process, and developing a framework that allows for stakeholder's inclusiveness to increase the level of building code compliance. This thesis involved a mixed research method comprising qualitative and quantitative research to answer the research questions that justify the objectives of this thesis. The mixed research methods include questionnaires, document analysis, interview with subject matter experts, narrative and integrative literature reviews. The study findings show that building code amendments in New Zealand have yielded significant results with emphasis on improved building resilience, increased compliance level, improved flexibility in design and construction, improved the quality of construction materials, increased professional training, and reduced corruption tendencies. Accordingly, the study addressed the efficacy of building code amendments as a measure to reduce the impact of disasters while increasing the built environment resilience. The thesis revealed the effectiveness of consultation with all relevant stakeholders in building a regulatory system, free access to amended documents with support for a three years amendment cycle, as against the current biannual amendment practised in New Zealand. The unintended consequences of building code amendments are primarily influenced by (i) passive training of code users, (ii) bureaucracy, (iii) shortage of competent technical staff, and (iv) increased building code complexities. The thesis developed a framework design based on identified parameters that assist in improving building code. The parameters consist of five action priority features such as regulation and administration, design and implementation, enforcement, compliance, and amendment process. The thesis developed an evidence-based framework that balances the diversity of stakeholder’s interest and enhances the building code improvement. The findings from the evidence-based framework validation show that it can facilitate a robust building code improvement with a well-defined area of priority while providing a better understanding of the code requirements and technical assistance to the code users. The study provides useful recommendations that require an implementation to improve building resilience, performance-based building code, encourage building code compliance, reduce the unintentional consequences of building code amendment and help the stakeholders to comply with building code. The thesis demonstrates that the unforeseen negative impacts of building code amendment can be effectively handled through the intervention of the building regulatory authorities, proactive government response and collaboration with the stakeholders. This research is significant as it contributes to the theoretical understanding of building code, its amendment and regulatory system as a measure to reduce the impact of disasters. The study also contributes to the decision-makers within the building regulatory system as it informs the building policy regulators on the importance of systematic training of code users and balancing of the innovative techniques in performance-based building code with the safety measures in amending the New Zealand building code. The findings in this thesis may not be generalised but could be transferred globally to the nations that regularly review and updates their performance-based building code, standards and other related compliance documents within the range of New Zealand building code amendment interval.
Planning in the front end of flagship projects post-disaster : a Canterbury earthquake study : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Construction Management at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2022) Rodrigo, Witharanage Lourdes Niransha
In the recent past, governments around the world have been using large public-funded projects to rebuild their disaster-stricken cities. Large public-builds, better known as flagship projects, have come under scrutiny due to unfavourable project outcomes. The continuity to under-deliver expected outcomes leaves a question about the relevance of flagship projects. Governments around the world continue to invest millions of taxpayer money into large builds. Marysville - a rural town in Victoria, Australia, spent a similar proportion on flagship projects to Christchurch following the Black-Saturday bushfires. Flagship projects post-disaster rarely attract favourable attention. There has been no previous research that explores the outcomes or the root cause of the negative impacts of flagship projects. Ten years post-disaster Marysville flagship projects have not been assessed to check the outcomes against objectives. Driven by the lack of research into flagship project outcomes and their causes, the researcher intends to understand how planning in the front end affects flagship projects in post-disaster rebuilding. The findings will be used to produce a set of guidelines for the planning of future post-disaster flagship projects. The researcher intends to assist government planners in determining if flagship projects would support rebuilding post-disaster by following the guidelines generated using the data of this study. The researcher used a case study approach to fulfill the research aim. A pilot study in Marysville, Australia, using a Grounded Theory approach, revealed that most factors that cause adverse project outcomes are linked to the planning in the front end. The study findings showed that top-level governance arrangements, early planning, and stakeholder management in Front-End Planning have a significant impact on project outcomes. A data-driven model obtained through the analysis formed the basis of the main study. The main literature study was conducted in phases to eliminate bias that could potentially affect Grounded Theory data analysis. The process revealed that pilot study data influenced a revision to the traditional Font-End Planning process. Marysville pilot study revealed that government project planning officials spent time understanding the situation created by the disaster. This activity appeared ahead of the feasibility phase. A modified version of the model included pre-feasibility, feasibility, concept, and detailed scope stages as phases of the Front-End Planning process. The findings informed the differences between routine and post-disaster public projects in the Front end Planning process. The data suggested that Stakeholder Management is a cross-phase activity starting at inception and continues right through to the detailed scope stage and beyond. The main research study was focused on three flagship projects in the Central Business District of Christchurch. The city faced a devastating sequence of earthquakes in 2010-2011 that had scrapped the city of its key buildings. The government planning officials put in place a strategy to rebuild through 17 flagship projects. The researcher adopted a qualitative method that used face-to-face interviewer data to explore three projects to achieve research objectives. The FEP process criteria identified through the pilot study and the previous literature were then applied to the case studies. The researcher adopted a qualitative study approach to construct the theory and used semi-structured face-to-face interviews as the data collection method. Thirty-four expert respondents were interviewed. The interviewees covered all major stakeholder categories for flagship projects in Christchurch, and they belonged to the highest level of decision-makers in their organisations, except for the frequent users of the public facilities in question. The data gathered through the case studies revealed that the projects that more or less followed all of the proposed steps in the front-end planning process had better project outcomes. Some of the adverse outcomes of the projects that followed the FEP process thoroughly still had some negative impacts. The negative impacts were caused by external factors outside of the control of the project owners. Governance at the portfolio level seems to have a lesser effect on projects that were fully Crown-funded. Large projects that allow sufficient time for FEP, specifically in the Pre-feasibility phase, feasibility phase, concept phase, and detailed scope phase seem to avoid detrimental project outcomes. A set of planning guidelines for future government planning officials has been formulated based on the evidence of the case studies. The guidelines address all four areas of the FEP process and follow the process revealed within the study. The research fills the gap where Emergency management frameworks/guidelines only consider immediate recovery following large-scale disasters. Unlike other planning guidelines, the guidelines produced as the output of this study appreciates the effect different governance arrangements may have on the planning of large public projects. With an understanding of governance arrangements post-disaster, the guidelines can be altered and used as a guide to inform better decision-making regarding large public builds post-disaster.
A quantitative situation analysis model for strategic planning in quantity surveying firms : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Construction at Massey University, Albany Campus, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2021) Frei, Marcel
Quantity Surveying (QS) firms, like all organisations must continuously formulate and execute the strategies required to enable them to survive and succeed in a constantly changing business environment. Key challenges that firms are required to grapple with include the rapid pace of technological advances affecting professional practice, intense internal competition, and the struggle to attract and retain key talent. In the midst of these operation challenges, QS firm leaders must also dedicate resource to planning and executing strategy. Unfortunately, strategic planning in QS firms is often ad-hoc or neglected, and there is a distinct lack of framework s and tools specific to the QS context. This study set out to redress this gap in literature and theory, by providing firstly a framework of key factors to be considered in a situation analysis – the core activity of the Design School approach to strategic planning, and secondly to provide a quantitative model based on that framework to enable firms to diagnose their Strategic Health – that is, their current performance and areas for improvement and optimisation, prior to formulating, selecting and executing strategic options to achieve their mission and vision. To achieve this, this study takes a multi-stage mixed methods approach. Firstly, following a review of the literature, in-depth semi-structured exploratory interviews were undertaken with key leaders in the Australian and New Zealand QS profession that led to the development of a situation analysis (SA) framework of 28 External Factors and 26 Internal Factors. Two stages of descriptive survey were undertaken (in 2013 and 2020) which enables the development of a quantitative Strategic Health model based on the framework Factors. Finally, the developed model was tested amongst five similar case study firms. Based on the case study results the developed model correlates strongly with five self-reported measures of success. The developed SA framework provides QS firms with empirically validated terms of reference when undertaking SA as part of their own strategic planning process. Due to the relatively small sample sizes involved, caution is urged in applying the developed Strategic Health model to situations outside of the population samples in the study. Further testing of the model in larger population samples or in associated industries are recommendations for further research. Keywords: quantity surveying, situation analysis, strategic health, strategic planning, Australasia
Rework management in construction contracts : an assessment of NZS3910:2013 provisions : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering, Construction Project Management, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2021) Asadi, Ramin
Contracts play a significant role in achieving project goals in the construction industry. To enhance a project's performance by implementing a professional contract, construction practitioners must understand how contraction issues are addressed in the contract conditions. Although various contributing factors that affect construction contracts have been investigated and several methodologies have been proposed, the contract provisions that contribute to rework in construction projects have not been assessed adequately. Rework is of interest in the construction industry as it occurs throughout the project life cycle and affects its performance. The lack of understanding of construction practitioners under rework events may lead to cost overruns and delay in projects, resulting in contractual claims and disputes. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the contract clauses to improve the conditions that affect the project's performance by addressing rework. On the other hand, the contract is an essential means of controlling and managing interactions between parties under various situations. The assessment of contract provision in addressing contractual issues has been practiced effectively over the years to overcome conflicts between contract parties. Thus, the selected concept is helpful for improving the contract conditions under different circumstances. This study attempts to address issues related to rework in construction projects, which significantly improves the contract conditions. Initially, through conducting a comprehensive literature review, the root causes of rework are identified and then using a systematic literature review approach, the identified causes are classified with liable contract parties. The classified rework causes then are investigated in New Zealand construction projects using a questionnaire survey to find the relevant common causes of rework in contracts. The relationship between rework causes and contract clauses is then established through common sources of rework and contractual claims. For this purpose, the case of NZS3910 is selected as the most commonly used standard form of contract in New Zealand to assess the contract provisions under rework events. The initial findings show that the current condition of the contract does not address rework adequately. After investigating the relational aspect of rework in the construction contract, a series of professional interviews are conducted to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the contract conditions related to rework in construction projects. Then, the best practice to address rework is followed up. Furthermore, the current provisions stipulated in NZS3910 are evaluated as a documentary review to collect evidence for validation of interview results. It is observed that, while rework has not been defined in the contract, some of the contract clauses can be referenced for addressing rework. It is also confirmed that more clarification in the contract provision is required during contract preparation to avoid contractual claims originating from rework. Thus, the study develops a list of recommendations for improving the contract conditions that address rework issues. The research concludes by providing guidelines for addressing rework in contract provisions of NZS3910 and some general recommendations for improving the contract conditions. This research adds to the body of knowledge by improving the contract practices for rework management and achieving higher project performance with fewer contractual claims and disputes. Finally, and based on the study's findings, a framework that shows the flow of information for addressing rework is presented and recommended for further investigation in future research.