Vietnam Construction Industry Research Articles

Residue fluidized catalytic cracking in lightweight polystyrene concrete: A sustainable construction solution

This study explores the potential of Polystyrene concrete, a globally recognized lightweight concrete, in the context of Vietnam's construction industry. The research incorporates non-hazardous industrial waste, specifically Residue Fluidized Catalytic Cracking (RFCC), as a novel additive in the production of lightweight concrete. The systematic approach involves evaluating different cement types and gradually replacing cement with RFCC to identify an optimal formula for lightweight Polystyrene concrete. The study aligns with global sustainability goals and addresses local gaps by contributing practical insights and solutions to challenges in traditional brick production. The experimental setup utilizes Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) granules, standard cement types (PCB50, PCB40, and PCB30), and super foaming additives. Results indicate the feasibility of replacing up to 10% of cement with RFCC, offering a promising avenue for effective industrial waste management. This research aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and contributes to a more environmentally conscious scientific community.

Total resource management model towards carbon neutrality in Vietnam construction industry: A hierarchical framework

This study contributes on the total resource management (TRM) model towards carbon neutrality in a hierarchical model. The TRM towards carbon neutrality is considered as an effective solution as construction industry in Vietnam increases society's awareness of eco-friendliness. However, there is lacking detecting TRM attributes towards carbon neutrality with a thorough viewpoint. This study objects to determine the model towards carbon neutrality along with their interrelationships and indicates the attributes for performance improvement. A hybrid of the fuzzy Delphi method, fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory and the analytical network process is proposed. As a result, a hierarchical model is vertified. The causal group includes low-carbon technology, organizational capability, and external constituency, while the effect group consists of intelligent method, financial resource, and collaborative innovation network. The practical criteria are technologies for renewable energy; technologies for CO2 capture, utilization and storage; and top management's business value.

Solutions to promote digital transformation of construction industry in Vietnam

Solutions to promote digital transformation of construction industry in Vietnam

An Analysis of Value Chain in the Vietnam Construction Industry

A value chain in construction industry is implemented to ensure that a construction project is successful from the planning stages, all the way to the completed and approved building. Therefore, it is important to utilize a construction value chain because it ensures that the project delivers the maximum value for the least amount of capital. However, value chain analysis in the construction industry is little understood. The present study aims to analyze the status quo for the construction value chain in Vietnam. The findings indicated that there are three primary parts of the Vietnam construction value chain. The analysis results indicated that there are three primary parts of the Vietnam construction value chain which includes: (1) input factors (i.e., labors, materials, and machines); (2) construction processes (i.e., design, bidding, foundation construction, structural construction, and finishing works); (3) construction markets (i.e., civil construction market, industrial construction, infrastructure construction). The outcomes illustrated a comprehensive picture in the Vietnam construction value chain and build a strong platform to implement better appropriate tasks towards improving sustainable competitive advantages in the construction industry.

Evolutionary Model of e-Procurement Adoption: A Case of the Vietnam Construction Industry

In order to propose more effective solutions to improve the diffusion of e-procurement technologies in the construction sector, it is very important to get a better understanding on the practical evolutionary process of e-procurement adoption at the enterprise level. This cases-study seeks to investigate the strategic evolution of e-procurement adoption in construction companies. Data collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews was analyzed by within-case and cross-case analyses to understand well the similarities and differences between the company cases regarding the way e-procurement technologies have been adopting and implementing. The present study found out a six-stage evolutionary model of e-procurement implementation specific for the context of Vietnamese construction industry. Further, it also proposed the best practical solutions for the casesstudied as well as for the general context toward more collaborative e-procurement environment. Although this study is based on the experience of the construction section in a specific country, it is believed its results may be applicable to other developing countries. Using the evolutionary model developed, construction companies are able to self-assess and locate their e-procurement adoption level, and so that establish appropriate practical solutions to move forward a higher level of e-procurement applicability.

The Impact of the COVID-19 on the Construction Industry in Vietnam

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a wide range of socio-economic disruption, which causes devastating in numerous aspects. Our knowledge of the true health of the construction industry under the ravage of COVID-19 outbreak is largely based on very limited data. This study aims to assess the impact of pandemic on the construction industry through an investigation in Vietnam. Data were collected through 129 respondents whose online questionnaire survey completed according to their recent direct or indirect participation in delivering construction projects during the spread. The implications of COVID-19 on the construction industry were examined based on simple percentage analysis and Relative Importance Index approaches. Three principal facets of the construction industry were considered: firms' business activities, project performance, and workforce demand. The findings highlighted the multilevel, multidimensional nature of the epidemic consequences on the construction sector. Notably, the revenue and profitability, in a general sense, have decreased during the COVID-19 period, while most of the production and business costs had remained unchanged. Further, the pandemic was argued to impair construction practitioners' incomes and mental health and sabotage projects' schedule and cost.

Using the Best Value Approach to Improve Project Performance in the Vietnam Construction Industry

The Vietnam Construction Industry (VCI) has been facing risks that cause delays, budget overrun, and low customer satisfaction that required continuous research efforts on solutions. This paper focuses on how the Best Value Approach (BVA), a procurement and project management philosophy, could be utilized in VCI projects to improve overall performance. Analysis from six industry experts determined how current VCI conditions, namely risk and success factors, are related to the BVA. Sixteen BVA success principles were identified and ranked based on their perceived impact to project performance by an industry survey with 98 VCI practitioners. The results show high agreement rate with all sixteen BVA principles. Spearman’s rank-order correlation test determined relatively high agreement between owners and contractors, and lower agreement between owners and consultants on the ranking. The majority of participants agreed that the BVA would improve project performance and were interested in learning more about the BVA. The results encourage further BVA testing and education in the VCI. This approach is not limited to the VCI but could be followed by other developing nations.

Enhancing Leadership Roles under Effects of Micro and Macro Economic Factors in Vietnam – A Case of Coteccons in Construction Industry

In Vietnam construction industry, Coteccons Group (CTD) established fifteen years ago, got brand name with big projects and became one of leading corporations.In our study, We will use OLS regression on CTD net profit to draw discussions.Research results present that CTD Net profit (Y) has negative correlation with lending rate, inflation, VNIndex and exchange rate.We imply that we need to reduce CPI and exchange rate to be in favor of net profit of CTD.Next, a policy of reducing lending rate and increasing risk free rate also push CTD net profit. There is management implications from this discussion.

Barriers in BIM Adoption and the Legal Considerations in Vietnam

Building Information Modelling (BIM), an emerging trend in the construction industry worldwide, has been officially introduced to Vietnam recently in some piloted projects. However, in Vietnam, the BIM market is still immature due to that the players in the construction industry have perceived many barriers in adopting this new solution. In a country with a civil law system like Vietnam, the legal environment is considered as the most important enabler for the construction industry to adopt innovative technologies, including BIM. This paper, using a hybrid research approach of surveys and expert judgment, discusses the most popular barriers in BIM adoption in the construction industry in Vietnam, which include five internal and five external barriers. The country’s BIM roadmap, policies and relevant legal documents that are currently in effective are then collected and analyzed in line with the discovered barriers in order to explore their effectiveness in creating an enabling environment for BIM adoption and implementation in the local conditions. After that, legal considerations on the clarity and feasibility roadmap for BIM adoption, the reasonableness of the strategy/plan to grow the industry’s BIM capacity, the system of relevant laws and regulations to govern the BIM-enabled construction projects, the need for a new set of standards and codes for BIM-related processes, and an incentive system for the pioneers in BIM adoption in public sector are discussed. Recommendations on the legal document system, governmental policies, incentives and supports from the Government to encourage the construction industry to apply BIM are then presented. Further research can be developed beyond this research to validate the research results in a broader coverage.

Evaluating outlook for lean construction in Vietnam through a study on perception of waste

Lean construction is a powerful wave in the construction industry around the world. Construction researchers and practitioners in Vietnam have also begun to pay attention to this wave. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of waste perceptions among the Vietnamese construction profession from the perspective of lean construction. Using data obtained from online questionnaire survey, the author undertook statistical calculation, analysis and interpretion by virtue of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. From the findings of the article, it can be seen that most of the views on construction waste are leaning towards loss and corruption. At the same time, there is not much difference in perception between occupational groups. They also show a sense of acuity and timeliness when making recommendations. Although the number of respondents to the survey is not a large number, in general, the research results have sketched a rough picture of the current perceptions of waste, which is a premise for further studies on lean construction. The author proposes a research direction on the openness of construction practitioners to the innovation trends and the development of a lean construction implementation framework in Vietnam's construction industry.

Use of the Stochastic Frontier Approach o Assessing t the Impacts of Ownership Structure on the Efficiency of the Construction Industry in Vietnam

The study assessed the impacts of ownership structure on construction enterprises' technical efficiency in Vietnam using a stochastic frontier approach. The results showed that the construction industry's technical efficiency in 2012-2017 was 55.73 percent on average. The study also showed that the ownership structure had an inverse relationship to technical efficiency. It indicated that the more equity an enterprise uses, the less efficient its operation was. Also, the private enterprise and foreigninvested enterprise sectors were less efficient than the state-owned enterprise sector; initial capital per worker had an inverse impact on technical efficiency, which may be because enterprises had applied for scientific and technological advances but had not yet used that technology effectively, leading the unexpected results. The study proposed several solutions to improve construction enterprises' performance in the future.

Factors Affecting the Work Motivation of the Construction Project Manager

Project manager plays a very important role in the success of any project. The primary duty of the project manager is to combine the outcomes or results of the various processes and activities of project management into a systematic project management strategy or plan for the project. In the construction industry, a lack of motivation is an urgent problem for many project managers in construction and engineering projects. Lack of motivation affects the quality and productivity of jobs, reducing profits and growth for companies, businesses, contractors or organizations that rely on human resources. The reasons for this lack of motivation are diverse ranging from salary to culture to life and working environment, among others. Through surveys and data analysis using Cronbach's Alpha reliability and EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis), our research scaled the factors affecting work motivation of project managers in the construction industry in Vietnam. The research results identified six major groups of relevant factors including (i) salary and benefits, (ii) work environment, (iii) promotion opportunities, (iv) organizational culture, (v) interest in the job, and (vi) relationship with the organization. From there, this paper contributed useful information as well as measures for businesses, companies, contractors or organizations in the construction industry.

Success Factors for Project Risk Management in Construction Projects: A Vietnam Case Study

Despite being one of the oldest industries in human history, the modern construction industry is still suffering from delays, cost overruns, and low satisfaction levels. As construction activities greatly contribute to economic growth for any nation, the study of how to achieve success in construction projects should be continuously developing and attracting scholars’ attention. The Vietnam Construction Industry (VCI) is no exception. The economy in Vietnam has been growing fast and steady with significant contributions from construction activities. The VCI also faces unique risks pertaining to the conditions of developing countries that require a separate study on project risk management strategies. This paper focuses on a survey that is adopted from 23 Critical Success Factors (CSFs) pertaining to common construction risks in the VCI. Factors were found through extensive literature reviews, and inputs were solicited from 101 VCI participants. The participants ranked those CSFs with respect to impact to project success. The study reveals the top five impactful CSFs such as all project parties clearly understand their responsibilities, more serious consideration during contractor selection stage, test contractors’ experience and competency through successful projects in the past, project team members need to be well matched to particular projects, and promote pre-qualification of tenders and selective bidding. Spearman’s rank-order correlation tests determined no significant differences between the participating groups. Factor analysis was conducted to explore the principal success factor groupings and yielded four outcomes – Improving Management Capability, Adequate Pre-Planning, Stakeholders’ Management, and Performance-based Procurement. The findings lay the foundation to understand project management in developing countries and assist project managers in planning and forming strategies to ensure high performance in their projects.

Disputes in Managing Projects: A Case Study of Construction Industry in Vietnam

The construction industry in developing countries like Vietnam, which incorporates small and medium construction enterprises, is typically more prone to disputes and contract dispute-related lawsuits. A dispute may occur at any time in the life cycle of the project. It is sometimes solved with the intermediation of a lawyer or directly by stakeholders. Understanding the causes of disputes in a construction project not only improves the efficiency of a company but also increases the success of projects. This study was carried out using a questionnaire survey at construction projects in Ho Chi Minh City. Sample data with 117 observations were analyzed to find the disputing factors in construction projects: diversity of working style among the parties; reluctance to work; and poor teamwork. Correlation coefficient on a rank of factors between design consultant and contractor; Design consultant and project owners are positively correlated. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) analysis identified six groups of factors in construction disputes: cooperation, technology, economics, productivity, information, and behavior. The findings are useful for enterprise practice and provide participants with an overview of sources of dispute. Thus, a more complete risk management plan can be formulated, which will accelerate project progress and improve the likelihood of success.

Critical Factors Affecting Construction Price Index: An Integrated Fuzzy Logic and Analytical Hierarchy Process

Nowadays, many construction engineering and technology enterprises are evolving to find that prosperity is driven and inspired by an open economy with dynamic markets and fierce multifaceted competition. Besides brand and product uniqueness, the ability to quickly provide customers with quotes are matters of concern. Such a requirement for prompt cost estimation of construction investment projects with the use of a construction price index poses a significant challenge to contractors. This is because the nature of the construction industry is shaped by changes in domestic and foreign economic factors, socio-financial issues, and is under the influence of various micro and macro factors. This paper presents a fuzzy decision-making approach for calculating critical factors that affect the construction price index. A qualitative approach was implemented based on in-depth interviews of experts in the construction industry in Vietnam. A synthetic comparison matrix was calculated using Buckley approach. The CoA approach was applied to defuzzified the fuzzy weights of factors that affect the construction price index. The research results show that the top five critical factors affecting the construction price index in Vietnam are (1) consumer price index, (2) gross domestic product, (3) basic interest rate, (4) foreign exchange rate, and (5) total export and import.

Benefits and challenges of BIM implementation for facility management in operation and maintenance face of buildings in Vietnam

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is regarded as a technological breakthrough that facilitates the modernization of construction industry, increasing the productivity and value across stakeholder groups. However, despite of BIM’s potential benefits towards the industry players, it seems that BIM is still not broadly implemented yet in the Vietnam construction industry, especially for facility management (FM) during the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) phase of buildings. This paper, therefore, investigate the status quo of BIM implementation for FM in O&M phase of buildings in Vietnam, exploring the benefits and also the challenges that construction practitioners in Vietnam need to overcome to fully exploit BIM potentials in O&M phase. The research results, on the basis of interviews with experts in Vietnam construction industry, show that BIM for O&M phase is still in its infancy in Vietnam and the most indicated challenges are: the cultural approach to adopt BIM in the FM industry; lacking or inadequate, misunderstanding information handover requirements.

Contract Form for Building Information Modelling (BIM) Projects Applied on Construction Industry in Vietnam

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a process supported by various tools, technologies and contracts involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of places. In general, BIM is researched and applied in many different fields related to construction investment projects. This paper focuses on analyzing the trends of the world in establishing BIM contract terms and assessing the sample of construction contract form in Vietnam piloted BIM. As a result, it proposes next steps for contract terms in projects using BIM in near future in Vietnam.

The change in mass of insulating materials in the Vietnamese climate conditions

In article obtained in laboratory experiments, water absorption characteristics and evaporation of water from the insulation materials to determine their weight change in tropical climates with the following characteristics: high temperature and humidity, a large number of medium and monthly rainfall seasonal rains lasting 6 months. Thus, the obtained results may be used to repair wall enclosing parts in the Vietnam construction industry. The characteristics of waterproof, moisture resistance, water evaporation, biological stability in insulation materials, which are used in the thermal protection of buildings in Russia and in the world. Evaluation experiments were performed on the characteristics of water absorption and water evaporation of heat-insulating materials (mineral wool, polyfoam, extruded polystyrene) in the laboratory in three situations: the location of samples on the surface of the water, drowning of samples in water and evaporation water from water-saturated samples. These tests simulate the impact of rainfall on the insulation material and evaporation of water from the insulation material during a certain time period (e.g., during assembly or during operation, when the protective layer is damaged). The experimental results show the dependence of saturation insulation from direct contact with water in his drowning conditions and arrangement of heat-insulating materials on the water surface. In addition, the rate of evaporation of water in the water depends on the amount of thermal insulation material and its characteristics. Based on the results of such experiments, it is possible to make a choice of types of insulating materials suitable for Vietnamese climatic conditions.

Government’s and professional associations’ roles in promoting corporate social resposibility – An exploratory in Vietnamese construction firms

With this large number of operating company, the construction industry in Vietnam needs the direction and supports from the government and professional associations not only in policies, business strategies, information about construction but also in leading and providing CSR information and instruction. By employing qualitative approach with in-depth interview as the main method to collect data, this study is to explore actual managers’ perspectives of the current roles of these two stakeholders in CSR and their expectations for the upcoming years. Two worthy notes need to be concerned. The first note is that the roles of government are really important in issuing appropriate policies and treating businesses fairly. Another note relating that of professional associations points out that construction firms do not have any belief in their operations.

Vietnam Construction Industry Performance Issues and Potential Solutions

This paper provides a literature review assessing the performance and issues of delivering construction services in the Vietnam Construction Industry (VCI). The research also explores a potential solution that could improve the performance of the VCI. The results show multiple non-performance issues that the VCI has experienced in the past 15 years, and presents a comparison between these issues and issues from other countries. The results reveal that the top 5 non-performance issues in the VCI include poor design services, frequent design changes, lack of skilled contractors, a lack of experienced project managers, and financial difficulties of owners. The comparison identifies that 87% of VCI issues were also experienced in other countries. Since the VCI has similar issues as other countries, the author propose that the VCI can improve construction performance by implementing successful methodologies from other countries. This paper investigates the Best Value Performance Information Procurement System (BV PIPS) as a potential solution because of two key aspects: (1) sufficient documentation of on time, on budget, and high customer satisfaction from this model, and (2) sufficient testing from other regions and countries to show similar improvement in construction performance.