The goal of this study is to identify, classify, explore, and understand decision-making complexity elements in major infrastructure projects (MIPs). This article puts forward systematic definitions of decision making, decision-making quality, and decision-making complexity. Based on literature reviews and an in-depth case analysis of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB), a comprehensive framework of decision-making complexity is developed, which divides the elements into six dimensions: technical, social, financial, legal, organizational, and time. The links between different dimensions are also illustrated. This article is expected to deepen our current understanding of decision-making complexity and to provide a fundamental point of reference in the front-end phase of MIPs.@en

In the process of internationalization of construction contractors, international enterprises as main contractors (IMC) need to consider whether part of the contract should be subcontracted to local subcontractors (LSC) to gain a competitive advantage when competing with local main contractors (LMC). The involvement of local subcontractors can usually help reduce cost through the cost spillover effect. However, it should be noted that the share of local subcontractors with local main contractors with an inferior quality may lead to quality spillover. The Hotelling model is therefore adopted to investigate the subcontracting decisions of main contractors considering both cost and quality spillover effects. Many scenarios are simulated and the results show that LMCs with inferior quality can always choose the subcontracting strategy to obtain increased profit regardless of the strategy that IMCs adopt. On the other hand, IMCs need to balance the cost spillover of subcontracting and the quality spillover for improving the quality level of LSCs. The results are useful for contractors to make decisions that are relevant to the adoption of subcontracting strategies to obtain competitive advantages.@en

As one of the most important sustainability project management practices, prefabrication has been drawing increasing attention to project construction practitioners. However, due to the needs of high technology and large capital investment, there is a great challenge for suppliers to adopt prefabrication in mega project construction. Therefore, designing an adequate incentive mechanism has become a daunting task for the project owner, which aims to ensure a socially and environmentally friendly project delivery. In this study, an incentive model with reputational concerns from the perspective of the project owner was established and how this incentive affects supplier's effort and project owner's profit was investigated. By contrasting to the incentive model without reputational concerns, when the reputation incentive is considered in the incentive contract, both supplier's effort and project owner's profit increase. In addition, adding reputation incentive implies more expenses, thus the project owner may not want to take this strategy due to the potential expense increase. Therefore, the study also considered an incentive mechanism with constant total incentive intensity. By comparison, the result shows that this strategy is also useful which can improve supplier's effort and project owner's profit.@en

In mega projects, the stakeholders may be exposed to significant on-site construction risk, especially the owners and insurance companies who take the most responsibility for the risk loss. It is difficult for insurance companies to diversify their risks by undertaking enough similar policies, and participating in on-site risk management has become an important method of active risk control. Based on the principal-agent relationship between the owner, insurance company, and contractor, this paper establishes incentive mechanisms for risk management considering the common agency and exclusive agency models. The results show that an insurance company's involvement in the common agency model creates external effects that can improve the utility of both the owner and the insurance company. The owner is then willing to provide a higher incentive coefficient, and the contractor's nonrisk and risk management efforts increase accordingly. From the owner's perspective, the influence of the participants' characteristics and external uncertainties on the incentive strategy are discussed. The results recommend that it is better for the owners and insurance companies to jointly establish a good cooperative relationship and build the incentive mechanism. The spillover effect has a positive effect on the cooperation between the two parties, while the impact of the uncertainty in risk management output on the cooperative relationship is negative. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge for understanding the on-site risk management considering stakeholders' participation and provides a practical mode for owners and insurance companies to implement active risk management in mega projects, thus achieving better risk governance of mega projects. @en

In mega projects, the stakeholders may be exposed to significant on-site construction risk, especially the owners and insurance companies who take the most responsibility for the risk loss. It is difficult for insurance companies to diversify their risks by undertaking enough similar policies, and participating in on-site risk management has become an important method of active risk control. Based on the principal-agent relationship between the owner, insurance company, and contractor, this paper establishes incentive mechanisms for risk management considering the common agency and exclusive agency models. The results show that an insurance company's involvement in the common agency model creates external effects that can improve the utility of both the owner and the insurance company. The owner is then willing to provide a higher incentive coefficient, and the contractor's nonrisk and risk management efforts increase accordingly. From the owner's perspective, the influence of the participants' characteristics and external uncertainties on the incentive strategy are discussed. The results recommend that it is better for the owners and insurance companies to jointly establish a good cooperative relationship and build the incentive mechanism. The spillover effect has a positive effect on the cooperation between the two parties, while the impact of the uncertainty in risk management output on the cooperative relationship is negative. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge for understanding the on-site risk management considering stakeholders' participation and provides a practical mode for owners and insurance companies to implement active risk management in mega projects, thus achieving better risk governance of mega projects. @en