ASSESSING THE LINK BETWEEN PUBLIC OPINION AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY IN BUILDING AND INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

Increasing the use of social sustainability in the decision-making process for build-ing and infrastructure projects requires that it be defined such that it can be evaluated objectively.One potential indicator of social sustainability in infrastruc-ture projects is public opinion,which can provide a means to evaluate the level of social sustainability on a project based on personal values.Public opinion includes both support and opposition for a project.In this study,the causes or triggers for public opposition to a construction project are identified and then compared to principles of social sustainability to determine if they are related.Eight case study projects were used to identify common triggers of public opposition.The results suggest that common triggers of public opposition are related to land acquisition,escalating construction costs and the presence of endangered species on the project site.Eight of the twelve principles of social sustainability that were identified were determined to be related to public opposition.The results of this study suggest that public opposition could be used as a measure for some elements of social sus-tainability but that further research into other measures for social sustainability is necessary.

SUSTAINABLE STRATEGIES FOR THE REHABILITATION OF AN HISTORIC STATE OFFICE BUILDING

When the Commonwealth of Virginia determined to renovate the Ninth Street Office Building for continued use as badly needed office space,it was confronted with many challenges.Not only does the prime location of the 11-story building on Richmond’s Capitol Square come into play,but also the complications inherent in the rehabilitation of any iconic 110-year old building for contemporary life.Overlay the Commonwealth’s mandate to meet a minimum threshold for sustainability,and we have the recipe for a challenging,but ultimately rewarding,project.This article will describe the historic evolution of the project along with a discussion of the process necessary to design and implement a sustainable building solution within the context of an historic building,including identification of potential sustainable strategies and the implementation of an appropriate approach to arrive at the final solution.

Optimal risk allocation in alliance infrastructure projects: A social preference perspective

The mechanism of risk allocation is designed to protect all stakeholders,and it is vital to project success.Qualitative and quantitative ways of optimizing risk allocation have been well documented in extant literature(e.g.,allocation principles,models,and solutions),and the foci of existing research are usually the maximization of rational utility.Few research has focused on partners’social preferences affecting the output of risk allocation.This study presents a quantitative approach based on modeling alliance member(AM)’s inequity aversion(IA)to analyze risk-sharing arrangements in an alliance project.Fehr and Schmidfs inequity-aversion model is integrated into modeling partner’s utility.This paper derives results for an alliance leader(AL)’s optimal risk-sharing ratio and AM's optimal risk-management effort simultaneously.The derivation is based on solving a restrained optimization problem using the conception and methods from Stackel-berg game theory.Results show that an AM’s IA significantly affects risk allocation between AL and AM.Specifically,envious preference is positively related to AL5s optimal risk-sharing ratio,whereas guilty preference negatively affects AL5s optimal risk-sharing ratio.These findings will be of interest to academics and practitioners involved in designing alliance negotiations.