Impact of critical factors within decision making process of public engagement and public consultation for construction projects: Case studies

Public engagement and public consultation are increasingly applied to involve stakeholders in the decision making process of construction projects. However, it is difficult for multiple stakeholders to clearly identify common interests and make decisions about specific issues of construction projects within the current public engagement and consultation processes. Hence, this study aims to investigate the critical factors within decision making processes for public engagement and public consultation, and their impact on the final project outcomes. In order to achieve this, three case studies were conducted on different project types, including public residential housing, urban planning and civil engineering. The study reveals the systematic steps of the decision making process in both public engagement and public consultation over construction projects. Causal relationships between the critical decision steps and the final outcomes have been found, while the results also indicate that the adoption of public engagement is more appropriate for construction projects than public consultation. Therefore, numerous practical recommendations are given for facilitating the whole decision making process of public engagement and improving final outcomes, including the adoption of value management into the decision making process of public engagement. The findings of this study also form the basis for a further longitudinal study.