... Editorial Associate Professor George Zillante Head of Building School of Natural and Built Environments University of South Australia Adelaide, Australia Welcome to the second issue of our Journal for 2006. The University of South Australia and,in particular, the School of Natural and Built Environments, is delighted to have been the host for this year's Australian Journal of Construction Economics and Building (AJCEB). From next year the journal will undergo a slight change to its name and will be known as the Australasian Journal of Construction Economics and Building. The AJCEB acronym will stay the same. The reason for the name change is the adoption of the journal by several Asia Pacific RegionalProfessional Bodies which will increase the readership to over 10,000. This is a positive step for our Journal and totally consistent with the intemationalisation theme adopted by our Board of management. This increase in circulation will allow the journal to reach a greater and more varied population group both in terms of readership and authors and should result in an even better quality journal. This issue of the journal is an interesting mix of papers from around the world. The first paper by Giustina Consoli traces the architects' dilemma when Australia embarked upon a number of private prison projects during the 1990's. Those projects involved the competitive bidding for prison projects by consortia, which generally consisted of a correctional operator, contractor and architect. The architect's role in such projects was to satisfy the needs and desires of the operator, contractor and government assessors. As a result, the architect became a critical element in the successful delivery of the prison projects despite the sometimes conflicting issues that they were forced to grapple with. These architects reported:(a) uncertainty in undertaking large specialist projects, (b) grappling with their own expectations and those of other participating parties as to the role of the prison architect, (c) a desire to acquire a working knowledge of the philosophies of incarceration and prison design and construction, and (d) r-·li·ff·ir·.-•-•·lt·i --in..w..n.-r·ld..n..n'"'w..i.t.h...i.n...:.:n-·p.n-v·i.r.n.n.-m·.P...·n-t·w...h.P.. ·rF-!·- suspicions were raised in regards to conflicting and underlying objectives of the operators and contractors. Rifat Rustom proposes the formulation of generic simulation models for analysing construction claims. Rustom maintains that while there are several techniques for analysing the impact of claims on time schedule and productivity, very few are considered adequate and comprehensive enough to consider risks and uncertainties. The formulation of the generic methodology presented in The Australian Journal of Construction Economics and Building [Vol6, No 2) the paper depends on three simulation models;As- Planned Model (APM), As-Built Model (ABM}, and What- Would-Have-Been Model (WWHBM). The approach proposed allows for scenario analysis to account for the disputed events and workflow disruptions thereby assisting claimants in presenting their cases in a much more effective and professionalmanner. Relationship contracting is the topic for Zuo and Zillante's paper. The construction industry has long been accused of poor performance.The confrontational attitude of its members and the resultant adversarial atmosphere has been identified as a major factor responsible for this poor performance. A cultural change is required to remove these barriers and to promote optimum project outcomes. Relationship contracting is promoted as a way to support the shift from the adversarial culture to the co-operative and collaborative culture within the industry and the project team. The authors use the Adelaide Convention Centre Extensions project as a case study and review the form of relationship contracting used in this milestone project. The paper documents the lessons teamed and makes recommendations that can lead to improvements in future projects. Due Thanh Luu and Willy Sher explore how obtaining competitive quotations from suitably qualified subcontractors at tender time can significantly increase the chance of winning a construction project. Amidst an increasingly growing trend to subcontracting in Australia, selecting appropriate subcontractors for a construction project can be a daunting task requiring the analysis of complex and dynamic criteria such as past performance, suitable experience, track record of competitive pricing, financial stability and so on. Case-based reasoning (CBR) may be an appropriate method of addressing the challenges of selecting subcontractors because CBR is able to harness the experiential knowledge of practitioners. This paper reviews the practicality and suitability of a CBR approach for subcontractor tender selection through the development of a prototype CBR procurement advisory system. In this system, subcontractor selection cases are represented by a set of attributes elicited from experienced construction estimators. The results indicate that CBR can enhance the appropriateness of the selection of subcontractors for construction projects. The paper by Peter McDermott and Malik Khalfan suggests that the main driver behind the adoption of supply chain management (SCM) philosophy into the construction industry was the successes within other industry sectors. SCM is defined as a network of different organisations, linked upstream and downstream in a chain, aiming to produce quality and value in the services and products for the end consumers through integrated processes and activities. In order to achieve the optimised level of integration of the whole supply chain, the industry has responded in various forms. This paper discusses different initiatives by the researchers, construction industry, and the UK government in order to achieve 11 The Australian Journal of Construction E