http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:7381 The building project development approval process is increasingly complex and fraught with conflict due to the rise of the sustainable urban development movement and inclusive decision making. Coupled with this, government decision-making decentralization has resulted in a fragmented and over-regulated compliance system. Problems arising from the process include wasted resources, excessive time delays, increased holding and litigation costs, inadequate planning coordination, high levels of advocacy costs and a divisive politicized approval process. In Australia, despite attempts by government and industry associations, numerous problems are still unresolved. Design managers increasingly assume a liaison role during the approval phase. There is a long tradition of planning theory literature which provides context for understanding the knowledge–power–participation relationship for this paper. This study investigated the policy, process and practice conflicts during the approval stage in achieving sustainable urban developments. Three regional local government areas within one state jurisdiction and observations from detailed structured focus group interviews involving 23 stakeholders, proposers and assessors were analysed to explore this conflictual environment. As a result of regulatory fragmentation and excessive consultation, various persuasion tactics have been developed by all stakeholders of which ‘reciprocity’ and ‘authority’ were identified as the most common. Two challenges for design managers were thus identified: first, the emergence of the role of a by default central informal arbitrator across conflicting planning instruments; and, second, as a navigator through a set of persuasion tactics. An inclusive knowledge-based design management framework for sustainable urban development is proposed considering Habermas’ communicative planning theory, Foucaltian governance and discursive powers thesis and Cialdini’s persuasion theory, as well as being grounded in the key empirical results from this study, using various types and sources of knowledge as an authoritative persuasion tactic. 2011-03-11T05:10:06.047Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:6012 The term design and build (D&B) is a well-established description of a procurement method in which the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders are clearly defined. The advent of public-private partnerships (PPPs) brings a new opportunity for design and build contractors with the concomitant challenge associated with bidding as a member of a private sector consortium with numerous stakeholders. The work described in this paper is based on an ongoing Australian Research Council (ARC) research project that is investigating the costs and the allocation of risks during the bidding process for PPPs. In the course of this research we have explored the implications for design and build contractors bidding for social (as opposed to economic) PPP projects. The conventional wisdom has been to assume that there is little difference between bidding for a conventional design and build contract as compared with submitting a design and build bid as part of a total PPP bid; however the results of our study indicate that there are subtle, and in some instances, significant differences. By way of placing the Australian experience in context, the paper also traces the emergence and growth of social infrastructure PPPs in Australia. 2010-04-27T04:43:24.730Z ]]>