- Title
- Change in the Thai construction industry under the new ASEAN economic community: real or assumed change?
- Creator
- Kanjanabootra, Sittimont
- Relation
- EPOC 2015: Engineering Project Organizations Conference: Engineering Growth. Working Paper Series: Proceedings of the 12th Engineering Project Organizations Conference (EPOC 2015) (Edinburgh, Scotland 24-26 June, 2015) p. 1-15
- Publisher
- Engineering Project Organization Society (EPOS)
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- The purpose of the paper is to understand Thai construction stakeholders perceptions of what they believe the impacts of the implementation of an Asian Economic Community will be on practice in the construction industry as it relates to professional migration and accreditation, to building and design regulations and to business practice. From 2015 the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) begins operations bringing economic integration across all economic activity including construction. Understanding how this happens is increasingly important in the AEC context because of a free trade agreement, with a changed discourse offering all members opportunities of investment and project control in any member state. The construction industry in the AEC countries has been using local laws, regulations, standards and practices which are not fully aligned, creating a problem for international construction, engineering and architecture companies. No new laws or regulations have yet been enacted and there is still no consensus about what will be done to address the anomalies that currently exist. In this paper personal stories of construction professionals, engaged in construction projects in ASEAN countries, are used to show their perceptions of the impacts of the AEC introduction. The stories show that what is in place now is what they perceive will happen within the AEC, until in the future when any regulatory changes happens formally and is agreed to by all member nations. The perception is that this will take considerable time in construction because of complexities with standards and existing building codes, different standards in university courses, and the difficulties in translating 15 standards with inconsistencies into common design and practice standards. The data shows that current operations in practice enable non-locals to have influence within the project at all stages, maintaining control because of their ownership of resources. In the short term the interviewees believed that there will be no change and the status quo will remain. In the longer term their belief is that change will be difficult and result in compromise. What is uncertain is, what real impact any changes will have on construction in the long term.
- Subject
- construction; international standards; AEC; mutual recognition arrangements
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1336285
- Identifier
- uon:27586
- Language
- eng
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