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In Hong Kong, over 20,000 private residential buildings will be 50 plus years old by 2039. However, building maintenance has not been owners’ popular interest because of the high cost as well as the complexities in justifying whether the quantities and prices of the maintenance works are reasonable. This paper therefore aims to validate the practicality of adopting Scan-to-BIM: Terrestrial Laser Scan (TLS) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) to perform quantity take-offs (QTO) for estimating building maintenance costs.

A 64-year-old tenement building was selected to conduct a case study. In this instance, the building had undergone a Scan-to-BIM survey approach to generate QTO for the bills of quantities for external painting works. The Scan-to-BIM approach includes site visit, positioning of scanning equipment, assignment of circular scan routes, point cloud registration and identification of residual error. After that, time, cost and quality data were logged into contrast with QTO on as-built plans for external wall plastering works.

The “time”, “cost” and “quality” of the Scan-to BIM practice were then examined and compared with the prevailing practices of manual measurements on as-built drawings. As noted from the results, the initial cost of Scan-to BIM is high, owing to the cost of equipment, software and capable available operators. However, the authors identified that the time and cost can be significantly minimised by developing and implementing efficient practices such as preparing a detailed scan plan, equipping modeller with quantity surveying knowledge, using automated object recognition and 5D BIM software packages such as Vico Office and CostX.

The upshot is that Scan-to-BIM could be one of the measures to advance the clarity in the QTO and estimated price of the maintenance projects.

The practicability of Scan-to-BIM has received limited attention on existing building maintenance project. The Scan-to-BIM approach was examined using a case building of a 64-year-old tenement building. The approach demonstrated in this research study is promised to advance the clarity in the QTO and estimated price of maintenance project.

This paper investigates the policy changes made towards infrastructure public–private partnerships (PPPs). The purpose of this study is to empirically identify the policy risks associated with the development of PPPs and to assess their impacts on the projects.

A case study of the policy changes that have been implemented for PPPs in China over the past seven years has been undertaken and is presented in this study. The causal loop diagrams are applied to assess and illustrate the potential impacts of the risks as a result of such changes on PPPs.

A sequence of the policy risks, which relate to PPP risk allocation, contract management and implementation, payment and abatement mechanisms and financing, has been identified. It is also found that the identified risks will generate significant but negative impacts on PPPs, leading to an ineffective project delivery, low revenue, poor service quality and even contract breach.

This research provides the private-sector entities that will embark on PPPs with an insight into managing and controlling policy risks over the project's lifecycle.

PPPs have been critical for infrastructure development worldwide. Nevertheless, they have been a controversy, as many of them were subjected to poor outputs. Consequently, a variety of political mechanisms has been implemented to enhance the governance for PPPs. Policy can bring not only benefits but also risks and, however, policy risks of PPPs with a particular assessment for their potential impacts have received limited attention. Therefore, the study presented in this paper will contribute to the identification and assessment of policy risks within the context of PPPs.

I trace and explain how the ratcheting of corporate mergers and deregulation transformed the structure of elite relations in the United States from 1960 to 2010. Prior to the 1970s there was a high degree of elite unity and consensus, enforced by Federal regulation and molded by structure of U.S. government, around a set of policies and practices: interventionism abroad, progressive tax rates, heavy state investment in infrastructure and education, and a rising level of social spending. I find that economic decline, the loss of geopolitical hegemony, and mobilization from the left and right are unable to account for the specific policies that both Democratic and Republican Administrations furthered since the 1970s or for the uneven decline in state capacity that were intended and unintended consequences of the post-1960s political realignment and policy changes. Instead, the realignment and restructuring of elites and classes that first transformed politics and degraded government in the 1970s in turn made possible further shifts in the capacities of American political actors in both the state and civil society. I explain how that process operated and how it produced specific policy outcomes and created new limits on mass political mobilization while creating opportunities for autarkic elites to appropriate state powers and resources for themselves.