The construction industry has been heavily criticized in the past few years for its development of productivity compared to the manufacturing industry. In 2009 the Social Care Center developed a report that treated och criticized different errors within the construction industry. For instance competence, construction errors and performance had showned bad results which had to be improved. A common sentence within the building industry is that ?every project is unique?. Today it?s common for a construction company to have costs for material and services which exceeds two-thirds of the total cost.

Efficient energy use in the housing sector is crucial for achieving a sustainable society. The expansion of this sector only represents a fraction of the existing houses, hence it?s within the existing houses the potential for energy savings lie. This potential has been analyzed in order to determine if it?s possible to cut the current energy demand in half.

This report deals with issues related to construction waste. Building material that has not been built into the project is defined as construction waste. Cost of construction waste amounts to 4-12 % of the total cost of the project. Moreover, cost of construction waste is 1-3 % of the production cost. The aim of this study is to increase knowledge about the main causes of waste within the construction industry.

This report deals with activities that from a CSR perspective are considered to create a shared value for a medium-sized construction company in Sweden. The CSR definition used in the report is the European Commission?s since it reflects the valuecreating aspects of CSR, in contrast to the traditional philanthropic aspect of CSR.Companies in the building construction industry have difficulties identifying activities that create value in society and in the company. The aim with the project is to, from a CSR perspective, identify and evaluate value creating activities in a building construction company. The activities will be evaluated with respect to competitiveness and how they can be implemented into an organization.

This degree projekt deals with Skanska´s safety at the construction site with focus on personal safety equipment. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how the rules of personal safety equipment are applied and experienced at Skanska´s construction sites.In October 2004 Skanska started a projekt to make the construction sites more safe. With use of a questionnaire we have made a survey at different construction sites. 80 questionaires have been handed out to Skanska´s employees in the southeast region. While they were handed out we conrolled if the employees at Skanska´s construction sites used head protection, easy visible clothing, safety shoes and identification cards.The result of the survey shows how the rules are applied.

Information technology (IT) with its enormous capacity involves more and more in our daily activities and public sector is using IT to make their activities more efficient. The government goal with electronic government (e-government) among other things is increasing the availability and service to the public as well as improving the democratic process. Democracy can be strengthened by involving citizens in public decision making process but this goal has not been achieved yet and the development of e-government has mostly been focused on improving efficiency within administration and electronic services (e-services). Promoting the democratic process has been postponed in the development of e-government because of the lack of political commitment and decision. Digital divide is also preventing public sector to promote democracy with the support of IT.

This report deals with activities that from a CSR perspective are considered to create a shared value for a medium-sized construction company in Sweden. The CSR definition used in the report is the European Commission?s since it reflects the valuecreating aspects of CSR, in contrast to the traditional philanthropic aspect of CSR.Companies in the building construction industry have difficulties identifying activities that create value in society and in the company. The aim with the project is to, from a CSR perspective, identify and evaluate value creating activities in a building construction company. The activities will be evaluated with respect to competitiveness and how they can be implemented into an organization.

This study was commissioned by the Västerbotten sports federation, whocalled for an overview of the policies that the municipalities inVästerbotten work after in the field of sport. The study aimed to identifysports policy programs or documents that have been produced by themunicipalities, and how they work with them. Furthermore, the studyhighlights the municipality?s politicians reasoning aboutsport andrecreation-sector,and how their sport policy-work was practiced. The datacollection was based on seven interviews and document-collections fromthe 15 municipalities.

The construction and real estate industry represents a significant part of Sweden's total impact on the environment and mainly affects the following national environmental objectives: reduced climate impact, a good built environment and a non-toxic environment. By establishing internal rules, companies within the industry can reduce their environmental impact. SMT (AB Sandvik Materials Technology), a part of the industrial group Sandvik AB, has set a target that during 2014 develop a guiding document with special consider to the environmental impact during construction of office buildings, that they establish at the Swedish regional capital Sandviken, for both internal and external tenants. This study therefore aims to clarify which environmental aspects that the construction and real estate sector mainly are responsible for, and therefore should be part of a guiding document for a company for establishing office buildings, and to present arguments regarding the use of such a document. The study is based on literature studies and personal contact with other companies, in the form of e-mail conversations and a telephone interview.

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..

This study is an initial attempt to investigate the relationship between banks and developers in Stockholm and its regions. It gives a good impression about the field of construction and project developments in terms of the finance and the negotiations associated with these types of projects. Main actors of the Stockholm?s construction financing market were of major interest for this study. On this regard, the relationships and ramifications of this group were investigated by using a qualitative and quantitative research method.

Few studies enlighten the problem associated with the dialectical relationship between adults and adolescents and how that affects the construction of identity for adolescent?s, in relation to two areas that are closely bordering to each other but differs socioeconomically whereas one area is much weaker on resources than the other. These two areas is Högberget and Haganäs, which are situated in a larger city in Sweden.For us to be able to enlighten this problem we have chosen to use an inductive research approach so that we can explain how adolescents construct their identity and how the organized spare time, in addition with the influence of adults, impacts on adolescents construction of their identity.Therefore we have used interviews as method, both group and individual, so it can regulate which theories that influence our study. The two theories that wires through the entire study are firstly Peter L. Bergman and Thomas Luckmanns theory on social construction where the idea is that the human being is an active social being that constructs its own reality.

Tourism is often being viewed as one of the worlds largest sectors and a great contribution to growth and development. There is a large motivation amongst developing countries to promote themselves as a tourist destination, since they expect the tourism to generate economic growth. The government of Thailand has been promoting tourism since 1960, and the number of foreign visitors has increased from 100 000 back then to 13.5 million in 2006. The purpose of this paper was to investigate weather the increasing tourism industry in Thailand has pulled resources away from other sectors of the economy towards the tourism sector, and in that way harming Thailand?s international competitiveness and causing deindustrialization.

Despite Sweden's ranking as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, recent studies suggest that the prevalence of corruption in the private sector is growing, now approaching international levels. Over the past couple of years, Sweden has witnessed a growing number of scandals involving unethical behavior on the part of its corporate sector. Corruption has gained the attention of authorities, legislators and the public - putting the private sector under pressure to take action to prevent such corporate misconduct. As a result, companies increasingly prioritize strategies and policies aiming to prevent corruption. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the role of leadership in such preventive work.

Reinforcement is of great importance to fulfill the dimensioned strength of a concrete construction. This requires that the work needs to be carried out with adequate results that neither endangers the workers or the safety of the construction. Progressive development of the planning phase, construction documents, and construction methods is in constant need since the technology constantly evolves.In order for contractors to be able to get acceptances from their quotations requires that they have to increase their working pace in order to be able to leave a quotation with a lower price than the competition.Due to the increasing pace the different parts involved in the construction process is subjected to time pressure. The design stage, construction documents, work preparation and the execution are all affected when everything has to be finished quickly. To avoid problems, it is required that all parts are able to deliver good quality solutions and results under the influences of time pressure, which is not always easy.