Study Guides: Construction Project Management: Search for Information

Finding and evaluating literature

The sample assignment topic is largely about economic data including the size of the construction industry, its share of the global economy and regional markets.

A great place to look for this information is in company and industry databases like Marketline and IbisWorld. Search in either of the places below for the construction or construction Australia and see what you can find:

Marketline Advantage Contains reports on the global construction industry as well as regional areas like the Asia-Pacific. Reports contain market value and growth of the sector, forecasts, regional breakdowns and more.
IbisWorld Also offers industry level data, including a profile on the Australian construction industry.

Finding books & articles

The Library Catalogue is a good place to search for books & journal articles on trends and future directions in the construction industry.

Below are a book & article found in the Library Catalogue searching for the terms:

construction Australia future
construction industry trends

Watch the video to learn more about using the Catalogue.

Tip:

When searching journal articles, try restricting your search to peer reviewed articles. Because peer reviewed articles have been double-checked by academic experts, it's easier to be sure that the words and ideas you're using are of sufficient quality for a university assignment.

Library Catalogue

Evaluating your results

Not all the information you get from a search will be useful. If your results are not relevant go back and try different keywords in your search.

To evaluate whether your source is of sufficient quality use the S.I.F.T. Test. Click on the letters of the acronym to learn more:

Other places to search

Finally, you can try running your search in more than one database. The three databases linked below all contain useful literature. The above image is an item found in the Proquest database.

Proquest Proquest contains reports on the construction industry, as well as an excellent collection of books and articles on construction and project management.
ScienceDirect ScienceDirect is great for articles on both construction and project management topics.
Taylor and Francis Online Journals Taylor and Francis contains articles on business and building related topics, and is a great complement to Proquest and ScienceDirect for students of construction project management.

Boolean Searching

In this search we're looking for two synonyms for construction, two possible locations, and either trends or challenges. The full search syntax is:

("construction industry" OR construction) AND (issues OR challenges) AND (Asia OR Europe)

Remember:

Add a keyword if you have too many hits and they aren't focused enough on the topic.
Remove a keyword or add more related terms if you don't get enough good hits.

Notice that when you add the extra search terms it changes the top hits in the search?

Construction Project Management: Search for Information