cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.24
title: EVALUATION OF CREDIT ACHIEVEMENTS OF LEED-CERTIFIED BUILDINGS

description: Nowadays, the concept of green building is no longer an alternative but a necessity. The acceptance of a building as "green" depends on having a certificate. LEED is one of the widely used green building certification systems in Turkey. The main objective of this study is to find out whether there were statistically significant differences between the credit achievements of 105 newly constructed and certified buildings in Turkey, which were certified according to four different levels, and to determine which of these credit achievements are weak. For this purpose, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests were performed and the findings were interpreted. Findings revealed that the highest level of achievement of these buildings was in sustainable sites, water efficiency, innovation in design, and regional priority credits, while the lowest level of achievement was in energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality credits. The analyses revealed that the achievements in the energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality credits of green buildings are relatively low when compared to the ones in other credits. There may be several reasons behind these low levels of achievement such as poor green culture, high investment cost of necessary systems, absence of reusable, recycled, and renewable materials, etc. If these problems, most of which are peculiar to developing countries, can be overcome, higher certification levels can be achieved.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.25
title: EVALUATION OF SIMULATION TECHNIQUES FOR MODELING PROGRESSION OF CONSTRUCTION CLAIMS

description: The unstructured and dynamic nature of construction projects and the on-site work complexities have been inevitably leading to claims. These evolve according to a staged mechanism set forth in the adopted conditions of contracts. More specifically, claims might progress expeditiously or drag depending on the nature of the applied mechanism and the behavior and interaction among contractual parties. As such, this complex problem of claim progression, which entails a lot of parameters and variables, is addressed in detail in this paper by resorting to three simulation techniques namely: (1) Discrete-Event Simulation (DES), (2) Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), and (3) System Dynamics (SD). The purpose behind this study is two-fold: (1) capturing and visualizing, through three different simulation models, the dynamic and interaction among the different entities as claims are progressing and defining the weak links hindering the efficiency improvement of such a process, and (2) comparing DES, ABM, and SD simulation approaches, using choose-by-advantage technique, and evaluating the advantages and drawbacks of each when studying the progression of claims. Results of all approaches are presented and analyzed followed by a discussion of the effectiveness of each simulation technique and the potential applicability of a hybrid approach in modeling the progression of claims.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.26
title: EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF THE FLEXURAL BEHAVIOR OF CONCRETE BEAMS REINFORCED WITH STIFF BIAXIAL GEOGRID

description: Limited research exists on the benefits of using geogrids to reinforce Portland cement concrete structural and non-structural members. Preliminary research findings have shown that the inclusion of geogrids in Portland cement concrete leads to a definitive improvement in the post-cracking behavior in terms of ductility, load capacity, and crack propagation control. However, the geogrid sheet caused partial discontinuity in the concrete section which in some cases lead to complete separation of the bottom concrete layer. Through a rigorous experimental program, this study aims to verifying and further enhancing the current knowledge regarding the behavior of geogrid-reinforced concrete elements as well as proposing a geogrid reinforcing configuration that is expected to maintain the continuity throughout the concrete section while achieving or improving the aforementioned benefits. A total of nine concrete beam specimens were prepared and tested under four-point bending. Testing results and observations re-confirmed the reinforcing benefits of geogrids and proved that the proposed configuration is very effective as it resulted in better post-cracking behavior while overcoming the concrete separation problem.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.27
title: FAST-PACED CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW KHALIFA PORT BRIDGE PROJECT

description: The significant growth and development in the United Arab Emirates in recent years necessitated considering advanced construction techniques for bridge structures. This paper presents features of the New Khalifa Port Project which consisted of bridge structures with a combined length of 3.64 km. The strict project design criteria, schedule and budget represented significant challenges which required considering specific designs using efficient precast elements and construction methods. The bridge structural system consisted of 39.8 m long precast, pretensioned modified AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) girders with cast-in-place concrete deck slabs. The main challenge was to optimize the size of the precast girder as the self-weight of the initially proposed elements exceeded the lifting capacity of the available equipment. The other challenge was to correlate between the British Standards and AASHTO LRFD (load and resistance factor design) code to design the girders for static and dynamic loads. The casting yard was set at 70 km from the project site and delivery roads were assigned to accommodate the special tandems carrying girders weighing 80 tons each. Lessons learned during design, fabrication, transportation and construction of the precast girders add on to the efficiency of the Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) processes.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.28
title: GLASS FIBER POLYMER ON THE FRESH AND HARDENED PROPERTIES OF CONCRETE

description: The study describes an experimental study into the relationship among incorporation of Glass Fiber on the fresh and hardened properties of concrete. The effect of fiber fractions on the slump, compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and flexural strength of Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC) were investigated for volume fraction (VF) of 0%, 1%, 2% and 4%. In order to serve the purpose, concrete cylindrical and prism specimens were made with various rates of fiber-glass polymer. The cylinder specimens were tested at 7 and 28 days for compressive strength and at 28 days for splitting tensile strength, whereas the prism specimens were tested at 28 days for flexural strength. The experimental test results show that the additions of glass fiber polymer to concrete decrease slump, but increase compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and flexural strength. In addition, an analytical model has been proposed to predict slump of fresh concrete.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.29
title: HUMAN RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN ENGINEERING DESIGN COMPANIES

description: The human capital is a major asset for engineering companies. On-time completion of project tasks and cost effectiveness are contingent on proper allocation of human resources. In practice, most engineering mangers assign resources according to availability without considering the level of employee's expertise while making the assignment decision. This may result in lower quality of design production or a difficulty in meeting deadlines in case an employee requires training or coaching. To better attain project requirements, the assignment practice could be improved by including resource characteristics and critical project information. This paper is part of an ongoing study that aims to develop a reliable resource assignment mathematical model that takes into account engineers' years of experience, their level of familiarity with different software programs used by the company, and other task-related attributes. Examples of the latter include scheduled submission date, and range of estimated period required to complete a task. The output of the model consists of assignment variables through pairing a group of human resources to a group of tasks with the objective of minimizing project duration and cost while maximizing resource utilization. Extensions to the model can allow engineering managers to monitor and control the progress of the project or the lack thereof.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.30
title: IMPACT OF COVERING IRRIGATION CANALS ON EVAPORATION RATES IN ARID AREAS

description: Water is the essence of life
description: thus preserving enough quantities and good quality of water will elevate the standards of living and health of communities. Egyptian government approved Toshka New Valley project to help deal with the rapidly growing population of the country. The project entails building a series of canals
description: the main is Sheikh Zayed canal - to irrigate portions of the Western Desert of Egypt. It is expected that the recovered land will become home to three million residents by 2020 and cultivate about 550000 feddans. Toshka is a very arid area with high air temperatures
description: thus very high evaporation rate
description: about 3 billion m3 /year. Researches showed that in the near future Egypt will face scarcity of water. So saving water from Sheikh Zayed canal by reducing evaporation will provide additional source of water to the area. This research aim is to estimate evaporation rate from the canal and its main branches. Variable configurations and spacing of covering canals were chosen to reduce evaporation and at same time allow for re-aeration and other water quality parameters to meet their standards. It was found that full coverage calculated evaporation amount is about 9 million m3 /year which could drip irrigate 35000 feddans of wheat per year which is about 7% of the total area of the land intended to be cultivated in Toshka project.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.31
title: IMPROVING CONSTRUCTION EDUCATION: THE ROLE OF COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN HIGHER INSTITUTIONS AND THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

description: Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are developmental hubs that contributes to a country's economic growth through knowledge generation, dissemination and skills diffusion among students. For HEIs to maintain their roles in fostering construction education to equip students for the industry, the current traditional pedagogical approaches are simply not enough to deliver on its mandate. One of the many ways through which HEIs can improve the quality of construction education today is through collaborations with the construction industry. Through a structured questionnaire survey, this paper identified the possible roles that collaboration between HEIs and the construction industry will play in fostering construction education. The sample for this study consisted of one hundred and twenty-six (126) respondents drawn from professionals in the Nigerian construction industry. The study revealed that exposing construction students to the world of work, strengthening universities in conducting quality and relevant research and creating and training students with key skills industry require, are among the benefits of collaboration between the HEIs and the construction industry. The study found that there is an increased need for HEIs to collaborate with the construction industry to be progressive, relevant and produce skilled graduates who will spur the activities of the construction industry. This study recommends that HEIs seek collaboration with the industry so as to address the shortcomings of higher education in Nigeria and Africa in general.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.32
title: INFLUENCE OF BOUNDARY CONDITIONS VARIATION ON TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION OF LOAD-CARRYING PARTS

description: The paper discusses the problem of boundary conditions formulation in FEA-based design procedures of load-carrying parts driven by topology optimization. The emphasis is on the correct formulation of boundary conditions and the definition of corresponding load cases so that topology optimization will deliver a usable design. It demonstrates that inadequate preparation of load cases may lead to a result that seems to be reasonable, but may behave badly in practical application due to possible lack of robustness and reliability. To illustrate this, an example study is performed for a loadcarrying bracket that is fastened by four screws. Namely, in such situations it may quickly happen that one or more screws become at least slightly loose. This changes the stress fields in the part dramatically. If this is not captured correctly in the applied load cases, this means that the topology optimizer will deliver some design that might be extremely sensitive to a loose-screw situation. Such a design may fail very quickly during normal operation.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.33
title: INFLUENCE OF COLLABORATIVE BEHAVIOR ON CLAIM NEGOTIATION

description: The high cost incurred by the resolution of conflicts is largely affected by the existing adversarial nature of the construction industry along with the use of non-efficient dispute resolution methods in construction projects. This paper studies opinion dynamics in the negotiation of construction disputes while trying to understand the behavior and extremism of each contractual party. The developed model uses an agent-based approach to show how each agent's attitude can influence the negotiation process when solving a dispute. It can also be used to highlight the importance of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods and the use of a mediator in helping parties initiate negotiation and decrease the number of negotiation cycles needed to converge. The results showed that negotiation is not only affected by the attitude and character of the agents involved but it is also influenced by the delivery method of the project and the level of intensity of each agent. It was found that when the project is delivered through an Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) method, parties are more flexible and cooperative and will reach agreement within few negotiation cycles.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.34
title: INFORMATION MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES FOR IMPROVING EARNED VALUE QUANTIFICATION

description: Real-time progress tracking of construction activities is critical for successful project monitoring and control. As such, the application of modern information technologies for progress tracking are proclaimed to overcome the limitations of manual approaches and hence contribute to the automated acquisition of onsite data for the computation of the earned value of progressed work. To this end, this paper presents a thorough review of 111 studies dealing with automated data collection and progress tracking on construction sites. The researched technologies were classified into four categories, namely: information technology, geo-spatial, imaging, and augmented reality (AR). It was found that research dealing with progress tracking using imaging technologies has been speedily growing over the years. The findings also revealed that the highest frequency (57) of reported technologies is found to be related to the AR category, with 74 percent of these studies having been published in the last eight years. Moreover, 63 percent of the studies were concerned with all kinds of project activities, with more specific areas of application reported to include concrete and steel elements, MEP elements, indoor and outdoor elements. The encountered technologies are reported to decrease labor hours and the time needed for progress monitoring, and automated data collection on construction activities progress is said to facilitate the generation of status reports and permit the early detection of deviations from the as-planned status.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.35
title: INVESTIGATING SITE-RELATED NOTICES IN CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS

description: Notices issued under the construction contract serve several purposes, the most significant of which is to facilitate the progression of the works. This is done through establishing necessary communications among the project participants by acting in accordance with the callings of the contract conditions. Through an in-depth examination of the notices stipulated under the standard conditions for the construction contract issued by the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC), it was found that 43 out of 93 encountered notices deal with issues related to activities taking place on the construction site. The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed analysis of these notices and highlight their operability properties. The analysis focuses on the various characteristics pertaining to this vital group of notices, namely: their types, the participants involved in their administration, their related time bars, and the concerned aspects of the site activities. Results of the performed analysis are twofold: (1) the majority of these notices are found to be of the structured (complex composition) type
description: and (2) the contractor has the larger share in triggering their associated sub-clauses, and to do so, for the majority of these notices, within numerically stipulated time bars. The main contribution of the presented work is in providing a focused reference that can help contract administration practitioners, dealing with site-related matters, improve the current state of practice.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.36
title: INVESTIGATING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY AS A SOLUTION FOR CONSTRUCTION WASTE: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

description: The construction industry results in a large amount of material waste, most of which currently ends up in landfills. This study aims to find new ways to reuse waste materials captured as outputs of construction projects. First, the circular economy (CE) concept is explored. Second, the application of CE as a potential solution for minimizing material waste on construction projects is investigated. To achieve a healthy industrial metabolism, the paper illustrates how a complex industrial ecosystem is one that produces little or no waste and whose constituents can be interdependent. Output ratios from the construction industry are compared with previous literature on material waste, as a foundation to present a cycle of material reuse. Reformulating the traditional input-output system into a more circular concept presents a set of challenges
description: however, the opportunities and significant impacts to the material cycles and landfills have proven beneficial and some major cities are starting to employ this concept with great success.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.37
title: MANAGING DESIGN PROJECTS: METHODS AND POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS USING BIM

description: The planning and monitoring of the design phase is crucial to ensure the aimed time, cost, and quality performances of the project are met. In this context, monitoring the progress of design is tightly related to the way design is being planned. In other words, the measures taken into account while planning the development of design
description: whether time, cost or quality measures, are themselves used to monitor the progress of design throughout the project. In this regard, this study sheds light on the methods used to manage design projects, highlights their shortcomings, and suggests new ways to properly manage the progress of design using BIM as a data repository of design information and management decisions. The study reviews current methods used to plan and monitor design projects and suggests improvements in needed areas. Results show that the reviewed methods differ in the way they approach design management and they do not fully represent all design characteristics. Nonetheless, measures used in these methods can mislead managers in detecting the actual progress of design. In this regard, this study suggests a comprehensive framework that builds on existing methods to enhance the management of design and to better control its development.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.38
title: MECHES HOUSE: THE IMPORTANCE OF CHOOSING THE RIGHT BENEFICIARY ON A POST DISASTER ALTERNATIVE CONSTRUCION

description: More than a year ago, Ecuador suffered a 7.8 Mw Earthquake that was devastating, the automatic response was to rush to the affected areas and rebuild. Mecheดs House is an alternative: the crisis as an opportunity to experiment and consolidate popular construction systems based on an endogenous and holistic approach. This study evaluates two different methodologies (Mutualista Pichinchaดs Casa Lista and Mecheดs House) of the selection process for the beneficiaries on a reconstruction post-disaster building program contrasting each case and its needs by analyzing its approaches to the reconstruction procedures: one automatic, non-reflexive and product-based, and one analytic and process-based. Founded on experience and how different processes need different beneficiaries this study will raise some questions about the effectiveness, pros, cons, and perspectives of different approaches to make the correct choice of beneficiary for the reconstruction process after a natural disaster.
DOI: 10.12755/isec.res.2018.39
title: MEDIATION TACTICS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN DISPUTE RESOLUTION

description: Dispute occurrence on construction projects is almost inevitable. If not addressed adequately, disputes can cause contract termination and loss of benefits for all parties involved. Among various dispute resolution methods, mediation is gaining popularity in the construction industry as it satisfies the desired degree of control of both parties among other factors (e.g., time, cost). Mediation is a cooperative problem-solving method that benefits from the expertise of a neutral third party known as the mediator. Well-defined tactics such as creating trust atmosphere, tackling the core of dispute, and using advanced integrative approach for solution determination are essential to reduce the gap between disputants and ensure effective discussions. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it investigates common mediator tactics and relates them to the likelihood of having a successful mediation. The San-Ramos Channel case study is used to illustrate the efficiency of mediator tactics. Second, this paper takes a closer look into the use of mediation in Lebanon as an example of a country with minimal regulations on mediation. Barriers for an effective implementation of mediation such as the role and the influence of the engineer on the construction process and the mediator's lack of technical expertise are discussed and recommendations are derived.