Digital Commons Network^™

Prediction Of Distresses In Pavement Networks: A Machine Learning Approach, Mahmoud Kotb

Theses and Dissertations

The quality of pavement networks is greatly affected by different distresses. These distresses appear in many forms, such as cracking, potholes, rutting and different types of deformation. As a result, to ensure effective pavement management, accurate modeling of these different distresses has become essential. Moreover, machine learning models have shown great potential in modeling pavement performance in recent years. The objective of this research is to develop machine learning models for modeling key parameters of pavement distress, specifically the International Roughness Index (IRI), fatigue and longitudinal cracking. Data for this investigation were extracted from the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) database, …

Developing And Forecasting The Egyptian Construction Cost Index, Mayada Elsaied

Theses and Dissertations

Accurate cost estimation is pivotal for the success of construction projects, yet the industry grapples with challenges related to cost overruns. Uncertainties and unforeseen variables often introduce discrepancies, particularly during the planning phase. Economic changes, considered uncontrollable risks, significantly influence these fluctuations. Various research endeavors have quantified the impact of economic conditions on construction costs, emphasizing the correlation between economic indicators and project expenses. Addressing these challenges, the Construction Cost Index (CCI), a tool introduced by Engineering News Record (ENR), accurately delineates the correlation between economic changes and construction costs. Despite its global efficacy, an Egyptian Construction Cost Index is …

Integrated Project Delivery (Ipd): A Contractual Framework For The Egyptian Construction Industry, Sarah Hussain

Theses and Dissertations

This abstract highlight the significant findings and contributions of the study, which aimed to develop model clauses specifically tailored to the Egyptian construction industry for multi-party construction contracts. The research methodology encompassed several key components. Firstly, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to explore the various construction delivery methods prevalent in Egypt. This review provided a solid foundation for understanding the existing practices and identifying areas for improvement. The study also delved into the concept of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) and its potential benefits as well as an analysis of the commonly used standard forms of contract and successful case …

Optimizing Repayment Strategies For Egyptian Construction Companies With Multiple Loans, Moataz Elkady

Theses and Dissertations

Optimizing Repayment Strategies for Egyptian Construction Companies with Multiple Loans is of utmost importance to efficiently allocate monthly income for loan repayment. The conventional practice of paying the minimum balance due each month leads to increased interest charges and prolonged repayment periods. In response, this research proposes a model for multiple loan repayment that considers the computational complexity involved.

The model is built on the foundation of mixed integer linear programming and aims to establish an optimal repayment schedule by minimizing the total cash required to repay the loans, prioritizing the repayment of loans before personal expenses. The implementation of …

Spatial Autocorrelation Analysis For Construction Sites, Raghda Moharram

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the usefulness of spatial autocorrelation analysis in construction sites. The objective is to provide construction managers with insights into the site's performance, identify potential areas for improvement, and ultimately lead to cost and time savings and improved project quality. To achieve this objective, the study identifies significant spatial autocorrelation variables for various applications in construction and analyzes their impact on the site's efficiency and potential problems.

The potential applications where spatial autocorrelation analysis could be useful were identified, including schedules, progress, earned value measures, safety incidents, workers' densities, equipment densities, energy expenditure, and quality non-conformity. A framework …

Influence Of Organizational Culture And Leadership Style On Disputes In Construction Projects – A Contractor’S Perspective, Omneya Nader Mekhaimer

Theses and Dissertations

Over the recent decades, studies on organizational culture and leadership practices have gained global attention across business management literature given their implicit influence on the organization’s success. However, very few studies tackled these practices in the construction industry research especially in Egypt. Unlike other industries, the construction industry is known to be a complex, dynamic, and adversarial industry sector due to its project-oriented nature where various stakeholders are involved and each have their own objectives. Consequently, construction disputes are inevitable to occur whereby previous studies revealed that the level of disputes have propagated throughout the years.

This research aims to …

Resources Based Planning Framework For Infrastructure Maintenance And Rehabilitation Projects, Heba Gad

Theses and Dissertations

Infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation projects involve activities scattered over a large geographical area (e.g., scattered road segments maintenance, telecom towers maintenance program, etc.). Planning such projects require a resource-based approach that accounts for the implications of resource mobility between activities’ locations in terms of time & cost. Existing scheduling techniques fall short of addressing the unique challenges of the scattered nature of these projects in combination with organization's limited resources availability. To address this need, this research presents a resources-based planning framework for infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation scattered projects with the objective of enhancing resources utilization achieving time and cost …

Enhancing Construction Safety Training Of Bridges Using Augmented Reality And Virtual Reality, Mohamed Sherif Elrifaee

Theses and Dissertations

Infrastructure development projects are widely acknowledged as some of the most complex and challenging projects to undertake. The construction of bridges, in particular, has proven to be a significant safety risk for workers, with a considerable number of accidents reported on construction sites. There is a lack of comprehensive training programs specifically designed for bridge construction safety, and only a few studies have explored the use of both AR and VR to enhance safety training in construction. As such, this research aims to improve the safety of bridge construction sites through the implementation of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality …

Vr-Based Safety Training Program For High-Rise Building Construction, Sahar Badr

Theses and Dissertations

The rates of fatal and non-fatal accidents within the construction industry across the globe are surging despite the massive efforts that are being exerted toward maintaining a safe working environment. Past research has proved that the provision of effective safety training programs is a primary course of action that should be taken to minimize construction accidents, fatalities, and both fatal and nonfatal injuries.

However, in acknowledging the limitations of traditional safety training programs within the construction industry, several researchers have addressed the urge to incorporate novel training practices that are based on the modern virtual reality (VR) technology to promote …

Implications Of Good Faith In Construction Contracts, Nadine Rashed

Theses and Dissertations

The principle of good faith is making inroads and continues to significantly impact various contractual arrangements. In most civil legal systems, good faith is present as a core principle. Nevertheless, its definition is beyond doubt scarce in the construction industry. However, the common law lacks the good faith obligations. Good faith is one of the fundamental principles that impact the contractual obligations between the contracting parties. This paper creates an urge to address the implications of good faith on construction contracts in the pre-contract and post-contract award stages. Therefore, the paper’s objective is to propose a legal/contractual clause that meets …

An Artificial Intelligence Framework To Contractor Financial Prequalification, Salah Elgamal

Theses and Dissertations

Financial distress in the construction industry always causes major disruptions that

usually result in a rippling effect on the economy. Avoiding such defaults is a top priority for employers to meet their demands. Artificial Intelligence (AI) models have provided increased accuracy in predicting financial distress compared to statistical, fuzzy and logistic regression models, and other classification models. The main objective of this work is to support project employers in pre-qualifying contractors by predicting the status of construction contractors during a bid analysis to disqualify contractors with a high probability of experiencing financial distress during the project duration. Eight financial indicators …

An Artificial Intelligence Tool For The Selection Of Delay Analysis Technique In Construction, Mostafa Farouk

Theses and Dissertations

The increasing complexity and magnitude of projects impose greater impact of delays on stakeholders. Construction delays are a major source of disputes in construction projects. Since a construction project depends on interactions and shared responsibilities among parties, research works were directed toward identifying delay causes, quantifying their impacts, and proposing ways to deal with them. Several delay analysis techniques (DATs) are available, but when applied to the same project’s delays provide different results. Thus, the selection of the DAT to use in evaluating delays becomes vital. Reviewing the literature, it has been realized that often there are disagreements, which lead …

Development And Prediction Of A Construction Price Index In Egypt, Mohamed Ramadan

Theses and Dissertations

Cost overrun is one of the most recurring issues in the Egyptian construction industry. The effect is not only on the construction industry ,but also influences the overall economy of a country like Egypt. Therefore, a construction performance index and a construction price index could be an integral indicator of the performance of the industry. These indices can reduce construction companies’ losses and decrease the effect of any sudden economic depression on the construction industry. Several research were conducted to predict construction indices. However, many uncertainties disturb the prediction of these indices. The trend in the prediction models for construction …

Legal Characterization Of The Challenges Faced By The Construction Industry During Covid-19 And Devaluation Of The Egyptian Pound, Riham Abuzaid

Theses and Dissertations

With all the challenges this past decade has inflicted on the economy on a global scale, Egypt had its share with two major events, starting with the Egyptian pound devaluation against the U.S dollar in 2016 and currently the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. These major events instigated the interference of the legal/contractual sectors in the construction market to find solutions that range from agreeable to stringent to protect the assets of their beneficiaries.

Both events are impactful and require extensive analysis to determine and classify each situation. This thesis addresses the implementation of standard internationally acknowledged legislative acts used …

Rework Prediction On A Construction Site Through Bim & Ann Integration, Raghda Attia

Theses and Dissertations

Construction Rework is a common and widespread issue in the construction industry that has a detrimental impact on the project performance, whether in terms of schedule delay or cost overrun. Developments in Building Information Modelling (BIM) have aided in the resolution of coordination issues, which are thought to be one of the leading sources of rework particularly during the construction stage. Nevertheless, the majority of research has focused on resolving coordination issues during the design stage with minimum regard to the coordination issues that occur during the construction stage. In a BIM environment, the goal of this research is to …

Project Leanness Score: A Machine Learning Approach, Julia Said

Theses and Dissertations

The construction industry is known to have several inadequacies in resource utilization leading to cost and schedule overruns. One of the popular recent methods that attempts to eliminate these inadequacies is lean construction principles, techniques and tools. Lean construction is a philosophy, backed with principles and tools, aiming at maximizing value, eliminating waste, optimizing efficiency, and seeking continuous improvement. Lean construction techniques (such as pull planning, just-in-time delivery, fail safe for quality, etc.) are widely researched and well developed. However, their implementation in construction sites is tricky as their success depends on several other factors such as the level of …

Mathematical Modeling And Optimization Of Water Efficiency In Residential Buildings, Mahmoud Amin

Theses and Dissertations

Water scarcity is a global issue that is rapidly worsening. The domestic sector is one of the fastest-growing segments of world water usage. Many researchers have explored various approaches to promote sustainable uses of water, with Greywater (GW) recycling and utilization of innovative plumbing fixtures among the methods presented to reduce freshwater consumption for domestic usage. Nonetheless, previous studies have dealt with both means independently, with limited analysis of the integrated effect of utilizing GW recycling with innovative plumbing fixtures, both on quality of supplied water, as well as on cost of the integrated system. Accordingly, this research aims at …

Final Bid Price Estimation For Negotiated Contracts: Bargaining Game Theory Approach, Amr El Mahallaoui

Theses and Dissertations

The wide use of the low bid method by employers for awarding construction contracts has created an aggressively competitive environment among contractors in the construction industry. As a result, a contractor may resort to use a low mark-up percentage for his bid to increase his chances of winning, which may lead to losses and conflicts in case he is awarded the project. Additionally, a contractor who reaches the final negotiations stage for a certain project is faced by the dilemma of the minimum discount percentage he may need to offer to the employer that maximizes his chance to win the …

A Quality Management System Implementation Framework For Contracting Companies In Egypt, Noha Elsokhn

Theses and Dissertations

Customer dissatisfaction due to low quality and performance in developing countries is more notable than technical construction failures. In order to enhance the corporate-level quality, which is reflected later in project-level metrics, quality management systems (QMS) are developed and applied. A quality management system (QMS) defines the organization's structure, processes, procedures, and responsibilities to achieve quality policies and objectives. Successful implementation of a QMS improves service quality, organization performance, and customer satisfaction. Previous research widely explored QMS implementation in different industries; only a few studies focused on the implementation and its influential factors in the construction industry, especially in developing …

Framework For Enhanced Applicability Of The Egyptian Public Procurement Law To International Administrative Construction Contracts, Amr Abu Helw

Theses and Dissertations

Local governments and public authorities conclude contracts for the purpose of acquisition of goods, delivery of services and construction of public facilities like bridges, infrastructures and public buildings. A public contract is an agreement to perform particular tasks financed by government funds to the benefit of the whole community. Private entities and corporations are subject to stricter standards in their dealings with the government than in private transactions. Conversely, the government must deal fairly and equitably with those who it contracted with to achieve successful implementation of the projects. On October 3, 2018, a new Egyptian public procurement law, namely, …

Assessment Of Key Imperatives For Enhancing Precast Adoptability In Egypt, Mostafa Sameh

Theses and Dissertations

Precast Concrete’s modular application concept is a major construction method that has been used historically seen in various shapes, forms, and with a wide range of constituents. Examples include Ancient Egypt and China among several impressive structures in old civilizations. The major advantages of precast concrete lie in its adaptability, resilience, and versatility which makes precast concrete one of the most agile building materials. Precast concrete as we know it today has been introduced to our markets over the past several decades. Having similar advantages to that of old precast building methods, the road has been paved for wider use …

Interactive Expert System For Budgeting World Bank Consultancy Projects, Yosra Rafat

Theses and Dissertations

Cost estimating and forecasting are key components of the budgeting of any construction project. However, conventional approaches may result in uncertainty and usually do not utilize the organizational knowledge of past projects. Ideally, performing a cost estimation under the best predictions of the relevant future conditions, is the best approach of economic analysis to evaluate the optimum value for money. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence techniques, there are now several Machine Learning (ML) methods that are being studied to capitalize on accuracy gains with regards to cost estimating techniques to increase reliability during the tendering phase. This research aims …

Assessment Of Carbon Dioxide Emission And Its Impact On High-Rise Mixed-Use Buildings In Egypt, Ahmed Salah Hamza

Theses and Dissertations

With Egypt's vision of 2030 focusing on sustainable development with a true emphasis on Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) emission reduction in the newly built cities and high-rise buildings, efforts are exerted on various levels towards accomplishing the vision’s goals. This is achieved through multiple tools and models associated with aiding the reduction of carbon emissions, yet not a clear one was introduced for the mixed-use buildings in Egypt.

Through this work, a significant gap was identified with respect to high-rise buildings carbon emission assessment in Egypt. This was a main driving force for this work in an attempt to …

Assessment Of Contract Terms And Conditions For Lump-Sum Contracts, Omar Othman

Theses and Dissertations

A Contract is a tool that defines the obligations of the contracting parties and assigns the risk between them. Contracts are usually drafted to meet the interests of the owner by addressing the legal issues and liabilities. Meanwhile, less emphasis is placed on clearly communicating the contract terms and ensuring that all contracting parties comprehend their risks and obligations. In a country like Egypt, which has faced drastic economic and political changes in the past few years, and yet is experiencing a boom in the construction sector, many developers tend to draft contracts that might be legally complicated or lacks …

A Web-Based Change Control Management Toolkit For Lump-Sum Turnkey Contractors: Transformation To Third Generation, Ahmed Omran

Theses and Dissertations

Project deviations and changes are one of the key common particulars encountered in the Construction industry. Project changes can occur in different forms, may impact different pillars of the project, and can be caused due to the existence of various underlying factors. Mismanaging or lack of controlling these changes is one of the key contributing factors leading to project hardships. Contractors incur profit erosion, scope creep, and time slippages mainly by failing to have an effective project change management system enforced within its project execution philosophy. Such adversity is amplified for contractors engaging in lump-sum turnkey “LSTK” projects. Contractors encounter …

Multi-Skilled Labor Optimization With Partial Allocation Of Resources, Amira Saleh

Theses and Dissertations

The current practice of labor allocation in construction schedules assumes single-skilled workforce; meaning that each worker is assumed to be skilled in only one trade. In such practice, at any instance in the project lifecycle, some of the workforce become idle waiting for other labor types to complete their work. Traditionally, companies may relocate idle workers to other projects and return them back to their original project when needed again. This complicates the resource management process and is not often performed successfully, leading to schedule and cost overruns. Alternatively, project managers may keep the idle workforce at their projects because …

Using System Dynamics To Study The Effect Of Change Orders On Labor Productivity, Shrouk Gharib

Theses and Dissertations

Change orders in construction projects lead to numerous negative impacts, including loss of labor productivity, delays, and cost overruns. Owners and contractors are usually in disagreement when it comes to allocating the extent of responsibilities with respect to the resulting overruns. Each party tries to hold the other party fully responsible for such overruns through a series of claims and disputes. Several delay analysis techniques have been developed to aid in settling such disputes, however, they do not fully grasp the rippled impacts of change orders and do not assist parties in reaching consensus when it comes to finding the …

The Effect Of Learning And Cost Optimization On Line Of Balance Scheduling, Kareem Essam Zahran

Theses and Dissertations

The increase in populations throughout the past years introduced the need for improving and increasing countries’ infrastructure. Moreover, there has been an increasing demand for dwelling units ranging from small economic housing blocks to high-rise buildings and residential villa compounds. These projects are known by their repetitive nature, where a constant unit is repeated several times. Scheduling techniques that consider the learning effect as an influencing parameter in calculating productivity rates can improve the effectiveness of the scheduling process. This achieves more realistic forecasts resulting in optimum utilization of resources and better control during implementation phases. Linear scheduling techniques are …

Life-Cycle Cost Analysis, Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

The construction industry can be considered as an indication of economical status of any country.