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The pandemic of COVID-19 crisis suddenly appeared worldwide, and there were no proper crisis management procedures taken in advance to contain such a problem. Moreover, it has had harmful and unmeasured consequences on most life sectors, including construction, which has been severely impacted during the pandemic. This paper aims to review factors with a high-risk impact on hospitals' construction projects during the outbreak of COVID-19 in developing countries by considering the case of Iraq's construction sector. A mixed methodology of qualitative and quantitative research approaches was used. The qualitative method involved (1) a literature review and (2) semi-structured interviews to identify high-risk factors that affect construction projects during the outbreak of COVID-19. The quantitative method involved (1) collecting survey data from 205 industry professionals and experts to determine each risk factor's importance and influence. Cronbach's alpha test to check the reliability of the collected data set, and (3) a fuzzy inference system method was used to assess the impact of each factor on construction projects during the pandemic. The findings of this study indicate that the construction industry has been hit severely during the COVID-19 in Iraq. Moreover, 17 high-risk sub-factors under six main construction factors involve health and safety, risk management, management deficiency, financial, supply chain management and contractual impact hospital construction projects. Furthermore, the most significant risk factors had impacted hospital construction projects by calculating their means were (1) commitment to safety and health recommendations with a level of impact equal to 4.81; (2) risk management procedures with a level of impact equal to 4.63; (3) equipment delivery delays with a level of impact equal to 4.54; (4) worker acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination with a level of impact equal to 4.36; (5) increase of price material with a level of impact equal to 4.18; (6) lack of use of the latest technology with a level of impact equal to 4.09; (7) delay in payments with a level of impact equal to 3.90; and (8) lack of training to deal with the pandemic with a level of impact equal to 3.81. As such, this paper contributes by providing effective policies and measures to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on hospital construction projects in Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planned methods may be developed to improve the efficiency of building construction. The construction business is profoundly impacted by the prevalence of inaccurate cost and schedule prediction. The main strategy to improve the project performance is to evaluate the hybrid sustainable materials using the artificial neural network (ANN) method based on the effective factors in construction projects in Iraq. This strategy needs an effective method to classify the project input representation and specify the accurate activity of each factor. This paper uses a hybrid artificial neural network to correlate and classify the sustainable hybrid of construction projects to evaluate their performance. The contribution of this method is the selection of the Multi-Criteria Decision-Maker method (MCDM) based on time and cost-effective factors correlated with the artificial neural network method. A dynamic selection procedure for project materials may be created using the existing technique as an evolutionary model for successful project completion. The MCDM observed that the appropriate sustainable material was considered as the main factor with a rank of 0.823 for cost effect and 0.735 for time effect and the main influence factor in Iraqi projects was the building height. The results present superior functional cost evaluation results correlated with the selection of hybrid sustainable materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main challenges and barriers facing the effective implementation of risk management (RM) practices in the construction industry have increased the ceiling of challenges associated with the implementation of construction projects during the COVID-19 era. The aim of this paper is to assess the level of significance of risk management implementation challenges and barriers (RMICB) and the level of efficacy of construction RM practices during COVID-19 by considering the case of Iraq. A multistage research methodology was adopted, including semistructured interviews with construction experts to identify the main RMICB and RM practices indicators; surveys to assess the identified RMICB and RM practices indicators; analytical hierarchy process–based and fuzzy-based models to quantify RMICB level of significance, and RM practices level of efficacy. Based on the adopted methodology, the authors identified a total of 34 RMICB grouped under four categories, namely analytical approach–related, behavior-related, management-related, and team-related RMICB. Moreover, the assessment of the current construction RM practices during the COVID-19 era indicated a low level of RM practices efficacy. This study significantly contributes to the body of knowledge by helping construction practitioners and researchers to better understand the RMICB that are hindering effective implementation of RM strategies for construction projects during the COVID-19 era. Furthermore, it provides valuable information to decision-makers regarding the current construction RM practices efficacy during extreme conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction projects are unique in nature. One of its most notable qualities is the length of time that may result in a change of circumstances, resulting in many risks as a result of the long implementation period and the several stages, beginning with the project foundation and ending with final delivery. This raises the level of uncertainty and the probability of risks, which has a negative influence on the economics of construction contracts. To manage risks in such projects, the researcher visited a number of sites in numerous governorates across Iraq after collecting papers and literature on the subject of risk management in construction projects. The researcher prepared unique forms displaying the probability of the risk arising and the magnitude of its effect after extracting a large number of them. After that, the forms were distributed to a group of specialists. Following a statistical analysis of the findings, the researcher came up with a set of conclusions and recommendations for managing risks in Iraqi building projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of risks in construction projects gives advance indications of the potential risks that may occur during project planning, construction or management. Therefore, identifying those risks and preparing the necessary plans to respond to them is a key detail for the success of the project from its failure. The projects implemented in the manner of a Build Operate Transfer (BOT) contract are accompanied by many risks due to the multiplicity of parties and the multiplicity of their responsibilities, as well as the size of those projects because they are usually associated with infrastructure projects. The aim of this research is to identify the most prominent risks in BOT contracts and the planned response against each risk. The adopted methodology is through conducting interviews and a closed questionnaire (included 77 out of 100 respondents), and the adoption of statistical analysis through the SPSS program and the scale of relative importance.The relative importance index technique was used to rank the risks according to their importance and discuss the reasons for their classification. The results showed a list of the most important risks that would be generated if the BOT contract was applied to transportation projects in Iraq, as well as the appropriate planned response to each risk based on historical information for previous BOT projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]