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Copyright of Journal of Engineering (17264073) is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Engineering (17264073) is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

The construction industry significantly impacts the environment and uses natural resources that negatively impact the built environment. Conversely, green buildings can lead to several environmental, social, and economic benefits. The paper explores the barriers that impede the implementation of sustainable construction projects in Iraq. It draws on a literature review in the field of sustainable construction, as well as a survey of construction industry professionals in Iraq. A total of 17 major barriers to sustainable construction projects are identified and classified into four groups to reduce the environmental impacts of construction activities. The variance inflation factor (VIF) values of dimensions were less than 3.5, indicating that they independently contribute to the second-order constructs. Therefore, it is essential to implement green building practices, such as using energy-efficient materials and systems, adopting energy-efficient designs, and using renewable energy sources. Furthermore, the findings suggest that sustainable construction practices can also help improve quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, the concept of sustainability has become a focus of attention for many institutions and communities. The reason for the spread of this concept and great interest is the pursuit of sustainable development of societies which aims at balancing the three factors: environmental, economic, and social. This paper aims to develop a system to implement sustainability ideas in school building projects based on the international guidelines and practices for sustainability. For example, (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM)-Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-The Pearl Building Rating System (PBRS)) and the current practices in Iraq. The purpose of the collected and reported information was for making decisions during various stages of preconstruction, construction, and post-construction. The system employed suitable criteria, subcriteria, and standard weights for school buildings assessment, which was set according to a field survey. The survey included interviewing a group of specialists in school buildings and conducting a closed questionnaire. A computer program was prepared to assess school buildings in the 3rd General Directorate of Education in Baghdad-Karkh. These buildings were executed during (2008–2018). The School buildings were classified into four types (traditional, precast concrete units, steel structures, and structural concrete construction). The field survey has shown that the highest standard of sustainability is the environmental design (20.79), and the lowest sustainability criteria are water treatment system (5.81). However, the study aims to develop a sustainability assessment system for school buildings. A comparison was made between the current buildings with ones that having ideal sustainability criteria. Similarly, a monitoring was done with the perfect situation to observe the deviation within the project progress. Finally, recommendations were given for the purpose of employing the sustainability concepts in school buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cost overrun in road construction projects in Iraq is one of the major problems that face the construction of new roads. To enable the concerned government agencies to predict the final cost of roads, the objective this paper suggested is to develop an early cost estimating model for road projects using a support vector machine based on (43) sets of bills of quantity collected in Baghdad city in Iraq. As cost estimates are required at the early stages of a project, consideration was given to the fact that the input data for the support vector machine model could be easily extracted from sketches or the project's scope definition. The data were collected from contracts awarded by the Mayoralty of Baghdad for completed projects between 2010-2013. Mathematical equations were constructed using the Support Vector Machine Algorithm (SMO) technique. An average of accuracy (AA) (99.65%) and coefficient of determination (R²) (97.63%) for the model was achieved by the created prediction equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Khawarizmi Engineering Journal is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Engineering (17264073) is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Post-conflict reconstruction has been one of the most challenging themes for the AEC industry, urban designers and planners, and related decision-makers, especially in complex urban contexts with severe destruction in terms of infrastructure. The city of Mosul in Iraq is a case where there is an urgent need for reconstruction, in particular the housing sector after the enormous destruction caused by the ISIS war of 2014–2017. Today, advanced technologies in construction present opportunities to address post-conflict reconstruction challenges. BIM has been used in recent years since it is an integrated and effective process for planning, monitoring and managing contemporary construction projects. Nevertheless, BIM has not been investigated properly in planning and managing post-conflict reconstruction, especially in developing countries. This paper discusses the potential of adopting BIM in post-conflict reconstruction through investigating the validity of the BIM process in planning and assessing possible housing solutions for the reconstruction of Mosul city, using BIM applications. The main findings suggest that BIM applications present significant potential in the process of planning, assessing and managing the reconstruction of post-conflict contexts in developing countries, where conventional methods are limited, dysfunctional and inefficient. [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]

Copyright of Journal of Engineering (17264073) is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Water supply projects (WSP) requires high plan information, specialized capabilities, capable human resources, and high administrative capacity. However, in the developing countries, particularly in Iraq, these projects experience a lack of a large number of these necessities, which shows the need to identify the critical success factors (CSFs). Accordingly, the objectives of this research are to investigate the CSFs for WSP and their significance among the construction (public and private) and education sectors. To achieve this, first we have carried out a comprehensive literature review of the CSFs for WSP. Second, we administrated a questionnaire survey to 260 construction experts working in the construction and education sectors. It was found that the top five important success factors for water supply projects in Iraq were a stable political environment; sustainable construction legislation and regulation; effective risk management practices; well-organized and committed project teams; and government decisions through the project life cycle. The survey results did not indicate major differences in the perception of the experts. The findings are focused to assist construction practitioners' gain better understanding on the important areas to achieve project set objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to avoid delays and cost changes that occur in emergency reconstruction projects especially in post disaster circumstances. This study is aimed to identify the factors that affect the real construction period and the real cost of a project against the estimated period of construction and the estimated cost of the project. The case study is related to the construction projects in Iraq. Thirty projects in different areas of construction in Iraq were selected as a sample for this study. Project participants from the projects authorities provided data about the projects through a data collection distributed survey made by the authors. Mathematical data analysis was used to construct a model to predict change in time and cost of the projects before the start of the construction. The artificial neural networks analysis was selected as a mathematical approach. The most important factors identified leading to schedule delays and cost increase were contractor failure, redesigning of designs/plans and change orders, security issues, selection of low-price bids, weather factors, and owner failures. The use of the ANN model for such a problem is expected to be an effective method for modeling this complicated phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Engineering (17264073) is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Al-Rafidain for Rights is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Construction projects still face the old–new problem of delivering the projects within the predefined time and cost. This problem becomes more complicated with when addendums and variations are considered during the projects. This study aimed at developing an artificial intelligent model using support vector machine (SVM) technique to predict the time and cost indices of projects. Data from 21 tunnel projects implemented in Kurdistan, Iraq were collected and used in this study. The input data include five variables, namely contract value, contract duration, number of change orders, number of conflicts, and classification of company. WEKA––a set of software for machine learning and data mining––developed at the University of Waikato in New Zealand was used to build SVM model to predict the time and cost indices. The collected data were split by default into a training set of 65%, a testing set of 10% and a validation set of 25%. The results show that SVM model I successfully predicted the cost index not only for the trained data, but also for projects with input parameters out of the range of the training inputs. Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and Average Accuracy (AA) for SVM prediction of cost index were found to be 13.9% and 86.1%, respectively. The SVM model II accurately predicted the time index with MAPE and AA of 3.4% and 96.6%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction industry is considered as one of the most important industries in Iraq. It is well known that most construction projects in this country are exposed to time and cost overrun or both. The main objective of this study is to find the most important causes of delay in public projects in Iraq. This objective was achieved through an intensive literature review and a survey which included a questionnaire used to assess the perceptions of the main participants involved in the construction of the projects. The questionnaire was divided into three parts. The main part focused on the causes of delay in construction sites. The 65 causes compiled through the literature review and the pilot study were classified into four groups (client related, contractor related, consultant related and external factors). Answers were collected from 134 participants representing the three parties involved in the construction of the projects. Analysis was carried out to find the amount of delay suffered by the projects, as well as the indices related to frequency of occurrence, severity and importance of the four groups. In addition, ranking of the 65 factors was carried out to identify the most crucial causes of delay. It was concluded that the most effective delay factors affecting the time overrun in the public projects in Iraq are: security measures, government change of regulations and bureaucracy, official and non-official holidays, low performance of lowest bidder contractors in the government tendering system, design and changes by owner, design changes by consultants, delay in progress payments by the owner, problems with local community, owner's lack of experience in construction and economic local and global conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cost and time performance are considered to be the most important aspects in the construction industry. The exceptional conditions that took place in Iraq since the beginning of the third millennia had a huge vicious impact on the cost and time performance of local construction projects. This may represent the principal motivation for the local authorities to enact some four successive legislations in order to control the performance of the construction industry. In this research, an evaluation is made to the cost and time performance of local construction projects and their variation due to the multiple changes in the internal factors that affect project performance, and changes in the surrounding events include legislative, economic, and security environment during the period that lasted from 2003 to 2014. Data is collected from 30 governmental projects to conduct the evaluation. A comprehensive questionnaire is performed to estimate a quantitative value for the impact of several factors that concern both the owner and the contractor, with special consideration to their variation through the successive legislation periods. These estimates are, in turn, utilized in a system dynamics model, in which the project development process is simulated. The final cost and duration changes in the project are accumulated in the form of stocks to give an indication of the cost and time performance of the project. The developed model returned a progressive reduction of 10.9% for the change in project cost and 135.37% for the change in project schedule throughout the eleven years period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]