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Climate change is increasingly exacerbating water shortages worldwide. Among the various repercussions of water scarcity, notably in developing countries, the most critical are the decline in social sustainability and the widening inequality within farming communities. In response, irrigation reforms aimed at establishing farmer-managed networks have been introduced to foster equitable water distribution and enhance the livelihood and food security of underprivileged farmers. However, these reforms have largely fallen short of achieving their social sustainability goals. A significant factor in this shortfall is the farmers' limited capacity and reluctance to assume roles typically filled by bureaucracy under institutional reforms. This study explores farmers' willingness to engage in a World Bank-assisted participatory irrigation infrastructure program. We utilized questionnaire surveys and hierarchical analysis to evaluate how various factors influence farmers' willingness to participate. The findings indicate a multifaceted challenge that intensifies in communities fragmented by socioeconomic and political divides. Particularly, the predominance of large landowners in agricultural communities and the absence of sufficient bureaucratic support for participation are key impediments. Our research offers comprehensive insights into the regional sociopolitical obstacles obstructing farmer involvement in government-led participatory projects. It also guides policymakers in grasping the intricate interplay between program design, execution, and contextual elements, which is crucial for the sustainable development of resource-stressed areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, this paper overcomes the atomistic view of external stakeholder engagement research to examine the specific conditions under which community engagement in urban infrastructure public-private partnerships (PPPs) can be transformational and create social value with and for communities. In particular, it shows that a transformational approach to community engagement is, in practice, closer to a form of governance that emphasizes involved stakeholders' responsibility. It traces this line of argument through the literature and practice of social enterprises and other hybrid collaborations in the private sector. Conceptually, it contributes to a political and transformational understanding of community engagement within the context of public-private partnerships. First, by proposing a "governmentality analytical framework" for understanding and uncovering the often purposefully concealed dynamic power relations in the engagement process between the state, communities, and private investors. Second, by proposing a set of guiding principles on how to: empower communities to be organized; reconfigure the institutional environment to offer incentives and reliability; and design public-private partnerships as hybrid organizations capable of including other actors, such as non-governmental organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In construction companies, employee burnout rates and negative socioemotional behaviors (NSEBs) are severe problems for the management. Work-related problems are then visible in the employee's psychological behaviors and consequent outcomes. The literature on organizational behavior argues that moral leadership can evade burnout and NSEB. Following the arguments, this article attempts to examine the impact of moral leadership on the employee's burnout and NSEB through the mediating variables of job embeddedness, and distributive justice in the construction industry. By using the social exchange theory, this article analyzes the data of 302 employees from construction companies in Hong Kong to assess these relationships. The results showed a negative relationship between moral leadership and the construction employees’ burnout. This article provides construction companies and their managers with useful insights on the way the moral leadership mediate through job embeddedness and distributive justice to curtail the employees' burnout. The results of this article also motivate scholars to investigate the multidimensional role of moral leadership in their future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation public–private partnership (PPP) projects are long-term projects that usually break the status quo of public ownership. In fact, opposition to PPP projects stems from a variety of factors, such as political influence to favor certain interest groups and high toll prices. Close examination reveals that vulnerability to societal and political domains originates at certain individual points and creates a complex web of problems as it propagates through different socioeconomic and political levels and project stages. This article attempts to unveil such complex and problematic trends by analyzing ten failed transportation PPP projects to identify critical socioeconomic and political failure factors. Employing questionnaire surveys and path analysis, a failure-mechanism model is developed to depict all possible transportation PPP project vulnerabilities to the socioeconomic and political domains. This article's failure-mechanism model could act as a vulnerability-prediction model for transportation PPP practitioners in the public and private sectors, and it can help better understand socioeconomic and political issues’ impacts to transportation PPP projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction projects are cost-intensive, complex, and challenging ventures that often place employees in a harsh work environment filled with safety hazards. Employees facing such rigid characteristics must also adhere to strict time schedules to complete construction tasks; as a result, construction employees experience high stress that can deplete their psychological resources. Consequently, construction employees develop intentions to quit the organization, commonly known as turnover intentions. This study evaluates the role of ethical leadership in reducing employee turnover intentions in the construction industry. In this study, work exhaustion and psychological contract breach are considered prime antecedents of employee turnover in the construction industry. We collected data from satellite town development projects in Pakistan and performed regression path analysis to assess hypothesized relationships between construction employee turnover intention and its antecedents. The moderating effects of ethical leadership in reducing the impacts of work exhaustion and psychological contract breach were studied. Results revealed that work exhaustion and perceived psychological contract breach positively correlate with construction employee turnover intention; however, ethical leadership significantly reduced the impacts of work exhaustion and psychological contract breach on employee turnover intention. The findings and practical implications of this study can be used to help construction managers act ethically in their managerial duties to retain employees and continue to motivate employees to complete project tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction companies are often notorious for high employee turnover and antisocial behavior. In a hazardous work environment, arduous scheduling tasks, unethical supervision, and working with multiple team members put higher stress on employees to reflect antisocial behavior and lead to turnover intention. Therefore, this article attempts to investigate the association between ethical leadership and turnover intention and antisocial behavior through trust in the leader and procedural justice in the construction industry. From the perspective of resource conservation theory, this article assumes that the moderating influence of job embeddedness plays a role in the association between mediators (trust in leaders and procedural justice) and outcome variables (turnover intention and antisocial behavior). This article uses data collected from 275 employees of Hong Kong construction companies. The results indicated a negative association between ethical leadership and employee turnover intention in the construction industry. The results revealed that job embeddedness moderated the link between trust in leader and turnover intention, and the link between procedural justice and turnover intention. Moreover, the influence of job embeddedness was found nonsignificant in the case of antisocial behavior. This article provides useful insights for policy and decision-making authorities, especially site managers, on how ethical leadership can retain employees by strengthening trust and procedural justice in construction companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry is a multiteam continuum, where in addition to the civil engineers, a wide array of experts and tradesmen provide necessary inputs to complete projects on time and schedule. Such essential inputs are provided by the skilled teams working in parallel and along with the civil engineers, but through separate leaders who are usually led by a project manager who is often a civil engineer or an architect. However, it is a growing concern that if such teams are given more autonomy in the form of shared leadership, it can lead to extended team creativity in a construction project. This study attempts to evaluate such an argument. This study also considers a mediating role of "professional identity salience" that highlights the fact that team members realize their specific professional roles in particular teams and then strive for better knowledge and performance. A moderating role of team coordination is then introduced in this study to assess professional identity salience effect to enhance team creativity. The authors collected a time-lagged data set from 84 working teams in construction projects. The analysis showed that professional identity salience positively mediates the link between shared leadership and team creativity. Furthermore, this relationship is also found to be moderated by the level of team coordination. Based on the results, this study explains how, when, and why shared leadership improves creativity in construction project teams. This study aims to help project managers to understand the shared leadership concept and its implementation in construction projects to enhance team creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1839 British East India Company captured the town of Karachi. After an effortless resistance from the locals the fort was conquered by the British commander sir Charles Napier. The village of Kolachi then was annexed to British India and the city was labeled as Karachi. With the British occupation a phase of new sophisticated architecture and development started. Before that the city was based upon the vernacular mud architecture. These developments resulted in an influx of economic migrants who helped in making Karachi as a multinational and a multicultural city. This paper investigates the architectural attributes that the historic core of the city offers. It also discusses the side by side development of the native and British towns. The paper also researches about the existing state of the architecture precedent of the British colonial past of the city and the urban blight occurred to them over time in various forms like vandalism, encroachments, illegal repairs, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the response of various hydrological parameters and future water availability against anticipated climate variations in snow dominated alpine catchment in Austria. The parameters assessed are base flow, environmental flow, total flow, evapotranspiration, and snow cover duration. The distributed hydrological modeling system PREVAH is developed to assess the impacts through the combination of various climate change scenarios produced under the framework of the European project PRUDENCE. The model results clearly indicate an apparent shift from observed trends in monthly, seasonal and annual values. The mean annual changes observed by all model scenarios range between 45% to 60% decrease in snow cover duration, 15% to 20% increase in evapotranspiration, 5% to 15% decrease in base flow, and 15% to 25% decrease in total runoff values. However, mean annual changes observed in available water are marginal, just ranging from -3% to +2%. All regional model projections show more or less the same identical pattern of changes in analyzed parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tunnels are often preferred for underground transportation in densely populated areas. In these areas, it is almost inevitable for tunnels to run close to some existing pile foundations. Since tunnelling activities induce stress relief and soil movement in the ground, existing piles may suffer from additional axial and lateral forces, bending moments, settlements and lateral deflections. Most of the previous researches on the responses of pile foundations due to tunnel construction were carried out under the plane strain condition. In this paper, a three-dimensional, elasto-plastic and coupled-consolidation finite element parametric study has been carried out to investigate the effects of a 6 m open-face advancing tunnel on a two by two pile group in saturated stiff clay. The influence of different cover-to-diameter (C/D) tunnel ratios (namely 2.0, 2.5 & 3.0) was studied. The objectives of this study are to determine the changes in axial load distribution, changes in shaft resistance along the shaft of pile group and settlement of pile cap due to an advancing open-face tunnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drinking water quantity and quality is of the utmost importance. If the drinking water gets contaminated, it can result in severe health problems. For example, the continuous consumption of drinking water co ntaining more than permissible amounts of fluoride can lead to bone deterioration and increased risk of bone fracture [1]. The present study was carried out to check the quality of underground water of Sukkur city. The analyzed parameters were fluoride, sodium, magnesium, calcium, potassium, iron, arsenic, TDS, pH, conductivity, odor, color and taste. World Health Organization (WHO) standards were followed in present study. Underground water samples were collected from 20 different populated locations of Sukkur city. Only arsenic, pH, iron and potassium were found to be within health safe limits while the rest of the parameters exceeded the permissible standards set out by WHO. The TDS, sodium, fluoride and magnesium were over the limits at some locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of underground transportation systems consists of tunnels, basement construction excavations and cut and cover tunnels which may encounter existing pile groups during their construction. Since many previous studies mainly focus on the effects of excavations on single piles, settlement and load transfer mechanism of a pile group subjected to excavation-induced stress release are not well investigated and understood. To address these two issues, three-dimensional coupled-consolidation numerical analysis is conducted by using a hypoplastic model which takes small-strain stiffness into account. A non-linear pile group settlement was induced. This may be attributed to reduction of shaft resistance due to excavation induced stress release, the pile had to settle substantially to further mobilise end-bearing. Compared to the Sp of the pile group, induced settlement of the single pile is larger with similar settlement characteristics. Due to the additional settlement of the pile group, factor of safety for the pile group can be regarded as decreasing from 3.0 to 1.4, based on a displacement-based failure load criterion. Owing to non-uniform stress release, pile group tilted towards the excavation with value of 0.14%. Due to excavation-induced stress release and dragload, head load of rear piles was reduced and transferred to rear piles. This load transfer can increase the axial force in front piles by 94%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In densely built areas, development of underground transportation system often involves excavations for basement construction and cut-and-cover tunnels which are sometimes inevitable to be constructed adjacent to existing piled foundations. In order to gain new insights into single pile responses (i.e. settlement and load transfer mechanism) to an adjacent excavation in saturated silty clay, a three-dimensional coupled- consolidation numerical analysis is conducted in this study. An advanced hypoplasticity (clay) constitutive model with small-strain stiffness was adopted. A linear increase in pile settlement was observed due to excavation-induced stress release. This is because part of the pile is placed within the boundaries of a major influence zone due to excavation-induced ground movement. Based on a settlement criterion, apparent loss of pile's capacity is 14%. A maximum bending moment of about 350 kNm is induced in the pile with the maximum deflection of 28 mm. In addition, mobilisation of shear strength at the pile-soil interface was found to be a key factor governing pile-soil-excavation interaction. During excavation, a downward load-transfer mechanism in the piles can be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In densely built urban areas, it is inevitable that tunnels will be constructed near existing pile groups. The bearing capacity of a pile group depends on shear stress along the soil-pile interface and normal stress underneath the pile toe while the two would be adversely affected by the unloading process of tunneling. Although extensive studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of tunnel construction on existing single piles, the influence of twin tunnel advancement on an existing pile group is merely reported in the literature. In this study, a series of three-dimensional centrifuge tests were carried out to investigate the response of an existing pile group under working load subjected to twin tunneling at various locations in dry Toyoura sand. In each twin tunneling test, the first tunnel is constructed near the mid-depth of the pile shaft, while the second tunnel is subsequently constructed either next to, below or right underneath the pile toe (Tests G_ST, G_SB and G_SU, respectively). Among the three tests, the 2nd tunnel excavated near the pile toe (Test G_ST) results in the smallest settlement but the largest transverse tilting (0.2%) of pile group. Significant bending moment was induced at the pile head (1.4 times of its bending moment capacity) due to the 2nd tunnel T. On the contrary, tunneling right underneath the toe of pile (i.e., Test G_SU) results in the smallest tilting but largest settlement of the pile group (4.6% of pile diameter) and incremental mobilisation of shaft resistance (13%). Due to stress release by the twin tunneling, the axial force taken by the front piles close to tunnels was reduced and partially transferred to the rear piles. This load transfer can increase the axial force in rear piles by 24%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of technical advancements, construction industry in developing countries, including Pakistan, heavily relies upon manual labor and orthodox methods of construction. Such practices then give rise to safety issues to which all construction industry practitioners, end users and the contextual environment is vulnerable. Contrary to the utmost need of investigating the situation, 'safety in Pakistan construction industry' has received very less attention from the academia and industrial researchers as well. This paper takes the opportunity to investigate fundamental factors that give rise to safety issues in local construction industry. A set of 23 factors have been identified based on the literature review. A questionnaire survey is then conducted that has reflected the most significant factors inflicting upon the safety issues on construction sites. The analysis results of 49 questionnaire survey responses showed that most significant factors causing health and safety hazards in construction projects are poor safety awareness among firm's leadership, lack of technical guidance in performing construction operations, lack of technological innovation/use to improve safety, lack of strictly defined operational procedures and poor safety awareness of project managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are institutional arrangements that facilitate private business activities in the public sector. The adoption of transportation PPPs is based upon governmental efforts to achieve extended efficiency, economy, and effectiveness in comparison to conventional infrastructure procurement systems. Transportation PPPs have shown remarkable contributions in achieving infrastructure development goals. However, introducing long-term profit oriented activities for public infrastructures, which basically run on the principles of social welfare, has brought numerous new management issues and risks that were never observed before in conventional infrastructures' procurement systems. New to such risks, public sector personnel have become prone to make mistakes that could cause loss of value to the public and even partnership failure. Along with a long list of successful transportation PPP projects, there also are a notable number of failed transportation PPP projects. This study is motivated by such failed transportation PPPs, in which public sector partners played key roles leading to partnership failure. First, a set of failure drivers has been established based on the evaluation of 35 case studies of failed transportation PPP projects. The identified failure drivers include improper actions and decisions by the project partners, socio-economic factors, factors associated with political and national situations, and other associated events responsible for transportation PPP failures. Second, the causal relationships among the failure drivers have been identified and the functions of the public sector personnel are evaluated. Third, the causal relationships are discussed in detail in terms of failure mechanisms, with examples extracted from case studies. The identified failure mechanisms have revealed the fact that failure drivers associated with public sector partners transmit their impacts over the entire project life cycle, thereby triggering new failure drivers and creating problems for other project partners. The findings of this paper will help public sector personnel to safeguard partnerships more effectively and provide private sector PPP practitioners with a better understanding of their counterparts' actions and decisions, and their influence on the project success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovative public-private partnerships (PPPs) have created potential opportunities for both public and private sector organizations in developing and managing public transportation networks. Through PPPs, public sector agencies are able to overcome budgetary and technical constraints and private sector companies can obtain long-term and sustained business prospects. However, previous studies have noted that despite possessing experience and skills, private sector companies are prone to making serious mistakes that could lead to the failure of a PPP project. Based on extensive case studies, this paper proposes a failure mechanism model that reflects the trails of mistakes made by private sector partners in transportation PPPs. A questionnaire survey was conducted to validate and assess the criticality of the failure drivers in the failure mechanism model and the causal relationships involved. Multiple regression path analysis was then applied to assess the statistical significance and calculate the path coefficients of the causal relationships depicted by the proposed failure mechanism model. This analysis then yielded the path coefficients, which indicate the causal strength of the proposed failure mechanism model along with its statistical significance. Based on the results of multiple regression path analysis, the failure mechanism model was respecified to reflect the validated and statistical significant causal relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any organization's performance depends on profitability which depends on several adopted criteria. The preference and level of adoption of these criteria varies, on different industries. This study focuses on investigating the criteria of profitability in the construction industry. This investigation involves a survey to seek the perception of the contractors involved in handling physical activities of construction works. The survey considered 63 questionnaire forms. Statistical analysis was performed to compute the frequency and the relative importance index. The results indicated that structural capital, lifetime values, capital structure and competitor actions are the top 4 criteria implemented in construction organizations to measure profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an insight of how to improve the bond strength of cement in which concrete is replaced with rice husk ash. A concrete mix was prepared and was used in different types of mixes i.e. Control Mix, 10% cement substituted concrete with rice husk ash and polymer modified concrete by incorporation different dosages of polymer in the 10% cement substituted concrete. A bar of 12mm diameter, 300mm in length was placed in the center of the cylindrical specimens for pull out test. It was observed that the bond strength between concrete and steel decreases with the replacement of cement with ash, conversely the bond strength improves with the addition of polymer dosages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public-private partnership (PPP) models for public infrastructure delivery are becoming popular among government institutions around the world, due to their embedded potential value for money (VFM) to the public and governments themselves. The experience with infrastructure PPPs internationally have demonstrated many problems and partnership failures, where both the public and private sectors suffered huge losses. Motivated by a number of these failures, this study investigates the actions and decisions of private-sector partners by evaluating 35 failed transportation PPPs around the world. This paper identifies a set of drivers responsible for the failures of transportation PPPs, discusses the causal relationships between them, and finally evaluates a set of failure mechanisms initiated by the private-sector partners. It sheds light on the role of private-sector partners in terms of triggering failure mechanisms in transportation PPP failures. The identification of failure mechanisms discloses the fact that inappropriate decisions and actions of private-sector partners (i.e., failure drivers) have created problems for other project partners, which ultimately caused the PPP failures. The failure mechanism model suggested here provides insight into the existing failure trends associated with private-sector partners in transportation PPPs. These findings will help private-sector partners to safeguard partnerships more effectively and provide public-sector PPP practitioners with a better understanding of their partners' actions and decisions and their influence on project success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]