The Choice of project governance modes to minimise contractors’ opportunistic behaviour

In this era of globalisation and fierce competition among businesses, contractors in the construction industry often tend to engage in opportunistic behaviour to gain more benefits at the expense of owners. The past researchers have defined contractors’ opportunistic behaviour (COB) as the behaviour of the contractor that is motivated to pursue self-interests at the expense of the client. The researchers in this field have identified project governance (PG), which considered as management of project management can be used to minimise the COB. Trust and formal control are the major PG modes that are used in the global construction industry. However, there is a dearth of research that identified the suitable PG modes to minimise the effects of COB in the Sri Lankan construction industry. Hence, this study aims to investigate the PG modes that can be used to minimise the effects of COB. Accordingly, qualitative research approach was adopted to achieve the research aim. A comprehensive literature review followed by case studies was conducted to investigate the synergy between the concepts. Information gathered were subjected to content analysis. This study revealed that formal control and combination of trust and formal control as the most suitable PG modes for Sri Lankan construction industry. The research further identified the factors that affect the COB namely, contractors focus on revenue maximisation, external uncertainties, contractual complexity, and dynamic complexity. The study further highlighted the importance of minimising COB to help minimise conflicts and reduce the financial losses incur for project stakeholders. Keywords: Construction industry

Investigation on the effect of different channel geometries of thermal wheel for energy transfer efficiency

Inside buildings, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems are utilized to provide a comfortable environment. However, they account for a significant percentage of overall total energy consumption: in the United States, they account for about 50% of building final energy consumption and 20% of total energy consumption. [1]. The installation of a heat exchanger between the exhaust and fresh air streams is critical, owing to the significant energy savings. [2], [3]. Thermal wheels have recently gotten a lot of attention because of their high efficiency and low-pressure loss when compared to other energy recovery solutions [4]. The goal of this research is to give a comprehensive study and optimization of Thermal wheel design, with the goal of enhancing sensible effectiveness while reducing pressure loss based on channel shape

Analysing the gap between predicted and actual operational energy consumption in buildings: a review

Operational energy consumption in buildings has a crucial impact on global energy consumption. Nevertheless, significant energy savings can be achieved in buildings if properly designed, constructed, and operated. Building Energy Simulation (BES) plays a vital role in the design and optimisation of buildings. BES is used to compare the cost-effectiveness of energy-conservation measures in the design stage and assess various performance optimisation measures during the operational phase. However, there is a significant ‘performance gap’ between the predicted and the actual energy performance of buildings. This gap has reduced the trust and application of the BES. This article focused on investigating BES, reasons that lead to a performance gap between predicted and actual operational energy consumption of buildings, and the ways of minimising the gap. The article employed a comprehensive literature review as the research methodology. Findings revealed that reasons such as limited understanding of the building design, the complexity of the building design, poor commissioning, occupants’ behaviour, etc., influence the energy performance gap. After that, the strategies have been identified to minimise the energy performance gap such as proper commissioning, creating general models to observe occupants’ behaviour in buildings, and using the general models for energy simulation, ensuring better construction and quality through training and education, etc. Further, the findings of this study could be implemented by practitioners in the construction industry to effectively use energy simulation applications in designing energy-efficient and sustainable buildings

Assuring sustainable construction at project feasibility stage in Sri Lanka

Construction activity is commonly considered to have adverse impacts on the environment, which is the basis of sustainable development for human being. Further, sustainability should be addressed mostly in developing countries, such as Sri Lanka, where a considerable amount of construction works is currently in progress and remain to emerge in the future. It is considered that the proper development and operation of a construction project can make significant contribution to the mission of sustainable development. However, the existing difficulty is the lack of the guidance for implementing sustainable development principles in construction industry. Therefore, this research intends to bring the necessity of mandated project feasibility studies as a guideline for sustainable development in the Sri Lankan Context. The research aim was approached through a qualitative survey strategy. To solicit the perceptions of experts on the identified sustainability performance criteria, a semi-structured interview survey was conducted. Ten experts were selected through purposive sampling strategy, who had experience in sustainable construction and project feasibility evaluation criteria. The manual content analysis method was used to analyse the collected data. Findings of the research revealed that though numerous sustainability assessment tools are being practised, there is a failure in sustainable construction in the current context. Thus, the minimum sustainability requirements were identified under the three pillars of sustainability, aiming to develop the project feasibility study as a guideline and to ensure sustainability performance from the project inception stage. These findings are helpful for industry practitioners especially the project owners to initiate a sustainable construction with concerted actions of all project stakeholders to safeguarding the future

a study of Ritigala monastic complex in Sri Lanka

Ritigala is one of the most picturesque places in Sri Lanka. This picturesque value is mainly due to its cultural and natural aspects. Ritigala mountain range is located in the Palugaswewa divisional secretariat, Kekirawa in Anuradhapura district. The most outstanding value of this Archaeological site is the Padhanaghara building tradition. Rare species of flora and founa is found in this forest and the value of this heritage is immeasurable due to the dense forest which has been there unharmed for thousand of years. There are more than enough reasons for Ritigala to be included in the world heritage list due to the above mentioned outstanding universal values. But it seems that no considerable attention in this regard has has yet been drawn on the part of heritage conservation authorities. A long and meticulous feasibility study has to be done before Ritigala being declared a world heritage site in addition, management system which is to be submitted in this regard should be prepared in impact of declaration of amonument as a wodld heritage: A study of Ritigala monastic complex in Sri Lanka, it is attempted to research the need for it. It is done employing the methodologies of defining what a world heritage is, how it can be applied to Ritigala and examing the advantages and dis advantages arising from that it was observed when analysing the data collected the local and foreign tourists that majority of them are of the opinion of it being declare a world heritage. A few tourists have expressed their comments against. It justifying their reasons. Both of these parties have expressed their opinions based on some facts and they can be justified depending only on the management system implemented once it had been declared a world heritage site. Some of the locals also were posed the question whether Ritigala be declared a world heritage or not. When their responses were summarized, it is clear that they have shown more inclination for it than otherwise more over attention was paid to the world heritage sites in Sri Lanka and in othr countries in relation to their present condition after the inclution of them in the world heritage category. It was reveated that there are many such sites which have been maintained minimizing the damages and conserving the heritage due t the actions taken under the world heritage concept. Thus, there is evidence that this concept has been a success. On the other hand, there are some other world heritage sites in and out of Sri Lanka, which have failed to achieve success due to the lake of a proper management system. Venice charter and Narah document provide a very wide coverage on the subject of conservation of cultural heritage. Thus, how for these charters could be utilized in relation to Ritigala has been examinedhere. However, local and foreign tourists have expressed their concern over environmental issues which could be arisen due to declaring Ritigala a world heritage site. So, strict measures should be taken to protect the founa and flora of this natural reserve. Several suggestions on how Ritigala could be carefully maintained once it is declared a world heritage site have been presented here. Deciding on the number of tourists allowed entry to the site on a day, preventing opportunities for the unnecessary tourists entering the site by increasing the value of entry tickets, closing down the site for some period of time every year for the environmental balancing are the suggestions which require attention since majority of the tourists have expressed the need forimplementing rules, regulations and restrictions for conserving the site, implementation of these rules, regulations and restrictions also could lead to minimizing the damages to the site

Appraising indoor thermal perception of elderly in hot climates: An experimental investigation of free-running residential aged care homes in Colombo

Rapid demographic transition with higher growth in ageing population demonstrate a major societal challenge in South Asia and Sri Lankans will age faster than other developing economies in the region. Climate shocks of people living in economically deprived countries will increase in future and elders are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of temperature extremes. The study experimentally investigated free-running residential care homes in hot climate of Colombo performing simultaneous personal monitoring and questionnaire surveys. Results explicitly prove overheated indoors with less air flow. Majority of elders confirmed thermally unacceptable interiors with warm thermal sensations and low air velocities of 0.1 to 0.29 m/s with predominant preference of more air movement proves inadequate passive airflow. A significant relationship between wind preference and presence of openings of their place of stay were evident. Staying away from a window or door instigated to practice a behavioural adaptation of moving towards transitional areas such as corridors, verandas, and outdoor spaces for more wind sensation. Since ageing is associated with physical inabilities and elders spend their life mostly in indoors, findings emphasize the importance of enhancing passive airflow and application of appropriate design strategies to ensure optimum air velocities and dispersion of airflow within interiors

Intelligent fall detection and notification system for IoT based smart home environments

Throughout the history of technology, various mechanisms to support the elderly and the disabled have been introduced as a remedy for the inadequacy of caregivers to provide them with the required assistance in leading an independent and secure living. Among all those mechanisms, smart homes and social robotics appear to play a significant and effective role in assuring a comfortable and safe environment for the elderly and the disabled who prefer to live independently without causing an extra burden on their families

The Impact of social capital on exploratory innovation activities

The inadequate use of social capital to improve exploratory innovation activities is a phenomenon observed amongst countries within the world. The previous literature states that social capital enhances the exploratory innovation activities. However, identification of the factors which enhance the effectiveness of the relationship at the individual level is limited. Hence, in response to the social capital theory and social network theory, this paper attempts to examine the effect of social capital and exploratory innovation activities by explaining network perspectives of social capital. The cross-sectional survey was conducted covering 250 managerial level employees employed within the IT sector. The network perspectives of social capital: Bonding, Bridging and Linking social capital was measured through structured self-administered questionnaire and was analyzed using Structured Equation Modelling through AMOS 21. The empirical data identified that the influence of network perspective social capital on exploratory innovation activities is positive and significant. Thus, the current study recommends in order to take the maximum advantage of the available social capital, the Managers must pay attention to the nature and strength of the networks

Simulation of deployable solar sails

Concept of solar sailing which uses solar energy to propel a spacecraft is becoming popular as a low-cost spacecraft propulsion system, especially for high energy-consuming longrange spacecraft. To capture a sufficient amount of energy these solar sails are orders of magnitudes larger in size compared to space available in spacecraft. Moreover, these solar sails, consist of thin folded membranes supported on a backing structure made of self deployable booms. Hence these solar sails along with deployable booms will be subjected to very high compaction to store in launch vehicle for transportation. While thin membrane panels are folded by introducing a series of fold-lines, deployable booms made of thin woven fibre composites are commonly used as a backing structure in these applications. Analogous to thin membrane panels, these booms are subjected to very high compact configurations which induce high stresses and curvatures. Hence, an optimized folding mechanism for solar sails is important to fully function during the deployment without failure. Simulation of deployment behaviour of these solar sails along with booms will facilitate the identification of suitable folding mechanism and optimized designs. In this study, idealisation techniques are presented to simulate accurate solar sail deployment. First, a simulation of a selected repetitive unit cell pattern of Miura-Ori folding was performed to develop an idealization method for the intersected creases in a virtual environment. Also, the effect of membrane thickness on the deployment was studied and verified using a series of experiments. Results illustrate that the connection with rotational stiffness gives better idealisation, and the deployment force and shape have a significant influence from membrane thickness and foldline geometry. Secondly, a simulation of woven fibre composites was performed to capture the nonlinear bending behaviour which is crucial in predicting the accurate behaviour of deployable booms. The numerical model developed can capture accurate moment-curvature response, as observed in experiments, including the non-linear behaviour. This indicates that modelling techniques presented are capable of utilising for simulation of a large-scale solar sail with the backing structure to develop optimised designs.Ministry of Science Technology and Research, Sri Lanka (Indo-Sri Lanka, Research Grant No. MSTR/TRD/AGR/3/02/09) and Senate Research Committee of University of Moratuwa (SRC/TP/2017/09

Promoting stakeholder collaboration in adopting circular economy principles for sustainable construction

Circular Economy (CE) has been recognised as one of the most comprehensive way of attaining sustainable development, which considers every aspect; social, technical, economic and environmental, of sustainable development. For a building construction project that aims to achieve circularity, collaboration of project stakeholders both within vertical horizontal supply chains is vital. This research project establishes importance of such collaboration and proposes methodology to identify stakeholders responsible for attaining circularity in projects through collaboration between such stakeholders. This paper reports of the key literature findings of this on-going research. The key findings from the current paper are establishing importance of stakeholder collaborations to achieve circular buildings and potential of blockchain technology in this regard