A model for predicting cost control practice in the Ghanaian construction industry

Abstract: One of the key roles of construction project managers is to execute construction projects within the targeted project cost. In Africa, most construction projects suffer huge cost overruns. Project cost control practice is required by every construction firm to keep the project cost in line with the budgeted cost. A comprehension of the different parts of cost control philosophies is fundamental to empower project cost managers to adequately set up robust cost controls and to improve future strategies for active construction project cost delivery. Although there are efforts by project cost managers to control cost, there is a lack of understanding of the factors that determine cost control practice in Ghana, as a developing nation. The factors enhancing cost control practice and a formal model are needed for consideration by project cost managers to guide their operations. This study develops a model for predicting cost control practice in the Ghanaian construction industry. Mixed-method methodology was utilised for this study. The qualitative survey used the Delphi survey approach to investigate the primary factors and measurement-related factors. The study identifies project cost control as eight-factor constructs: project cost estimation, project cost budgeting, project cost reporting, project cost monitoring, project cost analysis, decision-making, change management and project cost communication. These had strong inter-quartile deviations. ..D.Phil. (Engineering Management

The Use of Mobile Construction Applications in the Ghanaian Construction Industry

There exist several construction applications (Apps) used on mobile phones or tablets within the construction industry, yet there is a gap between technology design and technology use in the Ghanaian construction industry. The aim of this study is to find out the use of construction apps in the Ghanaian construction industry. The objectives were to find out the awareness of the use of construction apps and to evaluate the construction apps used in the Ghanaian construction industry. An extensive literature review was conducted to identify the construction applications available in the construction industry and were group under 5 main headings; namely, estimation, calculators, CAD, construction site and project management Apps. Field survey of Sixty-Two registered building and civil contractors in Ashanti Region was conducted. Questionnaires were distributed to top management team of the firms with a response rate of 89%. Data obtained were analysed with descriptive statistics techniques. The results show that majority were not aware of the use of construction apps by 58% of the respondents yet most use android phones or tablets that support Apps. However, the topmost applications normally used were site photos, microsoft, spirit level, material estimator calculator, AutoCAD WS, Construction Master Pro, Universal Estimator, AndCAD, Carpenter’s Calculator, and painting estimator. It is however important that tertiary educational institutions pursuing construction related programmes should from time to time educate the young construction engineers about the modern and importance of the usage of these construction apps to enhance efficiency in their operations. Keywords: construction Apps, contractors, construction industry, mobile phones, Ghana

Equations for Predicting Flexural Strength and Compressive Strength of Plastic Concrete Pavement Blocks

The influence of plastic content within the range of 0% - 60% as replacement for sand volume, water cement (w/c) ratio of 0.30 – 0.50 and curing age of 7 days – 28 days on flexural strength and compressive strength of plastic concrete pavement blocks (PCPBs) was investigated. All the mixtures were proportioned with a fixed aggregate / cement ratio of 4.5. Based on the experimental results, the flexural strength and the compressive strength of the PCPBs were calculated by considering the predictor variables (water cement ratio, curing age and plastic content). Equations derived based on the results from the experimental work are proposed to predict the flexural strength and the compressive strength of the developed PCPBs. The effect of water cement ratio, curing age and plastic content on flexural strength and compressive strength of PCPBs was found to be statistically significant (P < 0.0001). The equations are only capable of predicting the flexural strength and the compressive strength of plastic concrete products, if the w/c ratio, the curing age and the aggregate cement ratio used are within the tested range. Keywords: water cement ratio, plastics, curing age, flexural strength, compressive strength.

Panorama of mobile device applications (Apps) for the construction industry

Purpose – This study was conducted to identify, summarise, analyse and categorise mobile device applications (Apps), relevant to the construction industry and to explore their uses and exposure levels. Design/methodology/approach – The research method involved reviewing literature and searching for Apps. The construction Apps were found by developing key phrases. These key phrases were used to develop search strategies, which were then used to find the construction Apps. The Apps found were categorised based on the similarity of their uses. Findings – The 136 Apps identified were summarised, analysed, and categorised into 11 groups of distinct construction operations and tasks. The “Design and Drawing Apps”, “Measurement and Estimation Apps”, “Management Apps”, “All Round Apps” and “Construction Site Apps” recorded 29, 28, 26, 21 and 11 numbers of Apps, respectively. The Autodesk Sketchbook, GPS Field Area Measure, MagicPlan, Measure and TSheets were the top five in terms of the number of downloads. These Apps in terms of their exposure levels in the construction industry record 4.76%, 2.38%, 0.52%, 0.48% and 0.42%, respectively. Originality/value – This paper provides a catalogue of the continuum of construction Apps for a wide variety of construction operations/activities which are available for construction professionals and provide guidance on their uses to assist in selecting appropriate Apps for specified operation/tasks/activities in the construction industry. Construction professionals may benefit from increased productivity, efficiency and ease of working

Early Detection of Stroke for Ensuring Health and Well-Being Based on Categorical Gradient Boosting Machine

Stroke is believed to be among the leading causes of adult disability worldwide. It is wreaking havoc on African people, families, and governments, with ramifications for the continent’s socio-economic development. On the other hand, stroke research output is insufficient, resulting in a dearth of evidence-based and context-driven guidelines and strategies to combat the region’s expanding stroke burden. Indeed, for African and other developing economies to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 3, which aims to guarantee healthy lifestyles and promote well-being for people of all ages, the issue of stroke must be addressed to reduce early death from non-communicable illnesses. This study sought to create a robust predictive model for early stroke diagnosis using an understandable machine learning (ML) technique. We implemented a categorical gradient boosting machine model for early stroke prediction to protect patients’ health and well-being. We compared the effectiveness of our proposed model to existing state-of-the-art machine learning models and previous studies by empirically testing it on a real-world public stroke dataset. The proposed model outperformed the others when compared to the other methods using the research data, achieving the maximum accuracy (96.56%), the area under the curve (AUC) (99.73%), F1-measure (96.68%), recall (99.24%), and precision (93.57%). Functional outcome prediction models based on machine learning for stroke were verified and shown to be adaptable and helpful

Antibiotics Availability and Usage in Health Facilities: A Case of the Offinso-South Municipality of Ghana

The use of antibiotics has received increased public health attention in recent times because their irrational use could pose a global health problem. Since the introduction of antimicrobial agents, there has been an association between antibiotic use and the development of antimicrobial resistance. The emergence of antibiotic resistance is primarily due to excessive and often unnecessary use of antibiotics in humans. This study therefore sought to assess antibiotics availability and usage in a municipal area of Ghana. The study was retrospective and descriptive in nature. Folders of 300 patients were sampled from a municipal hospital and three health centres. Simple random sampling technique was used in the recruitment of patients’ folders. The study revealed a high antibiotics usage in the municipality. Overall, respiratory tract infections rated the highest so far as conditions for which antibiotics were prescribed were concerned. The penicillins which were the frequently prescribed antibiotics formed 50% of prescriptions for the treatment of gastroenteritis, which was in violation of the existing standard treatment guidelines to be adhered to by prescribers. Regular training and refresher courses could be organized for prescribers towards ensuring the adherence to the existing treatment guidelines. Key words: antibiotics, availability, usage, health facilitie

Ectopic pregnancies in low resource setting: a retrospective review of cases in Kumasi, Ghana

Background: Ectopic pregnancy remains a public health threat for women in reproductive age, and a major cause of maternal mortalities in the first trimester of pregnancy. Past studies in Ghana on the burden of Ectopic Pregnancy (EP) have focused on major referral health facilities with little consideration of primary health facilities. This study was set out to determine the prevalence of Ectopic Pregnancy, demographic characteristics involved and the various types of Ectopic Pregnancy seen in primary health settings in Kumasi, Ghana.Methods: A retrospective descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at the Suntreso Government and Tafo Government Hospitals in the Kumasi metropolitan area from 2007 to 2017. A review of 28,600 obstetric cases recorded in registers of the two facilities was done using electronic data extraction form. The data were exported into STATA/IC 14.0 for statistical analysis.Results: A prevalence of 0.76% EP was recorded over the study period of 10 years. 61.75% of the women diagnosed with EP were between the ages of 21-30 years with a mean age and standard deviation of 27.61 and 5.91 respectively. Tubal (fallopian tubes) EP was seen in 76.96% of the women diagnosed with EP. 10.18% and 7.19% of the tubal EP occurred in the cornual and fimbriae respectively. Ruptured EP was seen in 58.99% of the cases.Conclusions: The study reported EP in about one in a hundred cases. The commonest EP that emerged from this study was tubal (fallopian tube) EP. Among the tubal EP, cornual and fimbria were the commonest EP that occurred in the fallopian tube. Although cases of tubo-ovarian and ovarian EP are rare, a significant percentage were observed in this study. Early reporting and diagnosis of EP should be of great importance to prevent ruptured EP and any associated complications

Impact of vitamin A with zinc supplementation on malaria morbidity in Ghana.

BACKGROUND: Malaria is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among young children and is estimated to cause at least 1 million deaths each year especially among pregnant women and young children under the age of five years. Vitamin A supplementation is known to reduce morbidity and mortality in young children. Zinc is required for growth and immunity and we sought to replicate the study by Zeba et al. which showed 30% lower cases of clinical malaria in children on a combination of zinc and a large dose of vitamin A compared with children on vitamin A alone based on the hypothesis that combined vitamin A and zinc reduced symptomatic malaria compared to vitamin A alone. OBJECTIVES: The primary objective was to determine the effect of vitamin A alone vs. vitamin A and zinc supplements on the incidence of clinical malaria and other anthropometric indices. It also sought to assess the effects on the incidence of anaemia, diarrhoea and pneumonia. METHODS: The study was community-based and 200 children between the ages of 6-24 months were randomised to receive either vitamin A (100,000 IU for infants less than 12 months & 200,000 IU for children greater than 12 months and 10 mg daily zinc in the intervention group or vitamin A and zinc placebo for 6 months in the control group. RESULTS: The number of children who were diagnosed with uncomplicated malaria in the intervention group was 27% significantly lower compared with the children in the control group (p = 0.03). There were, however, no effects on severe malaria, pneumonia, anaemia and diarrhea. CONCLUSIONS: Our study confirms a significant role of vitamin A and zinc in reducing malaria morbidity

Vitamin A status and body pool size of infants before and after consuming fortified home-based complementary foods.

BACKGROUND: Home fortification using sachets of micronutrient powder (e.g. "Sprinkles") is a food-based approach offering an alternative to high dose vitamin A (VA) supplements for infants. The primary objective was to investigate the impact of VA-home fortification on infant VA pool size. The secondary objective was to compare VA status of infants assessed by the modified relative dose response (MRDR) test before and the (13)C-retinol isotope dilution ((13)C-RID) test in the same infants after vitamin A supplementation. METHODS: A randomized-controlled trial was conducted in 7-9 month old infants in Ghana. Eligible children were randomly allocated to receive a daily sachet of "Sprinkles" with or without VA for 5 months added to complementary foods. The MRDR test indirectly determined VA liver reserves at baseline and the (13)C-RID determined VA body pool at follow-up in the same cohort of children. RESULTS: At baseline, the MRDR values (95 % CI) for infants were comparable in the intervention and control groups: normal at 0·032 (SD 0·018) (0·025-0·038) and 0·031 (SD 0·018) (0·024-0·038), respectively. After intervention, total body stores (TBS) and liver retinol concentrations did not differ between intervention and control groups; TBS were 436 (SD 303) and 434 (SD 186) μmol, respectively, and estimated liver concentrations were 0·82 (SD 0·53) and 0·79 (SD 0·36) μmol/g liver, indicating adequate reserves in all children. CONCLUSIONS: Both the MRDR and (3)C-RID tests confirmed that the infants had adequate VA status before and after home fortification of their complementary foods. These tests offered more information than serum retinol concentrations alone, which predicted VA deficiency using current suggested cutoffs not corrected for inflammation status

Assessing the performance of only HRP2 and HRP2 with pLDH based rapid diagnostic tests for the diagnosis of malaria in middle Ghana, Africa.

BACKGROUND: Rapid diagnostic test (RDT) kits have been useful tools to screen for the presence of infection with malaria parasites. Despite the improvement, false results from RDTs present a greater challenge. The need for quality test kits is desirable. We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of three malaria RDTs. METHOD: The team consented and enrolled 754 participants from the two major public hospitals in Kintampo districts of Ghana from June 2014 to August 2014. Venous blood samples were obtained by trained personnel and samples were screened for malaria using CareStart and SD Bioline HRP2 and HRP2 with pLDH based RDTs with blood slides for malaria microscopy as "gold standard". Geometric mean parasite densities were estimated and parasite densities were used to estimate the quantitative limits of the RDTs. The sensitivities, specificities and other performance criteria were calculated using statistical analytical software. RESULT: The median age of participants was 21 (range 5-31) years. There were 28.6% (215/752) were males and 71.4% (537/752) were females. Comparing with microscopy, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and the ROC were for CareStart (HRP2), 98.2%, 66.5%, 82.6%, 95.6%, 0.82; for CareStart (HRP2/pLDH) 98.2%, 66.5%, 82.6%, 95.6%, 0.82 and for SD-Bioline (HRP2/pLDH) RDTs 98.2%, 69.2%, 84.2%, 96.0%, 0.84 respectively. The performance for all the kits were acceptable at a cut-off of 25 or more parasites/μl of blood. CONCLUSIONS: The diagnostic performance of the three malaria RDTs was acceptable, according to the World Health Organisation criteria, to detect densities ≥25 parasite/μl of blood. The RDTs with HRP2/pLDH targets were comparable to those with only HRP2 and could successfully substitute current and commonly used HRP2-based RDTs