The impact of strategic decisions on construction client satisfaction : an assessment framework

For some considerable time, client satisfaction has been a problematic issue in the UK construction industry with many projects failing to satisfy the client needs and meet or exceed the client expectations. Client satisfaction is, however, a key performance measure and a major determinant of project success. There is a common belief that strategic decisions made by clients have a significant impact on the levels of client satisfaction. Strategic decisions in the context of construction projects are often associated with project stages including pre-design, design, tender, construction, occupancy & maintenance and disposal and vary in nature. Consequently the impact of strategic decisions on client satisfaction depends as much on timing as on the subjects of the decisions. While such findings are useful to facilitate the industry’s focus on addressing the failure in achieving client satisfaction, and point to the route for improvement, they are arbitrary and do not provide a systematic basis for investigating the real impact on client satisfaction. The nature of strategic decisions and the significance of its impact on client satisfaction have not been clearly identified and client satisfaction has remained an elusive issue for a majority of construction professionals. This research was hence undertaken to seek empirical evidence of an interrelationship between strategic decisions and client satisfaction. Defining strategic decisions, often associated with project stages, as ones that are complex and made under uncertainty and have a long-term impact on project success, a quantitative research methodology combined with qualitative approaches, was adopted in investigating the interrelationship between strategic decisions and client satisfaction. Findings of a detailed literature review revealed that client satisfaction at any stage depends as much on the service quality attributes of service providers including overall service delivery, people of service providers and communications with clients as on the influence of strategic decisions and the client itself. These performance attributes and the groups of strategic decisions, referred as strategic decision cluster (SDC), were further assessed and the relationships between these measures and strategic decisions were examined using factor analysis and multiple regression modelling techniques. Analyses revealed SDCs including Design Approach, Procurement and Implementation predict better the outcomes of service quality and hence higher levels of client satisfaction. Service delivery and communications with clients have a positively significant correlation with the levels of client satisfaction. Of these two attributes, communications with clients makes the largest unique contribution to the variance and is considered the better predictor for client satisfaction. The developed models is validated via external and internal validation and the findings support the thesis that strategic decisions have a impact on client satisfaction by strongly influencing the performance of service quality although causality cannot be assumed. It is recommended that service providers including contractors and consultants devote more efforts to improve their performance on the attributes of service quality identified as having significant association with client satisfaction, particularly service delivery and communications with clients. Further research efforts focusing on providing a practical tool or expert system so as to address the practical issues for a wider range of clients and service providers are also recommended.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Robustness of interdependent networks under targeted attack

When an initial failure of nodes occurs in interdependent networks, a cascade of failure between the networks occurs. Earlier studies focused on random initial failures. Here we study the robustness of interdependent networks under targeted attack on high or low degree nodes. We introduce a general technique and show that the {\it targeted-attack} problem in interdependent networks can be mapped to the {\it random-attack} problem in a transformed pair of interdependent networks. We find that when the highly connected nodes are protected and have lower probability to fail, in contrast to single scale free (SF) networks where the percolation threshold $p_c=0$, coupled SF networks are significantly more vulnerable with $p_c$ significantly larger than zero. The result implies that interdependent networks are difficult to defend by strategies such as protecting the high degree nodes that have been found useful to significantly improve robustness of single networks.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Percolation of partially interdependent networks under targeted attack

The study of interdependent networks, and in particular the robustness on networks, has attracted considerable attention. Recent studies mainly assume that the dependence is fully interdependent. However, targeted attack for partially interdependent networks simultaneously has the characteristics of generality in real world. In this letter, the comprehensive percolation of generalized framework of partially interdependent networks under targeted attack is analyzed. As $\alpha=0$ and $\alpha=1$, the percolation law is presented. Especially, when $a=b=k$, $p_{1}=p_{2}=p$, $q_{A}=q_{B}=q$, the first and second lines of phase transition coincide with each other. The corresponding phase transition diagram and the critical line between the first and the second phase transition are found. We find that the tendency of critical line is monotone decreasing with parameter $p_{1}$. However, for different $\alpha$, the tendency of critical line is monotone increasing with $\alpha$. In a larger sense, our findings have potential application for designing networks with strong robustness and can regulate the robustness of some current networks.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figure

Robustness of a Network of Networks

Almost all network research has been focused on the properties of a single network that does not interact and depends on other networks. In reality, many real-world networks interact with other networks. Here we develop an analytical framework for studying interacting networks and present an exact percolation law for a network of $n$ interdependent networks. In particular, we find that for $n$ Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi networks each of average degree $k$, the giant component, $P_{\infty}$, is given by $P_{\infty}=p[1-\exp(-kP_{\infty})]^n$ where $1-p$ is the initial fraction of removed nodes. Our general result coincides for $n=1$ with the known Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi second-order phase transition for a single network. For any $n \geq 2$ cascading failures occur and the transition becomes a first-order percolation transition. The new law for $P_{\infty}$ shows that percolation theory that is extensively studied in physics and mathematics is a limiting case ($n=1$) of a more general general and different percolation law for interdependent networks.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Percolation of Partially Interdependent Scale-free Networks

We study the percolation behavior of two interdependent scale-free (SF) networks under random failure of 1-$p$ fraction of nodes. Our results are based on numerical solutions of analytical expressions and simulations. We find that as the coupling strength between the two networks $q$ reduces from 1 (fully coupled) to 0 (no coupling), there exist two critical coupling strengths $q_1$ and $q_2$, which separate three different regions with different behavior of the giant component as a function of $p$. (i) For $q \geq q_1$, an abrupt collapse transition occurs at $p=p_c$. (ii) For $q_2<q<q_1$, the giant component has a hybrid transition combined of both, abrupt decrease at a certain $p=p^{jump}_c$ followed by a smooth decrease to zero for $p < p^{jump}_c$ as $p$ decreases to zero. (iii) For $q \leq q_2$, the giant component has a continuous second-order transition (at $p=p_c$). We find that $(a)$ for $\lambda \leq 3$, $q_1 \equiv 1$; and for $\lambda > 3$, $q_1$ decreases with increasing $\lambda$. $(b)$ In the hybrid transition, at the $q_2 < q < q_1$ region, the mutual giant component $P_{\infty}$ jumps discontinuously at $p=p^{jump}_c$ to a very small but non-zero value, and when reducing $p$, $P_{\infty}$ continuously approaches to 0 at $p_c = 0$ for $\lambda 0$ for $\lambda > 3$. Thus, the known theoretical $p_c=0$ for a single network with $\lambda \leqslant 3$ is expected to be valid also for strictly partial interdependent networks.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figure

Loading of ionic compounds into metal-organic frameworks: a joint theoretical and experimental study for the case of La³⁺

Crystalline{,} highly orientated surface-anchored MOF thin films{,} grown on Au substrates{,} were prepared using liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE). The successful loading of La3+ ions into the Cu3(BTC)2 (HKUST-1) SURMOFs (surface-mounted metal-organic frameworks) was monitored using X-ray diffraction (XRD). Theoretical calculations using classical force-field based Monte Carlo simulations yield a structure with two La3+ ions within the large Cu3(BTC)2 pores{,} in full agreement with experimental results on the composition of these films and the relative intensities of the XRD peaks. Implications of these findings for using MOF thin films for electronic applications are briefly discussed

PPTPF: Privacy-preserving trajectory publication framework for CDR mobile trajectories

10.3390/ijgi10040224ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information10422