Feasibility of the Delay and Disruption Protocol for Claims Management in Sri Lankan Construction Industry

Delay and disruption claims are difficult to resolve due to issues in claims management in construction industry. Those issues are occurred due to wrong practices in the industry and having vague areas in delay and disruption. Although, there are some methods to diminish delay and disruption events, still there is no proper way to deal with those issues. Having a guideline for claims management is an effective mechanism. In that scenario, Society of construction law’s (SCL) delay and disruption protocol is the commonly used guideline in other countries and which have comprehensive scope. Hence, it is required to discover how far SCL protocol is appropriate to Sri Lankan construction industry. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the feasibility of adopting SCL protocol for dealing with issues in delay and disruption in claims management in Sri Lankan construction industry. A comprehensive literature review, a questionnaire survey and semi structured interviews were done as the research method for this paper. Interviewees were selected from questionnaire survey. The findings of this study prove that having a guideline for claims management is important and awareness of SCL protocol in Sri Lanka is comparatively less. Further, it demonstrates that adopting SCL protocol to Sri Lankan construction industry is feasible. Management can achieve sustainable construction practices such as using human resource efficiently, willingness to work and effective time management. Finally, it confirmed that implementing SCL protocol will improve knowledge related claims management and it will enable to improve the claim practitioners’ practices.International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB

A Framework for the Evaluation of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Performance in Apparel Industry Buildings in Sri Lanka

In the modern world, many people spend large portion of their time in built environments. Accordingly, significance of built environments’ performance is increasing over past two decades. It draws the attention towards the concept of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) to determine how well built environments are performing as IEQ performance directly affects occupants’ health, comfort, satisfaction and ultimately for a productive work environment. Moreover, IEQ concept can be considered as an integral part of total building performance approach. Today in Sri Lankan industrial sector, especially apparel manufacturing sector grows upward in speedily. For this rapidly development, performance of the built environment is vital as it is having direct relationship with occupants’ productivity. At the present, various approaches to evaluate IEQ performance has being developed. However, it is evident that there is no holistic approach. Similarly in Sri Lanka, there is no comprehensive framework applied in industrial buildings to evaluate IEQ performance. This necessitates the important of developing a holistic IEQ evaluation approach which would greatly benefit to the industrial sector. Survey methodology is used in the research and RII is employed as a data analysing tool to validate the IEQ indicators which have been identified in literature review and modified in preliminary survey. Further, it is established the most significant indicators based on their importance towards IEQ performance in apparel industry buildings with AHP tool. The developed framework comprised with four main IEQ indicators as thermal comfort, indoor air quality, acoustic quality and lighting quality. This framework focused on holistic approach to measure IEQ performance which will allow acceptable built environment while processing continuous improvements.International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB

Fuzzy navigation for robotic manipulators

This paper describes a novel navigation and obstacle avoidance system for robotic manipulators. The system is divided into separate fuzzy units which individually control the links of a manipulator. The rule base of each unit combines the repelling influence of obstacles with the attracting influence of the target position in a fuzzy way to generate actuating commands for the link. Owing to its simplicity and hence its short response time, the fuzzy navigator is especially suitable in on-line applications with strong real-time requirements. Furthermore, this approach allows obstacle avoidance in dynamic environments. The functioning of the fuzzy navigator with respect to robotic manipulators and results of real-world experiments are presented

Issues in Submission and Certification of Variations

The valuation of variation is a critical aspect in the post contract stage. The Contractor has to carry out the works according to issued variation order or on the instructions given by the Engineer even without having the approval. The Contractor might be paid a percentage on the submitted price until cost proposal is certified by the Engineer. The submission and certification process is delayed on most of the projects and this will lead the Contractor to suffer losses from the project. The researcher attempted to review the time gap between variation submission and certification, using a documentary survey of completed building projects. Content analysis of the documents exposed delay in certification period of several variations, those had generated payment delay to Contractor, and identified the loss of opportunity cost as the ultimate effect. Further, the author identified the issues which caused delays in submission and certification of cost variations, and probable solutions to mitigate those issues. In order to achieve above facts, interview survey was carried out with professionals, who had experience in variation management of building construction field. The issues of delay in variation submission and certification procedure in Sri Lankan industry, and solutions for those issues were derived via analysis of the content of conducted interviews. Finally “Variation Procedure Guideline” was proposed and validated with the participation of experts. Author recommended that a proper variation procedure is required to control and certify the value of variation according to the proposed guideline to manage the situation without conflicts. Further, maintain the positive relationship between project stakeholders and contribution of government as the regulatory body will be essential to overcome from mentioned issues.International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB