Non-excusable delays in construction

Existing literature and research findings indicated that delays are common amongst construction projects in many countries across the globe. Delays can be caused by one or more of the following: the client (excusable with compensation); force majeur or third party (excusable delays without compensation); or the contractors (non-excusable delays or contractor-responsible delays). Previous studies cited that approximately 50% of these delays can be classified as non-excusable delays. The root-causes (or factors) that cause non-excusable delays identified in these studies however, are given no detailed attention. Improving and constantly monitoring the factors causing non-excusable delays can help to determine and improve contractor's performance. This research explores issues related to the factors causing non-excusable delays. [Continues.

Economical, Heritage and Existential Evaluation of the National Park and Tandureh Protected Area Using the Conditional Method

In this article, a research has been conducted using conditional method, aiming to economically, based on heritage, and existentially, estimate and evaluate the National Park and Tandureh protected area. The required data were collected through libraries and field visits and questionnaires answered by visitors of the National Park and Tandureh protected area. Gender, number of family members, distance and income affected people’s willingness to pay and was statistically significant, and ultimately, the economical, heritage-based, and existential evaluation of the National Park and Tandureh protected area was determined by gathering information, collecting qualitative and quantitative data concerning the National Park and Tandureh protected area, visiting the park site, conducting and writing questionnaires, answering the questionnaires by the visitors, and determining the willingness to pay (WTP), and eventually by analyzing the collected information by using the Excel and Eviews

Economical, Heritage and Existential Evaluation of the National Park and Tandureh Protected Area Using the Conditional Method

In this article, a research has been conducted using conditional method, aiming to economically, based on heritage, and existentially, estimate and evaluate the National Park and Tandureh protected area. The required data were collected through libraries and field visits and questionnaires answered by visitors of the National Park and Tandureh protected area. Gender, number of family members, distance and income affected people’s willingness to pay and was statistically significant, and ultimately, the economical, heritage-based, and existential evaluation of the National Park and Tandureh protected area was determined by gathering information, collecting qualitative and quantitative data concerning the National Park and Tandureh protected area, visiting the park site, conducting and writing questionnaires, answering the questionnaires by the visitors, and determining the willingness to pay (WTP), and eventually by analyzing the collected information by using the Excel and Eviews

Geospatial method of siting sustainable sanitary landfill in Johor Malaysia

To obtain an accurate and precise result in any sanitary landfill siting study, one must be able to identify important criteria which are very crucial and challenging in geoinformatics. The level of importance of each criterion varies from one region or country to another. In this research, intensive literature review was carried out to extract the most important criteria to be used in siting sanitary landfill sites in the study area in accordance with local and international guidelines. Three main criteria were identified: environmental, social, and economic. They were divided into thirteen sub-criteria; water bodies, geology, soils, elevation, slope, residential areas, archeological sites, airports, population, roads, railways, infrastructures, and land use and land cover which were used to produce the map of the best potential sites. Ranking and weighing of each criterion was done using AHP pair-wise comparison matrix and normalization of the matrix to get the weight of each criteria. The study revealed that, 54% of the study area were unsuitable areas for sanitary landfill site, 12% less suitable, 21% suitable and 13% most suitable. Three most suitable potential sites were identified among the various sites from the class of most suitable sites in the final map and were validated using the satellite imagery of the study area via Google Earth PRO and field survey. This method can be an advanced alternative to the existing methodologies for selecting relevant criteria in siting sanitary landfill and for long-term planning of solid waste management

Morphological Characteristics of Hardened Cement Pastes Incorporating Nano-palm Oil Fuel Ash

Recently, nano-sized additives and supplementary cementing materials (SCM) have shown to improve the mechanical and durability of mortars and concretes. This study investigates the incorporation of nano-POFA (nPOFA) into cement paste so as to observe its effect towards the microstructure development of cement. Additionally, the effect of micro-sized POFA (mPOFA) was also carried out for comparison. The mPOFA were subjected to milling for the generation of nPOFA. The prepared nPOFA exhibited a BET specific surface area of 145.35 m2/g with an average particle size ranging between 20 nm to 90 nm. Cement pastes were prepared with 10% - 50% replacement of nPOFA and 10% - 30% replacement of mPOFA. The morphological analysis of hardened cement paste (hcp) containing nPOFA (nPOFA-hcp), mPOFA (mPOFA-hcp) at the curing ages of 7, 28 and 90 days were conducted and compared with Ordinary Portland cement paste. At 7 days curing, the nPOFA particles acted as fillers and nucleation sites to accelerate cement hydration. The nPOFA particles reduced the appearance of lime crystals in the nPOFA-hcp at later curing ages due to the occurrence of pozzolanic reactions which formed secondary calcium-silicate-hydrates gel, resulting in a compact microstructure. The study concluded that the nPOFA particles created a dense and closely-packed microstructure of the hardened cement pastes due to the filling effect and pozzolanic reactions in the pastes

Influence of Halal certification on customers’ purchase intention

The purpose of this study isto investigate the relationship between HALAL awareness, marketing and religiosity that are postulated to influence customers’ intention to purchase HALAL certified consumer products. Customers’ who visited SABASUN Hypermarket Sdn. Bhd. in Kuala Terengganu were selected as respondents. Questionnaires were used as the research instrument. The findings revealed there are positive relationship between the HALAL awareness and religiosity toward customers’ intention to purchase HALAL certified consumer products. The results also demonstrated that religiosity is the most influential factors in motivating customers’ to purchase HALAL certified products. For future study should consider demographic background as a moderating factor the can regulate the effect on factors influencing customers’ intention to purchase Halal certified consumer products.Keywords: religiosity; halal certified; halal; customer’s intentio

Multimedia environmental fate and transport model of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT): case study sayong river watershed

This study describes the development of a multimedia environmental fate and transport model of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) at Sayong River Watershed. Based on the latest estimated DDT emission, the DDT concentrations in air, soil, water, and sediment as well as the transfer flux were simulated under the equilibrium and steady-state assumption. Model predictions suggest that soil and sediment was the dominant sink of DDT. The results showed that the model predicted was generally good agreement with field data. Compared with degradation reaction, advection outflow was more important in removal processes of DDT. Sensitivities of the model estimates to input parameters were tested. The result showed that vapour pressure (Ps), chemical solubility (Cs), and absolute temperature (T) of DDT were the most influential parameters for the model output. The model output–concentrations of DDT in multimedia environment is very important as it can be used in future for human exposure and risk assessment of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) at Sayong River Basin

Engine performance and exhaust emission of diesel dual fuel engine fuelled by biodiesel, diesel and natural gas

The performance and exhaust emission of 6 cylinder four stroke direct injection diesel dual fuel (DDF) engine were investigated, the duel fuel used is corn oil methyl esters consist of 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% blends with diesel and compressed natural gas (CNG). Experiment was conducted at a fixed compression ratio of 17.5:1 with variance of engine speed 1400, 1800, 2400 and 2600 rpm. Combination of Biodiesel and CNG showed a better result on engine performance in terms of horse power and engine torque compared to other types of tested fuel. The substantial decrease of 25.6 % in exhaust emission flue was observed, giving lower value of UHC and nitrogen oxide (NOx). However, when the fuel is blended with CNG, a poor performance on exhaust emission was recorded, which include carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), unburned hydrocarbon (UHC) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) due to presence of CNG in fuel

Constraints T-Way Testing Strategy With Modified Condition /Decision Coverage (MC/DC)

Modern society in today’s digital era depends heavily on software in almost every aspect of daily life. In fact, whenever possible, most hardware implementation is now being replaced by the software counterparts. From the washing machine controllers, mobile phone applications to the sophisticated airplane control systems, the growing dependency on software can be attributed to a number of factors. Unlike hardware, software does not wear out. Thus, the use of software can also help to control maintenance costs. Additionally, software is also malleable and can easily be changed and customized as the need arises. With the advent of advancement in computer hardware technology, software applications grow drastically in terms of lines of codes, that is, to keep up with ever increasing customer demands for new functionalities and innovations. As such, ensuring software quality can be a daunting task. Exhaustive testing is practically infeasible given the large domain of inputs and possibly too many possible execution paths. Over the years, many sampling techniques (or strategies) have been proposed to select subsets of test cases for testing consideration. In many applications, sampling strategies based on boundary value analysis, equivalence partioning, cause and effect analysis, and decision tables are sufficiently useful but they are not designed to address faults due to interaction. In other applications particularly involving structural (predicate) testing (e.g. in avionic industry), sampling strategies based on coverage criteria such as statements, decisions, and path coverage are deemed necessary, however, they often suffer from the effect of masking (i.e. due to the resulting AND and OR operations). Currently, researchers in combinatorial testing have already developed strategies based on interaction testing (termed t-way testing) in order to detect bugs due to interaction. Here, depending on the value of interaction strength (t), all desired t-way interactions are faithfuly covered in the resulting test cases.Although useful, much existing work t-way testing has not sufficiently considered modified conditions/decision coverage (MC/DC) as the criteria for test generation. In many critical applications particularly involving the airborne system, compliants to MC/DC are required by law [1]. Proposed by NASA in 1992, the MC/DC is a white box testing criterion ensuring each condition within a predicate can independently influence the outcome of the decision - while the outcome of all other conditions remains constant. In this manner, MC/DC criterion subsumes other well known coverage such as statements, decisions, and path [2]. Addressing some of the aforementioned issues, this research discusses the design of a new constraints based t-way strategy with MC/DC criterion for structural (predicate) testing. In doing so, this paper also highlights the possible implementations