Factors Affecting Time Overrun in Construction Projects in Bhutan

The construction industry has a significant influence on the economy of a country as it plays a vital role in its development. However, construction projects in countries usually faced time and cost overrun, affecting the economic development and overall performance of the contractors. As infrastructure development is one of the key activities in developing countries, it is very important to analyze the factors contributing to time overrun to enable effective contract management. Time overruns are always associated with cost overrun often putting burden to country’s capital resources. Although time overruns have been recurring issues in construction industry, very little or no researches have been carried out in Bhutan so far. This paper presents a case study of time overrun of construction projects in Bhutan. The study was carried out through an online questionnaire consisting of thirty-one factors which are further sub-divided into seven categories. The one hundred twenty responses were analyzed using relative importance index which shows that inexperienced and financial instability of the contractor, incompetence of human resources, shortage and inefficient equipment, lack of construction materials are significant factors affecting time overrun. Issues related to sub-contracting, unrealistic calculation of the project duration, delay in the mobilization of machines are minor factors of time over-run of the construction projects in Bhutan. Keywords: Time overrun, principle factors, factor analysis, adversity, average index.s DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-29-01 Publication date:October 31st 202

Royal Manas National Park, Bhutan: A Hot Spot for Wild Felids

The non-uniformity of the distribution of biodiversity makes allocation of the limited resources available for conservation of biodiversity a difficult task. Approaches such as biodiversity hotspot identification, endemic bird areas, crisis ecoregions, global 200 ecoregions, and the Last of the Wild are used by scientists and international conservation agencies to prioritize conservation efforts. As part of the biodiverse Eastern Himalayan region, Bhutan has been identified as a conservation priority area by all these different approaches, yet data validating these assessments are limited. To examine whether Bhutan is a biodiversity hot spot for a key taxonomic group, we conducted camera trapping in the lower foothills of Bhutan, in Royal Manas National Park, from November 2010 to February 2011. We recorded six species of wild felids of which five are listed on the IUCN Red List: tiger Panthera tigris, golden cat Pardofelis temminckii, marbled cat Pardofelis marmorata, leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis, clouded leopard Neofelis nebulosa and common leopard Panthera pardus. Our study area of 74 km(2) has c. 16% of felid species, confirming Bhutan as a biodiversity hot spot for this group

Water-based therapies of Bhutan: current practices and the recorded clinical evidence of Balneotherapy

Medical water therapy (also called medical hydrology) is practiced worldwide both for relaxation and treatment of diseases. While this practice is still thriving in Bhutan, there is a lack of proper documentation and critical study. Therefore, the current study reports on the water therapies practiced in Bhutan and their health benefits. We used four-stage process: (1) a review of literature on balneotherapy (both traditional textbooks and scientific papers); (2) listing and surveying the hot springs, mineral, and holy spring waters; (3) reviewing the health records of the patients maintained at the traditional hospitals and interviewing traditional physicians and patients about health benefits; and (4) reviewing available literature to identify existing clinical trials data to provide evidence for hydrotherapies. We found three main forms of hydrotherapies are practiced in Bhutan, which comprises herbal bath therapy, balneotherapy, and spiritually empowered waters.The most popular hydrotherapies are herbal bath and hot spring therapies. Herbal bath therapy needs traditional physicians' prescriptions, while hot springs do not require it. Through field surveys, ten different hot springs (tsha-chu) and 17 medicinal water or mineral springs (sman-chu), and 17 holy spring-waters (sgrub-chu) were identified. In general, medical water therapies are used by the Bhutanese people to treat various ailments, including gastritis, neurological disorders, arthritis, dermatological diseases, and rheumatological and musculoskeletal disorders. Even though a lack of scientific evidence makes it difficult to draw concrete conclusions on their traditionally claimed efficacy and safety, there are clinical evidences documented from other countries

Festival and culture in Bhutan: A study of neypo festival of gaytsa in Bumthang Dzongkhag

Festivals in Bhutan are celebrated annually at national and local level as it is one of the cultural aspects to display the devotion towards Buddhism. The annual festivals take place in Dzongs where monks perform mask dances with a communal belief i.e. to commemorate the arrival of Buddhism in the country. Besides, lay men and women perform dances to entertain the crowd. Whereas local festivals usually take place in open space in their respective villages and contain the features of pre-Buddhism practices. Neypo is the local festival that is celebrated annually by the local community of Gaytsa village under Bumthang Dzongkhag. It may sound mystic to some but the festival is dedicated to worldly deities and spirits who are believed to have a direct impact on the daily life and the prosperity of a family or a community. Thus the community's spiritual beliefs are central to the cultural identity of the country, making their way into the Constitution of Bhutan, 2018 and other government policies. Besides religious purposes the events also provide the opportunity for the local people to wear the best dress, relax from daily work and to enjoy quality time with family and friends.&nbsp

The exchange programme between new and different partners, Royal University of Bhutan and Uppsala University

© 2020 IEEE. This WiP paper discusses difficulties, but also gains, in starting new collaborations, mainly when the universities differ: different natures of their strengths and weaknesses, acting in different contexts and having different international recognitions. At the same time, it is the differences that make exchanges fruitful and opens for new learning experiences. An example of such a collaboration between asymmetric partners can be found in the Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Sweden and College of Science and Technology, Royal University of Bhutan

New Herpetofaunal Records from the Kingdom of Bhutan Obtained through Citizen Science

Social media has, in the past decade, emerged unexpectedly as a powerful tool in citizen science (Liberatore et al. 2018). Whether unintended or formally integrated, it offers, among other benefits, mass participation in activities such as data collection in inventories, monitoring, or natural history observations (Tulloch 2013). It can be argued that such activities often do not consume taxpayers’ contributions, as formal research projects tend to do, and can provide a cost-effective means of data collection (Goldstien et al. 2014). The vast number of (and rapidly rising) online resources and virtual specialists available to identify samples serve as references and reviewers of such data, increasing the speed over traditional forms of data collection (e.g., scientific publishing) and providing the capacity to absorb multiple opinions. Nonetheless, challenges that remain in citizen science programs are directing the data towards priority scientific objectives and needs, and achieving high standards in data quality (Ambrose-Oji et al. 2014)