ASSESSING QUALITY MANAGEMENT RELATIONSHIP IN PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION IN TAIWAN USING FAULT TREE ANALYSIS

ISO 9000 has gained popularity and is being applied to manufacture-related companies all over the world as a system of standards related to quality assurance management and control. Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is an important risk-evaluating technique and has been used to present the relationships among the elements of the ISO 9001 standard in ISO implementation. However, a review of the literature suggests that it is much more difficult to manage quality in relation to construction industry due to its generic nature. This paper used FTA to evaluate the relationships among the elements of the ISO 9001:2008 standard and the root causes of defects on public construction quality assessed by Taiwan Public Construction Commission from year 2005 to 2007. Based on the results in this study, ISO 9000 quality management practices may be needed more emphasized in certain stages, the failed probability of check stage was potentially the highest. The implementation of plan stage was also likely to have a significant effect on public construction quality and this showed the importance of the two major elements of the ISO 9001 standard.Public Construction, ISO 9001 Quality Management System, Fault Tree Analysis, Taiwan

Maximum Score Estimation of Preference Parameters for a Binary Choice Model under Uncertainty

This paper develops maximum score estimation of preference parameters in the binary choice model under uncertainty in which the decision rule is affected by conditional expectations. The preference parameters are estimated in two stages: we estimate conditional expectations nonparametrically in the first stage and then the preference parameters in the second stage based on Manski (1975, 1985)'s maximum score estimator using the choice data and first stage estimates. The paper establishes consistency and derives rate of convergence of the two-stage maximum score estimator. Moreover, the paper also provides sufficient conditions under which the two-stage estimator is asymptotically equivalent in distribution to the corresponding single-stage estimator that assumes the first stage input is known. These results are of independent interest for maximum score estimation with nonparametrically generated regressors. The paper also presents some Monte Carlo simulation results for finite-sample behavior of the two-stage estimator