Globally, Sustainability is very quickly becoming a fundamental requirement of the construction industry as it delivers its projects; whether buildings or infrastructures. Throughout more than two decades, many modeling schemes, evaluation tools, and rating systems have been introduced en route to realizing sustainable construction. Many of these, however, lack consensus on evaluation criteria, a robust scientific model that captures the logic behind their sustainability performance evaluation, and therefore experience discrepancies between rated results and actual performance. Moreover, very few of the evaluation tools available satisfactorily address infrastructure projects. The research introduces a system engineering model that abstracts the environment, the construction product, and its production system as three interacting systems that exchange materials, energy, and information. The model utilizes this setup to capture and quantify essential flows exchanged between such three systems, to evaluate sustainability. The research walks through the development of a generic case of the model, and then demonstrates its utility in evaluating the sustainability performance of civil infrastructure projects. The developed model will address an identified gap within the current body of knowledge by considering infrastructure projects. Through the ability to simulate different scenarios, the model will enable identifying which activities, products, and processes impact the environment more, and hence potential areas for optimization and improvement.
Institutions and companies are looking to reduce spending on buildings and services according to scientific methods, provided they reach the same purpose but at a lower cost. On this basis, this paper proposes a model to measure and reduce maintenance costs in one of the public sector institutions in Iraq by using performance indicators that fit the nature of the work of this institution and the available data. The paper relied on studying the nature of the institution’s work in the maintenance field and looking at the type of data available to know the type and number of appropriate indicators to create the model. Maintenance data were collected for the previous six years by reviewing the maintenance and financial dep
... Show MoreThe quality and cost of constructed buildings are heavily influenced by the performance of design/auditing consultants. Thus, selecting the right design consultant and design auditing consultants is of utmost importance and not an easy task for any construction client. so, the client should specify the efficiency criteria and assess the performance levels of the design and design auditing consultant firm. The study aims to identify the selection criteria of the design consultant in construction projects and also identify the selection criteria of the design auditing consultant for the construction projects by using the Delphi survey with applying the principal components analysis (PCA
The importance of the construction sector and its Great role in the provision of services and infrastructure, reduce poverty, improve living conditions and improve the economic situation in the country, impose attention to the way in which the projects implemented for its improvement and to get successful projects. The objective of this research was to determine the criteria for success as well as critical success and failure factors that have a significant impact on project success. A selected 75 engineer (department managers, project managers and engineers) are asked to fill the questionnaire form, Sixty-seven valid questionnaire forms were analyzed statistically to get search results, which were as follows : Twe
... Show MoreWithin this work, to promote the efficiency of organic-based solar cells, a series of novel A-π-D type small molecules were scrutinised. The acceptors which we designed had a moiety of N, N-dimethylaniline as the donor and catechol moiety as the acceptor linked through various conjugated π-linkers. We performed DFT (B3LYP) as well as TD-DFT (CAM-B3LYP) computations using 6-31G (d,p) for scrutinising the impact of various π-linkers upon optoelectronic characteristics, stability, and rate of charge transport. In comparison with the reference molecule, various π-linkers led to a smaller HOMO–LUMO energy gap. Compared to the reference molecule, there was a considerable red shift in the molecules under study (A1–A4). Therefore, based on
... Show MoreIn this paper, two meshless methods have been introduced to solve some nonlinear problems arising in engineering and applied sciences. These two methods include the operational matrix Bernstein polynomials and the operational matrix with Chebyshev polynomials. They provide an approximate solution by converting the nonlinear differential equation into a system of nonlinear algebraic equations, which is solved by using
In this paper, the computational method (CM) based on the standard polynomials has been implemented to solve some nonlinear differential equations arising in engineering and applied sciences. Moreover, novel computational methods have been developed in this study by orthogonal base functions, namely Hermite, Legendre, and Bernstein polynomials. The nonlinear problem is successfully converted into a nonlinear algebraic system of equations, which are then solved by Mathematica®12. The developed computational methods (D-CMs) have been applied to solve three applications involving well-known nonlinear problems: the Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer equation, the Blasius equation, and the Falkner-Skan equation, and a comparison between the met
... Show MoreExpansion the engineering consultancy offices in the universities of Iraq, about (14) offices, leading to increas the competition between them, especially after the great trends of Iraqi government agencies to use the academic experiences and their efficiencies in general, due to non-existence of the engineering qualification in the government institutions to do the engineering designs ,supervision of projects and other engineering works which are practicing by the engineering consultancy offices in order to get the best performance of the work.Within this serious competition, needing a specific approach to enable government agencies to choose the optimal and alternative consultancy office to meet specific project and not rely on cronyis
... Show MoreIn this paper, two meshless methods have been introduced to solve some nonlinear problems arising in engineering and applied sciences. These two methods include the operational matrix Bernstein polynomials and the operational matrix with Chebyshev polynomials. They provide an approximate solution by converting the nonlinear differential equation into a system of nonlinear algebraic equations, which is solved by using
The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) describes an indoor space condition that the wellbeing and comfortability are provided for the users. Many researchers have highlighted the importance of adopting IEQ criteria, although they are not yet well defined in the Kurdistan region. However, environmental quality is not necessary for the contemporary buildings of the Kurdistan Region, and there is no measurement tool in the Region. This research aims to develop an IEQ assessment tool for the Kurdistan region using Mixed method methodology, both qualitative and quantitative. Therefore, a Delphi Technique was used as a method initially developed as systematic, interactive forecasting on a panel of experts. Thirty-five Delphi C
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