Journal of Construction Engineering, Management & Innovation

Ebrahim Jokar B. Amin Nejad Alireza Lork

Execution of infrastructure projects is considered as one of the most important indices of the country’s economic growth and development. In these projects, the governments’ financing always plays a vital role in the development and achieving project goals within the specified time. In order to deal with the problem, governments tend to increase the role of private sector companies in the development of infrastructure projects using public-private partnership (PPP) contracts. On the other hand, the private company should also be aware of the risks involved in the project, as well as the extent of the involvement of each of the risk factors in the overall project risk. To solve this issue, in this paper, the risk factors are first identified and then the proposed hybrid approach based on Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to prioritize the risk factors and finally select the contractor company to implement the Saveh-Salafchegan Freeway Project.

https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2020.01001016

Harun Turkoglu Gul Polat Atilla Damci

The construction industry is responsible for the consumption of large proportions of natural resources such as material, energy and water. Inefficient use of resources in the construction industry has a negative impact on the natural environment. In order to reduce these negative impacts on the natural environment, sustainable development has gained importance. “Green building” can be considered as the implementation of sustainable development principles in the construction industry. A building can be considered as “green” if it is evaluated and certified according to a recognized green building certification system such as LEED, BREAM, DGNB, BEPAC, CASBEE, etc. In Turkey, LEED is one of the most commonly preferred green building certification systems. In this green building certification system, “Materials and Resources” (MR) credit is one of the seven main credits and has 14 points, which accounts for approximately 13% of the maximum achievable points (110 pts. from seven different credits) for “New Construction” in LEED v3. However, the LEED certified green buildings in Turkey attain relatively low level of achievements in MR credit, regardless of the level of certification, especially when compared to the other categories. MR credit has seven sub-credits, which include: 1) building reuse, 2) construction waste management, 3) materials reuse, 4) recycled content, 5) regional materials 6) rapidly renewable materials, and 7) certified wood. The main objective of this study is to find out whether there are statistically significant differences between the MR credit achievements of 172 newly constructed and certified buildings in Turkey with respect to four different levels of certification. In addition, this study aims to investigate the potential reasons behind this low level of achievement in this credit. In this study, some recommendations have also been made to improve these low levels of achievements. These recommendations not only help the achievement of sustainability goals for construction projects, but also assist in attaining higher credit points during the application processes for green building certification.

https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2020.01017028

Beliz Ozorhon Cansu Kus Semih Caglayan

Contracting firms need to assess their competitive position in order to sustain their existence under fierce competition and an increasingly globalized business environment. Competitiveness has been investigated widely by both scholars and practitioners. However, it cannot be assessed easily and measured directly. This study aims to develop a framework to assess competitiveness of international contracting firms from the managerial perspective. In this context, competitiveness factors have been identified based on an extensive literature review. These factors are grouped under nine categories including effectiveness of strategies, managerial capabilities, organizational capabilities, efficiency of technical resources, efficiency of human resources, efficiency of financial resources, effectiveness of relationships, favorability of host country conditions, and favorability of market conditions. An Analytic Network Process (ANP) model is proposed to analyze the interrelations among the model parameters and to compute their importance weights. Analysis results suggest that “effectiveness of strategies” is the most influential cluster that contributes to the competitiveness of the contractors, followed by “organizational capabilities” and “managerial capabilities”, respectively. The applicability of the proposed model is tested on ten projects, and the results are found to be satisfactory. The findings of this study are expected to guide contractors in developing appropriate strategies to pursue in international markets and selecting right projects to bid for.

https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2020.01052066

RAMAZAN SARI Mehmet Koray Pekeriçli

Architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is in the midst of BIM transition across the world. In parallel, Turkish architecture and engineering firms are also experiencing such BIM transition. Regarding the sector wide change in the world; governments release standards, regulations and best practice guides to support not only the governmental institutions but also private sector firms on BIM transition. The United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) are two countries providing a continuous stream of official documents to support BIM transition with respect to the country perspectives, however; there are no such official documents released in Turkey yet. Therefore, current BIM practices executed in Turkey are in compliance with existing architectural and engineering practice documents in Turkey, which are dated and insufficient. This situation brings a question for the authors of this research that what kind of regulative shortcomings and deficiencies exist in BIM transition practices of Turkish architectural and engineering firms when compared with counterparts in USA and UK. The research question is tried to be answered by comparing and evaluating official BIM documents released in the USA and UK with Turkish architectural and engineering service specification document by using key BIM terms collected from best practice guides released in USA and UK. The selected key BIM terms are addressing potential legal issues in a BIM practice that in case of being not referenced, it is likely to be confront with claims and conflicts among project participants. The overall study has significant potentials on addressing not only common shortcomings of BIM implementation but also discovery of regulative gaps and challenging issues for the BIM implementation practices in Turkish AEC industry practitioners.

https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2020.01067084