Tangible And Intangible Success Factors In Marine Construction Projects
Vivekanand M. Bankolli and Karuna Jain
This paper identifies project success criteria and success factors that influence Indian marine projects. The exploratory study is conducted to find tangible and intangible factors and their role in influencing the project success. Semi-structured interviews in two stages i.e. pilot and final were conducted with ninety-two project practitioners across the project channel members. The study draws fourteen, tangible and intangible factors influencing the projects. These factors are further categorised into four success criteria and ten success factors.
Identification And Prioritization Of Factors Responsible For Contractors' Failure In Residential Construction Projects : A Case Study Of Bardoli City
Vimal kumar Patel , Neetu Yadav and Vyom Pathak
Now a days, with the growth of the country, its infrastructure sector is also growing very fast. But to complete any construction project in the stipulated constraints, the contractor plays a vital role. Hence, we can say that project success and failure also depends on success and failure of the contractors. Keeping this in mind, the author has conducted the research work on contractors' failure. A questionnaire based approach has been selected. To carry out this research work, the factor of the Contractors' failure is retrieved from literature, pilot study and by conducting personal interviews. Based on the feedback of the interviews and the pilot study subsequently, a questionnaire has been designed and distributed to total 50 construction work experts who represent contractors, site engineers and project managers. The analysis of questionnaires is done by Relative Important Index. Then ranking has been done of top 11 factors of contractors' failure. Based on those factors, recommendations are given to improve the current practices.
Contractors' failure, Factor of Contractors' failure, Project delivery, Quality, Performance
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Research Articles
Customer Satisfaction Study Of The Mumbai Metro Service
Mona N. Shah , Vineet Raitani , Aditya Oza and Kunal Gupta
India's enormous urban population has adopted the use of mass rapid transit systems that help them to efficiently commute in cities. 'Metros' as they are popularly called, are functional in mega cities like Kolkata, Delhi and recently in Mumbai since 2014; followed by other state capitals in India. This research is a first ever attempt that maps individual customer satisfaction levels of the commuters, who are using the Mumbai metro services, in the short run (approximately over a year since operations began). It examines the level of commuter satisfaction, using 11 parameters/attributes of customer satisfaction for the service quality of the metro. The data is collected using a personally administered survey of 1428 commuters to measure their current level of satisfaction. With the help of factor analysis using SPSS, data has been analyzed to identify the gap in the service quality as perceived by the commuters towards the service. The findings from this research suggest that there lies a negative gap between expectation and perception of the commuters of Mumbai Metro, indicating slight dissatisfaction of the overall service quality. All determinants of service quality, namely, 'Reliability', 'Assurance', 'Tangibility' and 'Responsiveness' have proven to be marginally dissatisfactory to the commuters, except for the determinant of 'Empathy', which has a negative gap between expectation and perception and proves to be satisfactory.
Mumbai Metro, Service Quality, Parameters/Attributes, Customer satisfaction, Gap analysis
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Research Articles
Current Resource Management Practices In Indian Building Construction Projects: Is It An Art Or A Science?
Marimuthu K. , Benny Raphael , Ananthanarayanan K and Koshy Varghese
Project resources such as labor, material, and equipment are kept minimal to maintain the efficient working capital. Therefore, the limited resources need to be planned and scheduled in such a way that the project performances are met with minimum and acceptable deviations. Resource scheduling problems are classified into (1) resource allocation, (2) resource leveling, and (3) tradeoff among project objectives. However, sharing, dedicating and substituting of resources, is as much important as the resource scheduling problems. The objective of this paper is to bring out the existing practices on sharing, dedicating, and substituting of resources used in the building construction projects in India. A review was done to compare this aspect through the practice and standards: PMI-PMBOK Guide, Guidance on Project Management, and Guidelines on Construction Project Management (Time Management). Through a questionnaire-based survey, it was found that the project manager and planning engineer have difficulty in making decisions towards sharing limited resources. Similarly, the project coordinator, regional project manager, and regional planning engineer face the similar challenges while making decisions related to sharing, dedicating, and substituting resources to multiple projects. Difficulties are amplified when the project characteristics change from time-constrained to resource-constrained and vice versa due to the requirements made by the client. The questionnaire survey also brought out some of the other important aspects related to sharing, dedicating, and substituting of resources. The decisions made in the limited resource situation are mostly experience-based, which may not be replicable. Science employs methodologies that require repeatable and verifiable explanations, whereas art involves skills that are only available to a particular person through experience. The key finding of this paper is that the current resource sharing, dedicating and substituting practices in the Indian building construction projects is mostly an art rather than a science.
Art or Science, Sharing, Dedicating, Substitution, PMBOK, Project Management, Construction
Project Management
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Research Articles
Impact Of Equipment Usage On Labour Productivity In The Indian Construction Industry At The Activity Level
G. Boopathi and Satyanarayana N Kalidindi
Productivity is a key driver for economic growth of a country. Increased productivity has shown increased economic performance. In construction, studies have reported that labour productivity influences the performance of the sector significantly. Studies have shown negative productivity trends at the aggregate level in many countries. The possible factors causing these negative trends have also been analyzed. A study on the influence of equipment usage, a factor that has been evolving over the past 20 years in the industry, on the construction labor productivity has hardly been done in the Indian context. This paper examines the effect of the usage of equipment on labor productivity during the period 1997 to 2014 for 40 different types of construction activities under various categories. For this period, the changes in equipment usage are measured using four technology indicators. Results show that there is an increase in labour productivity. However, large variations are noticed among the activities. The earth work, dismantling and piling works have shown improvement in labour productivity of 48%, 67% and 62% respectively but concrete works and road works have shown an increase of only 6% and 3% respectively. The results of two paired t-tests and regression analysis between the change in labour productivity and four technology indicators have revealed that there is a significant relationship between the usage of equipment and labour productivity.
Construction equipment, Construction labour productivity, Equipment technology, Construction industry trends
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