Kumar Neeraj Jha

Analyses and evaluation of irregularities in public procurement in India

Public procurement is prone to corruption, which in the global construction market alone accounts for an estimated US

Success Traits for a Construction Project

340 billion per year. There is a growing need for procurement systems to be able to fight corruption and improve the effectiveness, efficiency, fairness and transparency of public procurement. A comprehensive list of irregularities in public procurement is derived from irregularities observed during technical vigilance inspections by experts and reported cases. The research involved a questionnaire survey, Delphi method and an empirical investigation of the dynamics of irregular practices in public procurement. The survey revealed the top 15 most frequent irregularities. The irregularities have been classified under five categories: transparency, professional standards, fairness, contract monitoring and regulation and procedural irregularities. The ranking of these categories reveals that transparency is the key factor requiring prime attention. The other categories are of nearly equal importance. A framework for good procurement is developed and actions proposed under five categories to curb corruption in public procurement. The framework and the irregularities can be related systematically to various aspects of combating corruption, and hence should fulfil the urgent need of policy‐makers, professional staff, regulators and consumers.

Neural Network Model for the Prediction of Safe Work Behavior in Construction Projects

From the eleven success factors derived earlier, ‘human factors’ and ‘management actions’ have been further analyzed. A hypothesis that ‘project success’ is influenced by ‘success traits’ has been formulated. The hypothesized positive inter-relationships between success traits and project success have been tested using the structural equation modeling technique. Various steps taken for achieving the objectives are clearly outlined. The results of the analysis show that hypothesis set for the study holds good. Human factors and management actions play a key role in making the project a success. It can be concluded that trained, committed, competent participant’s coordination, with constant monitoring and feedback with regular budget update will influence the successful completion of project.

The impact of anti-corruption strategies on corruption free performance in public construction projects

AbstractA model has been developed employing an artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the safe work behavior of employees using 10 safety climate constructs determined through literature review. The model utilizes safety climate constructs (determinants) as inputs and safe work behavior as an output. Two hundred twenty-two responses from several construction projects across India were collected through a questionnaire survey. A three-layer feed-forward back-propagation neural network (10-11-1) was appropriate in building this model which has been trained, validated, and tested with sufficient data sets. The model predicts the safe work behavior of employees reasonably well. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to study the impact of each construct on the safe work behavior of employees. As a result, safety climate constructs like supervisory environment, work pressure, employees’ involvement, personal appreciation of risk, and supportive environment were significantly associated with t...

Ranking and classification of construction coordination activities in Indian projects

Despite extensive efforts, corruption in public procurement has reached epidemic proportions and has become one of the major challenges for management. Because corrupt practices mostly occur under wraps, the task of combating corruption becomes even more difficult. In the course of a review of the extant literature on the theme a number of independent constructs with the potential to develop anti-corruption strategies have been identified. A research model was developed on the basis of the hypothesis that anti-corruption strategies lead to corruption free performance in public construction projects. A questionnaire survey was administered and 105 responses were collected. ‘Anti-corruption strategies’ was defined as a second order construct composed of four latent constructs: leadership, rules and regulations, training and fear of punishment. The structural equation modelling (SEM) technique was used to test the hypothesized positive inter-relations between anti-corruption strategies and corruption free performance. The significance of the role of management leadership, rules and regulations, training, as well as fear of punishment is highlighted to help policy makers and construction institutions in understanding the role of various anti-corruption strategies in public construction projects so that they may contribute to this important endeavour in achieving the goal of promoting economy, efficiency, quality, fairness and transparency.

Identification of green building attributes for the development of an assessment tool: a case study in India

The efforts of contractors, consultants and owners need to be appropriately coordinated in large civil engineering projects, whose success can be defined in terms of compliance to schedule, economy in cost, adherence to quality, and non‐occurrence of disputes. Based on the hypothesis that coordination activities affect the different dimensions of project success differently, and that different stakeholders prioritize the activities differently, a questionnaire survey covering senior Indian construction professionals was carried out. For this a list of 59 coordination activities influencing successful completion of a construction project was drawn up. These coordination activities were ranked for the four success dimensions using statistical tools on the responses received. ‘Regular monitoring of critical path activities’; ‘monitoring the budget on all activities and taking corrective action’; ‘application of sound technical practices’; ‘implementation of all contractual commitments’ are the most important coordination activities corresponding to schedule, cost, quality and no‐dispute performance criteria, respectively. Results show that project coordination issues can be addressed by attending to essentially the four broad groups of coordination activities—resource handling, planning, team building and contract implementation. Findings presented in the paper could interest construction professionals and help them identify and concentrate on important coordination activities.

Neural Network Approach for Safety Climate Prediction

ABSTRACT Green building rating systems have been developed to measure the level of sustainability of buildings. Existing methods can be applied to different regions by addressing additional aspects such as varied climatic conditions and regional variations. This paper investigated the most widely used environmental building assessment methods, namely BREEAM, LEED, SB-Tool, CASBEE, LEED-India, GRIHA and Eco-housing. Comparative studies revealed that the existing assessment schemes had some limitations when applied to an Indian built environment. This necessitates the development of a new building environmental assessment scheme. An attempt is made to develop a framework to evaluate sustainability of buildings in India by applying principal component analysis (PCA). The PCA of 82 valid responses on the attributes measuring sustainability of buildings has extracted nine components: (1) site selection; (2) environment; (3) building resources and re-use; (4) building services and management; (5) innovative construction techniques, (6) environmental health and safety, (7) mechanical systems; (8) indoor air quality; (9) economy. Further, a framework suggested in this study can be applied for countries having similar climatic conditions. Findings of this paper can be helpful to designers and developers to achieve green development in developing countries.

Structural Equation Modeling for Relationship-Based Determinants of Safety Performance in Construction Projects

AbstractSafety climate is a snapshot of the safety culture of any organization and it is dynamic in nature. It reflects the employees’ perceptions and attitude towards the existing safety practices in construction projects. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate and differentiate construction projects based on their safety climate and to determine the significant constructs of a safety climate. This paper develops a model to predict safety climate in a construction project based on an artificial neural network (ANN). The important constructs for a safety climate have been determined through literature review. The constructs of safety climate are used as inputs and the safety climate of the project is used as an output for the ANN algorithm. This study collected a total of 250 responses through a questionnaire survey across the country. A three-layer feed-forward back-propagation neural network (10-18-1) has been utilized for the analysis. The developed model predicts the safety climate of a constructi...

Hazard Assessment Using Consistent Fuzzy Preference Relations Approach

AbstractSafety performance in construction projects is attributed to many determinants (factors) in a safety system. This study identifies various directly or indirectly related determinants and their effects on safety performance of construction projects. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), this study empirically examines the effect of safety climate (SC), hazard management (HM), safety budget (SB), safety rules and regulations (SR), and safe work behavior (WB) of employees and workers on safety performance (SP) of projects. The unit of analysis of this study is a construction project. A questionnaire survey was conducted, and 230 responses were collected from different types of construction projects across India. The results provide evidence that safety climate, safety budget, and hazard management positively influence safe work behavior of employees and the safety performance of the project. Conversely, the SEM findings demonstrate that implementation of safety rules and regulations are positivel...

Critical factors affecting schedule performance: A case of Ethiopian public construction projects – engineers’ perspective

AbstractThe construction sector is known as one of the most hazardous work places worldwide. Hazard identification and its assessment are the most important tasks of safety management. Based on a review of the existing literature, this study identifies 10 hazardous trades and their 39 attributes to assess the project hazard level. Most of the existing studies assess the hazards using the probability approach, which needs reliable established data that in most cases are not well maintained. This study uses the possibility approach (fuzzy set theory) and proposes a methodology to compute the hazard index representing the hazard level of projects. This methodology is based on the judgments and perceptions of respondents, and it uses the consistent fuzzy preference relations (CFPR) method to determine the relative weights of 10 hazardous trades and their 39 attributes. Fuzzy set theory is used to determine the risk impact of attributes. Thus, the hazard index for a given attribute is determined by a combined ...