Sharif Digital Repository

The construction industry is viewed as one with poor performance from the point of view of quality as compared to other industries such as service and manufacturing. Earlier field studies performed in Iran show low construction quality. Experts suggest that cultural factors are among the most important factors that lead to the difference between what is planned and what is constructed.
Unlike many other industries, the construction industry is yet to achieve wide-scale automation of processes. Therefore, majority of construction processes is heavily dependent on workers. In order to achieve higher performance in terms of quality and productivity, the practitioners and researchers should... 

According to the principles of the country 20-year outlook charter Iran as a developing nation should be ranked first in economic, scientific and technological status in the region. Productivity improvement in all fields is one of the key essentials for realization of stable economic growth. Construction industry in developing countries contributes a major share of gross domestic product (GDP). It has a crucial bearing on economic growth, therefore enhancement of performance indicators in this industry will result in economic development of the country. This research project has offered a pattern for measuring and analyzing labor and machinery productivity in large scale construction. This... 

Most construction projects contain activities repeated in project units or locations with definite consequence. These kinds of projects are called repetitive projects. One of the fundamental objectives of planning and scheduling of repetitive projects is using resources optimally and without interruption, a concept known as continuous workflow. Traditional planning and scheduling methods like Critical Path Method (CPM) are criticized for their disability to produce a reliable workflow. Ignoring the concept of workflow in project schedule causes time and cost overrun that arise from additional waiting times and also increase the risk of accessibility to resources on time. Therefore in this... 

Type and terms of payment is one of the most important fundamentals of any construction project contract. Suitable contract type is selected based on available financial options, payment systems, project schedule and other uncertainties of project environment. Commonly in Iran; private residential construction projects are executed using cost plus or lump sum contracts. Based on project’s contract type, costs of materials’ waste are to be borne by different parties. For example in cost plus contracts, the costs of materials as well as wastes are paid by owner while in lump sum contract this cost is paid by contractor. Considering limited budget of construction projects, materials’ waste... 

Nowadays, every society tries to adjust its development’s orientation towards sustainable development. Construction projects have a significant share of every country’s economy. Construction waste management is one of the most important issues affecting sustainability. Construction waste management and waste minimization programs in construction projects not only can save resources and help the economy, but also can enhance a country’s development toward sustainable development. Designing process can be an effective phase in waste management among different stages of a project life cycle. Considering the significant number of concrete building constructions in Iran, the aim of this research... 

Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contracts commonly used in the construction of oil and gas production facilities in Iran. These projects are subjected to many uncertainties. Because in these projects contractor is responsible for most of the activities related to the Engineering, Construction and Procurement, EPC contractors often assume most of project risks. Therefore, project risk management is very essential for achieving project goals. Several studies have focused on the identification and analysis of EPC project risks. However, they fail to identify appropriate risk management strategies. The objective of this study is to identify fair and efficient risk allocation and... 

Pre-fabrication of building components, as a level of industrial building, is an innovative method of construction, which is widely used in developed countries nowadays. However, this method has accounted for a small percentage of the construction in developing countries like Iran. On the other hand, it is essential to consider sustainable development with the incidence of issues such as degradation of natural resources and ecosystems, pollution, over population, injustice procedure, and decrease in quality of human life. Industrial building systems have a significant impact on improvement and expansion of sustainable development laws due to their potential characteristics. Hence, the... 

Construction is a vast industry. It is one of the vital and important industries in each country because of high financial turn over, creating many job opportunities and developments. Development has always been a great challenge to the environment due to using much of natural materials and resources. Studies show that construction projects produce the highest amount of waste among other industries. By continuing current situation and increasing rate of production of construction waste, nations and human beings will face a lot of problems in the future. Recently, an increasing attention has been focused worldwide to limit using natural resources in order to conserve the... 

Under volatile economic conditions, where inflation is high and market prices of materials, labor, and equipment change unexpectedly, construction cost rise. To avoid the disruption of work, the owner may be required to compensate the contractors in a way that the excess construction cost is partially or completely covered. This compensation should be provided to the contractors in a way that is authorized by the laws and regulations under which the contract is stipulated. Hence it is essential to have the proper mechanism, for sharing the burden of cost overruns caused by unforeseen economic conditions.
In Iran, the payment scheme for the majority of the medium-and large-scale contracts... 

Reliable forecasting is a fundamental element of successful project management. Construction managers regularly control and monitor their project in order to ensure that their project performance is under control and within the acceptable control limits. Conventionally, the earned value method (EVM) is used to monitor project cost performance. However, its application to schedule performance using schedule performance index (SPI) has been widely questioned both by practitioners and researchers particularly due to poor accuracy early in the project. This study presents a novel activity-based framework, namely Weibull Evaluation and Forecasting Method (WEFM), for stochastic evaluation and... 

In today’s competitive world, productivity is one of the main components that guarantee the success and profitability of an industry or a project. This research has studied productivity of dam construction projects in Iran that are usually classified as mega projects. First, the major factors influencing productivity of dam construction projects in Iran were identified and evaluated. Three main sources of information namely; literature review, records and lesson learned from previous projects and experts’ opinions were used to identify these factors. Then, 41 main factors influencing productivity were selected and the effect of each factor was measured based on the results obtained from... 

In response to the growing energy consumptions levels in buildings, many countries have introduced standards and codes aimed at reducing their national building energy consumption levels as well as managing the amount of pollutants. Title 19 of Iran’s National Building Regulation (NBR) was first introduced in 1991. It is projected that Title 19 can lead to a 30 to 50% reduction in the amount of buildings energy consumption. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that the introduction of Title 19 NBR has not led to substantial reduction in building energy consumption in Iran. Unlike Title 19 NBR, similar standards in other countries have proven to be very effective in reducing the building energy... 

In recent years, frequent involvements in claims have been inevitable due to unpredictable economic changes and increasing complexities in construction industry. Therefore, even appropriately made contracts are not exempted from claims. On the other hand, construction contract claims are time-consuming, expense-involving and most likely leading to unsatisfactory results. However, there may be some positive outcomes, such as time extension or compensation of damages. To launch investigationson claim management, a list of important and frequent claims in oil and gas industry projects of Iran was extracted after a succinct documents review. Further, the most important claim causes were... 

By using the information and communication technology (ICT) in the past three decades, many industries have been able to improve their productivity to a great extent. However, the construction industry is not experiencing such growth in productivity. Many believe that one of the most important reasons for this problem is the ineffectual use of ICT in the construction industry. To solve this problem, several construction methods have been developed in order to increase the productivity of the construction industry by using the aspects of the ICT. One of the most promising methods in this area is the Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) method.
Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) is the... 

In a macro view point, it can be said that housing demand in recent years is making the construction industry one of the main sectors of Iran’s economy. On the other hand, analysis of seismic risk in the country with regard to the geological conditions, the faults, and the seismic records of mega city of Tehran is depicting the delicate location of the Iranian capital. This city is selected as a case study in this thesis that has a high probability for the event; where this event has also been classified as a devastating earthquake ever. Due to the involvement of private sector in construction industry, the need for establishing a system of strict control on quality of construction of the... 

Most regions in Iran are located on an active plate boundary. Therefore, many parts of the country face a risk of earthquake damage at some point in time. Therefore, anticipating and addressing the consequences of earthquake events in order to minimize loss of life and damage to property is a national issue.There is concern about the ability of a signification fraction of buildings in Iran to withstand earthquake events. The deficiencies in the design and construction of buildings in Iran result in low-quality buildings vulnerable to earthquakes. It is necessary to identify and investigate the parameters that contribute to these deficiencies.Previous research studies indicate that... 

One of the main challenges construction industry face is the shortage of skilled labor. It is also one of the main reason of project’s delay. Many strategies including compensation payment, longer hiring duration and increase in wages has been proposed. Conventional scheduling assumes unlimited amount of resources or if consider the resource, is restricted to single-skilled resource. This is in contrast with real-world where workers may not be available at any time or they may possess a range of skills. Multiskilling is a workforce strategy that has been shown to reduce indirect labor cost, improve productivity and make the planning more realistic. Past researches proposed algorithms using... 

Construction is considered as a major industry with an important economic impact in every country because of its extensiveness, high working capital ratio, and rate of employment. The construction industry needs to incur expenses and take high risks. It's soundness is influenced by many factors, some of that are controllable, and some others are not. The stakeholders of construction projects try to maximize interests and reduce the cost and time of projects in every phase. Every year, a significant part of Iran’s national revenue is invested in construction projects and infrastructures. When construction projects become more extensive and complex, stakeholders are always looking for... 

Tehran is surrounded by about ten active faults, which have had no major seismic activity during the last 200 years. Considering soil characteristics, the faults may cause fault ruptures, resonance, landslides in some areas. Tehran's MPE is determined to be about 0.4g which is a high seismic hazard. Specific codes have been generated in the last 50 years to ensure structures' stability when a quake occurs, but observations show that the codes are not fully implemented in the construction of public structures in Tehran. In this study, first the structural imperfections observed in the public structures and their effect on the structures' seismic performance were reviewed. The imperfections... 

For sometimes researchers and practitioners have realized that the traditional success criteria, known as iron triangle (time, cost, quality), are not adequate indicators to align a project execution with the long term success trend of an organization. Many other success criteria in addition to time, cost and quality of a project can negatively or positively affect the long term success of an organization. Evaluating the project life cycle success is to some extent more judgmental and usually there is no agreed upon measures defined prior to the project execution. There are many stakeholders affected or involved in the life cycle of a project like; owner, contractor, operator, customers,...