Due to the complex nature of construction projects, delay risks are more widespread in the construction sector than elsewhere. This poses a problem for the industry, since it is already at risk because of the recent global economic recession. Indeed, the financial crisis in late 2008 arrested economic development in the construction sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with the result that investors’ confidence in the sector is severely depressed. In this situation, effective risk response is urgently required, since it aims to ensure that all project objectives, including avoiding delays, are met. In itself, the risk response process is a core element of risk management and perhaps the most important area needs to be improved. The aim of the research work that underpins this thesis was to develop a model for effective risk response to help in controlling delay risks. First, the strengths and weaknesses of current risk response processes have been analysed through a comprehensive critical literature review. Common causes of delay risks have been identified and various traditional measures used for their control have been critically reviewed. The greatest deficiencies in all published measures of delay risks control in construction projects are related to the lack of risk response development and appropriate measures (preventative/mitigating), within the risk management process. From the literature review it was also possible to identify the most appropriate methodology to adopt for the current research. A robust research methodology was then outlined which involved a questionnaire survey, case studies and interviews to confirm the literature review results and to achieve the research objectives. The questionnaire was piloted with nine construction professionals in the UAE for its suitability with the envisaged sample. After the pilot the questionnaire was refined then administered in 35 construction, consultancy, and contracting companies, attracting 102 usable responses. The results of the questionnaire confirmed the literature review results. Accordingly, six case studies from three companies were identified and supplemented by face-to-face interview, documents and direct observations. This strategy allowed the research evidence to be triangulated and thus the researcher to be more confident in testing a particular concept or theory. From the results it emerged that most organisations have immature project management systems and poor risk response processes. Hence, 22 Key Success Factors (KSFs) of preventative measures and 15 KSFs of mitigation measures were identified to achieve risk response development by maturity levels in the pre-construction stage and in the construction stage, respectively. The analysis of the case studies revealed the great potential for employing five KSFs of mitigation measures in the risk response development to control delay risks. Having considered these outcomes a risk response development model to control delay risks has been outlined. The model has been carefully validated, both theoretically and in practical terms, through the discussions with interviewees from the selected case studies. The interviewees agreed on the practicality of the model to identify the risk response development, however it is recommended that the project risk event severity and the company capability would need to be taken into account, and the demand to format the test stage for the maturity levels at the transition stages (Disciplinary, Consistency, Integration, and Optimisation) to achieve the effectiveness and the transparency of the model. Based on the validation, it is anticipated that by developing the risk response model, the process itself will be more objective, particularly in delay risks control. The study brings forward findings that can be promoted as the means to enhance opportunities to control delay risks, and benefit practitioners in the UAE given that so far, there has been no model of risk response development by maturity levels for delay risks control. Moreover, one of the unique features of the study is the creation of new knowledge by focusing on the UAE. At the same time, the use of maturity modeling to handle construction delay risks provides new knowledge for a wider audience.

Submitted by Elba Lopes (elba.lopes@fecap.br) on 2016-02-04T15:30:16Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Luis_Carlos_Costa_Fontes_Junior.pdf: 510399 bytes, checksum: c38bdb63713503d76c9fb875b64dc90b (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-04T15:30:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Luis_Carlos_Costa_Fontes_Junior.pdf: 510399 bytes, checksum: c38bdb63713503d76c9fb875b64dc90b (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004-07-28 / The process of transforming local financial market into global centers is contributing to the functional convergence among the markets and favoring the establishment of the Basel II. Activities which were firstly related to the offer of services in local basis, are becoming financial services with uniform and homogeneous characteristics, where the service suppliers are universal instituitions. This liberal moviment has resulted in the removal and simplification of policies, when it authorized the banks to act without the regulation limits through acts previously prohibited.The liberalization and flexibilization of these rules have caused great instability in the financial market, because the economic agents have tried more and more profitability rather than great risks. Because of this complexity that the connected financial system worldwide and the magnitude of the capital flow negotiated was tranformed; the financial risks and economic turbulence have risen. The Basel Capital Accord was created by part of Central banks and entity supervisors of G10 members, then, as an attempt to define the objectives and general mechanisms of supervision of national financial systems , with focus on the banking systems. However, it was noticed later that the present accord was not sufficient to prevent crisis, mainly, the banking crisis. Thus, the Basel Commitee representing once again the international banking industry, elaborated a new Basel Accord, yet more demanding (called Basel II), which has the objective of prevention of banking crisis and correcting the distortion of the old accord. This study it had as objective to verify the impacts of this new Agreement in the national banking institutions. In research carried through with Brazilian banks, showed that the credit area, for being one of most important of a bank, will have that to readjust itself quickly. It showed, also, that the small Brazilian financial institutions will suffer to greaters impacts from the Basel II. / O processo de transforma????o de mercados financeiros locais em centros globais est?? contribuindo para a converg??ncia funcional entre mercados. Atividades antes relacionadas com oferta de servi??os em bases locais ganham dimens??o de servi??os financeiros dotados de caracter??sticas uniformes e homog??neas, em que os prestadores de servi??os s??o institui????es universais. Este movimento liberal implicou na retirada e na simplifica????o das normas, ao autorizar os Bancos a agir sem os limites regulamentares por meio de comportamentos anteriormente vedados. A liberaliza????o e a flexibiliza????o desses regulamentos causou grande instabilidade no sistema financeiro, j?? que os agentes econ??micos buscaram, cada vez mais, rentabilidade ?? custa de maiores riscos. Em face dessa complexidade em que se transformaram os sistemas financeiros mundialmente interligados e da magnitude dos fluxos de capitais transacionados, ampliaram-se os riscos financeiros e as turbul??ncias econ??micas. O Acordo da Basil??ia surgiu, ent??o, como uma tentativa por parte dos Bancos Centrais e entidades supervisoras dos pa??ses membros do G-10 de definir objetivos e mecanismos gerais de supervis??o dos sistemas financeiros nacionais, com foco no sistema banc??rio. Entretanto, observou-se com o tempo que o Acordo vigente n??o foi suficiente para prevenir crises, principalmente, as banc??rias. Desse modo, o Comit?? da Basil??ia, representando mais uma vez a ind??stria banc??ria internacional, elaborou um novo Acordo, ainda mais exigente (denominado Basil??ia II), que tem como objetivo a preven????o de crises banc??rias e de corrigir eventuais distor????es do Acordo antigo. Este estudo teve como objetivo verificar os impactos desse novo Acordo nas institui????es banc??rias nacionais. Em pesquisa realizada com Bancos brasileiros, a ??rea de cr??dito, por ser uma das mais importantes, ter?? que se readaptar rapidamente. Mostrou, tamb??m, que as pequenas institui????es financeiras brasileiras sofrer??o os maiores impactos com a implanta????o da Basil??ia II.

As competition in the business environment increases, knowledge management becomes a critical success factor. Firms should be able to gather, analyze and reuse knowledge to support their strategic decisions. Construction firms should also analyze information in hand (completed and on going project data) and make it a part of their learning mechanism. Post-project appraisal is an organizational learning mechanism aiming to form an organizational memory. Organizational memory is a remedy for organizational amnesia, which is a very common problem in the construction industry due to the project-specific nature of the industry and lack of systematic ways to manage knowledge. Particularly, information about risks and their consequences is an important piece of knowledge that the firms should refer to in the forthcoming projects in order not to do the same mistakes. v Risk management comprises of risk identification, analysis and formulation of risk response strategy to maintain an optimum risk-return structure in a project. It is agreed upon by many researchers that, although risk management is accepted as one of the critical success factors for construction projects, project participants generally do not have sufficient knowledge pertinent to risk management concept and the number of tools which facilitate the risk management process is rather low. Typically, companies carry out a risk assessment exercise at the start of a project and the obtained risk ratings are used to determine contingency. However, after the project is over, a final assessment is not usually carried out. The main idea in this study is that, in order to improve the risk assessment process in forthcoming projects, risk assessment should be a part of post-project appraisal. Risk events that actually happened may be classified according to their sources and impacts (monetary/nonmonetary) as well as the effectiveness of utilized response strategies. Consequently, companies may learn from what had happened in previous projects and prepare more realistic risk management plans in the future. The major objective of this thesis is to develop a project risk management information model for risk assessment using historical data in order to improve risk assessment process in forthcoming projects. The framework is modeled to ensure information continuity throughout the project life cycle by storing and reusing project information that resides in risk event databases. The applicability of the developed database system is tested on a real construction project and potential benefits are discussed.

Public debt managers have a certain range of borrowing instruments varying in their interest rate type, currency, maturity etc. at their disposal and have to find an appropriate combination of those while raising debt on behalf of the government. In selecting the combination of instruments to be issued, i.e. the borrowing strategy to be pursued for a certain period of time, debt managers need to consider several objectives that are conflicting by their nature, and the uncertainty associated with the outcomes of the decisions made. The objective of this thesis is to propose an approach to support the decision making process regarding sovereign debt issuance. We incorporate Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) tools using a multi-period stochastic programming model that takes into account sequential decisions concerned with debt issuance policies. The model is then applied for public debt management in Turkey.

Management of public debt is crucial for every country. Public debt managers make efforts to both minimize the cost of borrowing and to keep debt stock at sustainable levels. However, due to competition for funds in the continuously changing and developing financial markets, new threats and opportunities appear constantly. Public debt managers construct borrowing policies in order to minimize the cost of borrowing and also to decrease risk by using various borrowing instruments. This thesis presents a mathematical model to determine the borrowing policy that minimizes the cost of borrowing in line with future projections and then seeks to extend it to construct risk sensitive policies that allow minimizing the effects of changes in the market on the cost of borrowing. The model&rsquo / s application results for determining the borrowing strategies of Turkish Treasury for 100 month horizon have been evaluated through the study.

Due to its complex nature, risk and uncertainty are more widespread in construction industry than many other industries. Aiming to ensure that all project objectives are met, risk management is considered as a critical success factor for construction projects. The core elements of risk management are now known and used by many organizations. On the other hand, as declared by Project Management Institute (PMI), the ability to measure the effectiveness in managing risk is one of the most important areas that risk management needs to be developed in. Designed to assess the capability of a project or an organization in a particular area, a maturity model aids in determining strengths and weaknesses, and to target improvement strategies accordingly. Several maturity models have been developed for the area of risk management and furthermore, an attempt to adapt a generic risk management maturity model to the construction industry was specified from the literature. All in all, when examined, it was seen that most of these models outline the topics to be investigated in a maturity assessment and provide guidance in terms of content. It was believed that a practical approach was needed and the diagnostic characteristics of these models should be enhanced. Therefore, the aim of this study was to propose a construction risk management maturity framework, together with an easily applicable and effective questionnaire. To achieve this aim, six outstanding risk management maturity models were examined, and the proposed model was further supported with construction-specific attributes such as construction supply chain issues. The applicability of the model was tested through case studies conducted with five large scale Turkish construction companies. The results were evaluated and interpreted for each company and the gathered data were further investigated through statistical tests for certain comparisons. Finally, the questionnaire was revised with respect to the feedback received from the case studies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Universität St. Gallen, 2001. / "Dissertation Nr. 2547." Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-270).

No description available.

The role of risk management in the construction industry is essential due to the complexityand dynamic environment of the projects. To enhance project success, it is important toembed risk management practices in every activity of the project.The research question is “What is the classification of risks of joint ventures projects indeveloping countries and especially in countries that are facing economic crisis?” Theobjective of this thesis work is to assess the risks by creating proper risk probability versusrisk impact matrices and proceed with further analysis and based on the criticality of themand furthermore to allocate the risks and possible bias of the Concession AgreementBased on literature review and the objective of this thesis work, the propositions are thefollowing: “1) All the examined risks have the possibility to exist. 2) Risks, which hugelyimpact joint venture projects, are financial risks. 3) The purpose of the ConstructionContract is to ensure a fair distribution of risks between the parties, determining the parties'rights, duties, responsibilities and obligations in advance. 4) Criticality is an independentvariable from impact and possibility.”Due to the nature of this research and the research objective, the scientific idealimplemented is critical realism. This research is conducted based on quantitative method ofprimary data analysis. A questionnaire was formed in order to be given to the Panel ofExperts from different organizations for the evaluation of the problem.Based on the empirical data and analysis, the author indentified and evaluated the risks ofthe joint venture construction projects in developing countries within the definedenvironment of the consortium, where the state has a specific regal role, based oncriticality, risk probability and risk impact. The analysis of the data was done with the RankReciprocal method (Carr & Zwick, 2007, p.70). In this thesis work, they are identified,individually and also aggregately, the specific risks with high criticality, high probabilityand high impact. The risks of joint venture projects classified with the higher criticality, thehigher probability and the higher impact, aggregately, are: Public Utilities Organizations(P.U.O.) permits delay (due to either Concessionaire's fault, or State's), State defaults (or anExtensive Force Majeure Event creates a State Event of Default), Events of Delay occurduring Design-Construction period affecting that period or the next one (the OperationPeriod), Critical path complications due to Archaeological Surveys revealing antiquities,Delays, inability of State in its obligation to go forth in expropriations. Risk managers canfocus on those risks and ensure the success of risk management and project control.

Many recent developments in education theory and the field of disaster management have left the meaning of public education as applied in the disaster management field fraught with uncertainty. This thesis addresses this uncertainty via a phenomenographic research study that sheds light on the meaning of public education, despite such uncertainty, by revealing a discrete number of qualitatively different ways in which disaster managers and disaster educators experience and understand public education. Transcriptions of interviews of 25 such senior Australian disaster managers and educators were analysed using phenomenographic methods and revealed a set of discrete, parsimonious and qualitatively different ways of experiencing public education. The referential component of the different ways of experiencing was revealed within ten emergent categories of description for public education: (i) a non-effective process; (ii) a way of managing a public issue; (iii) promoting an issue; (iv) issuing expert instructions; (v) changing individuals; (vi) strategic teaching and training; (vii) collaborative partnerships; (viii) empowering learners to make informed decisions; (ix) negotiation; and (x) element in societal learning. The structural component of the emergent ways of experiencing public education was presented in the form of a phenomenographic outcome space. Linkages between these findings about public education and current literature were made. The results suggested multiple ways to improve public education within the disaster management community and more widely. The need for clarity in communication amongst educators and professionals in regard to public education was confirmed by the research findings. Insights into phenomenography and education were included within the discussion.