Rapid transformation across all sectors through Saudi Arabia’s vision 2030 initiatives led to an increase in construction activities. However, the construction industry has been already facing huge cost and time overruns, affecting all stakeholders. The aim of this study is to identify and explore the influential risk factors that lead to completion delays and cost overruns of government-funded building construction projects in Saudi Arabia, all of which have been subjected to a traditional type of procurement method (Standard Public Works Contract). The literature examined in this study identified a total of 83 risk factors, which have been grouped into nine categories. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to determine the participants’ perspectives on the degree of probability of occurrence (P) of each risk and its potential impact on a project in terms of time (IT) and cost (IC). The questionnaire survey was distributed to 200 experts and professionals associated with Saudi building construction projects, which were grouped into four categories: clients, designers, consultants, and contractors. Fifty-five acceptable questionnaires were returned and analysed. The relative importance index (RII), and Risk Importance (RI) were used to identify the most influential risk factors, and an agreement test was conducted. The results of the survey revealed that the most significant risks factors contributing to the delay of building construction projects’ completion are contractor’s financial difficulties, owner’s delay in making progress payments for completed works, contracts awarded to the lowest bidder, change orders during construction, ineffective project planning and scheduling by the contractor, shortage of manpower, and contractor’s poor site management and supervision. In addition, change orders during construction and contracts awarded to the lowest bidder are the most significant risks factors of exceeding budgets. Based on the results, it is concluded that for achieving sustainable development, client, contractor, and labour-related risks must be effectively managed.

Remote sensing is essential in construction management by providing valuable information and insights throughout the project lifecycle. Due to the rapid advancement of remote sensing technologies, their use has been increasingly adopted in the architecture, engineering, and construction industries. This review paper aims to advance the understanding, knowledge base, and practical implementation of remote sensing technologies in the construction industry. It may help support the development of robust methodologies, address challenges, and pave the way for the effective integration of remote sensing into construction management processes. This paper presents the results of a comprehensive literature review, focusing on the challenges faced in using remote sensing technologies in construction management. One hundred and seventeen papers were collected from eight relevant journals, indexed in Web of Science, and then categorized by challenge type. The results of 44 exemplary studies were reported in the three types of remote sensing platforms (satellite, airborne, and ground-based remote sensing). The paper provides construction professionals with a deeper understanding of remote sensing technologies and their applications in construction management. The challenges of using remote sensing in construction were collected and classified into eleven challenges. According to the number of collected documents, the critical challenges were shadow, spatial, and temporal resolution issues. The findings emphasize the use of unmanned airborne systems (UASs) and satellite remote sensing, which have become increasingly common and valuable for tasks such as preconstruction planning, progress tracking, safety monitoring, and environmental management. This knowledge allows for informed decision-making regarding integrating remote sensing into construction projects, leading to more efficient and practical project planning, design, and execution.

Forecasting the final construction contract duration at an early stage plays a vital role in the progress of a project. An inaccurate project duration prediction may lead to the project’s benefits being lost. It is essential to precisely predict the duration due to the presence of several different factors. This paper contributed to developing a model to predict final construction contract duration (FCCD) in the early stages based on parameters characterized as few and shared for any contract. (contract cost, contract duration, and sector). This paper developed an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model based on 135 Saudi construction project data. The development model has three stages. The first stage was standardization and augmentation using Zavadskas and Turskis’ logarithmic and Pasini methods. The second and third stages were the first and second analyses of the ANN models, respectively. The first analysis aimed to promote the used data and integrate them into the second analysis to develop the ANN model. The ANN models were compared with three linear regression (LR) models (LR1, LR2, and LR3) and other models in the literature. The results revealed that the accuracy of the ANN model provides reasonable accuracy with an average mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 12.22%, which is lower than the LR3′s MAPE by 27.03%. The accuracy of the ANN model is similar to that of earned value management (EVM) in the previous study. This paper supports research to deal with relatively little data and integrate them into a neural network. The ANN model assists the stakeholder in making appropriate decisions for the project during the pre-tendering phase by predicting the actual contract duration based on the CC, CD, and project sector.

Joint ventures (JVs) in the oil and gas industry will not be disappearing anytime soon; the number of JVs is expected to increase in the near future as the global demand for energy resource increases. Joint ventures need to be measured correctly to properly asses their potential for success. This paper presented a study of 11 measures with respect to their contribution in measuring the degree of success of JVs. This research was supported by a variety of academic and private studies spanning several years; the aim was to develop a model that can be used in measuring the degree of success in JVs projects. Correlations and components analysis were used to examine the relations among measures and to discover underlying patterns. As a result, sustainability and financial measures were the two extracted success measures. Then, reliability test and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to validate and findings and the relationships between measures and degree of success of JVs. The sustainability...

Several developing countries around the globe have launched their future visions, which include concrete strategic plans that involve many kinds of mega-construction projects. One common goal across these visions is to increase the efficiency of construction projects’ huge expenditures using recent sustainable, practical engineering tools, such as the value engineering (VE) approach. Although the VE approach has been around for a few years now, some barriers prevent the popularity of its application in different construction projects. This research investigates the barriers to adopting VE through a systematic literature review. This study has categorized the application barriers using thematic analysis under three main categories: barriers related to practitioners’ knowledge and background, barriers associated with the behavior of practitioners towards VE, and barriers related to the implementation of VE. Moreover, this research has investigated solutions to overcome these barriers and improve the application of VE in construction projects. Saudi Arabia’s construction industry is used as a case study. A survey was distributed to Saudi construction industry practitioners using the snowballing technique to evaluate the criticality of the found barriers to adopting VE and the best strategic solutions to overcome these barriers using the importance–performance analysis (IPA) approach. Based on the results of this study we have specifically recommended including a VE course in college engineering programs and an incentive clause in construction contracts to encourage VE application on construction projects at the top of the list of proposed solutions. Finally, defining the criticality of barriers and the effectiveness of solutions will help enhance the application of VE and sustainability practices in the Saudi Arabian construction industry and around the globe.

Maintenance is crucial for healthcare facilities in terms of both the continuity of operations and annual costs. Many maintenance issues are associated with design decisions that pave the way for added costs in later lifecycle stages. Some systems, e.g., elevators, are sources of maintenance costs; additionally, elevator outages are significant issues for multi-floor healthcare facilities. Considering the maintainability of elevators from the early design stages helps to highlight potential maintenance issues in later stages. This also assists in mitigating costs by avoiding design decisions that result in future maintenance costs. This research uses the expertise of facility managers who have experience with maintenance issues resulting from design decisions. A list of 35 elevator maintenance issues caused by design flaws is presented in this paper, based on the literature and semi-structured interviews with a representative sample of six healthcare facility management experts. Then, a questionnaire using convenience sampling was conducted with facility management professionals to evaluate and rank the maintenance issues. While 60 professionals responded, only 30 attempted the four-parameter evaluation of all listed maintenance issues. The results of the questionnaire determined elevator car jams, sudden stops, and working space conditions to be the most critical issues faced by facility managers in healthcare facilities. The output of this study can help designers of new healthcare facilities to avoid decisions that result in unwarranted maintenance issues with costly impacts.