Saudi Arabia is forecast to develop a significant number of infrastructure projects, as recorded in its strategy Saudi Vision 2030. To implement this strategy, the country intends to leverage public–private partnerships. This research has various goals. Firstly, it intends to identify the determinant features (DFs) that may facilitate the population of private–public partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) through the opinions of PPP experts. Second, it aims to analyse these opinions through a statistical approach. The research used the following methodologies: the development of a survey amongst sectorial experts, with a total of 45 valid responses; a statistical characterisation of the responses; and an exploratory factor analysis to determine the minimum number of factors explaining the proposed objectives. The findings of the research revealed that the five most relevant factors were the availability and effectiveness of a proper regulatory and legal framework; adequate risk allocation and sharing among project stakeholders; a straightforward project brief and client outcomes; the comprehensive and business viability of project feasibility studies; and finally, the assurance that proper project value management systems are in place during different project stages. As its principal contribution, this study finds, based on the experts’ opinions, that KSA should consider the mentioned determinant factors to ensure that PPP plays the expected role in the provision of infrastructure.

Management systems that are recognized as key tools to improve business management and the results associated with it have spread at the business level during the last 50 years. Regarding Safety Management Systems (SMSs), despite having specific international standards, there are no complete studies that analyze the degree of effectiveness of SMS, and even less in construction, a sector that concentrates a large part of registered labor accidents worldwide. The present investigation is an analysis of SMS effectiveness from an empirical study carried out over 48 months in five countries with a total of more than 23 million work hours between 2009 and 2012. Additionally, it is implied that the impact of SMS implementation in a certain organization must be complemented by a statistical qualitative analysis of its effect on the distribution of accidents. Both analyses are developed in the present study, thus contributing relevant implications when assessing both quantitatively and qualitatively the effects of developing and implementing a health and safety management system in this sector. The findings from this research can contribute to understanding how SMS implementation can help reduce accidents in this industry as well as to enhance SMS implementation in a high-risk sector.

To control the seepage in the design of an earth dam, guidelines prescribe a high proportion of fines and high homogeneity of geotechnical characteristics in the material used for the dam core. However, on many occasions there is no material of this nature near the dam placement and, from an economic or environmental point of view, it is not possible to locate and transport material with good geotechnical characteristics close to the dam. This research demonstrated the possibility of using impermeable materials in earth dam cores, as well as soils considered unsuitable according to the classic recommendations and guidelines. For an optimized design, two situations are analyzed here. First, we examined the possibility of using soil with a marked difference in grain size as the core of the dam, each with homogeneous geotechnical properties. In this case, the optimal zoning of up to three types of materials was studied to ensure adequate seepage control. Second, we examined the use of soil with great geotechnical heterogeneity, which presents high permeability dispersion. In such a case, the conditions that would allow its use were studied via the of Montecarlo analysis. By maintaining the soil’s global heterogeneity, it was possible to study an unlimited disposition of layers of different permeability. In the first situation, the results showed that the most effective zoning for decreasing seepage flow corresponded with three vertically set materials. In this design, the most optimized zoning (minimal seepage flow rates) corresponded to the most impermeable soil situated downstream when water heights were under 90% of the height of the dam core. However, for maximum water height, more optimized cases corresponded to the intermediate permeability material located downstream. In the second situation, when heterogeneous materials were used to construct the impervious element of the dams, the Montecarlo analysis indicated that the seepage flow rates were limited to sufficiently low values despite the large dispersion of material permeability. In addition, the highest maximum hydraulic gradients were observed in the lowest lifts of the dam core and for situations in which the seepage flow rates were moderate and low.