Structural modelling of cost overrun factors in construction industry

Construction industry contributes significantly in improving socio-economic growth of a country. However, this industry usually faces chronic problems such as time overrun, cost overrun, poor quality and others. Of all these, cost overrun is a major problem that occurs globally including Malaysia. Cost overrun is resulted from various factors which are essential to identify for improving cost performance in construction project. Hence, this study focused on identifying and modelling the factors of cost overrun for construction projects in Malaysia. Data collection was done through structured questionnaire, which was designed based on 78 factors found from the literature. Qualitative pilot study was done based on the opinions of 15 experts in the construction industry to improve the questionnaire by reducing the factors to 58. The questionnaire survey was carried out among clients, consultants and contractors. A total of 231 questionnaires were collected of which 213 responses were found valid. Partial Least Square Structural Equation (PLS-SEM) model was developed based on 8 categories/constructs generated through factor analysis test and found that Global Fit Index (GOF) of the model to be 0.37. The findings from the model indicate that all the 8 categories have significant effect on the cost overrun. The most significant category is contractor's site management related issues with path co-efficient value of 0.448. The developed model was validated statistically (using power analysis and predictive relevancy) and through interviewing 21 experienced practitioners. Statistical validation tests showed that the developed model had achieved substantial power in explaining cost overrun problem. All the experts agreed with the factors and also categories of the model have significant impact to cost overrun

A short note on p-adic families of Hilbert Modular Forms

We extend previous work of the author using an idea of Buzzard and give an elementary construction of non-ordinary $p$-adic families of Hilbert Modular Eigenforms.Comment: To appear in New York Journal of Mathematic

Digital Divide: An Econometric Study of the Determinants in Information-poor Countries

There can not be two opinions on the importance of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for economic development. However, real disparities exist in access to and use of ICT across countries. The digital divide is a complicated matter of varying levels of access, basic usage, and applications of ICT among countries and peoples. Using the Gompertz Technology Diffusion model, this paper attempts to measure the contribution of factors such as affordability, knowledge, infrastructure, human capital, trade openness, and economic and social environment in the technology diffusion process, specially in the case of information-poor countries.Digital Divide, Information and Communication Technologies, ICT, Gompertz Model, ICT Diffusion, Economic Development, ICT Infrastructure

From Query to Usable Code: An Analysis of Stack Overflow Code Snippets

Enriched by natural language texts, Stack Overflow code snippets are an invaluable code-centric knowledge base of small units of source code. Besides being useful for software developers, these annotated snippets can potentially serve as the basis for automated tools that provide working code solutions to specific natural language queries. With the goal of developing automated tools with the Stack Overflow snippets and surrounding text, this paper investigates the following questions: (1) How usable are the Stack Overflow code snippets? and (2) When using text search engines for matching on the natural language questions and answers around the snippets, what percentage of the top results contain usable code snippets? A total of 3M code snippets are analyzed across four languages: C\#, Java, JavaScript, and Python. Python and JavaScript proved to be the languages for which the most code snippets are usable. Conversely, Java and C\# proved to be the languages with the lowest usability rate. Further qualitative analysis on usable Python snippets shows the characteristics of the answers that solve the original question. Finally, we use Google search to investigate the alignment of usability and the natural language annotations around code snippets, and explore how to make snippets in Stack Overflow an adequate base for future automatic program generation.Comment: 13th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Mining Software Repositories, 11 page

Hidden value - towards an understanding of the full impact of engaging students in user-led research and innovation projects between universities and companies

‘Live’ projects have been the staple of degree programmes in design for as long as design education has existed. They represent the perfect vehicle through which students can test their evolving knowledge and skills. They provide an ideal constructivist platform through which problem-centred, authentic learning can be achieved and deliver immediate value to student learning. This study explores the value to the other stakeholders in such projects: the Company and the University. A suite of projects undertaken over a ten-year period between a leading Design School and one of the largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies in the world has been reviewed. Semi-structured interviews with Company employees and academics have been used to establish the impact of each project, and this data has been mapped against the original objective of each project in order to identify the hidden value of these collaborations. Through this exploration of a decade of University-Company collaborations, the authors identify levels of engagement that go beyond the ‘live project’. The paper illustrates the value of such projects for the ‘client’ organisation, and the academic community, as well as reflecting, briefly, on the student experience