Preventing slips, overruns, and cancellations: Application of system accident investigations and theory to the understanding and prevention of engineering project failures

Water leakage has been reported from several dams constructed on karst terrains in Iran. In this study the main reasons for dam leakage were identified by studying ten examples, the Lar, Kowsar, Seymareh, Tangab, and Shah-Ghasem dams with considerable leakage, and the Karun I, Karun III, Karun IV, Salman-Farsi, and Marun dams with negligible leakage. The “Potential Leakage Passage (PLP)” is defined as those parts of a karst aquifer which transfer reservoir water to downstream. The most important control on leakage is in the narrowest part of the PLP, the “bottleneck” that depends mainly on the geological settings. At the dams with negligible leakage, sealing of the PLPs was found to be technologically and economically feasible by connecting all the edges of grout curtain to the natural impermeable barriers. In the cases of dams with considerable leakage, wider PLPs were not completely sealed and the installed grout curtain did not fully connect to the impermeable rock. To reduce the risk of leakage and inform effective design of grout curtains, the characteristics of the PLP should be determined during the initial stage of dam studies, and incorporate geological and hydrogeological information in the ground model. This study highlights the significant risk of engineering project failures that can occur if hydrogeological conditions are not properly assessed, understood and managed early in development of dam location, design and construction.

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The imperatives of effective project implementation on national infrastructural development: The engineering perspective

10.30574/wjaets.2020.1.2.0033 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 037-043

Author(s):

Obi Lawrence E

Keyword(s):

Due Process ◽

Infrastructure Development ◽

Project Implementation ◽

Engineering Project ◽

High Quality ◽

Infrastructural Development ◽

Project Costs ◽

Project Failures ◽

Process Compliance ◽

Quality Infrastructure

Project implementation has witnessed multifarious challenges ranging from quackery, corruption, project failures, and inflation of project costs to project abandonment. This has led many developing countries to remain in the doldrums of economic development. An effective project implementation is one that involves all relevant professionals and follows the necessary channels of project execution. The research focused on how effective project implementation can affect the infrastructural development in Nigeria. The research revealed that an effective project implementation will add value to infrastructure development through the elimination of abandonment of projects, projects failure, corruption, project delay and quackery. This paper through its research opined that an effective project implementation will improve the national infrastructural development through durability and high quality infrastructure, increased infrastructural serviceability and sustainability, improved value through transparent project execution, due process compliance and productivity enhancement in construction activities. With the results of the research, it is being recommended that projects should be handled by relevant professionals and the various cycles of civil engineering project be allowed to have its uninterrupted course in project execution.

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Teamwork Distribution: Local vs. Global Software Engineering Project Development Teamwork

International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET) ◽

10.3991/ijet.v15i18.15489 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (18) ◽

pp. 183

Author(s):

Ismail Al-Taharwa

Keyword(s):

Software Engineering ◽

System Development ◽

Learning Systems ◽

Engineering Project ◽

Global Teamwork ◽

Development Life Cycle ◽

Project Failures ◽

E Learning ◽

Process Perspective ◽

Intended Learning Outcomes

Deliverable and course project become the preferred mean to measure learner competency and attainment of intended learning outcomes in IT-fields. Proper setup and evaluation for teamwork projects remains a key challenge for e-learning systems. This study investigates the possibility to improve the early prediction of academic software engineering project failure by treating teamwork differently according to the distribution of teamwork participants. Two configurations of teamwork distribution are considered. In the first configuration, a teamwork may include international participants, but all team participants are affiliated to the same institution, namely local teamwork. In the second configuration, a teamwork may include participants from different institutions, namely global teamwork. Software engineering projects are approached from two distinct perspectives. First, obeying the best practices during the system development life cycle (SDLC), namely, process perspective. Second, characteristics of the final deliverable deployed at each milestone of the SDLC, namely product perspective. A publicly released dataset collected by a designated e-learning environment is leveraged to validate the proposed approach. Results indicate a noticeable variance among local and global distributions. These results puts evidence that the reasons behind software engineering teamwork project failures may vary depending on the distribution of the teamwork, local vs. global. Consequently, it advise to customize e-learning systems differently according to the teamwork distribution.

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