Motivational Factors Affecting Construction Labor Productivity: A Review

Research on motivational factors affecting construction labor productivity (CLP) has attracted numerous researchers worldwide many years so far. This study aims to review studies on motivational factors affecting CLP from the outcomes of previous studies. Based on a comprehensive review, publications on this domain were analyzed in terms of geographical distribution, adopted research methods, common motivational factors, and knowledge gaps. The findings indicated that the majority of studies were carried out in the Asia continent, followed by Europe, Africa, and America. Also, almost studies adopted methods of empirical research for identifying and evaluating of motivational factors with a prevalent procedure that includes five stages, namely, identifying motivational factors based on a review of existing literature; pilot study; data collection; data analysis; and concluding critical motivational factors. Additionally, the results also revealed that the mostly identified motivational factors contain rewards; good relationship; promotion opportunities; job security; good supervision; the amount of salary; and a good work environment. It is recommended that engineering managers, project managers, employers should use the findings of this study to make policies or decisions to ensure effective management and improve construction workforce productivity.

EXPLORATORY AND EXPLOITATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT: HOW PRODUCT AND ENGINEERING MANAGERS’ PERCEPTIONS DIFFER: A CASE OF TWO LARGE HIGH-TECH CORPORATIONS

Ambidexterity has been a focus for many researchers in the past few decades, and multiple angles of ambidexterity have been studied to understand how to achieve it, its antecedents, and its impact on organisations. While personal ambidexterity has been studied with respect to the tensions the individuals might experience as they juggle exploratory and exploitative innovation projects, little is known about their individual sensemaking prior to their exercise of ambidexterity. This paper aims at narrowing this gap in the literature by offering an insight, based on personal construct theory, as to why managers from product management and engineering management functions in software organisations may not be applying exploratory techniques on exploratory innovation projects. A key finding from this research indicates that managers do not differentiate between types of project in a sufficiently explicit and propositional manner, and as a result, do not choose techniques appropriate to the situation. Instead, they tend to apply exploitative techniques on exploratory innovation projects with slight variations. Recommendations to practitioners to address the issues uncovered are proposed.

SIGNIFICANT ROLE OF AI & ML TECHNIQUES USED IN IMPROVEMENT OF CYBER SECURITY

Cyber Security has become an arising challenge for business information system in current era. AI (Artificial Intelligence) is broadly utilized in various field, however it is still generally new in cyber security. Nonetheless, the applications in network protection are significant for everybody`s day by day life. In this paper, we present the current status of AI in cyber security field, and afterward portray a few contextual investigations and uses of AI to help the community including engineering managers, teachers, educators, business people, and understudies to more readily comprehend this field, for example, the difficulties and uncertain issues of AI in online protection. According to the new challenges, the expert community has two main approaches: to adopt the philosophy and methods of Military Intelligence, and to use Artificial Intelligence methods for counteraction of Cyber Attacks. Cyber security is a vital danger for any business as the quantity of attacks is expanding. Developing of attacks on cyber security is undermining our reality. AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Leaning) can help identify dangers and give proposals to cyber Analyst. Advancement of appropriation of AI/ML applied to cyber security requires banding together of industry, the scholarly community, and government on a worldwide scale. We also discuss future research opportunities associated with the development of AI techniques in the cyber security ?eld across a scope of utilization areas.

Is an Engineering Project Management Degree Worth it? Developing Agile Digital Skills for Future Practice

Engineering managers are progressively tasked with leveraging digital technologies and innovations which have yet to be fully developed, to seek out opportunities and challenges in complex project contexts. However, there is a disparity between knowledge gained from engineering development programmes, and the rapidly changing landscape of modern project practice, which requires professionals to effectively engage and deploy relevant agile digital skills in practice. For example, complex engineering projects increasingly employ dynamic digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR / VR), 3D Printing, and Digital Twins, which require managers to quickly adapt to changing constraints through agile digital skills. Therefore, this paper seeks to focus on exploring the role of engineering project management programmes in developing knowledge and agile digital skills relevant for future project practice. Through an outline review of project management development programmes, this research paper suggests that their inherent value for engineering project managers, is largely dependent on a combination of applied research, engagement, and agile digital skills development for future practice.

A New Sustainable Warehouse Management Approach for Workforce and Activities Scheduling

Sustainable engineering is very important for logistics systems. Nowadays, sustainable warehouse management is a key factor in market success. Workforce fluctuation and inverting the number of customers’ demands make a lot of problems in distribution warehouses. This study addresses a sustainable approach for the workforce scheduling problem recognized in a real distribution warehouse. The problem arises from the high variability of demand for workers over one workday, which causes workforce surplus in some periods of the workday and shortages in others. Engineering managers of the distribution warehouse already use different full-time and part-time shifts, and schedule workers on different activities, but they still have significant workforce surpluses or shortages in some periods. This study proposes the scheduling of activities’ execution together with workers to face that variability and decrease the cost of the workforce. This idea comes from the fact that some activities in a distribution warehouse can be done in a specific time period after the need for them occurs. In this way, the variability of demand for workers can be decreased, and a lower workforce cost may be ensured. Based on this idea, the entire problem is modeled as integer linear programming. The real example of the problem is solved, and the proposed model is tested on randomly generated instances of the problem in Python by means of the PuLP linear programming package. The results indicate different positive effects in the manner of sustainable warehouse management: lower workforce costs, time savings, better utilization of all types of resources and equipment, increased employee satisfaction, and so on. For even 61% of instances of the introduced problem, the obtained cost of the workforce is lower by more than 20% if activities’ executions are scheduled together with employees.

Macroeconomic effect on stock price: Evidence from Indonesia

Investment decision making by Engineering Managers needs to take into account microeconomic and macroeconomic factors in a country. The role of Engineering Managers in making decisions is crucial and very important. Technical Managers need to consider macro-economic effects such as the US dollar exchange rate against the rupiah, the interest rate set by Bank Indonesia, inflation, especially during the preparation of the Budget Plan (RAB). This research is to analyze the macroeconomic effect on stock prices, to prove the hypothesis, a quantitative approach is used. Macroeconomics are assessed through the US dollar exchange rate, and financial statements data of banking companies.