Addressing the Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Public - Private Partnership (PPP) Contracts

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the health and economy of the world. The pandemic has also frustrated the execution of public-private partnership (PPP) projects across the world, with economic and legal consequences for contracting parties. The impacts of the pandemic have, and may continue to, result in uncertainties and even project failures. PPPs are underpinned by long term contracts which should ordinarily determine the rights, obligations and remedies arising out of the impact of the pandemic. However, the legal outcomes are never always certain or determinable and might not augur well for any of the parties. This article examines legal and contractual tools for managing uncertainties and risks arising from the pandemic. It suggests that, as much as possible, parties should rely on extra-contractual arrangements to resolve the issues that are likely to arise out of the pandemic. This article discusses the possible legal outcomes of the pandemic on PPP arrangements and suggests creative ways of mitigating its impacts.

E-Government Information Systems (IS) Project Failure in Developing Countries: Lessons from the Literature

E-government information systems (IS) projects experience numerous challenges that can lead to total or partial failure. The project failure factors have been identified and studied by numerous researchers, but the root causes of such failures are not well-articulated. In this study, literature on e-government IS project failures in developing-world contexts is reviewed through the application of qualitative meta-synthesis, design–reality gap analysis, and root cause analysis. In the process, 18 causal factors and 181 root causes are identified as responsible for e-government IS project failures. The most prevalent of the 18 causal factors are found to be inadequate system requirements engineering (with 22 root causes), inadequate project management (19 root causes), and missing or incomplete features (16 root causes). These findings can be of use to future researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to identify methods of avoiding e-government IS failures, particularly in developing-world contexts.

Towards the effectiveness of communication in adopting virtual team for software development

: Advancement in technology particularly the development of smart application has caused a paradigm shift in software development. Teams for developing software do not need to be physically present at all times. Members of development teams may be at remote sites but still communicate with each other. Technology has enabled the creation of virtual teams. While technology put at the disposal of software development teams a range of devices for supporting their communication interaction, members still face many challenges in terms of time difference, language barriers and cultural diversification. Ineffective communication among team members lead to delays in software development and contribute much to make project failures. The primary focus of this research is to identify how communication in virtual teams may become efficient. A survey is carried to assess the factors which affect communication in virtual teams. Different team sizes are considered and their relevance and differences in communication interaction are studied. More in-depth data are extracted for this research by interviewing potential members of virtual teams who work and interact from remote sites. The factors which influence communication interaction is finally established which help in successfully managing virtual team projects

Shadow of Your Former Self: Exploring Project Leaders’ Post-Failure Behaviors (Resilience, Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy) in High-Tech Startup Projects

Globally, demands for sustainable strategies in the ICT industry have attracted greater momentum as high-tech projects continue to fail in large numbers. Recent studies have underpinned project resilience as a major factor for overcoming these increasing project failures, delays, or termination. However, the complex behaviors of resilient project leaders, especially in post-failure conditions, have been largely overlooked. To address this critical research gap, the present study identifies the direct relationships between three potential behavioral traits of project leaders (i.e., resilience, self-esteem, and self-efficacy) and examines how they move forward beyond project failures. The present study also explored whether self-esteem mediates project leaders’ resilience and self-efficacy. Drawing on data from 232 project leaders in Pakistan’s high-tech start-ups, the new findings suggest that there are significant positive effects of project leaders’ resilience and self-esteem on their self-efficacy, and that project leaders’ resilience and self-efficacy is significantly mediated by their self-esteem. As the project resilience theory gains traction, the present study findings have pinpointed major steps for meeting project challenges ahead of time, allowing leaders and teams to learn from failures, and also for improving organisations’ ability to implement successful and sustainable high-tech projects especially in emerging economies.

A Conceptual Framework for Modeling Social Risk Tolerance for PPP Projects: An Empirical Case of China

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are a useful approach that allows the public sector to collaborate with private investors in financing, implementing, and operating public sector facilities. Over the past few decades, the occurrence of social risks and the vulnerability of PPP projects to these risks have caused numerous project failures. While practitioners claim to manage the social risks of PPP projects, little effort has been made to explore the proper ways of doing this. In this study, we present a social risk tolerance (SRT) concept and propose a model to quantify the tolerance of PPP projects to social risks. One hundred and twenty-three PPP projects were collected from China for model validation. The results indicate a positive relationship between SRT values and project size and that the SRT has diminishing marginal values. This paper presents a new concept in PPP research and provides an appropriate approach for managing the social risks of PPP projects. The research findings can help both the public and private sectors understand the social risks associated with PPP projects and determine effective countermeasures to control these risks.

Potential leakage paths at the dams constructed on karst terrains in Iran

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.

The Impact of Transformational Leadership Factors on Project Progress and which Factor has Significant Influence and Great Contribution towards Project Success

Projects are essential drivers for business growth and success. The project’s aim is analyzing the effect of transformational leadership factors on succeeding the projects. The study will investigate transformational leadership factors (Idealized Influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation & Individualized Consideration) and their direct influence on project success. Examining the impact of each factor will support project leaders and project resources to influence project progress for delivering and achieving project success and eliminating potential project losses and unnecessary project failures. Data from 216 project members working in Saudi Arabia for managing and executing projects were gathered and screened before being analyzed and empirically tested using the Structural Equation Model. The findings are supported for hypotheses suggested and showed that transformational leadership as well as 3 factors (idealized influence, intellectual stimulation and individual based consideration) have a significant relationship influencing progress and ultimately impacting project success. The study concludes that inspirational motivation has insignificant effect on project success. The results are inviting project leaders to adopt transformational leadership and raise the awareness, which stimulates the employees to express their ideas, effective feedback, and concerns to create a situation for the employee to deliver best performance levels. The most significant contribution is recognizing the positive effect of at the transformational leadership on study progress and ultimately help project managers to secure the success.

Adopting International Learnings to Improve the Performance of New Zealand’s Infrastructure Supply Chain

Growing interest in the productivity of the infrastructure sector has increased due to cost and time overruns in major projects. In this regard, many developed countries have failed to implement a framework to ensure that project success is met through newly available technologies and business initiatives to ensure the user is the most important beneficiary. This review paper provides a review of international research relating to the life cycle, firm-level operations, and collaborative business models of infrastructure projects. The review initially identified the importance that understanding key phases and procurement models has on the efficiency of a project’s life cycle. A key indicator of the likelihood of good performance across a supply chain lies with the ability to understand the efficiencies of the firm-level operations. The literature has noted that successful projects are able to perform well across an organizations end-to-end involvement and be able to share risks among mature organizations. This paper provides a review of how a collaborative business model can benefit a project lifecycle and firm-level operations. The global research currently has identified the need for a collaborative approach that reduces the risk within all organizations through common goals, effective end-to-end project systems and consideration of the entire project lifecycle. The paper provides a detailed review of international practices in an infrastructure supply chain that have the potential to address New Zealand’s infrastructure project failures.

CONCEPT FOR A PERSONA DRIVEN RECOMMENDATION TOOL FOR PROCESS MODELLING APPROACHES

In order to ensure successful product development processes, manifold modelling approaches have been developed, which cover a wide range of aspects such as responsibilities, duration of activities and dependencies. Still, an industry standard does not exist. Users of process modelling approaches are driven by different targets depending on the respective role. Currently, practitioners need to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of each approach by themselves and find little guidance for the selection.As a consequence, users might select unsuitable approaches and do not get the expected result. Thus, the intended applications of the model such as analyses or an optimization of the process are hampered. This could heavily affect companies´ success by product or project failures.The paper shows the concept of a recommendation tool that enables a suitable and effective selection of process modelling approaches. Key element is the description of relevant use cases and personas that represent the various needs of both different company types as well as different roles within such as process modellers and users. By identifying the most relevant case, each practitioner will be successfully guided to the most suitable modelling approach.

An Ensemble of Hybrid Search-Based Algorithms for Software Effort Prediction

Software organizations rely on the estimation of efforts required for the development of software to negotiate customers and plan the schedule of the project. Proper estimation of efforts reduces the chances of project failures. Historical data of projects have been used to predict the effort required for software development. In recent years, various ensemble of machine learning techniques have been used to predict software effort. In the present work, a novel ensemble technique of hybrid search-based algorithms (EHSBA) is used for software effort estimation. Four HSBAs—fuzzy and random sets-based modeling (FRSBM-R), symbolic fuzzy learning based on genetic programming (GFS-GP-R), symbolic fuzzy learning based on genetic programming grammar operators and simulated annealing (GFS_GSP_R), and least mean squares linear regression (LinearLMS_R)—are used to create an ensemble (EHSBA). The EHSBA is compared with machine learning-based ensemble bagging, vote, and stacking on datasets obtained from PROMISE repository. Obtained results reported that EHSBA outperformed all other techniques.