Evaluation of Unit Rates Bids of Common Building Items

It is important to assess firms’ financial health in the harsh construction market of developing countries. This study seeks to achieve this by assessing locally owned construction firms’ (LOCOFs) financial performance through evaluating firms’ bill of quantities (BOQ) contract sums and bid unit rates of common building items. Accessible 60 BOQ of the 79 BOQ of building projects awarded to various LOCOFs from 2007 to 2015 by federal universities and federal universities teaching hospitals in Southwest Nigeria were obtained from the institutional archives. Regression analysis of the contract sums and bid unit rates of common building construction items of works such as concrete, sandcrete block, iron, mortar and floor tiles were carried out. LOCOFs’ bid unit rates were compared with published unit rates and Nigeria consumer price index (CPI) within the study period and inferences bothering on firms’ pricing pattern and financial viability of firms based on items of work unit rates were highlighted and discussed. The results showed that 119 out of a total 461 unit rates values representing 25.81% of the LOCOFs bided unit rates were higher than the published unit rates. LOCOFs unit rates trend decreased within 3 to 4 consecutive years while the Nigeria CPI trend increased all through the years considered in the study. This implies that LOCOFs common items of work bids unit rates were not always influenced by the prevailing prices of goods and services in Nigeria. A possible reason for this is the lowest tender selection criteria which influences LOCOFs’ bided unit rates thereby leading to the acclaimed compromise in the quality of construction output and stunted financial performance.

Container Slot Allocation for Time-Sensitive Cargo in Maritime Transportation: A One-Phase Model with consideration of Port Congestion

This paper studies a container slot allocation problem with dynamic pricing for time-sensitive cargo considering port congestion. Time-sensitive cargo calls for express delivery as soon as possible, and hence a new pricing pattern is proposed considering port congestion. To solve the slot allocation with dynamic pricing issue, a one-phase allocation model which is from different points of view on slot allocation strategy is proposed to formulate this problem. Finally, numerical examples are carried out to test the applicability of the proposed model and solution algorithm.

Social media and bitcoin metrics: which words matter

We develop a new Data-Driven Phasic Word Identification (DDPWI) methodology to determine which words matter as the bitcoin pricing dynamic changes from one phase to another. With Google search volumes as a baseline, we find that Reddit submissions are both correlated with Google and have a comparable relationship with a variety of bitcoin metrics, using Spearman’s rho. Reddit provides complete access to the text of submissions. Rather than associating sentiment with market activity, we describe the DDPWI method for finding specific ‘price dynamic’ words associated with changes in the bitcoin pricing pattern through 2017 and 2018. We assess the significance of these changes using Wilcoxon Rank-Sum Tests with Bonferroni corrections. These price dynamic words are used to pull out associated words in the submissions thereby providing the context to their use. For example, the price dynamic word ‘ban’, which became significantly higher in frequency as prices fell, occurred in the context of both government regulation and internet companies banning cryptocurrency adverts. This approach could be used more generally to look at social media and discussion forums at a granular level identifying specific words that impact the metric under investigation rather than overall sentiment.