Research on Progress Control of Overseas Cement EPC General Contracting Project

The purpose of Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) general contracting project schedule management is to ensure that the project meets its deadlines, and it plays a critical role in contract performance. In comparison to the domestic general contracting model, project management and coordination are more complex for the general contractor of international EPC projects. As a result, scientific project schedule process control is critical to effectively ensuring project duration, saving project costs, improving project management level, and project quality, and ensuring that the project achieves the promised advantages for both the contractor and the owner. Through the research and analysis of the status of the schedule management of the Indonesia B Project Phase II cement project, corresponding optimization measures are proposed for the project schedule process control.

Evaluation of Tourism E-Commerce User Satisfaction

According to the UNWTO, within 4 to 5 years, the proportion of tourism e-commerce in e-commerce will reach 20%-25%. The purpose of this paper is to improve the inadequacy of tourism e-commerce in customer experience, to conduct customer e-commerce satisfaction surveys, and to draw customers' dissatisfaction with tourism e-commerce. The experimental results show that the overall customer satisfaction is 2.6128. According to the division of the scale vector, the overall satisfaction of the travel e-commerce customers is generally level. The first-level fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is 0.0967, 0.1696, 0.3366, 0.2469, 0.502. According to the principle of maximum membership degree, the evaluation grades of R3 and R5 in the first-level fuzzy comprehensive evaluation are “unsatisfactory,” that is, the tourism-supporting services and contract-performance services become the main factors affecting customer satisfaction. In order to improve customer satisfaction, the tourism e-commerce platform should strengthen the management of tourism-supporting services and contract-fulfillment services.

Impact of Contract Farming on Farmers’ Income in the Food Value Chain: A Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Study in Vietnam

This study empirically analyzes the influence of contract farming on income and farming difficulties in Vietnam by using the econometric models and theoretically identifying the affecting mechanism of contract farming on income, sustainability, and welfare by using the qualitative method. The empirical results show that contract farming insignificantly impacts farms’ income while it can facilitate farming activities and decrease difficulties. The factors of education—head, gender of head, type of crop, and technology may affect farmers’ income. The impacting mechanism of contract farming on income, sustainability, and welfare is theoretically proposed as follows: Contract farming initially impacts the intermediate factors such as cooperative, market access, knowledge and skill, product quality, technology, and support. These factors then affect capacity, linkage, quality, and certification which can enhance farmers’ competitiveness. In the long term, stronger competitiveness, higher price, increasing productivity, and lower cost may significantly improve income, sustainability, and welfare. In general, contract farming may have positive impacts on income, sustainability, and welfare in the medium term and long term. In the short term, the result is not significant due to the similar or lower price comparing with the spot market price, growing production cost, decreasing productivity, and weak contract performance. The findings may help policymakers decide how to expand contract farming and its benefits. Economic scholars can test and compare both quantitative and qualitative findings in other contexts.

Credible Peer-to-Peer Trading with Double-Layer Energy Blockchain Network in Distributed Electricity Markets

Blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is one of the most viable solutions to incentivize prosumers in distributed electricity markets. However, P2P energy trading through an open-end blockchain network is not conducive to mutual credit and the privacy protection of stakeholders. Therefore, improving the credibility of P2P energy trading is an urgent problem for distributed electricity markets. In this paper, a novel double-layer energy blockchain network is proposed that stores private trading data separately from publicly available information. This blockchain network is based on optimized cross-chain interoperability technology and fully considers the special attributes of energy trading. Firstly, an optimized ring mapping encryption algorithm is designed to resist malicious nodes. Secondly, a consensus verification subgroup is built according to contract performance, consensus participation and trading enthusiasm. This subgroup verifies the consensus information through the credit-threshold digital signature. Thirdly, an energy trading model is embedded in the blockchain network, featuring dynamic bidding and credit incentives. Finally, the Erenhot distributed electricity market in China is utilized for example analysis, which demonstrates the proposed method could improve the credibility of P2P trading and realize effective supervision.

Time and Cost Performance Status of Sikta Irrigation Contract

Purpose: The government of Nepal (GoN) is implementing many small, medium, and large types of Irrigation Projects. Sikta Irrigation Project (SIP) is the National Pride Project implemented by the GoN. The command area of the project has 42766.00 ha and beneficiaries of the project have 46715 households consisting of 449588 population of Banke district. The paper aims to assess the contract performance in terms of the Time and Cost of the Sikta Irrigation Project, Banke, Nepal. Design/Methodology/Approach: Using secondary data of contract, content Analysis of Project documents review and Key Informant Interviews were used for assessing the contract performance. Findings/Result: Sikta Irrigation Project has a total of 52 contracts out of which consider for study based on documentation, only 18 contracts completed based on schedule time whereas 16 contracts behind schedule. However, 16 contracts are still on going far behind the schedule and one contract terminated. The actual expenditure of the project has 16.26 billion (64.90% of estimated cost) and the allocated budget was 18.26 billion (72.99% of estimated cost) whereas the estimated cost has 25.032 billion. It indicates that the progress of the project was 64.90% and fails to complete the scheduled time 2076/077. The client should prepare the project well before implementation with proper planning, designing, and detailed study from the beginning. Originality/Value: It is empirical research to assure the project performance based on lessons from Sikta Irrigation Project. Paper Type: Analytical Policy Research

Advanced Optical Technologies in Food Quality and Waste Management

Food waste is a global problem caused in large part by premature food spoilage. Seafood is especially prone to food waste because it spoils easily. Of the annual 4.7 billion pounds of seafood destined for U.S. markets between 2009 and 2013, 40 to 47 percent ended up as waste. This problem is due in large part to a lack of available technologies to enable rapid, accurate, and reliable valorization of food products from boat or farm to table. Fortunately, recent advancements in spectral sensing technologies and spectroscopic analyses show promise for addressing this problem. Not only could these advancements help to solve hunger issues in impoverished regions of the globe, but they could also benefit the average consumer by enabling intelligent pricing of food products based on projected shelf life. Additional technologies that enforce trust and compliance (e.g., blockchain) could further serve to prevent food fraud by maintaining records of spoilage conditions and other quality validation at all points along the food supply chain and provide improved transparency as regards contract performance and attribution of liability. In this chapter we discuss technologies that have enabled the development of hand-held spectroscopic devices for detecting food spoilage. We also discuss some of the analytical methods used to classify and quantify spoilage based on spectral measurements.

Maintenance Optimization Based on Three-Stage Failure Process under Performance-Based Contracting

As a new form of support contract, performance-based contracting has been extensively applied in both public and private sectors. However, maintenance policies under performance-based contracting have not gotten enough attention. In this paper, a preventive maintenance optimization model based on three-stage failure process for a single-component system is investigated with an objective of maximizing the profit and improving system performance at a lower cost under performance-based contracting. Different from conventional optimization models, the step revenue function is used to correlate profit with availability and cost. Then, a maintenance optimization model is proposed to maximize profit by optimizing the inspection interval. Moreover, the customers’ upper limit of funds is considered when we use the revenue function, which has rarely been considered in past studies. Finally, a case study on the cold water pumps along with comparison of linear and step revenue function and sensitivity analysis is provided to illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of our proposed approach.