Mohammed Kishk

• BSc, MSc, PhD MAPM
• Senior Lecturer in Project Management and Programme Leader at University of the West of England, Bristol

Sustainable electricity generation and supply in Nigeria has been a perennial challenge even though the country is one of the world’s leading exporters of oil and a member of organisation of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC). The reasons for this problem include persistent vandalism of energy infrastructure, high cost of gridline network and wea...

Biomass thermo-chemical systems (BTCS) source remains one of the means of providing sustainable electricity to rural areas in developing nations. Due the dwindling power generation and supply in Nigeria representing between 10 and 34%, the rural communities are mostly affected in their socioeconomic activities. Given the massive biomass resources i...

Renewable Energy Technologies (RET) in general, and biomass source in particular, remains one of the means of providing sustainable electricity to rural areas in developing countries. This is because of its strategic value in identifying when and where electricity is really required thus, reducing/eliminating the high cost of grid network. The majo...

Airport projects are considered to be very complex, as they face a number of challenges which inevitably expose them to risks. In Saudi Arabia, the aviation sector is considered an important sector due to the fact that Saudi Arabia is the first destination for M uslims on an annual basis. As a result, the Saudi government has allocated a significan...

Airport projects are considered to be very complex, as they face a number of challenges which inevitably expose them to risks. In Saudi Arabia, the aviation sector is considered an important sector due to the fact that Saudi Arabia is the first destination for M uslims on an annual basis. As a result, the Saudi government has allocated a significan...

The construction business has been at serious risks to the recent global economic recession. In the Middle East, the investments in this business have reached US$1.8 trillion in 2008, which is forming about 25% of the construction volume worldwide. The financial crisis in the late 2008 has braked up the economic development in many infrastructure s...

The growing rate of delays in project delivery is considered a major criticism of the construction companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This paper aims to investigate the causes and effects behind the delays pertaining to delivery of construction projects in the UAE. The study is exploratory in nature, and incorporates a pilot questionnaire...

Edge, M (2007) A generic finishes database for healthcare facilities. This paper is the fifth in a series reporting on-going research within a Department of Health (DOH) funded research project to develop a novel decision support system for the optimal selection of finishes for healthcare facilities. The system has been developed by integrating a r...

Purpose – The aim of the research work that underpins this paper is, therefore, to examine the effectiveness of project management maturity in mitigation measures for risk response within construction companies to influence project success. Design/methodology/approach – Ninety-three questionnaires were collected from respondents in different const...

Following the failure of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and fossil fuel source applications for the provision of electricity in Nigeria, the country has been experiencing power energy shortages for over three decades now. More than 65% of the population lack commercial electricity, particularly in the rural areas. This has caused socio...

A supportability decision model, as application of integrated logistic support, based on queuing theory for managing spares inventory in a limited repair capacity was presented. The model was validated by real world testing of the model within the Algerian petroleum industry. This maintenance support model potentially reduced system downtimes and l...

The growing rate of delays in project delivery is considered a major criticism of the construction companies in the United Arab Emirates UAE. This paper aims to investigate the causes and effects behind the delays pertaining to delivery of construction projects in the UAE. The study is exploratory in nature, and incorporates a pilot questionnaire s...

Public spending across the United Kingdom is facing unprecedented challenges as a result of the economic downturn. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than the interface between the National Health Service (NHS) and the construction industry. Limited government investment is challenged by the ever-evolving demographics and technological changes which...

Hospital refurbishment has taken a secondary role in the last decade, in favour of new build facilities. This has allowed the Client and the Design Team to build and specify with greater flexibility and from essentially a 'blank canvas'. Correspondingly, sustainability as an issue has been easier to plan and implement from the earliest briefing and...

This study is based on in-depth empirical data taken, as an outside-observer, from a medium-size enterprise. It provides hard evidence of the new non-financial Keys Performance Indicators (KPIs)' efficiency to evaluate a production system's (PS) performance. It has been proven that the use of only the internal performance measurement system (PMS) i...

Public spending across the United Kingdom is facing unprecedented challenges as a result of the economic downturn. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than the interface between the National Health Service (NHS) and the construction industry. Limited government investment is challenged by the ever evolving demographics and technological changes which...

Genetic algorithms and their hybrid schemes have shown a great efficacy in solving large scale combinatorial problems in which solutions are highly time-consuming. The level of repair analysis (LORA), mathematically formulised by an integer programming model (IP), is very difficult to optimize by means of traditional optimization techniques due to...

A major criticism of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) construction companies is the growing rate of delays in project delivery. The objective of the research work that underpins this paper was to investigate the causes and effects of construction projects delays in the UAE. The study was based on literature review and a questionnaire survey that inve...

The choice of correct inspection intervals poses a serious challenge to industries that utilise physical assets. Too short an interval increases operational cost and waste production time while too long an interval increases the likelihood of unexpected asset failures. Failure Modes and Effect Criticality Analysis (FMECA) is a technique that permit...

Project success is the satisfaction of stakeholder needs and is measured by the so-called success criteria as identified at the start of the project. The conventional view of project success based on cost, time and quality is no longer sufficient. The main objective of the research work that underpins this paper was to investigate the impact of eff...

There is a fundamental need to recognise and address the whole-life implications of the design and management of all buildings. This is due for most buildings to the dominant impact which running costs have on overall expenditure. With hospital buildings, though, the range of criteria which must be considered are increasingly complex, and relate to...

Modelling System Failures (MSF) is a unique quantitative maintenance optimisation technique which permits the evaluation of life-data samples and enables the design and simulation of the system's model to determine optimum maintenance activities. In this paper, the approach of MSF is used to assess the failure characteristics of a horizontal axis w...

Maintenance optimisation is a crucial issue for industries that utilise physical assets due to its impact on costs, risks and performance. Current quantitative maintenance optimisation techniques include Modelling System Failures MSF (using monte-carlo simulation) and Delay-Time Maintenance Model (DTMM). The MSF investigates equipment failure patte...

Maintenance optimization is indispensable to the core business objectives of industries that utilizes physical assets. A quantitative maintenance optimization technique known as the Modelling System Failures (MSF) is critically reviewed to identify its relevance to industries that employs physical assets. Practical application of the approach to op...

Common maintenance strategies applied to wind turbines include ‘Time-Based’ which involves carrying out maintenance tasks at predetermined regular-intervals and ‘Failure- Based’ which entails using a wind turbine until it fails. However, the consequence of failure of critical components limits the adequacy of these strategies to support the current...

Motivated by the lack of effective tools that would facilitate the effective choice of hospital finishes; an innovative application for the optimal selection of hospital finishes is proposed. The logic of the application is designed around two generic whole-life costing (WLC) databases. The first is a resource database that houses data for several...

This paper is the second in a series reporting on on-going research within an NHS-Estates funded project. This project aims to develop an integrated System for the Optimal Selection of Hospital Finishes. Motivated by the lack of effective tools that would facilitate the effective choice of hospital finishes; a methodological framework for the optim...

Recently, there has been a fundamental desire to adopt a whole-life attitude regarding the design and management of buildings because of the dramatic shift in the balance between the initial capital cost and the running costs of buildings towards a substantial increase in the running costs. Perhaps one of the challenging obstacles facing this desir...

In a previous paper (Kishk, 2004), a practical procedure has been developed to handle statistically significant data and expert assessments within the same whole-life costing (WLC) model calculation. However, results obtained from this algorithm are typically conservative. The objective of the research work that underpins this paper is to further i...

There has been a dearth of material on property performance to aid property management practices. Besides, there is a seeming lack of structured processes for carrying out the performance measurement of properties. Basic characteristics of an effective performance assessment in property managements are identified and the framework for a generic mod...

Published mathematical whole-life costing (WLC) models are investigated to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Various models have been evaluated against five evaluation criteria including: scope of application, ease of implementation, computational effectiveness, transparency, and theoretical soundness. The first evaluation criterion look sat...

Estimates for various parameters in a whole-life costing (WLC) exercise are obtained from different sources each with its own level and type of uncertainty. A practical procedure is developed to handle statistically significant data and expert assessments within the same whole-life costing (WLC) model calculation. First, various methods used to com...

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) has become increasingly important in construction over the last few years. However, despite its importance, it has found limited application so far. Two of the main barriers in its application are the shortage of LCC data and the complexity of the technique itself. This paper presents a computer-integrated environment, whic...

There has been a dramatic shift in the balance between the initial capital cost and the running costs of buildings. In addition, mounting concerns over the long term environmental impact of a building have pushed both building professionals and users to adopt a whole-life attitude regarding the design and management of buildings. This strong desire...

Various metrics and procedures required to effective whole-life management of buildings are outlined. This is followed by introducing a novel generic whole-life cost significance relation to identify buildings' cost significant items on various levels. Then, the details of the implementation of this relation into a useful computer application are b...

• Key activities of the implementation of whole-life costing (WLC) as a management tool during the occupancy stage are outlined. • Then, the logic of a novel whole-life management approach is designed around two recently developed generic WLC databases. • The proposed approach allows the systematic data collection of the running costs of occupied b...

This report is a state of the art review of whole life costing in the construction industry. It is the first of a series reporting on-going research undertaken within the research project ‘Developing an integrated database for whole life costing applications in construction’. This project is funded by the EPSRC and undertaken by a unique collaborat...

An application for WLC decision-making within the design stage has been developed. The development of the application involved three steps. The first step was to design a project database to accommodate data for the selected options for later use. The second step was to outline a mathematical WLC model to be used in the application. The third step...

This paper is the third in a series reporting on-going research within an EPSRC-funded research project undertaken by a joint collaboration between the Robert Gordon University and the University of Salford. This project aims to develop IT applications of whole life costing (WLC) to support the decision-making process in the design and management o...

A number of recently developed algorithms to handle uncertain information in whole life costing (WLC) are explained and validated in the context of two example applications. In the first example application, the proposed methodology is compared to the sensitivity analysis technique. The break-even point has been correctly identified in almost all c...

To undertake a whole-life costing (WLC) exercise, it is necessary to breakdown a built asset into its constituent elements whose costs can be distinctly defined and estimated. Motivated by the lack of a standard WLC data collection and analysis procedure, the framework of a novel cost breakdown structure (CBS) suitable for collection, recording and...

A number of recently developed algorithms are combined to build an innovative integrated whole life costing approach. The integration process is based on the simple idea of breaking the decision-making process into a logical series of activities. Then, the appropriate algorithms are employed to model each activity and link it with other activities....

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) techniques are being used across a wide range of projects across different industries and have attracted considerable attention. However, LCC techniques are not widely used within the construction industry because of problems associated with LCC related processes such as data capture, reliability and certainty. Recent techn...

An effective algorithm has been developed to include non-monetary benefits of competing design alternatives in life cycle costing studies. The algorithm handles a number of competing alternatives with multiple aspects of needs desired by the client, analyses them systematically, and ranks them automatically. The unique feature of the algorithm, amo...

Life cycle costing (LCC) is a management technique that has been available to the industry for some time, but despite this it continues to languish in obscurity. Some clients, most apparently from the public sector, are fostering the technique by commissioning studies based on the LCC appraisal techniques. However, the majority of building designs...

Life cycle costing (LCC) is a management technique that has been available to the industry for some time, but despite this it continues to languish in obscurity. Some clients, most apparently from the public sector, are fostering the technique by commissioning studies based on the LCC appraisal techniques. However, the majority of building designs...

The necessity of applying fuzzy set theory to life cycle costing (LCC) is highlighted. A computer algorithm for LCC-based decision-making is outlined. This algorithm is based on the fuzzy set theory (FST) and interval analysis. The algorithm is designed around an explicit analytical LCC model. The model was introduced in a form that allows the hand...

This paper outlines a fuzzy set theory approach to handle judgmental linguistic assessments of input parameters in life cycle costing (LCC). This approach is motivated by the fact that in many situations there is a lack of reliable information and data. The proposed methodology is built around an explicit mathematical model. This model is carefully...

A life cycle costing (LCC) algorithm that can effectively deal with judgmental assessments of input parameters is proposed. This algorithm is based on the fuzzy set theory and interval mathematics. The development of the algorithm is motivated by the need to handle in a systematic and a more objective way the imprecision in these subjective assessm...

This paper summarises the difficulties in the application of life cycle costing (LCC) as a decision making tool in the construction industry on the parts of the client, the analyst and the industry practices. Life cycle costing encompasses a great deal of uncertainty, functions of which are data imperfection, randomness and ambiguity. The tradition...

In a typical Monte Carlo simulation (MCS), it is required to assign probability distribution functions (PDFs) for uncertain parameters. Due to lack of or irrelevance of historical whole-life costing (WLC) data, these functions are usually assumed. The research work that underpins this paper aimed to identify the significance of errors in various in...

There have been a number of endeavours to establish and implement the whole life costing (WLC) technique in several industries. Many researchers recognize that the lack of readily available WLC data constitutes the most important barrier that inhibits its successful practical implementation. Data breakdown structure plays, therefore, an important r...

Motivated by the lack of effective tools that would facilitate the effective choice of building finishes taking into considerations various values to the client, an integrated approach for the selection of building finishes is proposed. First, critical requirements and processes for effective identification of decision criteria, generation of alter...

The decisive role of non-financial factors in the design and management of construction assets is highlighted and existing techniques used to include these factors in the decision-making process are critically reviewed. An effective algorithm has been developed to include non-monetary benefits of competing design alternatives in whole-life costing...