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This research compares consultants' and contractors' professional practices and perspectives on the use of specifications in the engineering of built environment projects.

The study initiates with a review of literature, toward realizing (1) the need for inclusion of specifications, throughout the projects' stages (design, tender, construction and handing over), as well as the (2) causes and effects of defective specifications in design and execution of engineered projects. Additionally (3) the study investigates the challenges and causes of specification variations to projects' design and execution. The systematic methodology adopted in this research utilizes frequency indicators, to rank and correlate the perspectives of 60 professionals, who are experienced in consulting and contracting of mega public and private projects.

The research considers the uncertainties and differences that could be present in engineering developments and use of design specifications for projects' execution and handing over. The two groups of experts' (consultants and contractors) perspectives are usually observed as conflicting, in practice. Practices comparison of their experiences with engineering projects' specifications usability provides unique empirical findings. The analysis and assessment of the experts' knowledge, this research addresses gaps identified in the literature, providing valuable insights.

The study provides in-depth recommendations and discusses possible trends and methods for enhancing specifications' usability in design engineering and execution of built environment projects. The analysis and recommendations present and assess experts' knowledge while bridge gaps identified from the literature.

This research presents the applicable international fire code requirements for educational facilities, in a comprehensive manner, and the findings of a case study to assess the level of compliance with these requirements.

A review of literature, fire codes and standards was conducted to identify the various sources of fire hazards in educational facilities and the required prevention measures. Accordingly, a code-compliance worksheet for assessing the fire prevention measures was developed. The worksheet included 34 prevention measures. It was implemented in a pharmacy college building, as a case study, to assess the compliance level with the code requirements. Recommendations were developed to improve the level of fire prevention in the case study facility.

The implemented worksheet facilitated identifying all the shortcomings in the prevention measures, in a methodological manner. These shortcomings included exceeded travel distance, absence of assembly point, inactive record keeping of fire inspection and maintenance works, deterioration of some extension cords and switches, alteration of some emergency doors, storage of combustibles in some electrical rooms and obstructions of the fire apparatus access road.

The research provides an assessment tool for fire prevention in educational facilities, which can be used by professionals for a code-compliant inspection. The findings of the case study as an example serve to expand the inspectors' observational significance while reducing subjectivity.

This research contributes to the educational facilities' context of health and safety domain in the literature. The research classifies the required fire prevention measures for an educational facility, according to the international applicable codes and standards. The case study demonstrates an applicable methodology for assessing the fire prevention measures and requirements.

This paper aims to design and control of a novel compact transportation system called the “wearable vehicle”. The wearable vehicle allows for traversing all types of terrains while transporting one's luggage in a comfortable and efficient manner.

The proposed design consists of a lower limb exoskeleton carrying two motorized wheels and two free wheels installed alongside its feet. This paper presents a detailed description of the system with its preliminary design and finite element analysis. Moreover, the system has been optimally designed to decrease wearable vehicle’s total weight, consequently leading to a reduction in motor size. Finally, two controllers have been designed to achieve stable operation of the wearable vehicle while walking. A PD controller with gravity compensation has been designed to ensure that the wearable vehicle tracks human motion, while a PID controller has been designed to ensure that the zero moment point is close to the center of the system’s support polygon.

Experimental tests were carried out to check the wearable vehicle concept. The obtained results prove the feasibility of the proposed wearable vehicle from the design, dynamics and control viewpoints.

This proposed wearable vehicle’s purpose is for traveling faster with less effort than normal walking. When a human comes across a flat open ground, the wearable vehicle can be used as a vehicle. However, when a human enters crowded traffic, an unstructured area or other obstacles like stairs, the vehicle can be switched into walking mode.

The wearable vehicle has seven DOFs exoskeletons, two motorized wheels, two free wheels and a foldable seat. It is used as a vehicle via its motorized and free wheels to travel fast with minimal effort. In addition, the human can switch easily into walking mode, if there is unstructured terrain to be traversed. Furthermore, an illustration of system's mechanisms and main feature parameters are presented to become acquainted with the ultimate benefits of the new system.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of integrating Sustainable Enterprise Resource Planning (S-ERP) systems and lean manufacturing (LM) practices on sustainability performance, especially in Egypt as an emerging country.

The authors carried out an experimental study with a sample of 144 professional accountants of MPA, MBA and DBA students at two of the top universities in Egypt.

The results provide significant evidence that the integration of S-ERP systems and LM practices implementation improve sustainability performance. However, there is no significant evidence that S-ERP adoption contributes to the success of LM practices implementation.

Because of the chosen research approach, this study is limited to use of a laboratory experiment design. Empirical evidence based on quasi experiments on a field setting would add value to the current literature.

Findings provide practical insights for the manufacturing sector managers into the benefits of integrating S-ERP systems and LM practices for sustainability performance improvement (e.g. reducing cost and waste, increasing operational efficiency). For ERP vendors, findings highlight how ERP vendors introduce “enablers” that incorporate LM best practices into their ERP systems and also how those vendors conform to the software sustainability criteria in the design of ERP applications.

Contrary to previous studies that addressed the individual impact of S-ERP systems and LM practices on performance, this paper experimentally gives an indication of the impact of concurrent implementation of S-ERP and LM practices on sustainability performance, especially in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how quality control circles (QCCs) enhance work safety in a manufacturing firm in a developing country environment of the Middle East.

This paper is an exploratory investigation into the role of QCCs in enhancing work safety based on a case study method. This includes: a comprehensive scrutiny of the relevant literature; and an analysis of a case study of QCCs implementation for enhancing work safety in Direct Reduction Furnace Zone at Qasco, a steel mill in the State of Qatar.

At the outset, the QCC team identified three specific targets for them to achieve in order to ensure a safe work environment for its workers. After having identified the causes of the problems, the team members were able to analyze the problems, generate alternative solutions, and eventually implement the best solutions. Consequently, the members were able to achieve all their targets.

There is a need to empirically test and refine the critical factors affecting the successful implementation of QCCs and to explore the most important barriers that might impede the success of their implementation.

The findings of this study can be considered as a roadmap for successful implementation of QCCs in all the subsidiaries of Industries Qatar, the parent company of Qasco, and perhaps in all other organizations in the different sectors and industries but with a similar working environment to that of Qasco.

Generally, the results of this research should enhance the current practices of QCCs implementation, which mostly follow narrowly‐focused approaches. In essence, the results of this research will help management in making crucial decisions and in resource allocations that are required to make the QCCs implementation a success.

The purpose of this study is the same as those of the preceding 16 studies on happiness, health and religion, and they are as follows: to estimate the mean scores and the sex-related differences in the study scales; to examine the associations between the study scales; to investigate the principal components; and to compare the present results with the previous findings.

A non-probability sample of university students in the United Arab Emirates was selected by the “snowball” sample method. To overcome the issue of people refusing to participate in the study, this method was used in the selection process due to the challenge of sampling students in all the universities across the nation, which makes it difficult to choose a probability sample. The approval of the Ethics Committee was obtained from Ajman University to apply the study tools, and then the students were given the choice through open announcement to participate in the study and circulate it to other students at Ajman University.

Results showed that men had significantly higher mean ratings on mental health, physical health and happiness than did women. All the Pearson correlations between the scales were significant for men. Except for the correlations between religiosity and both happiness and mental health, all correlations between the scales for women were significant. A principal components analysis extracted one component for men which was labeled “Well-being and religiosity”, whereas two components were retained for the women which were labeled “Well-being” and “Religiosity and physical health”. Comparing the present sample’s mean happiness score to that of prior students from 16 other countries revealed that it was higher and consistent with other scores from rich Arab nations with a high GDP per capita (such as Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman). In conclusion, happiness was found to be associated with mental and physical health in both men and women, as well as religiosity in men.

Despite the strengths of the current investigation, i.e. the large sample size and the good to high reliability and validity properties of the scales, some limitations have to be acknowledged. First, the convenience and non-probability sample. Second, university students are a special segment of any country. Their age range is limited, and they probably have greater intelligence and more education compared to the general population. Therefore, a replication of the present study using a probability sample from the general population is needed.

SPSS (2009) was used for data analysis. Means, standard deviations, t-tests, d for effect size, Pearson product moment correlation coefficients and principal components analysis were used. For the principal components analysis, the Kaiser criterion (i.e. eigenvalue > 1.0) and the scree plot were used to define the number of components to be retained.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study about happiness in United Arab Emirates.

This paper aims to empirically investigate how structural barriers affect the relationship between total quality management (TQM) practices implementation and organizational performance in service industries.

This research hypothesized the moderation effect of structural barriers on the relationship between TQM practices implementation and organizational performance. A questionnaire was adopted to collect data form 153 Egyptian service companies. Moderated regression analysis was used to test the study hypothesis.

The empirical analysis suggests that structural barriers partially moderate the relationship between TQM practices implementation and organizational performance. The analysis reveals that the effect of Quality Improvement, Process Improvement, External and Internal Relations and Employee Development – being as TQM dimensions – on performance is moderated by structural barriers. While the results provided insufficient evidence on the moderating effect of structural barriers on the relationship between both Performance Management – being as a TQM dimension – and performance.

This research presents a new perspective for researches to understand the TQM–Performance relationship in the light of the contingency theory. However, the adopted sampling technique and the small sample size might limit the generalizability of the research findings.

This study provides useful insights for service organizations about the necessity of developing suitable structural platform for supporting their TQM efforts to boost their performance which, in turn, improves their competitiveness.

This research proposed and empirically validated how structural barriers play a significant role as moderators to the relationship between TQM implementation and organizational performance within service organizations context.

In this paper, the authors study the critical success factors for deploying total productive manufacturing (TPM) programs in the Egyptian fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors study five Egyptian FMCG companies that have deployed TPM. Data were collected through interviewing group of middle managers in each company in addition to the TPM manager. Site visits were conducted for the purpose of data verification.

The research identified nine factors affecting the success of TPM deployment. The importance of each of those factors depends on the stage of the TPM deployment maturity at the company.

The main practical implication of this finding is to guide companies undergoing a deployment of TPM, particularly in developing countries, to focus on the factors that are most pertaining to the level of their deployment maturity.

The purpose of this study is to explore the total quality management (TQM) practices and identify their effect on the nonfinancial performance (NFP) in the automotive engineering industry in Ethiopia. Despite many studies investigating the relationship between TQM practices and NFP, rare research has been conducted on TQM in automotive industries, making this a hugely unexplored field.

The data underlying this study was collected using more than 500 self-administered questionnaire survey, distributed to the employees working under different departments and factories under one automotive engineering industry. Extensive data screening and refinement processes for discarding irrelevant items for the questionnaire (Likert five-point scale) were carried out. The data was employed to test the proposed theoretical model, established with the objective of assessing the effect of TQM practices on the NFP in the case industry. Empirical validated relations have been proofed for previously done researches that there were positive relations between the TQM practices and NFP. Different statistical tools applied include descriptive data analysis, correlation analysis, mean scale test, reliability analysis and factor analysis, and finally, two models were developed based on structural equation modeling by using SPSS and AMOS-26 software.

Results found in this study were quite surprising. Initially, there was a total of ten TQM factors. The six independent factors survived from factor analysis only two factors (employee involvement and innovation) were contributing to the NFP. The study was acted as a performance evaluation system to track the industry NFP. Although the study focused on the effect of TQM practices, for more results it is recommended to conduct a 360-degree further research study to reveal the weaknesses, strengths, opportunities and challenges of the case industry performance.

Every research has its own limitations. The way the analysis is conducted in this study ensures that the limitations do not compromise the validity of the results obtained. Control variables (industry type, size, age, process type and technology used) are not considered in the research which may affect the results obtained. The study included the automobile industry alone, so the obtained results cannot be generalized to other industries.

The positive relationship between the TQM practices and NFP measures indicates the importance of each of these practices in improving the industry. Researchers/managers/practitioners can use this developed model periodically to understand where the industry stands in the quality management journey. They can also analyze the effect of TQM practices on financial as well as operational performance measures. The research findings can also motivate the top management of the industry for better planning of goals, to arrange resources in time, in pursuit of improving quality, employee and industry performance.

The Ethiopian manufacturing industry is required to improve their manufacturing and service quality, in order to enhance their productivity and boost their competitiveness in an international market, which is the basis of this study. This study signifies one of the first attempts to empirically explore this linkage between TQM and performance in the Ethiopian automotive industry context.