Search results

Factors like bid price, submission time, and number of bidders influence the procurement process in public projects. These factors and the award criteria may impact the project’s financial compliance. Predicting budget compliance in construction projects has been traditionally challenging, but Machine Learning (ML) techniques have revolutionised estimations.

In this study, Portuguese Public Procurement Data (PPPData) was utilised as the model’s input. Notably, this dataset exhibited a substantial imbalance in the target feature. To address this issue, the study evaluated three distinct data balancing techniques: oversampling, undersampling, and the SMOTE method. Next, a comprehensive feature selection process was conducted, leading to the testing of five different algorithms for forecasting budget compliance. Finally, a secondary test was conducted, refining the features to include only those elements that procurement technicians can modify while also considering the two most accurate predictors identified in the previous test.

The findings indicate that employing the SMOTE method on the scraped data can achieve a balanced dataset. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the Adam ANN algorithm outperformed others, boasting a precision rate of 68.1%.

The model can aid procurement technicians during the tendering phase by using historical data and analogous projects to predict performance.

Although the study reveals that ML algorithms cannot accurately predict budget compliance using procurement data, they can still provide project owners with insights into the most suitable criteria, aiding decision-making. Further research should assess the model’s impact and capacity within the procurement workflow.

Previous research predominantly focused on forecasting budgets by leveraging data from the private construction execution phase. While some investigations incorporated procurement data, this study distinguishes itself by using an imbalanced dataset and anticipating compliance rather than predicting budgetary figures. The model predicts budget compliance by analysing qualitative and quantitative characteristics of public project contracts. The research paper explores various model architectures and data treatment techniques to develop a model to assist the Client in tender definition.

The current relationship between humans and nature is complex and tense. Overexploitation of natural resources, pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss present the main challenges for modern society. In particular, the issue of climate change is being intensely debated, and the interest in protecting natural resources by adopting sustainable practices is growing. Therefore, this chapter examines a brief history and concept of climate change, reviewing relevant theories and authors from Svante Arrhenius and Guy Stewart Callendar to Charles David Keeling and Mikhail Budyko. This chapter explores the first measurements and warnings regarding climate crisis and reviews international treaties and policy development at local, national and global levels. Furthermore, adverse consequences of the climate crisis are described, and ecologism, eco-imperialism and climate change denialism are explained.

Vadderas are an indigenous community, from the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, India, and are basically soil-diggers and stonecutters by occupation. As per folklores, they were king’s men once upon a time who lost their glory eventually. Their women enjoyed an affluent lifestyle and were reportedly physically active and went for small game very often. Men were a warrior class, and the folklores prove that they fought with valor but moved to forests after they lost wars and were at the mercy of their enemy. To save face, they became forest dwellers and gradually became construction-site laborers which brought transitions in their family structures. In earlier times, they had good progeny, but with lapse of time and over generations, they are conscious of family planning. In this chapter, the authors discuss the transitions in family structure as observed from the field among the Vadderas. A narrative style of discussion is adopted wherein first the family and its importance and reasons for its disintegration are discussed followed by approaches of study of prominent anthropologists/sociologists. Focus is drawn on Vadderas, and the granularities are discussed in a deconstructive manner, that is, going in detail and linking of current practices to the ones in the past and as mentioned in the folklores so as to understand the transitions evident in family structures of Vadderas. Ethnographic account has been knitted with this deconstructive approach as the authors observed the Vadderas from close corners. This chapter ends with summing of current trends as evident in the field.

The importance of developing and implementing sustainable business practices has never been greater. Business schools are increasingly tasked with preparing students to contribute to this imperative and although progress is being made, the impact of integrating sustainability into business school curriculum has remained uncertain as studies exploring the impact have been lacking. The purpose of this multi-case study was to examine the impact of integration efforts in two distinct undergraduate business programs at Royal Roads University. The research focused on how students' understanding of sustainability and their associated attitudes and behaviors changed as they progressed throughout their programs. In addition to considering the impact of a sustainability-infused curriculum, other factors affecting sustainability orientations were also explored. The study was unique in both its comparative nature and in its investigation of the various contextual factors shaping sustainability orientations. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and through document analysis. Findings suggest a combination of approaches to integration is most effective in impacting sustainability perspectives. While sustainability was generally understood in a multidimensional manner, there was a noticeable environmental bias and a tendency to view it within the business framework. A need for stronger and more comprehensive conceptualizations was identified. Recommendations include: (a) embed sustainability in a comprehensive manner across the curriculum, (b) move beyond a disciplinary conceptualization of sustainability and introduce stronger sustainability discourse, (c) utilize powerful experiential and place-based pedagogies, (d) pay attention to context and ensure both the formal and the informal curriculum mutually reinforce a pro-sustainability agenda.

This study aims to review recent advances towards the implementation of ANN and NLP applications during the budgeting phase of the construction process. During this phase, construction companies must assess the scope of each task and map the client’s expectations to an internal database of tasks, resources and costs. Quantity surveyors carry out this assessment manually with little to no computer aid, within very austere time constraints, even though these results determine the company’s bid quality and are contractually binding.

This paper seeks to compile applications of machine learning (ML) and natural language processing in the architectural engineering and construction sector to find which methodologies can assist this assessment. The paper carries out a systematic literature review, following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines, to survey the main scientific contributions within the topic of text classification (TC) for budgeting in construction.

This work concludes that it is necessary to develop data sets that represent the variety of tasks in construction, achieve higher accuracy algorithms, widen the scope of their application and reduce the need for expert validation of the results. Although full automation is not within reach in the short term, TC algorithms can provide helpful support tools.

Given the increasing interest in ML for construction and recent developments, the findings disclosed in this paper contribute to the body of knowledge, provide a more automated perspective on budgeting in construction and break ground for further implementation of text-based ML in budgeting for construction.

The issues raised in this chapter are primarily those of obfuscation regarding social and economic inequality in the UK. The chapter is about the way discourse in various forms serves to disguise and justify the huge inequalities in this society; legitimising and ‘naturalising’ them, or in Arendt's words ‘lying’ about them so that they are seen as ‘natural and self-evident’ (Alvesson & Deetz, 2006, p. 261). Issues looked at are the institutional arrangements by which government ministers give or withhold resources to and from certain categories of its citizens. This includes the UK Treasury in relation to which economic groups the Chancellor of the Exchequer decides how much to tax or not to tax. In particular what are examined are the discourses justifying these measures and establishing certain ‘truths’ about how things are economically and socially; which categories are entitled to or deserving of certain kinds of resources and which are not – argued here as constituting obfuscations of the ‘actual’ situation. Obfuscation has been defined as the action of making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible. This, arguably, is not far removed, from the action of being deliberately untruthful or lying. The question then arises as to how close these discourses come to lying and how serious the inequalities are.

This paper draws on the thinking of the nineteenth-century Italian philosopher and poet Giacomo Leopardi and scholars who studied his thoughts on the relationship between nature and humans. Leopardi's philosophy of nature recognizes the alienness of nature in relation to humankind, thus challenging human governance of the planet. The poet’s thoughts align with the dilemma identified in the Anthropocene literature: who speaks for nature? This dilemma has accounting implications in terms of the frameworks and disclosures to be adopted. Therefore, Leopardi’s thoughts can become the basis for a more articulated and complex understanding of some key concepts and issues at the roots of SEA.

The paper utilizes content analysis to examine four essays by Giacomo Leopardi, which serve as the source of our data.

Leopardi recognizes the alienness of nature with respect to humanity and the voicelessness of nature as a generative of conflict. He also warned of the consequences of human governance that does not take nature’s needs into account. These findings open a discussion on the complex accounting implications of the distance between humanity and nature. They can inspire SEA scholars to change the status quo by developing new accounting frameworks from the perspective of nature and adopting forms of governance of nature that recognize the need to protect it as a voiceless stakeholder.

Through Leopardi’s humanistic and poetic philosophy, the perspective of nature can be infused into SEA studies, thereby promoting the need for a multidisciplinary and complex approach to the discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the life and work, both fiction and nonfiction, of the American author Upton Sinclair, for the purposes of better understanding his impact on management theory and practice.

Critical biography is a historiographical approach that analyzes aspects of an individual’s life events and the context that surrounds those events to better understand the contributions of an individual. In this case, this paper analyzes Sinclair’s biography, his work-related fiction and nonfiction and his interactions with business leaders and management thinkers of the day, including scientific management founder Frederick Winslow Taylor, auto industry leader Henry Ford and safety razor magnate King Gillette.

This paper identified four themes which are related to management and workplace history that pervade his fiction and nonfiction writing and link these events to the events of his life as well as the context of the times.

Although others have cited certain aspects of Sinclair’s work for specific purposes, this paper presents a systematic review of Sinclair’s broad oeuvre and its relevance to management and workplace history using a critical biography approach.