• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.73-79
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• 2017

Rapidly expanding population in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a massive impact to put pressure on the shortage of housing and existing infrastructure. With average population growth rate of 1,9% yearly, the population in Saudi Arabia is projected to increase from 31 million in 2015 to 37 million in 2025. According to the housing ministry, Saudi Arabia needs to provide 3.3 million units to meet the demand in 2025, which is about 300,000 unit a year. In the past 40 years, using the conventional construction method, the Saudi construction industry was only able to build about 150,000 units per year. To meet the demand gap for the housing shortage, a new approach and innovation in construction methods are needed. Industrialized construction as an approach in construction methods has been studied and implemented in some countries that experienced similar corncerns. Industrialized construction can be defined as the implementation of manufacturing methods to construction-related activities to improve quality, reduce cost and project duration. Compared to the conventional construction method, prefabrication as industrialized construction methods has reduced construction labor on-site by 9.5%, construction project duration by 20%, and construction waste by 56%. It improves the quality, durability and cost saving not only for construction project owners, but also construction contractors. This paper discusses the possibility of 'industrialization' of building system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a solution for the housing shortage. It is an initial part of a study aims to develop a framework to develop industrialized building system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The is paper based on extensive literature review and case studies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.202-203
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• 2015

To promote the remodeling project it is important to get apartment residents' consent. It is significant variable to determine project to progress smoothly from planning stage which committee of association establishment sets up to establishment stage of association. On average, it takes about 1~1.6 year in planning phase which means before construction phase of remodeling. Therefore, it is very important issue to get apartment residents' consent in planning phase. In this research, we focused on residents' opinion and proposed solution of conflict with gathering residents' opinion to proceed remodeling project. By setting particular remodeling situation, related residents represented as agents made effort to efficient coordination to reduce total duration of decision making. Therefore, we proposed multi-agent based on fuzzy inference to simulate behavior of decision making on remodeling project effectively. From this method, optimal alternative is selected by considering each agents' attributes which represented by fuzzy set. This research will develope to further research for realizing concrete multi-agent based on fuzzy inference considering all stakeholders in remodeling project.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.90-96
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• 2019

The contributions of nuclear science and technology in enhancing prosperity and quality of life all over the world and its potential to achieve many important Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations are well recognized. It also is now recognized that with fewer students getting attracted to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in general and nuclear science and technology (NST) in particular; hence, there is a vital need to reach out to young students to provide the crucial human resources needed for these endeavours to continue in this highly specialized area. The success of a recently completed IAEA project related to introducing NST during 2012-2016 in secondary schools in the Asia-Pacific region countries encouraged the formulation of a new IAEA TC project RAS0079 entitled "Educating Secondary Students and Science Teachers on Nuclear Science and Technology" for 2018-2021, focusing on enhancing existing educational approaches through training and development opportunities both for teachers and students. The project aims at reaching a million students during the project duration while keeping the depth of learning between teacher and student. The strategy of executing the project, implementation status and its impact so far is presented in this paper.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.537-548
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• 2022

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: South Korea has been conducting the Sodium Reduction Restaurant Project since 2015 to reduce sodium contents in restaurant menus. The purpose of this study was to analyze changes in the sodium content of menus as determined by the Daegu Sodium Reduction Restaurant Project between 2015 and 2019. MATERIALS/METHODS: Intervention was aimed at reducing the sodium contents of over 10% of menu items in participating restaurants. On-site inspections and evaluations were conducted using a checklist, and reductions in sodium contents were determined by analyzing the salinities and sodium contents of menus after intervention. RESULTS: Post-intervention salinities and sodium contents were significantly lower than baseline values in 2016 (P < 0.001), 2017 (P < 0.001), 2018 (P < 0.001), and 2019 (P < 0.001). However, sodium contents and salinities differences before and after intervention were not significant in 2015. Sodium contents of more than 20% of menu items offered by restaurants that participated in the Sodium Reduction Restaurant Project for 2 yrs starting in 2016 declined by 28.9%. On the other hand, the sodium reduction rate achieved by restaurants that participated for 4 yrs from 2015 reached 55.4%. The percentage of restaurants that participated in the project increased annually, though some failed to be designated as Sodium Reduction Restaurants because they did not meet sodium reduction rate requirements. CONCLUSIONS: Positive correlations were found between duration of participation in the project and sodium reduction and designation rates. Sustainable long-term support at the national level is required to expand the project to other regions.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.543-550
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• 2022

The U.S. Department of Energy conducts the Solar Decathlon competition as a student-based achievement that encourages sustainable design with energy efficiency and solar energy technologies. In the 2020 competition, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) team designed, fabricated, and constructed a net-zero modular house that applies innovative and highly efficient building technologies. This paper focused on the lessons learned during the early phases of this ongoing modular project. The research methodology included obtaining feedback from key project participants using a well-structured questionnaire. The results showed that the major items/challenges in the project's planning phase included selecting the modular size, planning the construction system, planning the materials and procurement, estimating costs and duration, selecting a fabricator, collaboration and communication, safety, and planning module transportation. These findings will help modular practitioners and future Solar Decathlon competition participants better understand how and what factors they should consider most during the early phases through the lessons learned.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2018

Stressed vowels in English are usually produced using longer duration, higher pitch, and greater intensity than unstressed vowels. However, many English as a foreign language (EFL) learners have difficulty producing English lexical stress because their mother tongues do not have such features. In order to investigate if certain non-native English speakers (Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese-Chinese native speakers) are able to produce English lexical stress in a native-like manner, speech samples were extracted from the L2 learners' corpus known as AESOP (the Asian English Speech cOrpus Project). Sixteen disyllabic words were analyzed in terms of the ratio of duration, pitch, and intensity. The results demonstrate that non-native English speakers are able to produce English stress in a similar way to native English speakers, and all speakers (both native and non-native) show a tendency to use duration as the strongest cue in producing stress. The results also show that the duration ratio of native English speakers was significantly higher than that of non-native speakers, indicating that native speakers produce a bigger difference in duration between stressed and unstressed vowels.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.121-122
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• 2015

The demand on free-form buildings is gradually increasing, but there are several problems such as increased cost and construction duration, and decreased constructability at the construction phase upon construction of a building owing to the difficulty of member production-installation. To solve these problems, a technology to produce FCP using a CNC machine was developed. Basically, it delivers the information on a free-form building designed to the CNC machine, the shapes of RTM and PCM are created using the information delivered and FCP are produced with the RTM and PCM which act as forms. Since the construction duration and project cost are limited on site, the efficiency of FCP production-installation is significant for application of the technology. For it is almost impossible to change the production-installation layout and process once they are set in the construction phase, they should be carefully determined. Before the production-installation layout are established, it is necessary to analyze the factors that influence the duration. Thus, the study intends to analyze influence factors in PCM mold on estimation of the production-installation duration for FCP. According to the analysis of influence factors, a simulation model for estimation of the duration that changes depending on the constraint conditions can be built.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.34-42
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• 2011

Many companies open multiple projects simultaneously due to market trends, which results in a crowding out effect because of limited resources. R&D engineers become overloaded and scheduling of product development is delayed resulting in timing misses and lost sales leads. The company in this case study (Company A), often opens up many projects simultaneously in order to respond to market needs quickly. The engineers are overloaded and, of course, the schedule is delayed. In order to identify problems, Company A began using Dr. Goldratt's Thinking Processes (TP) during new product development (NPD). When the analysis phase of TP was completed, Company A's core problem was identified as "the quantity of kick-off projects." Consequently, new rules and conditions and procedures were proposed for the opening, suspending, stopping, and closing of projects. Finally, the "Future Reality Tree" ensured that the proposed rules, conditions and procedures were set up as an available solution approved for practical application by executives. After a one-year trial run, the results showed that the Project Duration Rate was reduced by 53%, the Project Closed Rate was increased by 140% and the Project on Time Rate was increased from 10% to 68%. The above results give significant evidence of the benefits of the proposed methodology.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.17-29
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• 2012

Delays are one of the biggest problems facing by the construction industry and they have significant financial and social impact in construction projects. The paper presents a framework of Delay Analysis System (DAS) with the aim of analysing the impact of delay factors in Libyan construction projects. The system has designed by integrating the possible delay factors, critical activities of a project using@risk simulator. A case study of building project was demonstrated to identify the impact of delays and the sensitivity of delay factor. The case study result showed that the project might be delayed by 97 to 103 days in comparison to the planned duration. The developed DAS is a tool for analysing and identify the impacts of delay factors and assist to construction manager to take necessary measure in reducing the delay impact. The paper provides a methodology for analysing the possible delay impact in a construction project and informing to construction manager in advance of the possible delay factors.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.393-399
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• 2009

This paper introduces an automated tool named Advanced Stochastic Schedule Simulation System (AS4). The system automatically integrates CPM schedule data exported from Primavera Project Planner (P3) and historical activity duration data obtained from a project data warehouse, computes the best fit probability distribution functions (PDFs) of historical activity durations, assigns the PDFs identified to respective activities, computes the optimum number of simulation runs, simulates the schedule network for the optimum number of simulation runs, and estimates the best fit PDF of project completion times (PCTs). AS4 improves the reliability of simulation-based scheduling by effectively dealing with the uncertainties of the activities' durations, increases the usability of the schedule data obtained from commercial CPM software, and effectively handles the variability of the PCTs by finding the best fit PDF of PCTs. It is designed as an easy-to-use computer tool programmed in MATLAB. AS4 encourages the use of simulation-based scheduling because it is simple to use, it simplifies the tedious and burdensome process involved in finding the PDFs of the many activities' durations and in assigning the PDFs to the many activities of a new network under modeling, and it does away with the normality assumptions used by most simulation-based scheduling systems in modeling PCTs.