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Electrical services contribute a substantial percentage of total construction cost of any particular project. It is essential for estimators to have a detailed knowledge of the factors that affect the incorporation of electrical services cost into the overall building project cost. The overall aim of the study that formed the basis for this paper therefore was to investigate the factors that influence cost estimating of electrical services project.

The study was carried out based on questionnaire survey of 225 organizations that are involved in cost estimating of electrical services projects in Nigeria. A total of 158 questionnaires out of the 163 retrieved were appropriate for analysis. A list of factors potentially influencing cost estimate for electrical services was identified for the respondents to rate. The data collected were analyzed using factor analysis based on principal component analysis and varimax orthogonal rotation.

The results shows that the factors affecting production of cost estimate for electrical services could be grouped into four principal factors: the most important factor grouping being estimator competence followed by project technicality, economic requirements and contract requirements.

Many factors are considered by practitioners in the preparation of cost estimate for electrical work in construction project development. The paper has listed about 23 factors that are relevant. However, this paper has shown that four principal factors need to be considered as they explain 64 percent of the factors affect cost estimate production for building project's electrical service works.

Review of literature has shown that there is limited empirical research on the factors influencing cost estimate production for electrical services work. The paper has produced an empirical research on the crucial factors that must be taken into account when producing cost estimate for the electrical service projects.

This study aims to examine the moderation role of human resource management (HRM) in the relationship between risk management and project success of electrical power transmission and distribution systems.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from the electrical companies of Pakistan. A 100 professionals working in power sector companies took part in it. To analyze the impact, correlation analysis and linear regression analyses have been performed using IBM SPSS V-22®.

The linear regression results obtained the significant impact of risk management on project success (p < 0.05). The moderated regression represented a change in the percentage variation (R²) that is 0.463 without moderating effect and it increased to 0.528 after including human resource (HR) moderator indicating a moderating effect of HRM.

Because of the theoretical significance of growing awareness about the importance of HRM and development, this study has significant practical implications. This study can be implemented practically to support the business strategies of the organization and HR competency and engineering will contribute in shaping those business strategies as well.

This study provides evidence on the impact of HRM on project success as a moderating variable with risk management. The study shows the increment in the ratio of project success in the electrical sector of Pakistan. This research provides the importance of HRM functions in the electrical sector of Pakistan.

This chapter presents a South American perspective on the environmental and financial sustainability of energy integration incorporating recent financial lessons from the United States and Europe. An illustrative project called UNASUR-GRID is presented to highlight new thinking on funding ecologically sensitive development (post-carbon electricity generation) and regional energy sovereignty via a new regional development bank for the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) called Bank of the South, Banco del Sur (BDS) ^1,2 . Sustainable BDS finance rules are presented that aim to break the link between development funding, environmental damage, and sovereign debt owed to banks outside the region, tapping into alternative finances to buffer the region against changes in global financial flows from core nations in the Great Recession.

The author attended presidential meetings of MERCOSUR and UNASUR supplementing this with presidential declarations comparing these with ongoing development planning from IIRSA, also interviewing a COSIPLAN representative. He also cooperated (as an independent researcher) with the Ecuadorian Central Bank research group called ‘New Architectures for Regional Finance’ (NAFR) and conducted technical interviews at South American energy institutes specialising in integration.

Development finance must reflect changes in both energy supply and demand while replacing fossil fuel inputs in electricity generation. Demand planning is necessary to attain sovereignty over a post-carbon electricity supply while maintaining dependability.

Successful energy cooperation is more than just energy infrastructure (UNASUR-GRID), cross-border confidence building is also required, reinforced by commercial treaties for energy exports and imports. Public and private national and regional energy companies need real incentives to trade internationally (improving competition) or renationalisation of supply and distribution may be necessary.

Highly original, this chapter incorporates government, UN and civil NGO inputs into primary research. BDS policy sources include government, ministerial and presidential speeches with interviews and participation in meetings with social movements. For indigenous ecological and social economic concepts such as Sumak Kawsay, the author has travelled extensively in South America and was an active participant at the first World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the 2010 Rights of Mother Earth (World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, 2014) in Cochabamba, Bolivia, along with ecologists and tribal representatives.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors for an academic research project in electrical engineering to become relevant.

As a conceptual basis, a few theories of entrepreneurial university and triple helix were correlated, seeking to determine the main critical factors and the successful criteria of an academic research project. The research was conducted through four cases of electric engineering that succeed in generating social and economic impact.

When analyzing the available bibliography, it is clear that the connection among the companies, the market and the research that happens at the university is very important. Not only that, but also, according to the results, this is the key to generating revenue and impact on society. In addition, operational policies and competent leaders promoting this impact inside the universities are extremely important.

The topic was selected because of the reduced number of articles related to the identification and analyses of the main aspects that make an academic research project relevant to the society. Furthermore, the paper is significant because it analyzes the main factors that help develop a better society and country through academic research.

The purpose of this paper is to promote full involvement of construction project leaders in the attempt by Nigerian banks to develop new branches and expand the scope of their services to customers whose banks were either liquidated or merged after the 2005 consolidation exercise.

Structured questionnaires are used to collect data on status, professions, services and leadership roles of construction project leaders from a sample of 80 clients' representatives selected randomly from the 24 Nigerian banks that survived the liquidation exercise.

The study discovers that Nigerian banks appoint mostly their staff who may not be project managers as project leaders and engage them mostly with services which relate to the day to day running of their new projects. It also discovers that the authority giving to project leaders is not full rather the control over the delivery of banks' projects is shared with the banks and this does not influence the banks' perception of the performance of project leaders. While this finding may appear as if the control giving to project leaders is not important in their performances, the study reveals that the performances of project leaders have significant influence on the performance of other project team members.

Although, there have been studies on project leadership in the construction industry generally, specific attention has not been given to project leadership in the banking industry as done in this paper.

The study considers the development as unhealthy because it will not encourage construction project leaders to regard the success or failure of the projects as their responsibility and will not motivate them to perform their duties effectively. It therefore advocates that clients in the Nigerian banking industry should adopt a practice whereby project managers instead of any construction professionals are the ones to be appointed as construction project leaders and that more authority and leadership functions on the delivery of the projects than those retained by clients be delegated to them.

The results of the study have identified some of the shortcomings in project leadership practice in the Nigerian banking industry which will spur changes that promote greater achievement of the goals of the banks for developing new projects.

The authors will give an overview of the railway market, with a focus on Morocco, before seeing the challenges to face, before listing some benefits of rail links in terms of development, ecology, security, space management, etc. The authors will then give an overview of the development of BIM, its benefits, risks and issues. The purpose of this paper is to verify that the BIM can provide the railway with the tools to face some of its challenges and improve its productivity.

This paper is part of our research project on the integration of BIM in railway, which is the result of a partnership between Colas Rail Maroc and the ENSAK of the Ibn Tofail University of Kenitra. The objective of this paper is mainly to confirm that the integration of BIM with the railway, through a theoretical and practical study, can have positive impacts. To do this, our methodology consists in studying briefly the development of the railway, the need to improve the budgets and schedules of the projects, to increase the productivity, before showing the advantages of the BIM in the sector of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC). The study of feedback from railway projects (chosen for their date of completion – beyond 2014, their size, their geographical situation in several countries and for the availability of literature in a new field) will confirm the initial hypotheses. Among the projects studied will be a project that has been the subject of an article written by the authors of this paper. In the discussion of the results, the authors will focus on the benefits, risks and limitations of integrating BIM into the railway. In conclusion, the authors are laying the groundwork for future research in the field.

The cases study discussed in this paper and previous research confirms the hypotheses of the literature. The integration of BIM into railway projects can have several advantages: collaboration, time saving, cost optimization, prevention of conflicts between networks, construction before construction, optimization of facility management, improvement of the quality of works, prefabrication. They also allowed us to illustrate the risks (status and appropriation of the BIM model, lack of standardization of versions or software and lack of understanding of the basics of schedules and specifications) and limitations (lack of feedback, lack of adaptability and convergence of tools). These experiences have also shown that the use of BIM is not just a technological transition, but a revolution in the project management process, which requires several key success factors (participation of all, commitment, change management and adoption of the collaborative approach). Visualization, collaboration and conflict elimination are the three main chapters where the benefits of BIM can be organized. In fact, there is a lot of intersection between these chapters, but they have been chosen as the main ideas around which all the benefits can be better understood. Visualization primarily addresses the benefits to an individual and improving one’s personal understanding as a result of using BIM. The collaboration refers to the cooperative action of several team members, which is encouraged and facilitated by BIM. Conflict elimination mainly concerns project-related benefits, such as conflict reduction, waste, risks, costs and time. For railway infrastructure projects, the main purpose of using BIM is to improve the design integration process, internal project team communication and collision detection to eliminate risk of rehabilitation.

The application of the BIM process in railway infrastructure requires constant improvement. This concerns the development of libraries and the models available to all users in order to encourage the development of this methodology and, consequently, its use of information throughout the life cycle of an infrastructure work.

The case study of real projects incorporating BIM confirms the results of the literature review. The benefits of integrating BIM into rail projects are multiple and proven: cost control, decision support, avoids extra work due to design errors, improves detection of interface problems, improves planning of vision, help with prefabrication and facility management, etc. Finally, the BIM process is able to overcome delays in procedures slowing the development of the construction industry in many countries, especially in Morocco, because of the slowness of design (or downright bad design).

The integration of BIM into rail is becoming a global trend. This integration requires government decisions and a maturation of technology and tools. The authorities of some developed countries studied (Sweden, UK, France, Germany) in the railways, at different stages of implementation, are adopting BIM in the process of setting up new railway projects. This political impulse is still behind in southern countries, such as Morocco. The trend and the data collected indicate an adoption between 2020 and 2030 of BIM in all/some AEC projects in developed countries. This will have an impact on other countries that will soon be doing the same, especially in the railway sector to adopt the BIM.

As part of the realization of this paper, we proceeded to the implementation of an electrical substation as part of the project to build 40 electric traction substations built by Colas Rail on behalf of ONCF.

This is a teaching case to be used in courses on funding and execution of renewable-energy projects, sustainable development, project finance or management of financial institutions. The case has been successfully used in courses at the graduate level as well as in executive education. The purpose of this paper is to achieve the following specific objectives. First, to illustrate the adjusted present value (APV) methodology to value investment projects in a project finance setting. Second, to show how APV methodologies can be used to value investment projects with subsidized financing and temporary fiscal incentives. Third, to understand how financial institutions use debt service coverage ratios to measure the capacity of projects to repay debt obligations.

The primary source of information for the study case came from in-depth interviews with senior officials from E+Co and project sponsors. Documents from E+Co's loan approval process and investment committee minutes were also consulted. Also a site visit was performed.

The case is quite interesting along several dimensions. To begin with the case deals with an important (and somewhat difficult decision) the general manager of a financial institution has to make. From a technical point of view, the case involves an APV analysis and requires the estimation of the value added (or destroyed) by several collateral effects of debt in the capital structure of the project (something seldom treated in formal courses or standard finance textbooks). In addition, even though standard financial analysis would probably have led to select on alternative course of action, the authors know the protagonist of the case actually decided to do something different based on an additional analysis (a nice postscript for the case, therefore).

Been a case study, the findings may be quite particular of the particular situation and context. However, the case provides good insight into the difficulties and problems entrepreneurs face in developing economies as well as in funding small renewable energy projects around the world.

The case provides a number of important lessons and learning opportunities for sponsors of renewable energy power projects and managers of financial institutions.

Please refer to the findings section above.

This paper aims to explore Turkey’s current energy status with a on renewable energy sources (RES) cooperation mechanisms, within the framework of RES Directive 2009/28/EC. The study uses the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis for drawing results about perspectives of RES cooperation between Turkey and European Union (EU) Member States. In particular, the SWOT analysis provides a clearer view of expanding RES in Turkey, as well as the level of utilization and potential of cooperation mechanisms and renewable energy in the country.

The approach followed incorporates desktop analysis, stakeholders’ mapping and involvement, key factors’ identification and results analysis and validation. The adopted approach is based on research conducted within the context of the “Bringing Europe and Third countries closer together through renewable Energies (BETTER)” (project number: IEE/11/845/SI2.616378) project, co-financed by the Intelligent Energy Europe Programme.

Based on the SWOT analysis conducted for Turkey, there are huge opportunities for RES deployment and cooperation in the country, because of its large unexploited RES potential. Turkey is a country with strategic importance, e.g. regarding energy security. Substantial savings can occur for the EU28 Member States through this cooperation, whereas Turkey will also benefit through income and investments, as well as technology transfers and further synergies associated with the cooperation. For the above potentials to be reached, nevertheless, national policies for RES development would have to be strengthened substantially, and non-economic barriers mitigated.

The potential of Turkey to utilise cooperation mechanisms provides opportunities for RES exporting between the country and EU countries. An analysis of these opportunities for cooperation will allow drawing clearer conclusions on cooperation potentials and business cases for Turkey.

Many electricity projects in Asian emerging economies involve private finance using Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) yet problems remain in terms of project initiation, commercial structuring, and financial arrangements. The motivation to pursue previous PPP power projects has been unduly influenced by the ability to attract finance rather than an independent assessment of value for money (VfM) of the project. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of VfM framework for improving investment sustainability of PPP power projects in Asian emerging economies.

The drivers for achieving VfM in projects involving both public and private participants have been determined by a critical review of international practices and the development of sustainable energy systems using grounded theory. These drivers have been used to cross-analyse six Asian PPP power projects.

The evaluation of the case study projects identifies the key determining linkages between the project structure, financial and commercial arrangements, and technical solutions with the ultimate project outcomes. It has been established that project outcomes can be improved through the inclusion of VfM considerations, energy security, and environmental sustainability. On the basis of this investigation, a conceptual governmental decision framework for future investment in PPP power projects is proposed.

Advocating a VfM framework for assessment of PPP power project proposals in Asian emerging economies is a new approach and offers enhanced benefits both to the public and private sector.

Taking Nonaka’s SECI model as the main reference, this paper aims to offer reflections on the virtual evolution of ba, the places for knowledge creation. Indeed, looking at the current scenario, widening the knowledge spiral to the inter-organizational epistemological level is inevitable. To this aim, information technology tools and virtual communities can establish effective interactions to exchange knowledge, making ba evolve congruently.

The paper takes the exemplary case of a platform developed during a European research project called “BIVEE: Business Innovation in Virtual Enterprise Environments”. The investigative approach chosen is participatory action research (PAR), with two researchers conducting PAR in real time, and two others involved ex post.

The paper shows that the virtual evolution of ba can lead the SECI model towards an inter-organizational level. Moreover, through a learning history, it describes how all the phases of the SECI process, even the Socialization one, can take place or be supported in virtual spaces.

Taking into account just one single exemplary case study provides a rich, contextualized understanding of phenomena, while allowing only some theoretical generalizations.

This paper contextualizes the SECI model within a Web platform for open innovation, to investigate whether the knowledge creation process can take place entirely within a virtual environment linking subjects from different organizations. In so doing, it applies the SECI model to the phases of the innovation process, called waves.