A lack of adequate building maintenance is a significant obstacle faced by governmental hospitals. This paper evaluates factors that negatively impact building-maintenance practices in Iraq. A literature review was conducted to identify factors affecting maintenance. A list of 42 factors affecting hospital-buildings was collected from previous studies and tested using a structured questionnaire distributed to hospital-maintenance experts. During the data analysis, 76 valid questionnaires were used. Based on the respondents’ ratings, the relative-importance index (RII) was used to determine the level of importance of each factor. From the results, it was concluded that twelve factors affect maintenance practices in hospital buildings: faulty design (0.889), lack of funding (0.874), inadequate training (0.871), misuse of building facilities (0.866), construction errors (0.863), lack of work experience (0.858), building age (0.826), individual modifications carried out by the hospital staff (0.826), shortage of maintenance staff (0.824), administrative corruption (0.821), selection of unqualified maintenance contractors (0.816) and unavailability of skilled appointed maintenance personnel (0.808). Understanding these factors’ effects is essential for maintenance-department managers to develop strategies for maintaining hospital buildings in Iraq by controlling them, as well as identifying problems and finding appropriate solutions to avoid them. KEYWORDS: Governmental hospitals, Maintenance, Iraq, Building maintenance, Maintenance practices, Factors affecting maintenance
Flow-production systems whose pieces are connected in a row may not have maintenance scheduling procedures fixed because problems occur at different times (electricity plants, cement plants, water desalination plants). Contemporary software and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are used to fulfill the research objectives by developing a predictive maintenance program. The data of the fifth thermal unit of the power station for the electricity of Al Dora/Baghdad are used in this study. Three stages of research were conducted. First, missing data without temporal sequences were processed. The data were filled using time series hour after hour and the times were filled as system working hours, making the volume of the data relativel
... Show MoreA Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computerized database management system for accumulating, storage, retrieval, analysis, and display spatial data. In general, GIS contains two broad categories of information, geo-referenced spatial data and attribute data. Geo-referenced spatial data define objects that have an orientation and relationship in two or three-dimensional space, while attribute data is qualitative data that can be counted for recording and analysis. The main aim of this research is to reveal the role of GIS technology in the enhancement of bridge maintenance management system components such as the output results, and make it more interpretable through dynamic colour coding and more sophisticated vi
... Show MoreBackground: Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. Autism affects the normal development of the brain in the areas of social interaction and communication skills.Objectives: To identify risk factors for Autism among a sample of autistic children in Baghdad city. Type of the study: this is a case – control, study. Methods: This study was conducted during the period of data collection extended from first of November 2010 until the first of April 2011,The total number of children involved was 100children with diagnosis of autism. Handred children who are free from autism were taken as the control sample. Results: there was a significant association between paternal age and
... Show MoreApplying the constructability concept in the construction industry has proven many benefits in different projects; however, this concept still lacks usage in Iraq. Therefore, it is important to encourage usage of the constructability concept in the construction industry in Iraq. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that affect constructability in Iraq and then classify them according to their importance. A total of 37 factors were collected from an intensive literature review, and they were classified under the sub and main categories. A survey was undertaken in two sessions with open questionnaire and close questionnaire. The results were analysed and the mean
This paper aims to study the second-order geometric nonlinearity effects of P-Delta on the dynamic response of tall reinforced concrete buildings due to a wide range of earthquake ground motion forces, including minor earthquake up to moderate and strong earthquakes. The frequency domain dynamic analysis procedure was used for response assessment. Reinforced concrete building models with different heights up to 50 stories were analyzed. The finite element software ETABS (version 16.0.3) was used to analyze reinforced concrete building models.
The study reveals that the percentage increase in buildings' sway and drift due to P-Delta effects are nearly constant for specific building height irrespective of the seism
... Show MoreBackground: Thrombasthenia is an inherited genetic disorder affecting platelets, which is characterized by spontaneous muco-cutaneous bleeding and abnormally prolonged bleeding in response to injury or trauma. Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the diagnosis and treatment of thrombasthenia in Children Welfare Teaching Hospital. Type of the study: A cross-sectional study. Methods: This descriptive study was performed on 66 patients with thrombasthenia from the first of October 2013 till the first of July 2015.The diagnosis of the disease was done by a wide spectrum of characteristics including family history, clinical manifestations, laboratory tests.. Results: The common manifestations of the disease at time of diagnosis wer
... Show MoreIn light of this, attention should be paid to tax reform as part of a comprehensive economic reform program. Therefore, the research started from the problem of the weak efficiency of the tax reform process in the General Authority for Taxation, as well as the need to know the addition of new taxes or increase taxes.The research aims study the relative importance of each disabled person, whether organizational, human, financial, legislative or technical. The research led to a number of conclusions, the most important of which were that the financial obstacles occupy the highest importance of the other obstacles and for the success of the tax reform, the material resources must be provided in order to provide the n
... Show MoreIn Australia, most of the existing buildings were designed before the release of the Australian standard for earthquake actions in 2007. Therefore, many existing buildings in Australia lack adequate seismic design, and their seismic performance must be assessed. The recent earthquake that struck Mansfield, Victoria near Melbourne elevated the need to produce fragility curves for existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Australia. Fragility curves are frequently utilized to assess buildings’ seismic performance and it is defined as the demand probability surpassing capacity at a given intensity level. Numerous factors can influence the results of the fragility assessment of RC buildings. Among the most important factors that can affe
... Show MoreIn the present work, a set of indoor Radon concentration measurements was carried out in a number of rooms and buildings of Science College in the University of Mustansiriyah for the first time in Iraq using RAD-7 detector which is an active method for short time measuring compared with the passive method in solid state nuclear track detectors (SSNTD's). The results show that, the Radon concentrations values vary from 9.85±1.7 Bq.m-3 to 94.21±34.7 Bq.m-3 with an average value 53.64±26 Bq.m-3 which is lower than the recommended action level 200-300 Bq/m3 [ICRP, 2009].
The values of the annual effective dose (A.E.D) vary from 0.25 mSv/y to 2.38 mSv/y, with an average value 1.46±0.67 mSv/y which is lower than the recommended the rang
In light of increasing demand for energy consumption due to life complexity and its requirements, which reflected on architecture in type and size, Environmental challenges have emerged in the need to reduce emissions and power consumption within the construction sector. Which urged designers to improve the environmental performance of buildings by adopting new design approaches, Invest digital technology to facilitate design decision-making, in short time, effort and cost. Which doesn’t stop at the limits of acceptable efficiency, but extends to the level of (the highest performance), which doesn’t provide by traditional approaches that adopted by researchers and local institutions in their studies and architectural practices, limit
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