Assessment of the types of public building maintenance contracts in Saudi Arabia

The study revealed that Fixed Price, Cost Plus and Purchased Labour contracts are the top three maintenance contracts adopted whilst Unit Price, Cost Plus A Percentage Fee contracts are alternatives used in the Kingdom. Some other types of maintenance contract were thought to be inappropriate by ministry departments.     

Face relighting using discriminative 2D spherical spaces for face recognition

As part of the face recognition task in a robust security system, we propose a novel approach for the illumination recovery of faces with cast shadows and specularities. Given a single 2D face image, we relight the face object by extracting the nine spherical harmonic bases and the face spherical illumination coefficients by using the face spherical spaces properties. First, an illumination training database is generated by computing the properties of the spherical spaces out of face albedo and normal values estimated from 2D training images. The training database is then discriminately divided into two directions in terms of the illumination quality and light direction of each image. Based on the generated multi-level illumination discriminative training space, we analyze the target face pixels and compare them with the appropriate training subspace using pre-generated tiles. When designing the framework, practical real-time processing speed and small image size were considered. In contrast to other approaches, our technique requires neither 3D face models nor restricted illumination conditions for the training process. Furthermore, the proposed approach uses one single face image to estimate the face albedo and face spherical spaces. In this work, we also provide the results of a series of experiments performed on publicly available databases to show the significant improvements in the face recognition rates.     

Quality practices in design organizations

Design organizations play a major role in the construction industry: they are the media that transfer the requirements of the client to the contractor and ensure that they are met. Thus they need to provide a high quality of service to ensure that their client's project achieves the best possible standards of cost, time and quality. Seventy quality practices (QP) were identified as having a bearing on the quality of service provided by the local design organizations. These quality practices were grouped into fifteen sections termed quality sections (QS). The prevalence of these practices among the local design organizations was surveyed and determined. The results indicate a significant need for improvement in the quality sections ‘working relationship’, ‘employee training and education’, and ‘performance quality audit’. The study reveals the need for the establishment of a design code, and evaluation standards for local design organizations.     

Contractors’ Views of the Potential Causes of Inconsistencies between Design and Construction in Saudi Arabia

The study identifies the causes of inconsistencies between the design and construction of large building projects. To achieve the study objectives, a questionnaire survey was carried out to collect information on potential causes of inconsistencies at the project design and construction interface. Responses from 27 contractors were analyzed. The results suggest that the involvement of designer as consultant, communication gap between constructor and designer, insufficient working drawing details, lack of coordination between parties, lack of human resources in design firm, lack of designer’s knowledge of available materials and equipment, and incomplete plans and specifications were considered as the most important causes of the project design and construction interface inconsistencies. On the other hand, project management as a professional service, weather conditions, nationalities of participants, involvement of the contractor in design conceptual phase, unforeseen problems, involvement of the contractor in design development phase, and government regulations were the least important causes of inconsistencies between professionals at the project design and construction interface in large building projects.     

Strays-insensitive switched-capacitor network realisation for nth-order voltage transfer functions

A general synthesis method is given for the realisation of nth-order voltage transfer functions in the z-domain by active SC (switched-capacitor) networks using only biphased switches, capacitors and ideal operational amplifiers. The method presented is based on signal-flow graphs and the resulting networks are completely insensitive to stray capacitances.     

Nonlocal PDE morphology: a generalized shock operator on graph

This paper presents an adaptation and extension of the shock filters on weighted graphs using the formalism of partial difference equations. This adaptation leads to new morphological operators that alternate between nonlocal dilation and nonlocal erosion filter type on graphs. Furthermore, this adaptation extends the shock filter applications to any data that can be represented by graphs. This approach is illustrated through image, data defined on region maps, and 3D point cloud processing.     

Electrothermal Monte Carlo simulation of submicron wurtzite GaN/AlGaN HEMTs

We present results from the simulation of the electrothermal behaviour of submicron wurtzite GaN/AlGaN High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs). The simulator uses an iterative procedure which couples a Monte Carlo simulation with a fast Fourier series solution of the Heat Diffusion Equation (HDE). The results demonstrate the dependence of the extent of the thermal droop observed in the I_ds-V_ds characteristics and the device peak temperature on the device bias. The paper also investigates the effect of the inclusion of thermal self-consistency on the device microscopic properties and studies the dependence of the device electrothermal characteristics on the type of substrate material used.