This paper proposes a radical change in industry practice that will improve the quality of the construction process and the levels of customer satisfaction derived from it by evaluating the quality performance of the contractor. An alternative theory is developed of what constitutes quality, client satisfaction, performance, and their interrelationships in the context of the construction industry. It should be noted here that the term construction client includes both the owner (i.e. the agency or organization funding the project) and the end-user of the construction (i.e. the general public). A comprehensive view of construction quality is proposed that deals with both the service (as received by the owner) and product (as received by the end-user) aspects of the construction project as well as the corporate quality culture. Such a dissection of construction activity facilitates developing strategies to define, operationalize, measure and improve construction quality. A frame4 work for the assessment of a contractor's quality performance is established. This involves gathering a list of contractor quality performance (CQP) indicators that are derived from various quality-related practices of the contractor at the corporate and project level. Finally, a contractor quality performance (CQP) evaluation model is introduced that can be used in a contractor prequalification and/or selection system. The CQP indicators are operationalized within the theoretical framework of the CQP evaluation model.Contractor Quality Performance, Quality Control, Quality Assurance, Prequalification, Contractor Selection,

No abstract

To assess quality of health services in Zanjan health centres based on clients' expectations and perceptions. The study was conducted by using service quality (SERVQUAL) scale on a sample of 300 females, clients of health care centres in the district of Zanjan, selected by cluster sampling. The results indicated that there were negative quality gaps at five SERVQUAL dimensions. The most and least negative quality gap mean scores were in reliability dimension (-2.1) and tangible (-1.13) respectively. There was statistically significant difference between clients' perceptions and expectations mean scores at all of the five service quality dimensions (P<0.001). The negative quality gap level in health service dimensions can be used as a guideline for redistribution of resources and managerial attempts to reduce quality gaps and improvement of health care quality.

Background: Soil and effluent of lead and zinc industries contain high concentration of cadmium. The present study was conducted to isolate tolerant fungal strains from cadmium -polluted sites in Zanjan province, Iran.

No abstract

Currently bridges are evaluated using either a visual inspection process or a detailed structural analysis. When bridge evaluation is conducted by a visual inspection, a subjective rating is assigned to a bridge component. With analytical evaluation, the rating is computed based on the load applied and the resistance of the bridge component. There have been several attempts to correlate the subjective rating to the analytical rating. The conventional statistical analyses, as well as methods based on fuzzy logic, have not been very successful in providing a clear relationship between the two rating systems. This paper describes the application of neural network systems in developing the relation between subjective ratings and bridge parameters as well as that between subjective and analytical ratings. It is shown that neural networks can be trained and used successfully in estimating a rating based on bridge parameters. The specific application problem for railroad bridges in the commuter rail system in the Chicago metropolitan area is presented. The study showed that a successful training of a network can be achieved, especially if the input data set contains parameters with a diverse combination of intercorrelation coefficients. When the relationship between the bridge subjective rating and bridge parameters was investigated, the network had a prediction rating of about 73%. The study also investigated the relation between the subjective and an- * To whom correspondence should be addressed. alytical rating. In this case, the prediction rate was about 43%. Compared with conventional statistical methods and the fuzzy-logic approach, the neural network system had a much better performance ratio in establishing the relation between the bridge rating and bridge parameters.

No abstract

No abstract