https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/5787 JOAE Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:03:37 GMT 2026-04-08T12:03:37Z https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/8725 RISK ANALYSIS OF CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF CONTRACTORS De Silva, AK; Kumanayake, RP Construction industry plays a central role in economic and social development of Sri Lanka. As construction projects are inherently risk prone, risk management is a key area in construction project management. Risks can impact project scope, budget, timeline, and resources. Despite its importance, not many studies in the area are available in Sri Lankan context. With objectives of studying risk parameters and risk factors affecting construction projects in Sri Lanka, identifying existing risk prevention and mitigation measures, and recommending appropriate strategies to improve current risk management practices, this study considered the perspective of construction contractors. Study sample was selected from contractors registered in Construction Industry Development Authority (CIDA) using stratified random sampling method. Data was collected via a structured questionnaire. Industry professionals were interviewed to obtain feedback on risk parameters and risk factors most relevant for Sri Lanka. All categories of contractors identified financial risks as the most critical. By referring to Risk Assessment Matrix, criticalness of risks and urgency for taking appropriate actions can be identified. For small scale contractors, the extreme risks included cost overruns, delayed payments and poor resource management, which indicated need for immediate improvements. For large and medium scale contractors, impact and frequency of all risk factors were found to be in high and moderate region, which require improvements at some point. Applying best practices of similar previous projects was considered as the highest ranking risk preventive measure, while improving coordination among all parties concerned and effective supervision were identified as the best mitigation measures. Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/8725 2023-09-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/8724 INFLUENCE OF SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF A COUNTRY- A CASE STUDY Malkanthi, SN; Silva, RPV Sustainable construction is one of the most important attributes in developing countries to achieve sustainable development. This research aims to investigate the importance of the use of sustainable aspects during construction towards sustainable development in a country. There are two main objectives namely: to identify the factors of sustainable construction as indicators for sustainable development measurement and to investigate the contribution of sustainable construction practices to environmental, social and economic development. Through a comprehensive literature review, 39 factors related to sustainable construction were identified under the eight main criteria based on the green rating system of the Green Building Council, Sri Lanka. The contribution of those identified factors to three themes of sustainable development, namely: environmental, social and economic was investigated through the responses collected using a questionnaire survey. Respondents cover CS2 to C4 grade construction companies via physical and google questionnaire forms. The sample size was taken based on the purposive sampling method. 122 responses were collected and those were analyzed using the Relative Importance Index (RII). According to the results, Material and Resources (MR), Water Reuse (WR), Energy (E), and Innovation and Innovative Aspect (IA) categories mostly contributed to economic development. Effective Land Use (LU) and Management Aspect (MA) mostly contributed to environmental development. The other two categories, Social and Cultural Awareness (SC) and Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ) mostly contributed to social development. Further, all the factors under Energy category have significantly contributed to economic development compared to other factors in all other categories. Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/8724 2023-09-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/8723 LID ORIENTATION SYSTEM FOR PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTION LINE Dissanayake, PRA; Sriyarathna, OL; Perera, PSJM; Dissanayake, MCP; de Silva, FBYR The pharmaceutical industry renders services to people so that it fulfils their health and hygienic needs. The State Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Corporation (SPMC) of Sri Lanka plays a major role in the manufacturing and distribution of medicine within the island. The process of packing and handling medicine must be properly addressed to prevent and control communicable and non-communicable diseases. The manufactured pills need to be packed and placed in anodized pill dispensers. This research is an approach to enhance the efficiency and productivity of a production line in the SPMC by designing and implementing an automated lid orienting process to the existing bottle cleaning machine. SPMC’s lidorienting and cleaning processes are done manually, which require high amount of manual labour. Further, the current process has many inaccuracies. To address this problem, a lid orienting mechanism was introduced to the existing bottle-cleaning process for lid-cleaning as a changeover process, which has a cleaning rate of 52 lids per minute, and an increased efficiency up to 10.93% compared to the manual system. Further, a comparison of the efficiency and cost between conventional and developed system was conducted. In addition, the payback period was calculated to conclude the cost-effectiveness of the developed system to the existing SPMC production line. Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/8723 2023-09-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/8722 PIEZOELECTRIC ENERGY HARVESTING USING FOOTSTEPS Withana, Anuji; Samarakoon, Sharadha; Amarasuriya, Hashini; Peiris, Bumindi; Lucas, Rohan The need for sustainable green energy is increasing. This has brought the use of human locomotion in harvesting alternative renewable energy to the forefront. The mechanical stress exerted on the ground when walking can be used as a source for electrical energy generation, in particular using a piezoelectric material. The piezo-electric material is electrically neutral as long as no stress is applied, but once a mechanical stress is applied, the balance is disturbed resulting in an external electric field, namely the piezoelectric effect. This paper presents a portable floor tile structure - StepGen, designed using piezoelectric plates to harvest the energy from human footsteps. Two major prototypes are presented, namely a rod-tap mechanism and a wheel-tap mechanism. The rod-tap mechanism uses a vertical rod array to strike the plates simultaneously and provides an average output of 1 mW per step with an approximate walking frequency of one-step per second. The wheel-tap vibration mechanism uses a chain system to rotate an array of wheels arranged on a shaft. Each wheel taps a plate simultaneously and provides an average power output of 5 mW at the same walking speed. The work demonstrates the feasibility of using piezoelectric technology for harvesting electrical energy and enhances the possibility of using improved piezoelectric material in the field of renewable micro energy. Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/8722 2023-09-01T00:00:00Z