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Research On Structural Equation Modelling Of The Risk Assessment Of Chinese Construction Firms In Africa

Posted on:2018-10-20Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:MartinFull Text:PDF
GTID:1319330533967107Subject:Structural engineering
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The Chinese Construction Industry has been developed rapidly for three decades.With the continuous growth of strength,the Chinese construction companies take quite large shares in the international market.Recently,the Chinese construction companies played important roles in African market.They contributed a lot for the local infrastructural construction.Although they obtain their set goals and achievements,there are contradictions and problems occurring.The construction project risk,which is particularly to be concerned,is one of them.Statistics makes it vivid that every construction project is flooded with possible hazards or risks at every stage of the construction.This is even more precarious when engineers and contractors are in a terrain foreign to them in terms of weather conditions,standards and codes,topographical features and cultural discrepancies.The main motivation of the thesis is trying to find critical risks involved for the Chinese construction firms in Africa.The win-win objective is to make the Chinese construction firms relevantly thriving,profiting and suited for Africa,whilst ensuring that construction and sustainable development is being advanced in Africa.In order to thoroughly understand the opinions,attitudes,trend judgements and suggestions,a questionnaire has been designed based on literature review in this study.A total of 617 questionnaires were administered in Ghana to both Chinese firms and Ghanaian consultants and contractors out of which 512 valid responses were received representing a response rate of 83%.The statistical data was processed using Excel and SPSS to indicate key-point groups and risk variables structures.Besides,there were two main case studies in Ghana,one which outlines the oil drilling and gas project by Chinese firms and the other relates to Bui dam project.It is attempting to analyze risk problem and frustration in the former case and to evaluate the environmental risk influence in the later one.The SEM method is normally adopted to express the risk assessment and to show the basic correlations between various evaluation factors relevant to the risk assessment model.There are a lot of causal effects that lead to various threats in construction which cannot be pin-pointed by mere survey.For this reason SEM approach was adopted to precipitate latent causes of risks and threats in the construction industry.The model was ratified by several model fit indexes such as Chi-Square,CFI,RMSEA,and SRMR together with various parametric estimates.Five different factors were extracted and presented in the final model.These were the Social and Language Factors;Technical and Communication Factors;Legal Factors;Management Factors;Political Policy Factors.These factors according to the results of the study were the main key indicators of constructional instability and drawbacks in Africa.This new approach using SPPS and AMOS programs for SEM method to identify risk in construction for Africa shows the results obtained on PCLOSE for the model to be 0.565,showing that RMSEA is 0.049 and that the null hypothesis(H0)can be accepted.The null hypothesis is supported and validates that Chinese Construction firms in Africa are affected by specific factors which are moderated by observable or latent indicators.When the Bartlett‘s test p-value,is less than 0.001,it is said to be significant therefore not an identity matrix.The result of the Goodness-of-fit test for Maximum Likelihood model indicated whether or not the factor analysis model fits the data for the study.Relatively large significance values indicated a reasonably good fit of the model to the observed data.The significance value of 0.233 in the analysis indicated a considerably good fit for the data used.The study showed critical key risk factors like the Social and Language factors with significant indicators to wastage of materials by workers(S3 in SEM model)in various fields.Having identified this as a serious risk factor,more stringent measures could be taken especially in places where they may have been overlooked in previous construction engagements.Resettlement and rehabilitation of people(S8)was identified as critical from the model.An issue like this can take a big toll on the government and construction if it not speedily addressed.Some local people being resettled because of a construction project may demand unreasonable conditions which may not augur well for the development plan of the locality.Difficulty in communication with local workers(S4)is revealed in the model as highly significant but with an inverse relationship.The results also show that most of the people working with the Chinese in Africa do not ascertain that communication is a threat to their work and that there is an easy flow of information between the locals and the Chinese.Generally,the results from the study will help to resolve a lot of issues related to measurement of both latent and observable factors which leads to diverse hazards in African.The study will also be useful for analyzing and investigating the hypothesized relationships between different factors that may influence performance of international joint ventures.The risk factors displayed in this research can primarily be used in supporting data for many other research development studies in the area of construction,risk analysis and African development studies.
Keywords/Search Tags:Structural Equation Model, Risk, Confirmatory Factor analysis, Construction, Engineering firms, China, Africa, Ghana
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