Subashini Suresh

By Subashini Suresh, Chike Oduoza and Suresh Renukappa

The need for leadership in the construction industry has been greater due to the fact that health and safety has become an important business tool to reduce accidents to save lives and minimise injuries. This chapter demonstrates the importance and role of leadership for manging risks associated with health and safety aspects in small construction companies. A case study of an Italian family run small construction company is investigated and reported. A diagnostic tool Leadership and Worker Involvement toolkit was administrated in the company. The toolkit had assessment levels (walking, running and sprinting). Analysis showed the company was at walking and running stages in various aspects. But the leadership aspiration of the company was to reach the ?sprinting? stage as a long-term target and sustain it to minimise health and safety risk. A holistic approach was developed to achieve the leadership aspirations of the company. In conclusion, the role of leadership in small companies is to understand the importance of H&S aspects and develop strategies which are then embedded in the processes of the companies to minimise H&S risks for their sustainability and competitiveness. This chapter is beneficial for professional at site, project and programme level and for leadership team.

Part of the book: Risk Management Treatise for Engineering Practitioners

By Suresh Renukappa, Subashini Suresh, Saeed Al Nabt, Redouane Sarrakh and Khaled Algahtani

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) government aims to reduce fiscal deficit by improving efficiency, reducing costs, as well as its subsidies. This often calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge. Therefore, knowledge assets must be properly managed to provide an environment for well-informed decisions. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the critical success factors (CSFs) for effective implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) strategies in the KSA public sector organisations. Semi-structured interviews with 42 public sector directors and managers were conducted. Nine key CSFs were revealed. The association between the identified factors is established by employing an interpretive structural modelling methodology. The Matrix of Cross-Impact Multiplications Applied to Classification analysis is carried out for identifying the factors having high influential power. The results indicated that ‘leadership’ and ‘organisational culture’ are the most significant critical success factors having highest driving power. The chapter concludes that leadership plays a key role in implementing KM strategies in the KSA. Leadership is about preparing organisation with a KM vision and values. The findings of this research provide valuable insight and guidance which will help the public sector decision makers to accomplish KM strategies effectively.

Part of the book: Harnessing Knowledge, Innovation and Competence in Engineering of Mission Critical Systems