الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The continued increase in the number of population and the urgent need for replacement and renovation of utility networks (water, sewage and communications .... etc) in Egypt, which needs to resort to non-destructive waysand therefore of the best ways to achieve this are trenchless technology methods, The National Research Council of Canada reported that rehabilitation ofmunicipal water systems between 1997 and 2012 would cost $28 billion (NRC, 2004).With the rapid increase of new installations, the need for replacement and repair of pipeutilities and also the demand for trenchless excavation methods, increase. This must bedone with minimum disruption to public. One alternative to reduce disruption is to use Micro-tunneling (MT) for new pipe installation scenarios. Consequently,contractors, engineers, and decision makers are facing continuous challenges regarding toestimation of execution time and cost of new pipe installations, while using MT. This isbecause productivity prediction and consequently the cost estimation of MTinvolve alarge number of objective and subjective factors that need to be considered. It is wellknown that prediction of both productivity and cost is an important process inestablishing and employing management strategies for a construction operation. Thiscalls for the need of developing a dedicated MT productivity model that meets presentday requirements of this area of construction industry, There are two main objectives of the current research. The first objective is to identify thefactors that affect productivity of MT operations. The second objective is to develop aproductivity prediction equation to calculate the MT Equipment performance ratio as a Preliminary Study. To achieve these twoobjectives a thorough literature review was carried out. Thereafter, data on potentialfactors on productivity were collected from MT experts across Abu Dhabi- United Arab Emirates. Following data collection, the current research identified managerial, mechanical,environmental and pipe physical conditions parameters, Analytical Hierarchy Process(AHP) technique was used to classify and rank these factors according to their relativeimportance.SPSS software (Multiple Regression Analysis) is employed to develop MT productivity prediction equation for MT Equipment performance ratio. The following sixteen factors were finally selected as inputs of the model to bedeveloped: Operator Efficiency, Labors Efficiency,Project specification and conditions, Management efficiency,Equipment age, Equipment Efficiency,Separation equipment Efficiency,Slurry flow rate, Cutter head shape efficiency, Equipment torque, use of intermediate jacking station, Jetting,Soil V classification,Ground water level,Pipe section length and shaft design, Pipe diameter. Finally the program output was got an equation to calculate the MT Equipment performance ratio as a Preliminary Study depends on the most effective variables as the collected real data. It was proved to be helpful for contractors, consultants and MTprofessionals in predicting execution time of MT projects duringthe preconstruction phase in the environment of imprecise and noisy inputs.