In the last twenty years, civil engineering industry has been improved significantly due to the expanded use of technology and innovations in project management. This progress represented as a challenge to universities to provide competence engineers with the right capabilities to be fit in the new job requirements and able to lead this industry to the new era. As this problem considered a global issue, it has a particular situation in Iraq. This resulted from the sharp change in the Iraqi construction industry after recent political change in 2003. This study aims to investigate the current industry expectation from graduated civil engineers and compare it with actual competences that engineers learned from their study in Iraqi universities. This research implements both a qualitative and quantitative approach to collect valuable and reliable data. This has been achieved by sending an online questionnaire to senior engineers working for both public and private organizations. In addition, another set of questions send to students to evaluate their knowledge to identify the gap. This study identified a considerable gap between current civil engineering education and industry expectation, which mainly resulted in project management skills. This gap needs to be addressed in the near future to make sure that Iraqi civil engineers maintain their chances to get hired from foreign companies and be able to lead the Iraqi construction industry to the global market.

This study shows the torsional conduct of aggregate streaming beams of reinforced concrete recycling. Pure torsion was perceived for 15 reinforced concrete beams containing recycled concrete aggregates. The beams were grouped into five lengths and cross-sectional groups. The study’s principal parameters were the various percentages of longitudinal steel reinforcement and the proportions of recycled aggregates. The beams were purely twisted until failure and investigated for torsional and crack behaviour. The findings show that the beams with maximum steel enhancement and standard aggregate exhibited maximum cracking power and ultimate torsional strength. Recycled aggregates increased the presence of splitting and the ultimate strength, and the effects of steel strengthening in recycled beams were apparent. In a second analysis, the whole torsional reaction of the beams was analytically predicted. A soft truss model was used and matched with test results for standard beams. A strong compromise was generally reached.

The construction industry has a multifaceted relationship with most sectors of the economy in all nations, as well as playing a vital role in social and economic development. One of the main factors that affect the development of the construction industry is labour productivity. The aim of this paper is to identify and rank the importance of the factors perceived in the literature to influence labour productivity in the Iraqi construction industry using Basra city as a case study. From the literature a total of 59 main factors were identified that may affect labour productivity on construction sites. These factors were classified into ten primary groups: (1) Managerial; (2) Environmental; (3) Manpower; (4) materials and equipment; (5) Schedule; (6) Safety; (7) Quality; (8) Motivation; (9) Technical; (10) External. The statistical analysis of these factors was prepared by using the Relative Importance Index (RII) and SPSS 23 programme. The grades obtained made it possible to assess the comparative importance of the factors as perceived by respondents.  The study provides comprehensive and explicit data for the construction contractors working in Iraq before providing the proposal for the bids taking in account the risks and the challenges mentioned in the study. Also it observed that the Iraqi government authority enforcement is essential to ensure that the construction labour productivity is fulfilled without losing in time and money. A structured questionnaire survey was sent to construction project managers, as a target group and the results showed in order to improve labour productivity in Basra city in particular and in Iraq in general. The results are show that the ten essential factors affect on construction labour productivity with different level of importance. In addition, all types of corruption must be considered to be serious problems affecting labour productivity.  Enforcement, conduct education and training for manpower by using new techniques are decreasing the difference between estimated and actual labour productivity.