Category Of Projects Research Articles

Dynamic planning of earthmoving projects using system dynamics

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a dynamic planning model for earth moving operations through capturing the operations context level (scope change, skill level, etc.). Method Uncertainties, scope, and changes in project condition call for dynamic modeling of earthmoving operations. Static planning and scheduling methods such as CPM and PERT neglect – and are incapable of – considering project dynamics and causal-effect loops that exist between project variables. In an effort to address this challenge, system dynamic modeling and simulation is utilized in this research to plan and simulate earth moving operations. The developed model consists of three modules: (i) a work flow module that focuses on work execution from excavating the material until dumping it as demonstrated in; (ii) a resource module that captures the resources’ interactions and estimates the required resources based on the variables governing the site condition and management requirement; and (iii) a cost module that estimates associated costs with project’s operations. Results & Discussion The model was tested using a real case from Marzouk and Moselhi. The model outputs demonstrate that including the project context variables and their cause-effect loops to the planning stage of this category of projects improves the planning process. The developed system dynamic model is expected to enhance project modelling; capturing the interactivity among its variables to provide more realistic modelling for its schedule and cost. It also can assist members of project teams to predict a variety of likely scenarios and develop suitable action plans.

Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas

Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas

Regional transport challenges within the Southern African Development Community and their implications for economic integration and development

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) seeks to deepen economic integration among its members through the SADC free trade area that came into effect in January 2008. The thrust for a progressive reduction of tariff and no-tariff barriers, which the market integration model emphasises, has serious implications for the impact of transport and communication systems on economic integration and development within SADC. Transport and communications systems have an important bearing on economic integration and development because they can be significant non-tariff barriers. The SADC Protocol on Transport, Communications and Meteorology is the instrument through which transport and communications constraints are to be addressed. Through this protocol, some institutions have been established and others proposed to ensure that projects designed to deepen economic integration and development are implemented effectively. The neo-functional integration approach is a relevant theoretical framework for analysing transport and communications issues and for implementing joint sectoral projects in areas that impact on overcoming development-related deficiencies in production and infrastructure. Transport and communications fall in this category of projects and the SADC region has benefited from functional co-operation in this sector. As integration proceeds, polarisation of industries could occur, raising concerns about the distributional effects of economic integration as this affects development. However, polarisation is not inevitable: it depends on transport costs. This might seriously address transport and communications constraints because, if these are greatly reduced and eventually removed, weaker SADC countries need not lose industries to the core with the SADC Free Trade Area in place.

Finance‐based CPM/LOB scheduling of projects with repetitive non‐serial activities

Projects of repetitive non‐serial activities constitute a major category of construction projects which can be scheduled more conveniently using the line of balance (LOB) technique. Generally, scheduling activities such that the expenditures are always in balance with the available cash is a must to devise financially feasible schedules. The objective is to integrate a CPM/LOB model for a project of repetitive non‐serial activities with a cash flow model and utilize the integrated model to devise financially feasible schedules. The genetic algorithms (GAs) technique is employed to maximize the profit at the end of the project under the constraints of available cash. The optimization of the integrated models was demonstrated using an example project of 15 activities carried out at five units. The CPM/LOB model was validated against the results of a dynamic programming model in the literature and further by conducting a sensitivity analysis of the results of the integrated model. Finally, the model offers an effective financial planning tool for projects of repetitive non‐serial activities.

Genetic Suppressors and Recovery of Repressed Biochemical Memory

Many of the Reflections articles in this journal have focused on particular biological problems that the authors have devoted their careers to or on particular techniques that have facilitated their biological studies. Although I began my career as a biochemist, one of the most common threads to my research has been the exploitation of a genetic approach, the analysis of suppressor mutations. Particularly in the last 20 years, the success of this approach has led me into biological problems that required a remembering or relearning of my early training in biochemistry. This article will describe the voyage from chemistry and biochemistry to genetics and then to a recovery of remnants of my biochemical memory. As a graduate student working under Lowell Hager at Harvard in the late 1950s, my thesis research was chemical and biochemical, as I performed the chemical synthesis and studied the biosynthesis of the chlorinated mold product caldariomycin (2,2-dichloro-1,3-cyclopentanediol) (1–3). With his postdoctoral fellow Paul Shaw, Lowell had discovered an enzyme, chloroperoxidase, that was capable of utilizing chloride ion to chlorinate organic compounds (4). Part of my work was to determine how this enzyme might be involved in the biosynthesis of caldariomycin. Apparently, the work became somewhat well known. This I learned when, toward the end of my Ph.D. work, I attended a FASEB meeting in Atlantic City to give a short presentation. As I walked into the conference center on the first day, a scientist passing by me stopped to look at my badge, hesitated a moment, and then commented “Beckwith... hmmm, oh yes, I remember... chlorination!” Despite this really quite limited chemical/biochemical notoriety, I became more and more fascinated by bacterial genetics in graduate school. I proceeded to do postdoctoral work in several bacterial genetics laboratories.

Project management can help to reduce costs and improve quality in health care services

Health care spending has increased steadily over the last 50 years, but there is a consensus that this trend cannot continue indefinitely. The ideal solution would bring about cost reductions coupled with improvements in quality, but this has remained an elusive goal. In this article, a novel idea is proposed that consists of adopting a project type of production in health care, instead of the current mass production methods used in the modern 'health care factories'. The author demonstrates that health care services in general, and medical services in particular, fit the category of projects. This is accomplished through a comprehensive study of the main features of projects and medical services and a comparative analysis. The author infers that the productivity gains brought by project management to so many other human endeavours can be brought to health care. It is also claimed that if project management is adopted in health care, then physicians would be the natural project managers because of their proficiency with the casuistic method (one-off, non-repetitive production) and because of their experience in 'managing' their patient's cases that is indeed what doctors have been doing for as long as their profession exists.

The market reaction to capital expenditure announcements

The theory of the firm regards investment decisions as one of the fundamental and central activities of the modern firm. The normative aspect of the theory claims that firm resources should be allocated to value-creating positive NPV projects. The current literature has mostly focused on managerial behaviour in advanced economies and has reported evidence that shareholder wealth is positively affected when firms make capital spending decisions (Woolridge (1988) and McConnell and Muscarella (1985)). Recent work by La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishney (2002) and Shleifer and Vishney (1997) document that corporate environments in emerging economies differ quite significantly from those in advanced economies. Claessens, Djankov, and Lang (2000) also report that many emerging markets are dominated by companies which have high ownership / asset concentration, and which are large in size and function as conglomerates. Berger and Ofek (1995) suggest that greater agency costs are incurred when firms engage in conglomeration. Accepting negative net present value projects and misallocating resources toward inefficient divisions are a manifestation of these agency costs, which negatively impact firm value (Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Mansi and Reeb (2002)). Insights from the published literature imply that these problems are likely to be more severe for firms that are operating in countries with majority share ownership and asset concentration, suggesting that the nature of managerial decisions made in emerging economies require empirical examination. This paper has three aims. The first is to conduct an event study of capital investment announcements to measure whether the investment decisions of South African companies are consistent with the goal of maximizing shareholder wealth. The second aim is motivated by a unique attribute of the South African economy. In addition to being classified as an emerging market, the South African economy is also dominated by large groups of holding companies, which are highly diversified (Castle and Kantor, 2000). Many of these conglomerates are managed by founding families and their descendents (Kantor, 2001). It has been reported that many local companies stray from their core activities into diversifications that lack any business logic (Gerson, 1992). In light of these important characteristics of the South African business structure, this paper also examines whether the wealth effects of capital expenditure announcements differ between diversified firms and focused firms. The third aim of this paper is to investigate whether the market reaction to capital expenditure announcements varies with the category of projects being announced, as well as other characteristics of the investment and the company making the announcement.

Public Funding and Broadband: Distortion of Competition or Recognition of Policy Failure?

Several local or regional authorities around Europe are currently deploying alternative telecom infrastructure or are seriously thinking of doing so. This is an interesting phenomenon. Only a few years ago, the European Union was adopting legislation liberalizing the telecommunications sector on the premise that private sector investment will deliver much better services and innovation to European consumers than state owned monopolies. Is this assumption still valid or do these projects demonstrate that there may still be some parts of the value chain where public sector intervention is necessary? The article describes a number of cases of publicly funded broadband projects that have been notified to the European Commission and the Commission's assessment of these cases. The article divides these cases in two main categories that of publicly funded infrastructure projects and that of publicly funded end to end broadband services and discusses the Commission's approach with regard to each category of projects. Finally the article highlights the evolution in the Commission's thinking and provides some comments on these decisions as well as some suggestions for a different approach.

User Collaboration in Open Source Software Development

Open source development is labelled with free source, fast evolution and extensive user collaboration. Previous studies primarily touched on user activities in a few well‐known open source projects but lack the empirical data to represent important issues facing the open source development community. This paper reports on a survey‐based study that investigated user collaboration in open source development. Among the many interesting results, we found open source users themselves to be very experienced software developers. They are highly motivated to make their own contributions, work closely with developers on various tasks, and use electronic communication tools extensively. Users with different development experience and contributing to different category of projects tend to exhibit different motivations and behaviours. These findings confirm the differences between traditional and open source user collaboration and their implications for future open source evolution and management are given and discus...

Determinants of knowledge management technology projects in Australian law firms

Information technology support for knowledge management can be classified into four categories of knowledge management technology projects. The first category of projects is concerned with end user tools that are made available to knowledge workers, the second category is information about who knows what, the third category is information from knowledge workers, and the final category is information systems solving knowledge problems. This paper reports results from an empirical study of law firms in Australia. While current projects in most firms were concerned with end user tools, few firms had projects storing information about who knows what, some firms were storing what they know, and few firms were implementing systems solving knowledge problems. Discriminant analysis indicates that firm size in terms of number of lawyers and IT department size in terms of number of IT personnel are significant determinants of category of knowledge management technology projects in each firm.

On the “Geotechical Category of Construction Projects”

The concept of the “Geotechnical category of a construction project” has arisen as a result of the development by representatives of 11 European countries of a document regulating problems of the geomechanics, surveys, design, and installation of beds and underground structures. We have developed a regulation for use of this concept in practice involving domestic standardization, design, and installation of beds, foundations, and underground structures.

Estimation of project total cost and duration for housing projects in the U.K.

There are a number of variables which act individually and in combination to influence project total cost and duration. The extent of the effect of these variables is dependent on the nature of the project. A project is defined in terms of its constituent variables. This paper is concerned with a variety of project definitions within the category of housing projects in the U.K. The most influential variables are examined and, in quantified terms, the extent of the relationship between these variables and project total cost and duration is determined. To this end, two separate models are developed and proposed for the estimation of project cost and duration. While the model for the latter encompasses the former as a variable, the model for the estimation of project cost is independent from project duration.

Software development productivity of European space, military, and industrial applications

The identification, combination, and interaction of the many factors which influence software development productivity makes the measurement, estimation, comparison and tracking of productivity rates very difficult. Through the analysis of a European Space Agency database consisting of 99 software development projects from 37 companies in a European countries, the paper seeks to provide significant and useful Information about the major factors which influence the productivity of European space, military, and industrial applications, as well as to determine the best metric for measuring the productivity of these projects. Several key findings emerge from the study. The results indicate that some organizations are obtaining significantly higher productivity than others. Some of this variation is due to the differences in the application category and programming language of projects in each company; however, some differences must also be due to the ways in which these companies manage their software development projects. The use of tools and modern programming practices were found to be major controllable factors in productivity improvement. Finally, the lines-of-code productivity metric is shown to be superior to the process productivity metric for projects in the authors' database.

Modeling Work Space to Schedule Repetitive Floors in Multistory Buildings

Multistory buildings are in a category of projects, termed linear or repetitive projects, that involve considerable repetitive activities performed consecutively by the same crew. Current available network techniques and linear scheduling methods mainly consider technological constraints and resource requirements in the generation of schedules for repetitive work. Such techniques and methods ignore requirements of activities for work space necessary for material storage and movement of manpower and equipment. Ignoring such requirements will increase conflicts among the different trades, decrease productivity, impact safety, and may lengthen project durations. To acknowledge work‐space constraints in the scheduling process, one first needs to identify and evaluate the different parameters that characterize work space. Once these parameters are defined, scheduling decisions can be formulated to generate a work sequence based on these parameters. This paper describes a model to define and quantify work‐space demand and availability parameters for repetitive floors in multistory buildings. A scheduling procedure to implement these parameters for sequencing repetitive work is discussed. Work continuity issues and variable crew‐productivity rates associated with scheduling this type of construction are also considered.

Meeting Needs with Scarce Resources: Community Network Building for Low-incidence Conditions

Meeting Needs with Scarce Resources: Community Network Building for Low-incidence Conditions

Higher education projects

In modern society, the number of projects increases because of the rapid development of economy, science, culture, and education as well as the fierce competition on the market. Two great projects, i.e. '211 project' and '985 project', have been set up in higher education of China. Higher education projects are then given more attention and have become a new issue of great concern. The definition, category, item, feature and characteristics of higher education projects are discussed in this paper within the framework of the theory of modern project management. The paper aims at the introduction of theory and methodology concerning the management of projects of higher education in China.

The New Role of the Government in Britain

IT IS probable that no aspect of British public activity has received as much attention outside the country during the years following World War II as the nationalization program. Indeed so many sensational accounts have been broadcast that there seems to be a widespread belief that virtually all economic enterprises have been taken over by the government or at least are about to be so acquired. Consequently the role of free enterprise is supposed to be very small indeed in present-day Britain. It is not easy to get a clear picture of the situation, but it is interesting to note that the official statement made by the Labor Party representative in charge of nationalization plans, Mr. Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Council and Deputy Prime Minister, was to the effect that 80 per cent of industry would remain in private hands.1 Nationalization is a term which is variously defined. Some persons, for example, regard virtually every domestic program of the British Labor Party as coming under nationalization: the National Health Service, the National Insurance Scheme, the Agricultural Act of 1946, and the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. Indeed there are those who would include even the Education Act of 1944 in this category.2 It is doubtless true that much of the political philosophy which is embodied in the activities enumerated may be more or less closely related to the taking over of the coal mines, the acquisition of the transport facilities, and the transfer of the gas works to national ownership. However, it hardly seems accurate to include such programs, even if related, in the strict category of nationalization projects. At least for purposes of this paper discussion of nationalization will be limited to the taking over of industrial enterprises by the government. Used in this sense the most recent nationalization programs include the coal mines, the railroads, inland water transport, air transport, long distance bus and truck lines, electricity facilities, and gas works. In addition the Labor Party has committed itself to the nationalization of the iron and steel industry.3 It might also be proper to mention on the list of previously nationalized undertakings, but without discussion in this paper, the British Broadcasting Corporation created by Royal Charter in 1927, and the Bank of England, though the remainder of the banks