Project Characteristics Research Articles

Cooperative leadership as a condition for patient-reported rehabilitation success.

Rehabilitation is a complex intervention that takes place in a complex setting. The MeeR project (characteristics of successful rehabilitation facilities) aims to identify complex conditions of successful rehabilitation outcomes. A project with a sequential mixed-methods study design with a quantitative prestudy and a qualitative main study was applied. In the quantitative study, quality assurance data of the German Pension Insurance was used to (1) develop and compute a multifacet z-standardized outcome index based on patient-reported outcome data, (2) rank k = 273 orthopedic rehabilitation facilities comprising n = 112,895 patients and k = 86 cardiac rehabilitation institutions comprising n = 30,299 patients based on their outcome index score by means of a league table, and (3) adjust the ranking by basic patient characteristics (age, gender, diagnosis, weeks out of work prior to rehabilitation, application for pension). In the qualitative main study, k = 6 rehabilitation facilities (orthopedic and cardiac rehabilitation centers) were recruited based on the results of the quantitative analysis: three facilities that ranked top 10% and three facilities that ranked lowest 10% of the adjusted league table. All six rehabilitation facilities were visited each for 1 week by two researchers. We conducted participant observations, expert interviews with medical and administrative leaders, group discussions with rehab team members, and group discussions with patients. Subsequently, a systematic comparison of the results of the upper and lower 10% facilities was conducted to identify those characteristics that distinguished those institutions from one another. One of the three clusters of characteristics that distinguished the above and below 10% facilities related to teamwork or interdisciplinary cooperation: among others, the extent of interdisciplinary cooperation was higher in the rehabilitation facilities with a higher degree of success, the leading medical doctors were less dominant in these institutions, and there was also a more comprehensive representation of the team within team meetings, i.e., the quality and amount of interdisciplinary cooperation were higher in these institutions compared to rehabilitation facilities with a lower level of success. This project provided qualitative evidence for the role of interdisciplinary cooperation and collaborative leadership and its different facets for patient-related successful rehabilitation in orthopedic and cardiac rehabilitation. It provides valuable insights into the fabric and structure of a rehabilitation institution and a variety of target points for team development and group-leading interventions.

International volunteer projects in oral care: an inventory of successful characteristics

This study provides an overview of Dutch oral healthcare volunteer projects abroad and describes to what extent these projects meet the characteristics of a successful volunteer project. These characteristics are based on literature studies and include: preparation of the project, project goal, suitability for the specific population, general approach and scientific justification, composition of the team, sustainability of the project, ethics, external collaborations and sponsors, evaluation of the project, and safety of the volunteers. This study identified 24 Dutch volunteer projects abroad, based on a systematic search. Most of them meet the characteristics of 'project goal and suitability,' 'team composition,' and 'external collaboration and sponsoring.' The information provided for the other characteristics was incomplete, which means that no statements can be made as to the fulfillment of these requirements. These results provide insights into how existing and new volunteer projects can be (further) developed to contribute to oral healthcare in low- and middle-income countries in an effective and well-suited manner.

The mayor said so? The impact of local political figures and social norms on local responses to wind energy projects

Wind energy plays an important role in the energy transition. However, many wind energy projects result in conflicts at the local level. Mayors and local council members are key actors who can play a supportive, moderating, escalating, or mediating role in siting decisions about wind energy. Further, communities' social norms encapsulate their beliefs about what a wind energy project should be like. Alongside public expectations, these norms indicate the layers of cultural dynamics and standards of communities. Hence, this study investigates the dynamics of local responses to wind energy projects and their outcomes. This is achieved through an empirical-qualitative approach in which the experiences of four Bavarian case studies in Germany are illustrated using document analysis and in-depth interviews. The results of this study indicate that mayors play a crucial role in local responses to wind energy projects in Bavaria. Their support is necessary but not sufficient for local acceptance. Other stakeholders, next to project characteristics and communication, as well as external events, also have an impact on local responses over time. The paper concludes with lessons learned about communication and information strategies, as the study has implications for policymakers and practitioners in relation to designing and planning wind energy projects.

Dynamic-Bayesian-Network-Based Project Cost Overrun Prediction Model

One common problem in the construction industry is project cost overrun. Cost overrun can have significant impacts on financial profitability, project completion, project quality, and stakeholder satisfaction. The average percentage of construction project overrun can vary widely depending on the project type, size, complexity, and location. Many approaches can be adopted to prevent or mitigate project cost overrun, and one of them is a more accurate cost estimate and prediction. Several studies on the construction project cost overrun estimation and prediction have been conducted based on historical data; nevertheless, each project has its project characteristics and cost trend. Real-time, project-specific cost data are more reliable for forecasting the cost trend of the project itself. There are many influence factors that may interdependently affect the construction project cost overrun. This paper proposes a real-time predict cost overrun risk prediction model based on the influence factors and their interdependence as well as the corrective actions if adopted. This study used a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) to formulate problem architecture and to use the input–output hidden Markov method (I/O HMM) with particle filter (PF) to run inference. Six building and mass rapid transit projects in Taiwan were used as model validation and comparison. The posterior probabilities from the DBN-based cost overrun risk prediction model were highly consistent with the cost overrun ratios of real construction projects. Moreover, it is superior to other prediction models in terms of accuracy. The proposed model could provide project managers with an early alert for cost overrun.

Project Cost Overrun Risk Prediction Using Hidden Markov Chain Analysis

Construction project cost overrun is a common problem in the construction industry. The cost of construction projects is thought to have increased by approximately 33% on average. Several types of research on construction project cost overrun have been conducted and these generally rely on historical data. However, whilst each project has its own project characteristics and cost trend, real-time project cost data are more reliable to forecast its own cost trend. This paper proposes a real-time hidden Markov chain (HMM) model to predict cost overrun risk based on project-owned cost performance data and the corrective actions if adopted. The cost overrun events occurrence in this model was assumed to follow a Poisson arrival pattern. Real-time HMM with a particle filter was used to run the simulation. One SRC building project in Taiwan was used for model validation and comparison. The posterior probabilities from the real-time HMM model were highly consistent with the cost overrun ratios of real construction projects. The proposed cost overrun prediction model could provide an early alert of cost overruns to the project manager. Based on the survey of cost overrun risk and significantly influential factors, we propose effective cost management plans to alleviate the frequency of project cost overrun.

What Should a Good Software Requirements Specification Include? Results of a Survey

Abstract Software requirements specification is an important foundation of the software development process. It documents the requirements, expectations, and restrictions for a system to be developed. It should describe what the produced system will offer in detail and unambiguously. It should also provide a realistic basis for estimating product costs, risks, and schedules. Still, it is difficult to prepare a useful specification effectively. We want to propose an approach to creating a good specification. We started the work from scratch by determining what the scope of the specification should be. We asked people who work on IT projects what information is and should be included in the specifications with which they work. This paper presents results from a survey conducted with 163 participants who have experience working on commercial software development projects. The main observation is that the content of requirements specification differs with respect to project characteristics, such as industry or financing method. We also noticed that the information about integration with external systems and functionalities most often appears in the SRS.

Design of pre-professional pedagogical training of schoolchildren in an educational organization

The solution of the problem of teaching staff, the quality of their professional activity depends largely on the organization of pre-professional pedagogical training of schoolchildren who consciously choose the profession of a teacher and strive to achieve their goal. The article defines the concepts of "pre-professional pedagogical training", "design", examines the essence of design in an educational organization, determines its relationship with other similar concepts (modeling, design, programming, planning). The importance of pedagogical design is emphasized for the unification and development of cooperation of interested subjects (teachers, children, their parents, specialists, teachers of pedagogical universities and colleges) in the process of developing the concept and program, plans for pre-professional pedagogical training, projects providing continuous pedagogical education. The functions of design (analytical, prognostic, developing, integrating, etc.) are considered, the characteristics of projects (concept, model, program, plan, route) are proposed, the principles that must be followed in the design of pre-professional pedagogical training (forecasting, self-development, motivational support, interaction, the subjective position of adults and children in the design process are determined, technological efficiency, continuity, systematicity and cyclicity). Based on the analysis of the results of many years of experimental work, the stages of designing pre-professional training of schoolchildren focused on the teaching profession are proposed, a brief description of the actions of adults and children in the process of project development is given.

신속통합기획 정비사업 활성화를 위한 제도개선 방안 연구

This study analyzed the current status and characteristics of Seoul's improvement projects and especially the current status and cases of implementation of ‘Rapid Integrated Planning’ for the purpose of deriving institutional improvements and presenting policy directions for the vitalization of ‘Rapid Integrated Planning’. As a result of the study, the following conclusions were obtained. First, about 25,000 housing units will be supplied in Seoul through the introduction of ‘Rapid Integrated Planning’. Second, 21 ‘private redevelopment candidate sites’ were selected in the first phase of the ‘Rapid Integrated Planning’, but it took a little longer than expected by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. Third, the ‘Rapid Integrated Planning’ is promoted mainly for redevelopment project, and the participation in reconstruction project is withheld or withdrawn due to rental housing, etc. Fourth, in areas where ‘Rapid Integrated Planning’ was selected, it became possible to select a construction company after the establishment of the association. Fifth, it is necessary to improve the evaluation index reflecting the various characteristics of the target area. As described above, in order to achieve the policy goal of ‘Rapid Integrated Planning’, it is necessary to target areas in the blind spot of the improvement projects due to declining business feasibility and conflicts with residents. In addition, efforts to discover and promote institutional improvement and support systems from the perspective of residents should be supported.

Influence of Contractor Selection Criteria on Critical Success Factors of Public Project Delivery in Abuja

There are so many contractors that are not technically and managerially competent. This makes contractor selection processes an onerous task to be performed by the client. Yet, without a proper and accurate method for selecting the most appropriate contractor, the performance of the project will be affected denying clients value for money. Therefore, the study assessed the Influence of contractor selection criteria on critical success factor of public project delivery in Abuja, Nigeria using self-administered structured questionnaires to construction professionals. It was discovered that experience, financial capability, and technical capability are widely considered criteria in the selection process while all the critical success factors for project delivery are very much crucial and that procurement related factors, project stakeholders’ related factors, and daily site factors are essential factors to effective project delivery. The study concluded that there exists a significant relationship between the factors considered in selection of contractors and the criteria success factors. Based on the relati0nship between selection criteria and success factors, there is the need to adopt the selection criteria for each individual project based on project characteristics, client characteristics and external environment for effective project delivery. It is necessary to make good assessment of the technical capacity and experience of the contractors when considering the costfactor for project delivery.

Analysis of News Regarding on Shared Housing Using Text Mining Techniques

This study was conducted to explore the development direction of shared housing as a sustainable housing product by exploring the perception of shared housing and related words through Big data analysis and examining the correlation between keywords. Data was collected using Big Kinds, a news search service, and sentiment analysis, text mining analysis, N-gram and network analysis, and CONCOR analysis were performed using TEXTOM and UCINET, which are Big data analyses programs. As a result of the analysis. First, shared housing began to be introduced as a new housing type in late 2010 and began to be supplied in earnest in 2013. Second, the sensibility for shared housing has a liking and interest in the new space, but there is also a sense of rejection of living together. Third, as a result of keyword frequency analysis, the frequency of occurrence of related keywords indicating the residence of shared housing such as youth and single-person households and keywords indicating the characteristics of youth housing policy projects was high. Fourth, CONCOR analysis found significant four cluster characteristics: ‘Share house’, ‘Co-living’, ‘Remodeling social housing’, and ‘Young people rental housing’.

Comprehensive Case Study on the Ecologically Sustainable Design of Urban Parks Based on the Sponge City Concept in the Yangtze River Delta Region of China

Owing to widespread urbanization, previously elastic and permeable ecological foundations are being continuously hardened, sealed, and channelized, leading to problems such as intensified urban convergence, water pollution, seasonal rain, and flood disasters. Urban parks and large green spaces, as rare large, cavernous bodies in cities, can effectively address the abovementioned urbanization problems. This study holistically analyzed and discussed the current developments in the sponge city concept using several case studies of recent ecologically sustainable designs for urban parks in the Yangtze River Delta region of China. Under basic conditions of the same hydrological characteristics and considering the differences in other external conditions and the environment, sponge city construction aims to address the actual characteristics and needs of specific projects, develop applicable goal-oriented sponge city constructions, and ensure design practices around a goal-oriented method. Practical problems associated with identifying specific design features, priorities, and measures were then identified according to the project location, goals, and characteristics. Thus, this study details various goal-oriented sponge city designs and their application methods to inform future design efforts.

Groundwater Monitoring through Citizen Science: A Review of Project Designs and Results.

Citizen science is increasingly prominent in the field of freshwater monitoring. Although there is a large body of literature related to surface water monitoring, less experience exists regarding citizen-based monitoring of groundwater resources. This calls for a better understanding of the actual experiences of citizen science in the field of groundwater monitoring, including specific project designs and results. Based on a systematic review of 33 citizen-based groundwater monitoring activities, we analyze (1) the design of citizen science projects, including their general project characteristics, institutional characteristics, citizen characteristics, and forms of interactions, as well as (2) their results, including their data outputs, outcomes on citizens, and impacts on problem-solving. Results show that projects mainly have positive results on data quantity and quality and partly influence the citizens themselves and their contributions to groundwater-related problem-solving. Information on project design characteristics is scarce and mostly hints at the relevance of specific process mechanisms such as training and feedback. Based on these results, we suggest groundwater-related projects to consider involving citizen scientists in monitoring activities in order to benefit research and citizens alike. Such involvement needs, however, careful design including relevant training to unfold its full potential for both sides. Researchers are advised here to rigorously report on both design and results to further improve citizen science practice in the future.

The Ethics of Participatory Action Research with People Living in Poverty

This article is based on the webinar “The Ethics of Research on Poverty” held in April 2018. Coauthored by the four presenters of the webinar, it brings together perspectives on poverty from lived experience in the United States, academia, the District Six Museum in South Africa, and the Joseph Wresinski Centre for Archives and Research in France. The article argues that the ethical principles of participatory action research (PAR) are too generic to address the specific characteristics of research projects conducted with people living in poverty. PAR projects on poverty require, in addition to the relevant general ethical principles of PAR (i.e., leading transformational PAR, treating all participants as co-researchers, nurturing respect for the individual and the group, and raising awareness on the level of literacy of each participant), specific ethical guidelines. For PAR to address the needs of people living in poverty, the choice of words on poverty should be aimed at reducing symbolic and epistemic violence, questions should be framed so as to encourage knowledge to be shared, research should yield direct benefits to participants and outweigh risks, and researchers should aim at eradicating extreme poverty. Researchers failing to apply these principles may find themselves guilty of committing unintended symbolic or epistemic violence to the thinking of people in poverty or fall for the soft bigotry of low expectations that inevitably triggers underperformance. To bridge the divide between narratives of people in poverty and interpretations of these narratives , researchers should be aware of their own biases and remain open to being challenged.

The bioeconomy in Germany: A failing political project?

Almost two decades ago, the OECD and the EU kickstarted the development of bioeconomy strategies. In Germany, like in many other countries, policy development gained momentum in the 2010s, resulting in three consecutive policy strategies to date. And yet the bioeconomy concept remains largely unknown to a wider public and there are hardly any tangible outcomes in terms of transforming the economy towards sustainability as proposed in these strategies. Against this background, the German bioeconomy is characterized in this article as a political project aiming at a technological fix to problems like supply security and climate change in order to stabilize the social order of neoliberalized capitalism. Evaluating the different dimensions of the project's characteristics as well as its impacts, however, we find that the bioeconomy neither succeeds in universalizing its ideas and attracting a broader range of societal actors to them, nor in delivering the promised pathway to a socio-ecological transformation. Still, the analysis also reveals successes of certain actors in securing funds and advancing their agendas related to the bioeconomy. It can be argued that the bioeconomy succeeded in this way in stabilizing the existing unsustainable social order.

UDRN: Unified Dimensional Reduction Neural Network for feature selection and feature projection

Dimensional reduction (DR) maps high-dimensional data into a lower dimensions latent space with minimized defined optimization objectives. The two independent branches of DR are feature selection (FS) and feature projection (FP). FS focuses on selecting a critical subset of dimensions but risks destroying the data distribution (structure). On the other hand, FP combines all the input features into lower dimensions space, aiming to maintain the data structure, but lacks interpretability and sparsity. Moreover, FS and FP are traditionally incompatible categories and have not been unified into an amicable framework. Therefore, we consider that the ideal DR approach combines both FS and FP into a unified end-to-end manifold learning framework, simultaneously performing fundamental feature discovery while maintaining the intrinsic relationships between data samples in the latent space. This paper proposes a unified framework named Unified Dimensional Reduction Network (UDRN) to integrate FS and FP in an end-to-end way. Furthermore, a novel network framework is designed to implement FS and FP tasks separately using a stacked feature selection network and feature projection network. In addition, a stronger manifold assumption and a novel loss function are proposed. Furthermore, the loss function can leverage the priors of data augmentation to enhance the generalization ability of the proposed UDRN. Finally, comprehensive experimental results on four image and four biological datasets, including very high-dimensional data, demonstrate the advantages of DRN over existing methods (FS, FP, and FS&FP pipeline), especially in downstream tasks such as classification and visualization.

Site selection of crop straw cogeneration project under intuitionistic fuzzy environment: A four-stage decision framework from the perspective of circular economy

Due to the energy shortage and environmental pollution, the development and utilization of biomass energy has aroused increasing attention all over the world. The crop straw cogeneration (CSC) of heat and power is an efficient renewable energy utilization technology in rural area, which is a practical solution to energy saving and pollution control. Circular economy, characterized by resource conservation, recycling and environment harmony, greatly enriches the connotation of energy projects, which is of guidance implications for the development of CSC. In this paper, the CSC project site selection is conducted under the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework from the perspective of circular economy. A complete criteria system considering the sustainability indicators is established to reflect the characteristics of CSC projects for the first time. Furthermore, due to the complexity and the lack of ready-made experience in the CSC site selection, the intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs) are improved and applied by creating a novel IFSs distance formula to provide clear expression for the hesitation degrees of the experts. Finally, taking Changchun City, Jilin Province as an example, the improved TOmada de Decisao Interativa Multicriterio (TODIM) method is applied to obtain the optimal location. A2 (Nongan) is the best choice among the four given alternatives, and comparative analysis shows that the improved TODIM method is better than the other methods. This study improves the application of intuitionistic fuzzy sets in site selection of energy projects and brings new insight for the decision-making from the perspective from circular economy.

Walking at the edge: How tempo-spatial nexus forms HRM practices in project-based organizations.

Research has scrutinized the role of different HRM practices in Project-based Organizations (PBOs) mostly in terms of project success and articulated the challenges of traditional HRM to reconcile with the project context. Nevertheless, HRM practices have been addressed less in PBOs with a practice-based research lens. Particularly, the role of tempo-spatial nexus in shaping such practices in this organizational form has been under-researched, although PBOs provide a very suitable context for doing so. Drawing upon a comparative case study in the oil and gas industry of Scotland and adopting a practice-based approach, this research aims to shed light on how HRM practices are shaped and re-shaped in the project-based context. The study, specifically, scrutinizes the role of temporality and space in the formation, adoption and adaptation of HRM practices in these organizational forms. The findings reveal that project characteristics, specifically their duration, size and technical properties, induce different temporalities that along with different work locations and inter-organizational relationships, impact HRM practices as a threefold structure.

A systematic literature review of carbon footprint decision-making approaches for infrastructure and building projects

There is an urgent need for all industries to go beyond the existing set of policies against greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to combat climate change. As the major producer (19%) of GHG, the construction industry needs to optimise its carbon footprint (CF) decision-making processes to provide better management solutions against global warming. Identification and evaluation of the key factors that affect CF decision-making are critical yet limited. Based on our knowledge, no existing study compares the different characteristics of construction projects’ CF management approaches through the whole life cycle phases (including assessment, optimisation, and comparison) to enable CF-related knowledge transfer between the building and infrastructure sectors. To meet these knowledge gaps, this paper reviewed 1,465 studies related to infrastructure and building CF projects and selected 31 studies to evaluate academic researchers’ contributions toward the different CF decision-making stages for the building and infrastructure projects’ whole lifecycle. The paper systematically reviewed and assessed the existing information in five key CF decision-making stages: project drafting stage, methodology choosing stage, data collection stage, CF analysis stage, and CF visualisation stage. A generalised CF decision-making framework is also developed to inform future CF management. The limitations of the existing studies and the benefits of the developed framework were summarised. This study identifies the key information required from the perspective of CF management decision-makers and contributes a universal CF decision-making framework for state-of-the-art CF management practice.

Beyond design and delivery: developing a model to measure end-user satisfaction (delight) in projects

PurposeThis research aims to develop and test a model for measuring end-user satisfaction (EUS) in a practical manner and then statistically verify its reliability and validity.Design/methodology/approachA comprehensive list of attributes using extensive literature review, focus group and brainstorming meetings were used to create a set of attributes for the model. These attributes were then used in a survey among the end-users (N = 687) of seven case studies with different characteristics (type, size and location) to assess the reliability and validity of the model. The statistical methods included reliability tests (Cronbach's alpha), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and correlation analysis), canonical discriminant analysis (CDA), item response theory (IRT) and model specification tests.FindingsEUS must be quantified before determining a project's overall performance. The analysis of repeatability and consistency (reliability and validity) performed on case studies (data collected from the end-users) strongly suggests that the EUS model is robust for a range of project types.Originality/valueAlthough many studies have proposed customer satisfaction models in the project success context, research on quantitative measurement tools is scarce. The paper departs from past research and develops and validates a new EUS model independent of project characteristics (while the study's limitations are acknowledged).

Performance Evaluation of Urban Water Environment Treatment PPP Projects Based on Cloud Model and OWA Operator

The public-private partnership (PPP) model has become one of the marketization models for water environment treatment projects. Evaluating the performance of these projects is vital for their long-term success. Performance evaluations can inform the government when allocating expenditures for the operation and maintenance of services and can guide the private sector’s operation and maintenance management of projects. By attending to the specific characteristics of urban water environment treatment PPP projects (UWETP-PPP), this study developed a performance evaluation system and corresponding performance evaluation model comprised of eight first-level indicators and fifty second-level indicators. This model was used to evaluate a water environment treatment and ecological restoration project located in Xuchang, China. The results generated by the performance evaluation model indicated that this project was satisfactory and used the PPP model with a very high level of success, which accurately reflected real-world assessments of the project and verified the effectiveness of the model. This research provides guidance for the government in designing a performance evaluation mechanism that implements the specific characteristics of PPP projects. It also provides practical value for the operation management and performance improvement of PPP projects in China.