Large International Projects Research Articles

Editorial: Enlarging the Focus on the Role of Competencies, Abilities, and Personality in Management Research

Editorial Past research on the role of individual characteristics in management research (e.g., predictive value of personality on job related issues, human resource management practices handling individual competencies) has generated considerable knowledge. However, with an increase in globalization leading to higher complexity of organizations as well as to altered demands on employees, there is a necessity to expand prior knowledge on the role of competencies, abilities, and personality across various contextual features (e.g., other cultures, markets). This special issue contains seven articles that focus on competencies or personality in not yet researched contexts and levels (individual vs. firm level). The special issue incorporates new and interesting outcome variables (e.g., career decisiveness, work council participation) and cross-cultural comparisons in relationships between constructs. In this editorial, we give a short overview over the articles and conclude with a short discussion about some problems of incorporating competence and personality measures into research designs. We suggest that this discussion is especially important if researchers intend to apply modern analytical methods (e.g., structural equation modeling) to management research. The article by Matjaana Gunkel and Christoph Schlaegel (The Influence of Personality on Students' Career Decisiveness - A Comparison between Chinese and German Economics and Management Students) investigates in how far the Big Five personality factors (i.e., conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience) allow to predict career decisiveness of students and its determinants career adaptability, career optimism, and career knowledge. Moreover, the authors' approach is cross-cultural as they compare Chinese and German economics and management students. Results show that three of the Big Five - neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion - are differendy related to the dependent career variables within the two cultures. Thus, these results indicate diat personality factors allows predicting and understanding students' career decisions and their determinants. The study by Susi Stornier (Individual Characteristics of Work Council Members - Empirical Evidence) analyzes the personality profile of work council members. She finds that female council members show a higher extraversion and internal locus of control than female non-council members and male council members can be characterized by a higher conscientiousness than male non-work council members. Hence, her study sheds light on the work council as an institution and should be followed by further analyses to understand functioning of this collective. Joost Bucker and Erik Poutsma (How to Assess Global Management Competencies: An Investigation of Existing Instruments*) focus on the importance of competence measurement and provide a framework that allows assessing the quality of competence measures. Moreover, by means of a review of existing measures, the authors apply the developed framework and propose a number of high quality measures. The article by Erik Doving and Odd Nordhaug (Investing in Human Resource Planning: An International Study) examines the determinants for analyses of competence developments needs and the role of formal HRM strategies on the firm level. By means of a large international research project with 3,877 firms worldwide, they conclude that resources (size, having an HRM department and corporate affiliation) and to some degree cost-benefit considerations are the main determinants of these human resource planning arrangements (p. 263-291). Michael Stephan (Does Outsourcing Result in the Outsourcing of Technological Competencies? An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Vertical Specialization on the Technological Competence Base of Firms) investigates the effect of vertical specialization on the technological competence of the firm. …

Project Management Improvement Efforts—Creating Project Management Value by Uniqueness or Mainstream Thinking?

This paper presents a research study that is part of the large international Project Management Institute (PMI)-sponsored research project the “Value of Project Management.” Three case studies have been conducted on Norwegian enterprises. This article focuses on how enterprises improve project management and presents the improvement efforts and the stated reasons behind them. There are striking similarities as to the prioritized ways the enterprises have chosen to make improvements: use of a rather standardized model for project work and internal schooling activities. The enterprises all explain their efforts as internally driven, even if some consultancy assistance was used. This article discusses three drivers behind the improvement efforts: an economic perspective, a new institutionalism perspective, and an innovation perspective. This article identifies indicators pointing to all drivers and helps us understand why and how enterprises are improving project management. The importance of research on the practice of the most capable enterprises within the project management field is acknowledged.

Innovative Gas‐Cooled Reactors

Innovative gas-cooled reactors, either with a thermal (HTGR) or fast (GCFR) neutron spectrum, are widely considered by academia, research centres, and industry to be among themost promising reactor concepts for the next generation. These reactors are characterized by a fully ceramic core and a noncorrosive coolant (helium or carbon dioxide), which is transparent for neutrons. Due to these characteristics, it is possible to have high operating temperatures. R&D projects are currently under way in many countries from China, European Union, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, to the United States, of which many are cooperating through large international projects, such as the framework programmes of the EU, the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), and the International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors, and the Fuel Cycles (INPRO) programme of the IAEA. In terms of safety and competitiveness, the high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) has very attractive characteristics. It is generally considered to be the most promising candidate at short term and seems to offer at least a partial solution to the growing world energy demand. The operational experience obtained from the HTTR and the HTR-10, in conjunction with the experience already available from other reactors and research projects, constitutes a strong technological basis for the commercial development of HTGRs. Additionally, the fuel cycle flexibility of the HTGR offers the possibility to use this reactor type for the reduction of plutonium and minor actinides stockpiles, as recent studies indicate. Recently, the gas cooled fast reactor (GCFR) has also gained the interest of industry and the international scientific community. Due to the positive characteristics common to all fast reactors (the improved sustainability by generation of fuel from fertile nuclides and the possibility for efficient burning of nuclear waste) combined with the advantages of gas coolants (no phase change, and no nuclear or chemical reactions in the core), the GCFRs represent a very interesting prospect for future nuclear technology. Their development takes advantage of the high temperature gas coolant technology arising from the HTGRs. In view of the above, it has been decided to bring out the special issue “Innovative gas-cooled reactors”. Looking to the manuscripts, they could be subdivided into three groups.

Temporary project cultures

Previous research confirmed that there are cross-cultural leadership attributes, or dimensions, that are universally effective, regardless of culture. This paper provides a short summary of that research, and of the resulting Cross-Cultural Leadership Intelligence (XLQ) model, and tests the model on three large international projects.

Measuring Chandler's Impact on European Business Studies since the 1960s

Recently, a number of groups sponsored large international research projects that are concerned with business history. Harm G. Schröter's group investigated the European integration that followed the Treaty of Rome in 1957 in order to discover whether it had led to the appearance of a characteristically “European” corporation. Franco Amatori, Camilla Brautaset, and Youssef Cassis coordinated an analysis with the ambitious title “The Performance of European Business in the Twentieth Century.” The projects shared some common “Chandlerian” features: they were problem-oriented, comparative studies of the long-term development of large enterprises, and their goal was to propose illuminating generalizations. Such Chandler-inspired studies are likely to undergo a renaissance in the next couple of years. Still, as the term “renaissance” implies, Chandler's impact on European business studies has undergone upswings and downturns over the past four decades.

PASSIM--an open source software system for managing information in biomedical studies.

BackgroundOne of the crucial aspects of day-to-day laboratory information management is collection, storage and retrieval of information about research subjects and biomedical samples. An efficient link between sample data and experiment results is absolutely imperative for a successful outcome of a biomedical study. Currently available software solutions are largely limited to large-scale, expensive commercial Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS). Acquiring such LIMS indeed can bring laboratory information management to a higher level, but often implies sufficient investment of time, effort and funds, which are not always available. There is a clear need for lightweight open source systems for patient and sample information management.ResultsWe present a web-based tool for submission, management and retrieval of sample and research subject data. The system secures confidentiality by separating anonymized sample information from individuals' records. It is simple and generic, and can be customised for various biomedical studies. Information can be both entered and accessed using the same web interface. User groups and their privileges can be defined. The system is open-source and is supplied with an on-line tutorial and necessary documentation. It has proven to be successful in a large international collaborative project.ConclusionThe presented system closes the gap between the need and the availability of lightweight software solutions for managing information in biomedical studies involving human research subjects.

Portable EDXRF surface mapping of sulfate concentration on Michelangelo's David

AbstractThe study presented in this paper was carried out within a large international project founded in the context of the Michelangelo's David's 500th anniversary celebration. A group of experts analysed Michelangelo's masterpiece with several techniques with the aim of helping restorers to choose the most suitable treatment for cleaning of the statue. The task of the present team was to map the possible presence of sulfur (as sulfates) on the surface of the sculpture due to pollution effects. A portable energy‐dispersive x‐ray fluorescence (EDXRF) system was used. The EDXRF technique is not only non‐destructive, sensitive and capable of simultaneous multi‐elemental analysis but also, in its portable version, it allows the analysis of many areas before, during and after restoration. A large number of measurements were made to obtain an overall picture of the sulfur distribution on the sculpture and then further measurements were made at selected strategic points. After applying different removal procedures at each of these points, the measurements were repeated to obtain a quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of each cleaning procedures. The results are presented and discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Converging human resource management

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to participate in the convergence‐divergence debate related to the trends in European human resource management (HRM). The paper evaluates the converging vs diverging implications in Estonia and Finland by comparing HR strategies, policies and practices between the two countries in the context of HRM in the Nordic and EU‐15 countries.Design/methodology/approachThe research is part of a large international comparative HRM project (CRANET), which covers over 30 countries. Empirical data were collected by a survey questionnaire mailed to large private and public organisations employing over 200 employees. The Estonian survey data involve 69 organisations and the Finnish data 269. The data cover private companies and public sector organisations.FindingsThe comparison of HRM in Estonia and Finland revealed a few interesting empirical observations: First, in spite of Estonia's short history as an independent Baltic state, HRM has stabilised its position at both strategic and policy level's as well as in HR practices. Second, there is a converging (directional) trend between Estonian and Finnish HRM. Third, the Estonian HRM matches with the EU‐15 HRM; Estonia does not increase diversity in the European HRM.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of the study is related to survey methodology. In further research longitudinal data as well as case studies and triangulation are needed to open country‐level trends in the convergence‐divergence debate.Practical implicationsEstonian companies and public organisations might need to pay more attention to equality/diversity policy. Special attention should be paid to HRM in public organisations.Originality/valueThe main value of the paper is related to the contribution to the convergence debate in HRM.

Editorial: Knowledge-based digital media processing

This Special Section presents work on integrative research aimed at low-level analysis, classification and semantic-based structuring of digital media. Most of the work presented in this section has originated in two large international cooperative projects funded by the European Commission under the sixth framework programme of the Information Society Technology: aceMedia and COST292. The mandate and scope of these two projects is very generic, embracing several applications that rely on technology for bridging the gap.

Novel Approach for Assessing Performance of PCR Cyclers Used for Diagnostic Testing

As part of a large international project for validation and standardization of PCR, the influence of thermocyclers on PCR was tested. Six brand-new, Peltier technology-driven 96-well thermocyclers were subjected to a novel and stringent in-tube (not block) physical testing. The temperature was directly monitored in PCR tubes containing 50 microl of distilled water at 13 different block positions. The certified temperature accuracy of the measurement system was +/-0.3 degrees C. Finally, the results of the physical testing were compared to those of an amplification efficiency study running an in-house PCR assay. The cyclers did not perform within the manufacturer's specification. Premature timing, under- and overshooting, and spatial variation of heat transfer were found to be the critical factors. The physical testing allowed us to distinguish accurate from less-accurate (2/6) cyclers. The lack of thermal homogeneities became most evident at the denaturation level during the first 15 s. At the time point zero, the accurate cyclers showed temperature deviations of 0.5 to 1.5 degrees C, whereas less-accurate cyclers failed to reach the set temperature by 13 to 20 degrees C. Consequently, the two less-accurate cyclers could not gain positive PCR results by running an in-house PCR assay. However, by modifying the original temperature protocol by increasing the denaturation temperature and time, the amplification efficiency of these two cyclers could be improved significantly. The results have implication for laboratories using diagnostic PCR testing.

The ALMA Project

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array, hereafter ALMA, is a large international telescope project which will be built over the next decade in northern Chile on a site at 5 km elevation. The site provides excellent atmospheric transmission in the millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelength ranges. The project consists of sixty-four 12-m antennas which can be placed on 250 different stations. These stations cover baselines up to 14 km. At the shortest planned wavelength, λ = 0.3 mm, and longest baseline, the angular resolution will be 0.005 arcsec. The receivers are superconducting (SIS) mixers, to provide the lowest possible receiver noise contribution. In the basic ALMA project the 4 highest priority receiver bands will be installed first (see Table 2). These will all have SIS mixers for both polarizations, each with a bandwidth of 8 GHz. A unique feature of ALMA is that this instrument will record both interferometric and total power data. Thus the complete flux density will be recovered. In the following, we present the status of the ALMA project as of end 2003 with a few comments about future developments in the project in Section 7.

Le projet Welfare Quality : de l’attente des consommateurs à la mise en place de certifications bien-être en élevage

In 1999, AGRIBEA was set up to coordinate animal welfare research conducted by INRA (French Institute for Agronomy Research). Initially made up of some forty researchers, AGRIBEA expanded rapidly both within and outside INRA, to include 128 members, of which less than two thirds are from INRA, the other members coming from universities or technical institutes. AGRIBEA organizes scientific seminars every quarter, on topics of general interest focused around animal welfare : pain, emotions, ethics in human-animal relations, etc. AGRIBEA also stimulated new research avenues to address the question of mental states in animals. AGRIBEA improves the visibility of INRA work within the institution, as well as of all French research, thereby helping exchanges within large international research projects.

Improving National and Homeland Security Through a Proposed Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT)

A recent National Research Council study found that: there are many private and public databases that contain potentially relevant to counter terrorism programs, they lack the necessary context definitions (i.e., metadata) and access tools to enable interoperation with other databases and the extraction of meaningful and timely information [NRC02, p.304, emphasis added] That sentence succinctly describes the objectives of this project. Improved access and use of are essential to better identify and anticipate threats, protect against and respond to threats, and enhance national and homeland security (NHS), as well as other national priority areas, such as Economic Prosperity and a Vibrant Civil Society (ECS) and Advances in Science and Engineering (ASE). This project focuses on the creation and contributions of a Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT) with two interrelated goals: (1) Theory and Technologies: To research, design, develop, test, and implement theory and technologies for improving the reliability, quality, and responsiveness of automated mechanisms for reasoning and resolving semantic differences that hinder the rapid and effective integration (int) of systems and data (dmc) across multiple autonomous sources, and the use of that by public and private agencies involved in national and homeland security and the other national priority areas involving complex and interdependent social systems (soc). This work builds on our research on the COntext INterchange (COIN) project, which focused on the integration of diverse distributed heterogeneous sources using ontologies, databases, context mediation algorithms, and wrapper technologies to overcome representational conflicts. The COIN approach makes it substantially easier and more transparent for individual receivers (e.g., applications, users) to access and exploit distributed sources. Receivers specify their desired context to reduce ambiguities in the interpretation of coming from heterogeneous sources. This approach significantly reduces the overhead involved in the integration of multiple sources, improves data quality, increases the speed of integration, and simplifies maintenance in an environment of changing source and receiver context - which will lead to an effective and novel distributed grid infrastructure. This research also builds on our Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD), an Internet platform for generation, provision, and integration of multiple domains, regions, languages, and epistemologies relevant to international relations and national security. (2) National Priority Studies: To experiment with and test the developed theory and technologies on practical problems of data integration in national priority areas. Particular focus will be on national and homeland security, including data sources about conflict and war, modes of instability and threat, international and regional demographic, economic, and military statistics, money flows, and contextualizing terrorism defense and response. Although LIGHT will leverage the results of our successful prior research projects, this will be the first research effort to simultaneously and effectively address ontological and temporal conflicts as well as dramatically enhance quality. Addressing problems of national priorities in such rapidly changing complex environments requires extraction of observations from disparate sources, using different interpretations, at different points in times, for different purposes, with different biases, and for a wide range of different uses and users. This research will focus on integrating both over individual domains and across multiple domains. Another innovation is the concept and implementation of Collaborative Domain Spaces (CDS), within which applications in a common domain can share, analyze, modify, and develop information. Applications also can span multiple domains via Linked CDSs. The PIs have considerable experience with these research areas and the organization and management of such large scale international and diverse research projects. The PIs come from three different Schools at MIT: Management, Engineering, and Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences. The faculty and graduate students come from about a dozen nationalities and diverse ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. The currently identified external collaborators come from over 20 different organizations and many different countries, industrial as well as developing. Specific efforts are proposed to engage even more women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities. The anticipated results apply to any complex domain that relies on heterogeneous distributed data to address and resolve compelling problems. This initiative is supported by international collaborators from (a) scientific and research institutions, (b) business and industry, and (c) national and international agencies. Research products include: a System for Harmonized Information Processing (SHIP), a software platform, and diverse applications in research and education which are anticipated to significantly impact the way complex organizations, and society in general, understand and manage critical challenges in NHS, ECS, and ASE.

Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies: A New Research Initiative

The convergence of three distinct but interconnected trends - unrelenting globalization, growing worldwide electronic connectivity, and increasing knowledge intensity of economic activity - is creating powerful new opportunities and challenges for global politics. This rapidly changing environment has information demands that surpass existing capabilities for information access, interpretation, and overall use, thus hindering our abilities to address emergent and complex global challenges, such as terrorism and other security threats. This reality has serious implications for two diverse domains of scholarship: international relations (IR) in political science and information technology (IT). Unless IT advances remain one step ahead of emergent realities and complexities, strategies for better understanding and responding to critical global challenges will be severely impeded. For example, more so now than ever, the U.S. Office of Counter-Terrorism and the newly-created Office of Homeland Security rely on intelligence information from all over the world to develop strategic responses to security threats. However, relevant information is stored in various regions throughout the world and by diverse agencies in different media, formats, and contexts. Intelligent integration of information is fundamental to developing policies to anticipate and strengthen protection against terrorist threats or attacks in the United States. This Project's activities, and relationships with its collaborators, will be coordinated through a newly formed joint Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT). LIGHT will address information needs in the IR domain, focusing on the conflict realm, which deals with emergent risks, threats, and uncertainties of potentially global scale and scope related to: (a) crises, (b) conflicts and war; and (c) anticipation, monitoring and early warning. The goals of this initiative are to: (1) improve understanding of the types of IR information needs for decision making and institutional performance under varying degrees of risk and uncertainty; (2) design and implement the System for Harmonized Information Processing, to facilitate access to and correct interpretation of essential information that is critical to policy and research in the IR realm, as well as to other similarly complex domains, and (3) advance developments in the use of information technologies to facilitate such interdisciplinary research and to contribute to new education approaches, tools, and methods. Increasingly, addressing problems central to national and global interests in complex domains such as IR requires the use of technologies that easily combine observations from disparate sources, using different interpretations, for different purposes, and by a wide range of users. Critical advances in IT capabilities must span multiple domains (e.g., economic, political, geographic, commercial, and demographic), diverse contexts (i.e., meanings, languages, assumptions), and a multiplicity of contending agents (i.e., states, governments, corporations, international institutions). The technology-related research will focus on acquiring and enhancing information to serve user requirements both over individual domains (i.e., a single shared ontology) and across multiple domains, which are necessary for addressing complex challenges. The core innovation is reflected in the notion of a Collaborative Domain Space (CDS), within which applications in a common domain can share, analyze, modify, and develop information. For applications that span multiple domains we provide for a Collection of CDSs to link shared concepts in distinct domains. Moreover, we will develop the System for Harmonized Information Processing that incorporates CDSs as a basis for knowledge representation and includes all the necessary reasoning algorithms required to support information processing over a range of heterogeneous sources and applications. The development of the system described above builds upon prior work. The political science IR work will draw on an earlier Internet-based experimental platform for exploring forms of information generation, provision, and integration across multiple domains, regions, languages, and epistemologies which are relevant to complex but domain-specific applications, the Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD). The IT component builds on work on the Context Interchange project (COIN) focused on the integration of a range of distributed heterogeneous information sources (e.g., financial, supply chain, disaster relief) using ontologies, databases, context mediation algorithms, and wrapper technologies. Both groups have considerable experience with the organization and management of large scale, international, distributed, and diverse research projects, including cross-national (e.g., China, Middle East, Europe) and institutional (private, public, national and international) agencies. The anticipated results will apply to any complex domain with multiple entities that rely on heterogeneous distributed data to address and resolve compelling problems. This initiative is supported by a network of international collaborators from (a) scientific and research institutions, (b) business and industry, and (c) national and international agencies. Expected research products include: a software platform, IR-based knowledge repository, and diverse applications in policy, research, and education which are anticipated to significantly impact the way complex organizations, and society in general, understand and manage critical global challenges.

Journal Quality in the Asian Region

The authors report on a project sponsored by the IFLA Round Table of Library and Information Science Journals to determine factors contributing to journal quality. This was a pilot project focusing on Asia with the aim in part of determining whether a larger international project might be feasible. Quality of papers emerged as the key category, with a number of criteria used to determine this quality. It was found that, given the relative ease with which data were collected for the pilot study and the ready participation of most editors approached for input, a more substantial project would be possible with only low level funding.

3 The Future Systems Engineering Data Exchange Standard STEP AP‐233: Sharing the results of the SEDRES Project

ABSTRACTSharing design information during the systems engineering activities on large international projects within virtual enterprises faces many challenges, amongst them is working with heterogeneous sets of systems engineering tools. The adoption of neutral data exchange standards is one appropriate approach now well advanced in areas such as structural design (Computer Aided Design or CAD).ESPRIT project 20496, ‘SEDRES’, has made significant progress in producing a neutral data exchange standard based on STEP (ISO‐10303), embracing systems engineering design data. SEDRES stands for Systems Engineering Data Representation and Exchange Standardisation. Co‐funded by the European Commission and running 1996–1999, SEDRES was initiated by Aerospatiale, Alenia, British Aerospace, DASA and Saab. Also contributing are the Universities of Loughborough, Linkoping, and the Australian Centre for Test & Evaluation.This paper reports on the development and prototyping of the Capability/2 data model, on early exchange experiences, and on the related ISO STEP AP‐233 standardisation activity. Two companion papers describe the data model content and data exchange evaluation in detail.

Conditions of Authoritarianism, Fascism and Democracy in Inter-War Europe

Conditions of democracy continue to be discussed for various parts of the world. The inter-war period in Europe, with some of the most dramatic breakdowns of democratic systems, provides an interesting laboratory for systematic investigation in this respect. This paper summarizes the major findings of a large international research project covering 18 European states. It presents and discusses broader social structural, political cultural, institutional, etc. conditions of democracy against which the impact of the world economic crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the respective social and electoral reactions, the political moves of major actors and the final survival or breakdown of parliamentary regimes are assessed. It employs both macro-quantitative and macro-qualitative methods in a cross-sectional and, as far as possible, longitudinal manner. In this way, in a quasi-experimental systematic comparative design structure- and actor-oriented approaches, i.e., the opportunity-set and the actual choices and outcomes, are brought into a common perspective. The results point to interesting applications to the present situation in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

New methods for analyzing multiple processes in muon catalyzed fusion

A package of calculation programs is written to create and analyze the main physical distributions related to the muon catalyzed fusion reactions in the D/T mixture. It involves the simulation of both the muon catalysis processes and registration systems with FADC. Special attention is paid to the absolute calibration problem. It follows from our observation that, in principle, it is not necessary to make special calibration measurements. The programs are intended for use in the large international project TRITON.

Transition processes in the novel method of the muon catalysis investigation

The problem of modifying the interpretation of the results to be obtained with the novel method of muon catalysis investigation to take the fast transition processes into account is first considered. The results of exploring the process kinetics are compared with the ones found from the analysis of the appropriate Monte Carlo distributions. The calculation programs simulate both the kinetics and the registration system of the experiment which is now performed in the frame of the large international project TRITON. The main conclusion is that the multiplicity distribution of the fusion neutrons is “invariant” under any assumptions of the fast transition stage.

Multi-national consortium based projects: improving the process

An increasingly significant feature of large projects is the internationalisation of project consortia formed for the purpose of elaborating an offer and, if successful, subsequently delivering the project. This trend coincides with the increasing preference of customers for fixed price, turnkey contract arrangements. This combination—an international consortium working with a fixed price contract—presents challenges that stretch traditional project management methods to the limit. This paper argues that a ‘process’ approach is required for the improved sale and execution of large international projects. The paper reviews some of the main problems experienced by multi-national, multi-company consortia, proposes a set of guidelines by which the task of the consortium might be smoothed through the project life-cycle, and introduces the role of an ‘independent facilitator’ as part of the project improvement process.