Inception Of Project Research Articles

Project MUSE's New Pricing Model: A Case Study in Collaboration

Project MUSE®, an online collection of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, undertook an extensive revision of its pricing and subscription model in 2003, the first since the project's inception in 1995. A collaborative effort of MUSE staff, industry consultants, participating libraries, and publishers produced a new pricing scheme for 2005 based on two factors: peer institutions grouped by Carnegie Class and then divided into quadrants based on their usage. This article discusses the background and implementation of the new business model and next steps.

Project MUSE's New Pricing Model: A Case Study in Collaboration

Project MUSE®, an online collection of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, undertook an extensive revision of its pricing and subscription model in 2003, the first since the project's inception in 1995. A collaborative effort of MUSE staff, industry consultants, participating libraries, and publishers produced a new pricing scheme for 2005 based on two factors: peer institutions grouped by Carnegie Class and then divided into quadrants based on their usage. This article discusses the background and implementation of the new business model and next steps.

‘It's in the water here’: the development of a community‐focused literacy strategy

AbstractThis paper considers the pioneering development of a community‐focused literacy initiative that began in Derbyshire, a county in the middle of England. Read On‐Write Away! (ROWA!) is viewed from the standpoint of its former director. The article describes the strategy in the context of national policy and other government initiatives in England, and gives a historical account of the project's inception and development.

A method for performance briefing at the project inception stage

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to create a strategically positioned client performance brief with a clear and workable statement of the project requirements specified by a representative group of stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThe application describes the relocation of a library with community facilities with a local council. This action research study of the project inception stages used the process of strategic needs analysis (SNA). This approach uses a workshop setting involving stakeholders in identifying a range of strategic options for the project problem. The development of a range of realistic options was aided by the use of a problem‐ structuring computer program, Situation Structuring. Individual workshop participants then expressed their preferences for the final options using a second software package (Strategizer) and after a short period for analysis the results were presented to a second workshop for discussion. The performance brief was then prepared to reflect stakeholders' and the workshop's preferences.FindingsThe process involved is described with the development and selection of organizational strategic options with the council stakeholders. The creation and identification of user performance indicators to guide the design development process is illustrated and a sample from the final performance brief is provided. The project is nearing completion and the local Council considers the process has been a success.Research limitations/implicationsThe process described has been developed over six studies in varying client environments in Australia. Further studies are needed in client organisations with a rolling program of capital works to test the robustness of the approach described.Practical implicationsThis work can assist the facilities manager to play an important role in the development of the initial performance‐based brief during the project inception stage that can assist clients and guide the design team.Originality/valueEstablishing client needs during the formative stages of a project (before design commences) is becoming an increasingly important role for the facilities manager. This work presents a description of a process that provides the means for clients and facilities managers to ensure that their strategic needs are met within the defined project.

An Approach to Developing a Performance Brief at the Project Inception Stage

The project inception stage has been the focus of intense research activity in design, project management and facilities management for a number of years. The need to establish the project parameters and performance requirements has been an imperative in many organizations, and facilities managers have been leaders in this process. Pre-design processes and activities are being instituted that work through the client's strategic and organizational issues, needs and requirements before the design team is involved. The participation of stakeholders in pre-design workshops is a common feature of these project inception approaches. These approaches prepare a clear and workable statement of the project requirements in performance terms that the client and user groups have committed themselves to. This strategic brief (or definition of the business case of the organization) can then provide a sound basis for the documentation of the needs and the development of the design. One approach to these early stages of the project is strategic needs analysis. This study describes the use of strategic needs analysis in a community library project where stakeholders from the client organization were involved in workshops to discuss, propose and identify strategic options for the library. Two computer programs assisted in this application—Situation Structuring and Strategizer. In the former, a problem-structuring approach was used to categorize performance indicators that were grouped into the final set of options. Strategizer is a dedicated interactive decision-making program that assists individual stakeholders in ranking the chosen options. The identification of performance indicators established by the stakeholders during the strategic needs analysis is an important part of the project inception process and these performance indicators formed the basis of the final performance brief, part of which is illustrated in this paper.

Application of the Proposed UVDGM Requirements to an Existing UV Disinfection Installation

The Clayton County (Ga.) Water Authority (CCWA) has installed ultraviolet (UV) disinfection systems at three water treatment plants. The CCWA's projects were designed, constructed, and tested in advance of publication of the proposed Ultraviolet Disinfection Guidance Manual (UVDGM) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in June 2003. Onsite validation testing was successfully completed at the three facilities early in 2003. Following the publication of the proposed UVDGM, the UV system configuration and validation results for the CCWA's Freeman Road plant were analyzed underthe UVDGM framework. A comparison to the Tier 1 requirements indicated that not all criteria were met, making a Tier 2 analysis necessary. From the Tier 2 analysis, the UV safety factors and dose requirement were reduced by approximately 12% compared with the proposed Tier 1 dose requirement These analyses showed that the CCWA systems are surpassing all potentially applicable USEPA requirements, and the CCWA is providing enhanced public health protection as intended at project inception. As a result of these analyses, significant comments, focused on simplifying the proposed UVDGM and enhancing its ease of use, were submitted to the USEPA.

Establishing Participation: The Case of Empowering Communities in Wetland Fishery Management

Participation of local fishing communities in conservation measures for enhancing fish populations has been established in Ashurar beel, a large perennial wetland in northeast Bangladesh. Caritas, a national NGO engaged in government led partnership arrangement Community Based Fisheries Management project to organize and motivate fishers with integrated approach towards understanding and implementing development initiatives. The study period encompassed since the project inception in 1996 to 2002. As the concept was new therefore, it was justified to select the study period in the subsequent years during the project period to investigate the outcome of community based management effort launched by the project. This gave an opportunity to critically see how the fishers acquainted themselves with the concept of the project approach in terms of fisheries management, sustainable use of recourses, equity, building up community organization, and at the same time how effectively they apply these in their work. The major areas for the study were related with the development of human resources, capital resources, and fisheries management. After a year of deal 25 Village based fisher groups with 527 members are organized. Cohesiveness among the members and a sense of ownership on the resource has been generated with diversified activities. A network interconnecting the organized groups has happened to form an institution and ensuring the fisher rights. Fishers established a fish sanctuary for enhancing natural fish population that has become the ever-largest functional sanctuary in Bangladesh. With NGO support backed by government, fishers have been empowered resulting in more sustainable and productive fishery management.

Application of the Proposed UVDGM Requirements to an Existing UV Disinfection Installation

The Clayton County (Ga.) Water Authority (CCWA) has installed ultraviolet (UV) disinfection systems at three water treatment plants. The CCWA's projects were designed, constructed, and tested in advance of publication of the proposed Ultraviolet Disinfection Guidance Manual (UVDGM) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in June 2003. Onsite validation testing was successfully completed at the three facilities early in 2003. Following the publication of the proposed UVDGM, the UV system configuration and validation results for the CCWA's Freeman Road plant were analyzed under the UVDGM framework. A comparison to the Tier 1 requirements indicated that not all criteria were met, making a Tier 2 analysis necessary. From the Tier 2 analysis, the UV safety factors and dose requirement were reduced by approximately 12% compared with the proposed Tier 1 dose requirement. These analyses showed that the CCWA systems are surpassing all potentially applicable USEPA requirements, and the CCWA is providing enhanced public health protection as intended at project inception. As a result of these analyses, significant comments, focused on simplifying the proposed UVDGM and enhancing its ease of use, were submitted to the USEPA.

Integrating NEPA, environmental permitting, and contracting actions into a DOD hazardous waste treatment facility construction project to successfully meet budget and schedule

AbstractEnvironmental managers responsible for high‐profile Department of Defense (DOD) construction projects entailing National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and environmental permitting requirements must constantly monitor cost and schedule. For numerous interrelated reasons, NEPA and environmental permitting are the initial critical path activities and are constantly scrutinized by higher management levels, as they have the potential to significantly affect life‐cycle budgets and schedule if mismanaged. Maintaining effective management vigilance is therefore required to ensure environmental actions remain on schedule and support projected contract award dates and submitted budgets. This article provides some insights into how to integrate NEPA, permitting, contracting, and budgeting to achieve and maintain success from project inception to conclusion. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Quest for Value Revisited

Period profit is a result. It starts with an investment generating cash. After deduction of value differences and taxes, net profit remains. Share capital (embedded value - what really is present), shareholder value (economic value - what might happen, additional to the existing activities or 'the market value of the company's shares') and cash flows, are all inter-related.Analogous to the law of conservation of energy in physics, the law of preservation of value holds true in economics, a natural law. Within thorough calculations, everything fits together seamlessly. Although being different notions (e.g. shareholder value and period profit), each having its own peculiarities, in between the various quantities, no euro, no dime, no cent can disappear or appear just like that. In other words, all amounts of money (inherent in an exemplary problem) are inter-dependent.Measuring and reporting a variety of non-financial indicators i.e. widening the information spectrum is a welcome development, generally speaking, but information about the game cannot step into the result. Management is in continuous need of up to date financial accounts, that are clear and complete, speak for themselves, contain proven numbers, and unravel the future. Ex ante accounts are signposts on the road to the future. Walking down the road, ex post accounts are made regarding past time periods and new data will generate new signposts on the road ahead. Nothing is able to replace thorough financial statements, not even the most extensive balanced scorecard/performance-review.This paper presents uniform metrics that are capable of handling both risk (by using for instance an alternative rate) and time value of money to the fullest extent. No more is necessary than a simple and easy procedure, which provides a check at any point in time against stipulated project value. Performance measurement, monitoring and control, from project inception to completion. Assessing NVA (Net Value Added) is transparent, it eases the tension among multiple interest groups and it makes the decision-making less complex, costly and subjective. This is compared to the disparity of metrics (between project appraisal and subsequent evaluation) so far applied to measure and control project performances.

Stakeholder Management during Project Inception: Strategic Needs Analysis

The project inception stage has been the focus of intense research activity for a number of years. The need to establish the project parameters and performance requirements has been an imperative in many organizations. Predesign processes and activities are being instituted that work through client strategic and organizational issues, needs, and requirements before the design team is involved. The participation of stakeholders in predesign workshops is a common feature of these project inception approaches. These approaches prepare a clear and workable statement of the project requirements in performance terms that the client group has agreed and committed itself to. This document can then provide a sound basis for the development of the design. One approach to these early stages of the project is strategic needs analysis. This approach uses a workshop setting to focus stakeholder involvement in proposing and identifying a range of strategic options for the proposed project. A case study of strategic needs analysis involving university faculty relocation to a new site is presented. The developments of organizational strategic options are described with the development of user performance indicators to guide the design development process.

New Zealand women entrepreneurs

Women make a significant contribution to the entrepreneurial advantage of nations and women-owned businesses are critical to economic prosperity. A higher level of participation by women in the economic arena is associated with higher standards of living (Reynolds et al., 2004). Nonetheless, since the inception of the GEM project in 1999, data have shown that women's participation in entrepreneurship is only about two-thirds that of men (Minniti and Arenius, 2003). In New Zealand it was expected that the entrepreneurial gender gap would be closing, possibly more quickly than in other countries, however the research results indicated the opposite.

Bonded composite solution to ship reinforcement

Abstract This article briefly describes a project carried out by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) for the Royal Australian Navy in which the principal objective was to investigate the suitability of bonded composite technology to reinforce part of a ship superstructure prone to fatigue-induced cracking. This project also provided an opportunity to demonstrate in-service, long-term durability of a composite reinforcement bonded to a metal structure. The aluminium superstructure on an Adelaide Class (FFG) frigate was reinforced using an adhesively bonded carbon fibre composite material. All aspects of the project undertaken by a DSTO team of researches from project inception in the late 1980s are described, including analysis of the superstructure cracking problem, research and development work, installation of composite reinforcement on board the ship, assessment of reinforcement efficiency, through-life monitoring and maintenance and repair. The original composite reinforcement is still in place on board HMAS SYDNEY. Further improvements in the technology have been made since, taking into account the new materials and processes which comply with the current occupational health and safety requirements.

World Class Arena: Providing an International Perspective on Assessing Gifted and Talented Students

When the UK Government introduced its national strategy for gifted and talented students in its policy document Excellence in Cities in March 1999 (DfEE, 1999), the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) was given the remit to produce World Class Tests. These tests, in mathematics and problem solving, were to be developed to demonstrate World Class abilities in the top ten per cent of nine and 13 year olds in those subjects internationally. From the inception of the World Class Arena project, it was intended that strong international links would be forged in order to learn from, and contribute to, the teaching and learning of gifted and talented students.

The national ignition facility

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) currently under construction at the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a 192-beam, 1.8-Megajoule, 500-Terawatt laser being built by the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) for inertial confinement fusion and high-energy-density experimental studies. The stadium-sized facility is currently activating systems for first light and will be completed in 2008.The facility is controlled by the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS), a layered architecture of 300 front-end processors (FEP) coordinated by supervisor subsystems. The FEP's are distributed computers that interface to physical devices through VME-bus and PCI-bus crates. The functional subsystems - beam control including automatic beam alignment and wavefront correction, laser pulse generation and pre-amplification, diagnostics, pulse power, and shot timing - implement the actions of operators at eight graphic consoles, coordinate control, and display and archive data in a database. The software architecture mimics the hardware design levels: software devices in FEP's model hardware control points and supervisory objects model the line replaceable units that modularize the laser system. Graphic user interfaces are provided to make status and control of each level accessible to operators.The ICCS software is based on an object-oriented framework that incorporates services for archiving, machine configuration, graphical user interface, status monitoring, event logging, scripting, alert management, and access control. Software code development uses a mixed language environment of Ada (for functional controls) and Java (for user interface and database backend). CORBA is used to communicate between languages and processors. Substantial benefits credited to using Ada include the formality of controlled interfaces that rely on Ada's type model, easy-to-construct exception processing and the robustness of Ada's tasks.A strategy of incremental cycles of construction and formal test has been used since project inception. The project has completed more than 30 planned cycles of deployment into testbeds and is now integrating with the first 4 operational beamlines in the facility. Fifty of the planned 300 FEP's have been installed and tested with facility equipment. These implement nearly 200 classes that model physical control hardware - some 2500 software objects. Nearly all of the top-level functional subsystems, embodying some 110 application classes, have been commissioned in the facility. The integrated control system has successfully executed shots into test diagnostics in support of laser integration. The first coordinated facility shots to the 10-m diameter target chamber are expected in early 2003.Issues of robustness and scaling arise as the system integrates larger ensembles of control points and serves an increasing number of operators. The system comprises some 60 intercommunicating processes, and since none of these are known to be defect free, techniques for replacement and restart of individual processes are required. The most common communication pattern - publish and subscribe - is supported by a connection management framework that adds exception handlers to the ORB in order to restore broken connections and restart failed processes without explicit action by application client codes.This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.

The decision to build and the organisation

The decision to build initiates the development process. After taking account of all the factors it represents a decision to embark on a built solution to satisfy the organisation’s strategic objectives. It is a decision that senior managers and members of the design team should be aware of, reflect on and consider why the decision to build was made in the first place. By understanding the history of the strategic decision the design team may be better able to respond to client requirements and opportunities by providing the most appropriate building. In practice, most participants in the design process are often divorced from the decision within the client organisation and may lack the necessary background information that informed, guided or forced the choice of a building solution. There is a dearth of well‐documented material and literature on this key decision in the development process. The literature is sparse and that which does exist often ignores or only includes as a secondary issue the decision to build. The attitude is often one where the decision is generally accepted as a given, not to be revisited or amended by later players. Presents some key findings from the research into the project inception and the decision to build process, with particular emphasis on the environmental factors that influence the process and the product.

Public vs. proprietary science: a fruitful tension?

The authors examine the presumption that basic scientific research is most effectively utilized when the findings of that research are openly disseminated without significant restriction, while research with more practical application should be the prerogative of private enterprise. However, many fields, including molecular biology generally and genomics in particular, lie in the intersection between basic research and application. Moreover, institutional boundaries that once reasonably sharply demarcated basic research from technological development have grown porous, with more academic research finding application in industry. The authors consider the Human Genome Project and rival industry sequencing efforts as a case in point of the new political economy of scientific research. Since the inception of the Human Genome Project, there has been general agreement among researchers that the project would be most advantageous to science if the sequence data were made publicly available, quickly and without restriction. Many of these arrangements required federal agencies and some universities to "maneuver around" the Bayh-Dole Act. In several cases, most notably genomic sequences and the SNPs (i.e., single nucleotide polymorphisms) consortium, it was the pharmaceutical industry that initiated or helped enable the project to ensure open and unencumbered access to information, the type of access that has historically been the provenance of academia and the raison d'être of academic research. The authors conclude by reasserting the value of public science as a broadly valuable and enabling social commitment, not limited simply to the products or technologies it spawns.

Primate evolutionary genetics.

With the publication in February 2001 of the draft human genome sequence, a new milestone was established in the history of biology. Seemingly, at the inception of the Human Genome Project, the pervasive impact of the availability of complete DNA sequences from human and other species failed to receive the wide and general recognition that now exists. Genome sequences have become an important organizing force for biological research. Increasingly those interested in the biology of an organism will come to count on the availability of detailed information on genomic sequence and expression. In the context of the emergence of genomic sciences and the development of tools for genomic analysis, the American Genetic Association (AGA) held its annual meeting in San Diego, California, May 18– 20, 2001, and held a symposium entitled ‘‘Primate Evolutionary Genetics.’’ Some of the papers presented at that symposium are collected together in this last issue of the Journal of Heredity for the year 2001. It is unusual to assemble a set of papers so rapidly for publication in a widely distributed peer-reviewed journal. As the approaches represented in the articles presented here are refined and extended to a broader diversity of primates and other organisms, we can anticipate that new insights into the biology of these species will become available. This is particularly true if appropriate sets of samples for analysis are available for the research community. Furthermore, the focus on describing and understanding genetic variation that is now an inherent part of the genomic sciences spawned by the Human Genome Project will increasingly draw attention to the importance of understanding the human genome from an evolutionary point of view. This perspective will be enriched through a more detailed understanding of DNA sequences of primate genomes, as well as the regulation of their expression in the course of development. The articles collected here reflect some of the diversity of investigations through which genetic analyses can contribute to our understanding the biology and evolution of primates. Primate evolution is of general interest because humans are primates. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzee, the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee, and the gorilla share with us a common ancestry of genes and genome organization. The understanding of human biology and medicine requires a detailed comparison of our genetic makeup with the species to which we are most closely related. Scientific societies such as the AGA have a positive role to play in bringing issues of societal concern to fuller discussion, not just within their own disciplines but to the larger public. In this regard, the AGA fulfills this role through its Journal of Heredity and its symposia, of which this is the most recent. Attainment of the emerging diversity of genetic studies will have dramatic effects on human society, as well as an impact on the rest of the biosphere. Many species of primates are endangered, including chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas. Increased genetic knowledge of primate species may provide important contributions in the effort to conserve viable populations in the wild.

The national system architecture for intelligent transportation systems: features and consequences

In 1993, the Federal Highway Administration embarked on a program to develop a national system architecture (NSA) for intelligent-vehicle-highway-systems (IVHS, later renamed intelligent-transportation-systems). The project was completed in early 1996, with the delivery of documents totalling more than 10,000 pages. This paper examines the effects of the national system architecture on transportation management and control. Special emphasis is placed on California because of the state's active participation since the project's inception. The paper includes a review of NSA within the context of: (1) Functional areas of responsibility, (2) Content of communication and information residence, and (3) Lines of authority and resolution of decisions. The paper also identifies implementation issues for California, and reports on interviews with traffic managers and traffic technology developers. The paper concludes that despite the state's participation, NSA is unlikely to significantly affect transportation deployments in the state.

HIV/AIDS-Related Electronic Queries and Responses

ABSTRACT Although information about HIV and AIDS has become abundant and accessible, questions from health care providers and consumers alike continue to persist. As part of an HIV/AIDS outreach program begun in 1995, a Web-based model was created to facilitate access to relevant information. The model includes an interactive component whereby individuals can pose questions to HIV specialists. Web-based queries and responses have been captured and recorded since the project's inception. A total of 192 query encounters were collected, sorted, and analyzed with descriptive statistics.