The determinants of successful partnering: a transaction cost perspective

Support is emerging for the assertion that partnering can have a significant beneficial influence on project relationships and project outcomes. However, not all of the evidence bears this out: there are some examples of less-than-successful experiments with partnering approaches. Questions quite naturally arise as to whether any particular elements or aspects of partnering have differed in some of the documented examples, thus giving rise to their relative success or failure. In order to answer such questions there is a need for a theoretical framework against which to analyse the relative performance of partnering projects. In this paper, the authors propose an approach based upon aspects of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) theory. It is argued that two main factors, contractual incompletedness and opportunism, are fundamental in determining whether project relationships are adversarial or not. The validity of the approach is examined by applying it retrospectively to a strategic partnering agreement involving more than 80 individual building projects. This agreement had been the subject of a four-year study and had been found to produce benefits in a number of areas, not least in the avoidance of conflict and disputes. After analysis, evidence for the reduction of contractual incompletedness was mixed, however the opportunistic inclinations of the participants (specifically, the contractors) were effectively attenuated by a clearly observable combination of factors, which included preselection criteria, and the use of appropriate management and commercial frameworks in which to operate. The case study suggests a prima facie validity to the analytical approach that was adopted, which merits further testing: the next stages being to develop and refine the framework, and to carry out comparative multi-case research on a number of different partnering projects

Status Updates Over Unreliable Multiaccess Channels

Applications like environmental sensing, and health and activity sensing, are supported by networks of devices (nodes) that send periodic packet transmissions over the wireless channel to a sink node. We look at simple abstractions that capture the following commonalities of such networks (a) the nodes send periodically sensed information that is temporal and must be delivered in a timely manner, (b) they share a multiple access channel and (c) channels between the nodes and the sink are unreliable (packets may be received in error) and differ in quality. We consider scheduled access and slotted ALOHA-like random access. Under scheduled access, nodes take turns and get feedback on whether a transmitted packet was received successfully by the sink. During its turn, a node may transmit more than once to counter channel uncertainty. For slotted ALOHA-like access, each node attempts transmission in every slot with a certain probability. For these access mechanisms we derive the age of information (AoI), which is a timeliness metric, and arrive at conditions that optimize AoI at the sink. We also analyze the case of symmetric updating, in which updates from different nodes must have the same AoI. We show that ALOHA-like access, while simple, leads to AoI that is worse by a factor of about 2e, in comparison to scheduled access

Hidden supersymmetry and quadratic deformations of the space-time conformal superalgebra

We analyze the structure of the family of quadratic superalgebras, introduced in J Phys A 44(23):235205 (2011), for the quadatic deformations of $N = 1$ space-time conformal supersymmetry. We characterize in particular the `zero-step' modules for this case. In such modules, the odd generators vanish identically, and the quadratic superalgebra is realized on a single irreducible representation of the even subalgebra (which is a Lie algebra). In the case under study, the quadratic deformations of $N = 1$ space-time conformal supersymmetry, it is shown that each massless positive energy unitary irreducible representation (in the standard classification of Mack), forms such a zero-step module, for an appropriate parameter choice amongst the quadratic family (with vanishing central charge). For these massless particle multiplets therefore, quadratic supersymmetry is unbroken, in that the supersymmetry generators annihilate \emph{all} physical states (including the vacuum state), while at the same time, superpartners do not exist.Comment: 25 pages, Latex; corrected typos, minor clarification of degeneracy condition

Multicast With Prioritized Delivery: How Fresh is Your Data?

We consider a multicast network in which real-time status updates generated by a source are replicated and sent to multiple interested receiving nodes through independent links. The receiving nodes are divided into two groups: one priority group consists of $k$ nodes that require the reception of every update packet, the other non-priority group consists of all other nodes without the delivery requirement. Using age of information as a freshness metric, we analyze the time-averaged age at both priority and non-priority nodes. For shifted-exponential link delay distributions, the average age at a priority node is lower than that at a non-priority node due to the delivery guarantee. However, this advantage for priority nodes disappears if the link delay is exponential distributed. Both groups of nodes have the same time-averaged age, which implies that the guaranteed delivery of updates has no effect the time-averaged freshness.Comment: IEEE SPAWC 201

Sound insulation design of modular construction housing

This paper provides an insight into the acoustic issues of modular housing using the Verbus System of construction. The paper briefly summarises the history of the development of Verbus modular housing and the acoustic design considerations of the process. Results are presented from two sound insulation tests conducted during the course of the project. The results are discussed in terms of compliance with Approved Document E1 and increased performance standards such as EcoHomes2

The generation of a Gaussian random process in a position parameter

Analog computer method for approximating stationary Gaussian random process depending only on position paramete