Adapting Green Innovation Centres to climate change: analysis of value chain adaptation potential. Rice, potato, and mango value chains in Koulikoro, Sikasso, Kayes, Ségou, and Mopti zones, Mali

The present report aims to provide a climate and vulnerability analysis of the Green Innovation Centres (GIC) target commodity value chains. Herein we identify climate change- related vulnerabilities, hazards, and opportunities for adaptation to the same. Ultimately, our goal is to foster awareness of risks and adaptation priorities in the selected value chains and inform climate investments and planning through the recommendations on priority innovations to manage climate risks

A framework for collaborative costing in the UK construction industry.

Although collaboration has been recognised as a necessary component of success in the modern construction industry, concepts like building information modelling (BIM), integrated project delivery (IPD) and target value design (TVD) are still emerging in the construction landscape. However, collaborative working (CW) is reported to be fading within the UK construction industry, largely because of commercial behaviours. These behaviours are reinforced by the dominant procurement arrangements and ‘institutional’ factors, which surrounds project delivery approach in construction. Consequently, construction clients and supply chain organisations struggles to realise the full benefits of CW. In fact, these commercial behaviours create costing approaches marred with irregularities and uncertainties with little shared understanding amongst stakeholders. Invariably, the prevailing approach mainly follows the RIBA Plan of Work, which is discrete, sequential and favours competitive tendering. This guides stakeholders within a narrow view to consider costing and design activities as separate functions. Conversely, the integration of design and construction creates opportunity for commercial actors to be more deeply included in CW approaches thus removing a major barrier to the performance improvements demanded in successive UK government reports. In view of these problems, this study was undertaken to shed light on the current costing practice and CW in the UK construction industry, with the intention of developing a framework that would guide stakeholders to cost projects collaboratively. Qualitative research design strategy was adopted, which gathered data from construction and infrastructure sectors in the UK. A total of 50 interviews was conducted with three case study examination. The study found attributes like target costing, optioneering, and integrated value engineering, as core constituents of costing in collaboration. In light of this, the study proposed the notion of ‘costing collaboratively’ (CC), as a process that integrates stakeholders (upstream and downstream) around a wider scheme budget, creating a sense of ownership which drives positive behaviours to achieve desired cost outcomes. However, the analysis showed that the current practice differs from this description and does not support wider CW, particularly within commercial activities. Although, the findings revealed some progress, and glimpses of CW emerging from multidisciplinary setting, however, costing process is still driven by price, and the limited understanding continues to affect the wider practice of collaboration in the UK construction industry. The implication of this to industry, and practice is that costing approaches need to shift from the traditional standpoint to a more social-based approach, incorporating commercial actors, to heighten ‘flow’ and ‘value’ perspectives for the smooth running of production activities. This is primarily because the findings revealed that, without properly aligning commercial actors and their interests in a ‘collaborative production’ fashion, most of the barriers found to unsettle CW would remain, regardless of the environment. Thus, whilst this implication remains, efforts to sustain an integrated practice and other construction reforms in the UK will continue to stall. Hence, the study developed a simple but effective framework to guide stakeholders through the necessary steps to costs projects collaboratively in practice

A framework for collaborative costing in the UK construction industry

Although collaboration has been recognized as a necessary component of success in the modern construction industry, concepts like building information modelling (BIM), integrated project delivery (IPD) and target value design (TVD) are still emerging in the construction landscape. However, collaborative working (CW) is reported to be fading within the UK construction industry, largely because of commercial behaviours. These behaviours are reinforced by the dominant procurement arrangements and ‘institutional’ factors, which surrounds project delivery approach in construction. Consequently, construction clients and supply chain organizations struggles to realize the full benefits of CW. In fact, these commercial behaviours create costing approaches marred with irregularities and uncertainties with little shared understanding amongst stakeholders. Invariably, the prevailing approach mainly follows the RIBA Plan of Work, which is discrete, sequential and favours competitive tendering. This guides stakeholders within a narrow view to consider costing and design activities as separate functions. Conversely, the integration of design and construction creates opportunity for commercial actors to be more deeply included in CW approaches thus removing a major barrier to the performance improvements demanded in successive UK government reports. In view of these problems, this study was undertaken to shed light on the current costing practice and CW in the UK construction industry, with the intention of developing a framework that would guide stakeholders to cost projects collaboratively. Qualitative research design strategy was adopted, which gathered data from construction and infrastructure sectors in the UK. A total of 50 interviews was conducted with three case study examination. The study found attributes like target costing, optioneering, and integrated value engineering, as core constituents of costing in collaboration. In light of this, the study proposed the notion of ‘costing collaboratively’ (CC), as a process that integrates stakeholders (upstream and downstream) around a wider scheme budget, creating a sense of ownership which drives positive behaviours to achieve desired cost outcomes. However, the analysis showed that the current practice differs from this description and does not support wider CW, particularly within commercial activities. Although, the findings revealed some progress, and glimpses of CW emerging from multidisciplinary setting, however, costing process is still driven by price, and the limited understanding continues to affect the wider practice of collaboration in the UK construction industry. The implication of this to industry, and practice is that costing approaches need to shift from the traditional standpoint to a more social-based approach, incorporating commercial actors, to heighten ‘flow’ and ‘value’ perspectives for the smooth running of production activities. This is primarily because the findings revealed that, without properly aligning commercial actors and their interests in a ‘collaborative production’ fashion, most of the barriers found to unsettle CW would remain, regardless of the environment. Thus, whilst this implication remains, efforts to sustain an integrated practice and other construction reforms in the UK will continue to stall. Hence, the study developed a simple but effective framework to guide stakeholders through the necessary steps to costs projects collaboratively in practice

Monitoring oriented agile based web applications development methodology for small software firms in Jordan

Small software firms (SSF) is vital to the software industry in many countries as they provide substantial growth to their economy. In Jordan, most software companies that are involved with developing Web applications are small firms. However, the extent of applying best Web applications development and management practices in these firms is limited. Besides, the existing software development methods are still lack of monitoring the quality of process and product. As a result, the Web application being developed exceeds deadlines and budget, and not meeting user requirements. Therefore, this research aims to construct a new methodology referred as Monitoring Oriented Agile Based Web Applications Development (MOGWD) Methodology for SSF. This study introduced an Extended Agile Method by extending the Scrum method with Extreme Programming (XP) elements. The Extended Agile Method was improved by combining common steps of Web design method and incorporating the Goal Oriented Monitoring Method (GOMM). The GOMM has defined twenty goals. Each goal has one or more questions. The questions are answered through the defined metrics. There are 101 qualitative metrics for monitoring the process quality, and 37 quantitative metrics for monitoring the process and product quality. Moreover, the proposed MOGWD methodology defines four phases: Plan, Do, Check and Act. The MOGWD methodology was evaluated using expert review and case study. The evaluation results show that the MOGWD methodology has gained SSF practitioners’ satisfaction and found to be practical for the real environment. This study contributes to the field of Agile based development and Web applications measurement. It also provides SSF practitioners a development methodology that monitors the quality of the process and product for Web development

Antioxidant and DPPH-Scavenging Activities of Compounds and Ethanolic Extract of the Leaf and Twigs of Caesalpinia bonduc L. Roxb.

Antioxidant effects of ethanolic extract of Caesalpinia bonduc and its isolated bioactive compounds were evaluated in vitro. The compounds included two new cassanediterpenes, 1α,7α-diacetoxy-5α,6β-dihydroxyl-cass-14(15)-epoxy-16,12-olide (1)and 12α-ethoxyl-1α,14β-diacetoxy-2α,5α-dihydroxyl cass-13(15)-en-16,12-olide(2); and others, bonducellin (3), 7,4’-dihydroxy-3,11-dehydrohomoisoflavanone (4), daucosterol (5), luteolin (6), quercetin-3-methyl ether (7) and kaempferol-3-O-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1Ç2)-β-D-xylopyranoside (8). The antioxidant properties of the extract and compounds were assessed by the measurement of the total phenolic content, ascorbic acid content, total antioxidant capacity and 1-1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) and hydrogen peroxide radicals scavenging activities.Compounds 3, 6, 7 and ethanolic extract had DPPH scavenging activities with IC50 values of 186, 75, 17 and 102 μg/ml respectively when compared to vitamin C with 15 μg/ml. On the other hand, no significant results were obtained for hydrogen peroxide radical. In addition, compound 7 has the highest phenolic content of 0.81±0.01 mg/ml of gallic acid equivalent while compound 8 showed the highest total antioxidant capacity with 254.31±3.54 and 199.82±2.78 μg/ml gallic and ascorbic acid equivalent respectively. Compound 4 and ethanolic extract showed a high ascorbic acid content of 2.26±0.01 and 6.78±0.03 mg/ml respectively.The results obtained showed the antioxidant activity of the ethanolic extract of C. bonduc and deduced that this activity was mediated by its isolated bioactive compounds