Integration Of Sustainability Principles Into Project Baselines Using A Comprehensive Indicator Set

Sustainability is defined as balancing the three concepts of people, planet, and profit to maximize the absolute value of an undertaking. Therefore it deals with the long term economic, social, and environmental effects of an undertaking. However, the definition of sustainability, which is focused on the long term, does not provide practical guidance to companies attempting to integrate sustainability into their projects, which by definition are temporary constructs. The imbalance between the definition of sustainability and the definition of a project has made it difficult to incorporate meaningful sustainability indicators into project baselines.   In this paper we propose a framework for integrating sustainability into project baselines for consulting engineering projects in the industrial and resource extraction fields. This framework is based on using a sustainability indicator set that has been derived from existing sets applicable to industrial or resource extraction projects. The utility of the proposed framework and indicator set are back checked against a recently completed engineer, procure, and construction manage mining project undertaken by a large engineering and project management services organization

The dynamics of the global market : a knowledge acquisition and application approach

Globalization has created vast economic opportunities for nations and companies around the world to access the global market. Consequently, nations and companies specifically within the manufacturing sector and service industries are doing business around a borderless globe. Nations are focusing on the global market to strengthen their economic growth and investing their resources in different infrastructural aspects to facilitate rapid economic growth. There has been a constant change within the global market, making nations and companies struggle to keep up with the global market emerging trends. This paper provides insight into the dynamics of the global market and the key elements contributing to these constant changes. It seeks to alert nations and companies to the need to re-focus in order to sustain competitive advantage in the global economic market. It sensitizes nations and companies to the need to re-focus on key elements such as knowledge acquisition and application in order to sustain competitive advantage in the global economic market. The main argument of this paper is that companies and nations in the developing world strive to keep up with the uncertain environments of the global market, but they overlook the dynamics of the global market. This paper’s findings suggest that sustaining competitiveness at the business level requires knowledge acquisition and application, complementary to which is further education, technical skills, re-training and technological development. At the national level this knowledge acquisition and application balances the effective strategic leadership, attracting foreign investment and reaching global networks

Managing Knowledge in Project Environments

Projects ought to be vehicles for both practical benefits and organizational learning. However, if an organization is designed for the long term, a project exists only for its duration. Project-based organizations face an awkward dilemma: the project-centric nature of their work makes knowledge management, hence learning, difficult

Research to improve maritime education and training for energy efficient ship operation in China

The dissertation is a study to improve Chinese maritime education and training (MET) for raising the performance of energy efficient ship operation, by analyzing the increasing demand on seafarers’ capacity and the barriers existing in the Chinese MET for energy efficient ship operation. Finally, a systematic framework of improvement measures was provided for Chinese MET. A brief review of the increasing demand on seafarers for energy efficient ship operation was carried out from four aspects including regulations, practices on board ships, alternative fuel and renewable energy sources. Based on the increasing demand, the barriers existing in the Chinese MET was analyzed by literature review and questionnaires. The final presentation of the barriers was obtained by an online workshop, the barriers include four aspects, courses, pedagogy, cognition practice, and cultural construction. Additionally, each aspect of the barriers includes four dimensions, which are human resource, financial resource, other resource and policy. Furthermore, in order to develop the framework of improvement measures, the lessons from other industries were also analyzed by literature review. On the basis of the increasing demand on seafarers and the identified barriers, a systematic framework of improvement measures was built up, which contains two new subjects, a comprehensive project for improving pedagogy, and some recommendations for cognition practice, cultural construction and policy making. Additionally, a batch of cognition practice of Marine Engineering students of DMU was chosen to assess the advised workshop through online communication with educators. All attending students believed that the workshop is helpful for improving understanding of energy efficient ship operation. Finally, the PDCA cycle and the participatory design approach were introduced for the development of the framework

Planning For 5G: A Problem Structuring Approach for Survival in the Telecoms Industry

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordThis paper examines the application of systemic problem structuring methods to the development of a research strategy in response to the challenges of fifth generation (5G). The paper proposes a methodology for strategic decision making. The key stakeholders, objectives, technologies, and boundaries from existing literature are identified and problem structuring based on hierarchical process modeling is used to explore the dependency of certain features of 5G on specific technologies, giving an indication of the importance of certain technologies over others and thus insight into where to place research effort. The hard technical challenges of 5G are discussed and equally the importance of the soft social and business challenges explored. For context, we explain how 5G will provide a platform for innovations and discuss how new and existing businesses may use this to their advantage. Problem structuring is used to explore how the challenges and opportunities of future wireless systems are related to the process of developing new business models