A research study on Hong Kong's building services engineering profession: a review of the building services engineering profession in the United Kingdom

A review of the building services engineering profession in the United Kingdom is considered in this document. It provides supporting information for a comprehensive study into the profession in Hong Kong which is being conducted by Hong Kong Polytechnic University on behalf of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. The overall aim of the work is to investigate mechanisms for raising the profile of building services engineers in Hong Kong

Designing a novel virtual collaborative environment to support collaboration in design review meetings

Project review meetings are part of the project management process and are organised to assess progress and resolve any design conflicts to avoid delays in construction. One of the key challenges during a project review meeting is to bring the stakeholders together and use this time effectively to address design issues as quickly as possible. At present, current technology solutions based on BIM or CAD are information-centric and do not allow project teams to collectively explore the design from a range of perspectives and brainstorm ideas when design conflicts are encountered. This paper presents a system architecture that can be used to support multi-functional team collaboration more effectively during such design review meetings. The proposed architecture illustrates how information-centric BIM or CAD systems can be made human- and team-centric to enhance team communication and problem solving. An implementation of the proposed system architecture has been tested for its utility, likability and usefulness during design review meetings. The evaluation results suggest that the collaboration platform has the potential to enhance collaboration among multi-functional teams

Managing digital coordination of design: emerging hybrid practices in an institutionalized project setting

What happens when digital coordination practices are introduced into the institutionalized setting of an engineering project? This question is addressed through an interpretive study that examines how a shared digital model becomes used in the late design stages of a major station refurbishment project. The paper contributes by mobilizing the idea of ‘hybrid practices’ to understand the diverse patterns of activity that emerge to manage digital coordination of design. It articulates how engineering and architecture professions develop different relationships with the shared model; the design team negotiates paper-based practices across organizational boundaries; and diverse practitioners probe the potential and limitations of the digital infrastructure. While different software packages and tools have become linked together into an integrated digital infrastructure, these emerging hybrid practices contrast with the interactions anticipated in practice and policy guidance and presenting new opportunities and challenges for managing project delivery. The study has implications for researchers working in the growing field of empirical work on engineering project organizations as it shows the importance of considering, and suggests new ways to theorise, the introduction of digital coordination practices into these institutionalized settings

SODA: Generating SQL for Business Users

The purpose of data warehouses is to enable business analysts to make better decisions. Over the years the technology has matured and data warehouses have become extremely successful. As a consequence, more and more data has been added to the data warehouses and their schemas have become increasingly complex. These systems still work great in order to generate pre-canned reports. However, with their current complexity, they tend to be a poor match for non tech-savvy business analysts who need answers to ad-hoc queries that were not anticipated. This paper describes the design, implementation, and experience of the SODA system (Search over DAta Warehouse). SODA bridges the gap between the business needs of analysts and the technical complexity of current data warehouses. SODA enables a Google-like search experience for data warehouses by taking keyword queries of business users and automatically generating executable SQL. The key idea is to use a graph pattern matching algorithm that uses the metadata model of the data warehouse. Our results with real data from a global player in the financial services industry show that SODA produces queries with high precision and recall, and makes it much easier for business users to interactively explore highly-complex data warehouses.Comment: VLDB201

What is the Optimal Structure for Organisations Representing Design and Designers on the Island of Ireland?

The research question addresses the issue of the structure of organisations that represent the interests of design and designers on the island of Ireland. The role of designers in Ireland is seen by society as marginal, rather than one central to the economic, social, and cultural well being of the island and those who live on it. This problem is exacerbated, as the organisational structures of those who play a key part are both confused and confusing. The answer to the question of what is an optimal structure lies in the literature that has been written on the subject and the experiences of the people who have played a key role in design organisations both on the island of Ireland and abroad. The significant literature was reviewed and ten key people were interviewed as part of this dissertation. The dissertation ends with conclusions and recommendations. These, if adopted, will help designers make better use of their collective resources, enabling them to increase the awareness of the importance of the role that design plays on the island. The island of Ireland is celebrated for its creative skills; the arts, literature and music. All are world renowned. Design is a creative activity. So why is Irish design not celebrated widely? The dissertation concludes that part of the answer lies in the fragmentation and dispersion of Irish designers, their lack of unity and their lack of a common voice. With no voice, the interests of Irish design and its designers are simply not being listened to; either on the island, throughout Europe, or internationally. The dissertation recommends that the representation of designers should be seen as separate to the representation of design. Design promotion can be undertaken on an allisland basis, whilst design support should be undertaken locally. If each of these activities is clearly defined and delivered, then we can move toward the creation of a design council. This has been done successfully in Norway, a country that has been striving to reduce its economic dependence on oil. Norway has invested heavily in design support and promotion for over ten years with significant results. This island has lessons to learn from Norway. The head of the Norwegian Design Council, Jan R. Stavik was interviewed as the final piece of this dissertation

Real world evaluation of aspect-oriented software development : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Software development has improved over the past decade with the rise in the popularity of the Object-Oriented (OO) development approach. However, software projects continue to grow in complexity and continue to have alarmingly low rates of success. Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is touted to be one solution to this software development problem. It shows promise of reducing programming complexity, making software more flexible and more amenable to change. The central concept introduced by AOP is the aspect. An aspect is used to modularise crosscutting concerns in a similar fashion to the way classes modularise business concerns. A crosscutting concern cannot be modularised in approaches such as OO because the code to realise the concern must be spread throughout the module (e.g. a tracing concent is implemented by adding code to every method in a system). AOP also introduces join points, pointcuts, and advice which are used with aspects to capture crosscutting concerns so they can be localised in a modular unit. OO took approximately 20 years to become a mainstream development approach. AOP was only invented in 1997. This project considers whether AOP is ready for commercial adoption. This requires analysis of the AOP implementations available, tool support, design processes, testing tools, standards, and support infrastructure. Only when AOP is evaluated across all these criteria can it be established whether it is ready to be used in commercial projects. Moreover, if companies are to invest time and money into adopting AOP, they must be aware of the benefits and risks associated with its adoption. This project attempts to quantify the potential benefits in adopting AOP, as well as identifying areas of risk. SolNet Solutions Ltd, an Information Technology (IT) company in Wellington, New Zealand, is used in this study as a target environment for integration of aspects into a commercial development process. SolNet is in the business of delivering large scale enterprise Java applications. To assist in this process they have developed a Common Services Architecture (CSA) containing components that can be reused to reduce risk and cost to clients. However, the CSA is complicated and SolNet have identified aspects as a potential solution to decrease the complexity. Aspects were found to bring substantial improvement to the Service Layer of SolNet. applications, including substantial reductions in complexity and size. This reduces the cost and time of development, as well as the risk associated with the projects. Moreover, the CSA was used in a more consistent fashion making the system easier to understand and maintain, and several crosscutting concerns were modularised as part of a reusable aspect library which could eventually form part of their CSA. It was found that AOP is approaching commercial readiness. However, more work is needed on defining standards for aspect languages and modelling of design elements. The current solutions in this area are commercially viable, but would greatly benefit from a standardised approach. Aspect systems can be difficult to test and the effect of the weaving process on Java serialisation requires further investigation

The numbers game : 80- 200m2 Pigs, Pokes and Horses

The Highland Housing Expo, Scottish architects and low carbon dwellings

Mustang Daily, May 11, 2005

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/studentnewspaper/7304/thumbnail.jp