Strengthening Construction Management in the Rural Rehab Line of Business

The Five Key ObservationsObservation#1: Rural rehab success emanated from positive thinking and persistent implementationObservation #2: Almost every RHRO would benefit from a substantial increase in the per unit funding available, especially in light of the forthcoming HUD HOME requirement to establish written rehab standards in ten subcategories.Observation #3: A smartphone and tablet with 20 to 40 apps is the rehab specialist's Swiss Army knife. They are our, GPS, calculator, spec writer, office lifeline in case of danger, camera, clock, cost estimator calendar and a hundred other single-purpose but very important uses.Observation #4: NeighborWorks® Rural Initiative could provide a clearinghouse for success techniques targeted to rural rehab. Each month it might focus on a specific aspect of rehab management; inspection checklists in January, green specs in February, feasibility checklist in March, contractor qualification questionnaires in April and so on.Observation #5: Even with most components of in-house contractor success formula in place, per the Statistic Research Institute 53% of construction firms go out of business with in the first 4 years. It remains a very risky model that requires significant; funding, staff experience, administrative support and risk tolerance.Three Rehab Production Models And Their AlternativesThis middle section restates the introduction and methodology and offers a detailed review of the Traditional Rehab Specialist, Construction Management Of Subcontractor and the In-House General Contractor production models .for each model the article provides: definition and staffing pattern, design roles and tasks for each major player, benefits and challenges, alternative models and finally recommendations for successful implementationFocus TopicsDuring our interview process, three ideas surfaced that were best served with a mini discussion of the topic rather than being embedded in the already large middle section.The three topics are; software and technology, management of community relations – marketing and quality control, and budget solution

Leveraging Wireless Broadband to Improve Police Land Mobile Radio Programming: Estimating the Resource Impact

Despite rapid growth in criminological studies of police technology, examinations of police land mobile radios are absent in the literature. This is troubling given the central role mobile radios serve in police operations and their significant management costs. The present study seeks to fill this gap by introducing the functionality of wireless broadband radio programming. Current practice requires a police officer to physically drive to a radio programming location to manage their mobile radio. Wireless programming remedies this burdensome reality, thereby saving officer time and cost. Geospatial analyses are used to estimate distance saved associated with wireless programming. We then conduct a number of calculations to determine time and cost savings related to the observed differences between existing and wireless radio programming within the context of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. Results suggest wireless radio programming can save significant personnel and financial resources. Implications are discussed

The Cost of Teacher Turnover in Alaska

Low teacher retention - high turnover - affects student learning. Teacher recruitment and retention are challenging issues in Alaska. Rates vary considerably from district to district and year to year, but between 2004 and 2014, district-level teacher turnover in rural Alaska averaged 20%, and about a dozen districts experienced annual turnover rates higher than 30%. High turnover rates in rural Alaska are often attributed to remoteness and a lack of amenities (including healthcare and transportation); teachers who move to these communities face additional challenges including finding adequate housing and adjusting to a new and unfamiliar culture and environment. Though urban districts have lower teacher turnover rates, they also have challenges with teacher recruitment and retention, particularly in hard-to-fill positions (such as special education and secondary mathematics) and in difficult-to-staff schools. Annually, Alaskan school districts hire about 1,000 teachers (500-600 are hired by its five largest districts), while Alaska’s teacher preparation programs graduate only around 200. The costs associated with teacher turnover in Alaska are considerable, but have never been systematically calculated,1 and this study emerged from interests among Alaska education researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders to better understand these costs. Using data collected from administrators in 37 of Alaska’s 54 districts, we describe teacher turnover and the costs associated with it in four key categories: separation, recruitment, hiring, and induction and training. Our calculations find that the total average cost of teacher turnover is $20,431.08 per teacher. Extrapolating this to Alaska’s 2008-2012 turnover data, this constitutes a cost to school districts of approximately$20 million per year. We focused on costs to Alaskan school districts, rather than costs to individual communities, schools, or the state. Our calculation is a conservative estimate, and reflects typical teacher turnover circumstances - retirement, leaving the profession, or moving to a new school district. We did not include unusual circumstances, such as mid-year departures or terminations. Our cost estimate includes costs of separation, recruitment, hiring, and orientation and training, and excludes the significant costs of teacher productivity and teacher preparation. We suggest that not all turnover is bad, nor are all turnover costs; and emphasize the need to focus on teacher retention as a goal, rather than reducing turnover costs. Even with conservative estimates, teacher turnover is a significant strain on districts’ personnel and resources, and in an era of shrinking budgets, teacher turnover diverts resources from teaching and learning to administrative processes of filling teacher vacancies. Our recommendations include: • Better track teacher turnover costs • Explore how to reduce teacher turnover costs • Support ongoing research around teacher turnover and its associated costs • Explore conditions driving high teacher turnover, and how to address themUniversity of Alaska FoundationExecutive Summary / Acknowledgements / Funding / Contact / What is teacher turnover? / What are the impacts of teacher turnover? / What factors are associated with teacher turnover? / What are the costs associated with teacher turnover? / Challenges in calculating turnover costs / Method / Analysis / Findings / Implications / Recommendations / Limitations / Conclusions / References / Appendix A: Detail costs of teacher turnover / Appendix B: Occupation codes & wages used for cost calculation

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace-vehicle Design (IPAD) system. Volume 2: Characterization of the IPAD system, phase 1, task 1

The aircraft design process is discussed along with the degree of participation of the various engineering disciplines considered in this feasibility study

Space station final study report. Volume 1: Executive summary

Volume 1 of the Final Study Report provides an Executive Summary of the Phase B study effort conducted under contract NAS8-36526. Space station Phase B implementation resulted in the timely establishment of preliminary design tasks, including trades and analyses. A comprehensive summary of project activities in conducting this study effort is included

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace vehicle Design (IPAD). Volume 6: IPAD system development and operation

The strategy of the IPAD implementation plan presented, proposes a three phase development of the IPAD system and technical modules, and the transfer of this capability from the development environment to the aerospace vehicle design environment. The system and technical module capabilities for each phase of development are described. The system and technical module programming languages are recommended as well as the initial host computer system hardware and operating system. The cost of developing the IPAD technology is estimated. A schedule displaying the flowtime required for each development task is given. A PERT chart gives the developmental relationships of each of the tasks and an estimate of the operational cost of the IPAD system is offered

Cloud Migration: A Case Study of Migrating an Enterprise IT System to IaaS

This case study illustrates the potential benefits and risks associated with the migration of an IT system in the oil & gas industry from an in-house data center to Amazon EC2 from a broad variety of stakeholder perspectives across the enterprise, thus transcending the typical, yet narrow, financial and technical analysis offered by providers. Our results show that the system infrastructure in the case study would have cost 37% less over 5 years on EC2, and using cloud computing could have potentially eliminated 21% of the support calls for this system. These findings seem significant enough to call for a migration of the system to the cloud but our stakeholder impact analysis revealed that there are significant risks associated with this. Whilst the benefits of using the cloud are attractive, we argue that it is important that enterprise decision-makers consider the overall organizational implications of the changes brought about with cloud computing to avoid implementing local optimizations at the cost of organization-wide performance.Comment: Submitted to IEEE CLOUD 201