69,800 research outputs found

    The suitability of PRINCE2 for engineering infrastructure

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    The view that PRINCE2 was not suitable for application to infrastructure was identified in a study done for a separate purpose, namely, to examine project governance and methodology, which is not reported in this paper. It was asserted by several participants in interviews conducted with a sample of experienced practitioners across a range of industries and disciplines. This paper follows up on those comments by conducting an examination of PRINCE2 from an engineering infrastructure perspective to investigate the validity of this assertion. It takes a deductive, definitional approach to determine if there are any features in it that would cause difficulty for engineering infrastructure use. Seventeen features were examined, and 15 were found to have difficulty in application to the project management of engineering infrastructure. The remaining two found inconsistencies that were unlikely to cause too much difficulty. The features causing difficulty include non-generic terminology for the terms project, lifecycle and stage, using a product rather than a project-based process, use of an iterative product delivery process unsuited to predictive projects, use of a delivery process for all project phases, assumption of a board governance model with inappropriate accountabilities, lack of clarity around the use of the project plan, and absence of a lifecycle appropriate for engineering infrastructure, with PRINCE2 effectively self-declaring its need for a higher-level project lifecycle/ methodology from somewhere else. The paper concludes that PRINCE2 is quite poorly suited to managing engineering infrastructure projects and identifies that some of the reasons for this are likely to also cause difficulty for many ICT projects as well

    Innovation and communication technologies + Problem based learning: a new approach for teaching architecture

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    This article presents the results obtained during its first year of application in the educational innovation project called “New frameworks of teaching: ICT applied to problem based learning in technical bachelors” (PIE 15-166) developed at the School of Architecture in the University of Malaga. This has been focused on the development of educational strategies based on exploiting the potential of ICT, taking as a framework the ABP. Its application on subjects from different areas of knowledge (architectural composition, urban planning, projects and architectural constructions) has allowed assessing the adaptability of this methodology depending on the content. Among the obtained results can be highlighted the improvement in cross curricular coordination between subjects from different fields of studies, providing different ways of synchronous and asynchronous communication between students and teachers to generate a greater interaction between all the involved subjects; increasing in addition the interest and an improvement of the results.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

    An experiment with ontology mapping using concept similarity

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    This paper describes a system for automatically mapping between concepts in different ontologies. The motivation for the research stems from the Diogene project, in which the project's own ontology covering the ICT domain is mapped to external ontologies, in order that their associated content can automatically be included in the Diogene system. An approach involving measuring the similarity of concepts is introduced, in which standard Information Retrieval indexing techniques are applied to concept descriptions. A matrix representing the similarity of concepts in two ontologies is generated, and a mapping is performed based on two parameters: the domain coverage of the ontologies, and their levels of granularity. Finally, some initial experimentation is presented which suggests that our approach meets the project's unique set of requirements

    The role of urban living labs in a smart city

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    In a rapidly changing socio-technical environment cities are increasingly seen as main drivers for change. Against this backdrop, this paper studies the emerging Urban Living Lab and Smart City concepts from a project based perspective, by assessing a series of five Smart City initiatives within one local city ecosystem. A conceptual and analytical framework is used to analyse the architecture, nature and outcomes of the Smart City Ghent and the role of Urban Living Labs. The results of our analysis highlight the potential for social value creation and urban transition. However, current Smart City initiatives face the challenge of evolving from demonstrators towards real sustainable value. Furthermore, Smart Cities often have a technological deterministic, project-based approach, which forecloses a sustainable, permanent and growing future for the project outcomes. ‘City-governed’ Urban Living Labs have an interesting potential to overcome some of the identified challenges

    The case for new academic workspaces

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    Executive summary: This report draws upon the combined efforts of a number of estates professionals, architects, academics, designers, and senior managers involved in the planning of new university buildings for the 21st century. Across these perspectives, all would agree – although perhaps for different reasons - that this planning is difficult and that a number of particular considerations apply in the design of academic workspaces. Despite these difficulties, they will also agree that when this planning goes well, ‘good’ buildings are truly transformational – for both the university as a whole and the people who work and study in them. The value of well-designed buildings goes far beyond their material costs, and endures long after those costs have been forgotten ..
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