The Prevalence of Six Sigma Trends in the Construction Industry in Pakistan

Economic development in any country or area depends heavily on the performance of the construction industry. This is because the subsequent development of infrastructure increases economic activity, living standards, direct foreign investments, and business opportunities. The construction industry in Pakistan also plays a significant role in its economic activity, and the government’s focus towards increasing infrastructure development provides the construction industry with growth prospects. It is observed that quality management practices in the Pakistan construction industry are highly inadequate to enhance quality. The construction industry there is highly challenged with inadequate delays in projects and project quality. The need for the implementation of Six Sigma in the construction industry in Pakistan is underestimated. The structured questionnaire has been developed to collect data from a sample size of 100 managers from 100 construction companies in Pakistan. Current study determines the current trends, the extent of implementation, prior knowledge and related training required in the implementation of Six Sigma

Exploring the Green Infrastructure Workforce: Jobs for the Future

How many people work in green infrastructure? What are the jobs? What level of compensation do they offer? What are the educational requirements? How much potential is there for job creation as green infrastructure investments increase? How is the green infrastructure workforce within the six U.S. cities examined for this report similar to—or different than—that in the nation as a whole?This issue brief attempts to answer these and other questions about current and emerging workforce trends related to the rise in green infrastructure activities. It summarizes the results of research conducted by Jobs for the Future (JFF) as part of NatureWORKS, a national initiative to understand the jobs, careers, skills, credentials, and potential of the U.S. green infrastructure workforce. The study was funded by the U.S. Forest Service's National Urban and Community Forestry Grant Program as recommended by the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council, NUCFAC.The research focused on occupations involved in the direct installation, maintenance, and inspection (IMI) of the green infrastructure (GI) and their first-line supervisors. This report describes the GI-IMI involvement of occupations whose work includes green infrastructure activities. It also discusses the emerging movement to certify green infrastructure workers in the stormwater management field as a way to both raise the quality of GI work and promote green infrastructure implementation, thereby expanding the workforce

Looking Ahead: Business Intelligence & Analytics Research in the Post-Pandemic New Normal

The COVID 19 black swan event has disrupted every aspect of life in unprecedented ways, causing organizations to scramble to effectively sense and respond to the tumultuous business environment. Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) capability has gained attention as a key weapon in the arsenal needed to combat turbulent times and to adjust to the post-pandemic new normal. Post-pandemic BI&A trends point to changes in organizational priorities for BI&A infrastructure that influence the traditional view of BI&A architecture and its role within an organization. As a result, new challenges and opportunities are emerging. This paper identifies and examines twelve key post-pandemic BI&A trends from industry practice and six major research themes. It also proposes an initial set of research questions that could inspire future research in BI&A in the post-pandemic new normal

Uncertainty, Innovation, and Infrastructure Credits: Outlook for the Low Carbon Fuel Standard Through 2030

California’s low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) specifies that the state’s transportation fuel supply achieve a 20% reduction in carbon intensity (CI) below 2011 levels by 2030. Reaching the standard will require substantive changes in the fuel mix, but the specifics and the cost of these changes are uncertain. We assess if and how California is likely to achieve the standard, and the likely impact of infrastructure credits on this compliance outlook. We begin by projecting a distribution of fuel and vehicle miles demand under business-as-usual economic and policy variation and transform those projections into a distribution of LCFS net deficits for the entire period from 2019 through 2030. We then construct a variety of scenarios characterizing LCFS credit supply that consider different assumptions regarding input markets, technological adoption over the compliance period, and the efficacy of complementary policies. In our baseline scenario for credit generation, LCFS compliance would require that between 60% and 80% of the diesel pool be produced from biomass. Our baseline projections have the number of electric vehicles reaching 1.3 million by 2030, but if the number of electric vehicles reaches Governor Jerry Brown’s goal of 5 million by 2030, then LCFS compliance would require substantially less biomass-based diesel. Outside of rapid zero emission vehicle penetration, compliance in 2030 with the $200 credit price may be much more difficult. New mechanisms to allow firms to generate credits by building electric vehicle charging stations or hydrogen fueling stations have minor implications for overall compliance because the total quantity of infrastructure credits is restricted to be relatively small

Next Generation Evaluation: Embracing Complexity, Connectivity, and Change

This Learning Brief draws from literature and research, as well as more than a dozen interviews with foundation leaders, evaluation practitioners, and social sector thought leaders, with the intention of starting the conversation in the field around Next Generation Evaluation characteristics and approaches

Topics and trends in NSF ocean sciences awards

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Topics and trends in NSF ocean sciences awards. Oceanography 31(4), (2018): 164-170. doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.404.The National Science Foundation Ocean Sciences Division (NSF-OCE) provides the majority of the support for ocean research in the United States. Knowledge of the trends in research and funding for NSF-OCE awards is important to investigators, academic institutions, policy analysts, and advocacy organizations. Here, we apply topic modeling to NSF-OCE award abstracts to uncover underlying research topics, examine the interrelationships between awards, and identify research and funding trends. The 20 topics identified by the model capture NSF-OCE’s 10 largest programs (~90% of awards) remarkably well and provide better resolution into research subjects. The distribution of awards in topic space shows how the different topics relate to each other based on their similarity and how awards transition from one topic to another. Awards have become more interdisciplinary over time, with increasing trends in 13 of the 20 topics (65%). Seven topics show a growing fraction of the number of awards while six topics have a declining share. Both the annual inflation-adjusted amount of money awarded and the fraction of the annual funding have been increasing over time in four of the 20 topics. Three other topics show a decline in both the annual amount awarded and the fraction of total annual funding. The identified topics can be grouped into three major themes: infrastructure, education, and science. After 2011, increases in the mean annual cost per project result in a relatively constant fraction of annual funding for infrastructure, despite a significant decline in the infrastructure fraction of awards. The information presented on research and funding trends is useful to scientists and academic institutions in planning and decision-making, while the metrics we employed can be used by NSF to quantify the effects of policy decisions.We thank T. Horner, B. Peucker-Ehrenbrink, K. Buesseler and M. Kurz for discussions and comments, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry for support, and A. Mix and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. NSF deserves special credit for making its data publicly available

Gaining Depth: State of Watershed Investment 2014

Last year, governments, businesses, and donors channeled $12.3 billion (B) toward nature-based solutions to the global water crisis. Water users and public funders were paying land managers to repair and protect forests, wetlands, and other natural systems as a flexible, costeffective strategy to ensure clean and reliable water supplies, resilience to natural disasters, and sustainable livelihoods. These deals paid for watershed protection and restoration across more than 365 million (M) hectares (ha) worldwide in 2013, an area larger than India.The value of investment in watershed services1 (IWS) - referring to funding for watershed restoration or protection that delivers benefits to society like aquifer recharge or erosion control - has been growing at anaverage rate of 12% per year. The number of operational programs grew by two thirds between 2011 and 2013, expanding in both scale and sophistication as program developers introduced new tools to track returns on watershed investment, coordinated efforts across political boundaries, and delivered additional benefits like sustainable livelihoods and biodiversity protection

Monitor for ICT Integration in Flemish Education (MICTIVO) : research set-up and some preliminaries

MICTIVO is a monitoring tool to evaluate ICT integration in the formal Flemish education. It was first conducted in 2008, based on a literature review of several European monitors for mapping the adoption and diffusion of technology for teaching and learning purposes to evaluate the return on investment and effects of ICT on educational practice. The tool consists of different aspects concerning ICT: infrastructure and policy, perceptions, competences and integration at micro-level. In 2008, MICTIVO was tested a first time, the indicators for the different components were validated and empirically tested. In 2013 and 2018 a follow up study was conducted to monitor the current state of ICT integration. The scale and breadth of MICTIVO makes it possible to get representative information on the status of ICT integration in Flanders and the evolution of trends through time

"Billion Dollar Bets" to Create Economic Opportunity for Every American

The American Dream--the notion that if you "work hard and play by the rules," you will improve your lot in life--has become impossible for Americans to achieve. That was the conclusion of nearly six out of ten people who responded to a June 2014, CNNMoney poll. In a December 2015 Harvard Institute of Politics' survey of millennials, nearly half pronounced the American Dream "dead."Given the fact that social mobility in the United States has largely remained stagnant for more than 30 years, many people doubt there's a better economic future for themselves and their children. Indeed, it will take a sustained effort to restore economic opportunity for all Americans. But according to research by The Bridgespan Group, reports of the American Dream's demise just might be premature.Drawing from an extensive research base--as well as dozens of interviews with experts and practitioners and the diverse perspectives of an advisory board--a Bridgespan team embarked on an effort to map out "what matters most" to increase upward economic mobility for millions of low-income Americans. (Learn more about our research effort in the Overview of Research.)The team identified an array of on-the-ground interventions that are already building pathways to the middle class, as well as promising innovations that are just beginning to emerge. The results of that investigation can be found in this report, "Billion Dollar Bets" to Create Economic Opportunity for Every American.We framed our research around this question: "How could a philanthropic investment of $1 billion dramatically increase upward social mobility for low-income individuals and families?" With access to capital that is flexible and adaptable, philanthropists are uniquely positioned to put social mobility on an upward trajectory. Roughly 80 percent of the largest donors aspire to impel social change, but just 20 percent of philanthropic investments above$10 million went to social-change organizations between 2000 and 2012. Philanthropists have lacked the sightlines into shovel-ready projects and they've lacked the confidence that large investments would actually impact the economic lives of many people.Our intent was to create a series of roadmaps that illustrate how investments of $1 billion might improve the lifetime earnings of millions of low-income Americans. We began by identifying four promising areas where large investments of private capital would likely catalyze population-level change.We then evaluated scores of concepts for restoring the meritocratic ideal to many more Americans. Working with our advisory board, we selected 15 of those concepts as illustrative "big bets" that span the four investment areas. To get a better understanding of the promise and pitfalls that come with any attempt to take on the social mobility challenge, we took a deeper dive into six of the proposed bets:Improve early childhood developmentEstablish clear and viable pathways to careersDecrease rates of conviction and incarcerationReduce unintended pregnanciesReduce the effect of concentrated poverty on the lives of people living in distressed neighborhoodsImprove the performance of public systems that administer and oversee social service