Building a complementary agenda for business process management and digital innovation.

The world is blazing with change and digital innovation is fuelling the fire. Process management can help channel the heat into useful work. Unfortunately, research on digital innovation and process management has been conducted by separate communities operating under orthogonal assumptions. We argue that a synthesis of assumptions is required to bring these streams of research together. We offer suggestions for how these assumptions can be updated to facilitate a convergent conversation between the two research streams. We also suggest ways that methodologies from each stream could benefit the other. Together with the three exemplar empirical studies included in the special issue on business process management and digital innovation, we develop a broader foundation for reinventing research on business process management in a world ablaze with digital innovation

The Evolution of Smart Buildings: An Industrial Perspective of the Development of Smart Buildings in the 2010s

Over the course of the 2010s, specialist research bodies have failed to provide a holistic view of the changes in the prominent reason (as driven by industry) for creating a smart building. Over the 2010s, research tended to focus on remaining deeply involved in only single issues or value drivers. Through an analysis of the author’s peer reviewed and published works (book chapters, articles, essays and podcasts), supplemented with additional contextual academic literature, a model for how the key drivers for creating a smart building have evolved in industry during the 2010s is presented. The critical research commentary within this thesis, tracks the incremental advances of technology and their application to the built environment via academic movements, industrial shifts, or the author’s personal contributions. This thesis has found that it is demonstrable, through the chronology and publication dates of the included research papers, that as the financial cost and complexity of sensors and cloud computing reduced, smart buildings became increasingly prevalent. Initially, sustainability was the primary focus with the use of HVAC analytics and advanced metering in the early 2010s. The middle of the decade saw an economic transformation of the commercial office sector and the driver for creating a smart building was concerned with delivering flexible yet quantifiably used space. Driven by society’s emphasis on health, wellbeing and productivity, smart buildings pivoted their focus towards the end of the 2010s. Smart building technologies were required to demonstrate the impacts of architecture on the human. This research has evidenced that smart buildings use data to improve performance in sustainability, in space usage or for humancentric outcomes

An agile based integrated framework for software development.

Doctor of Philosophy in Management. University of KwaZulu-Natal. Durban, 2018.Software development practice has been guided by practitioners and academics along an evolutionary path that extends from a Waterfall approach, characterised as highly prescriptive, to an approach that is agile, embracing the dynamic context in which software is developed. Agile Methodology is informed by a set of generic principles and agile methods that are customised by practitioners to meet the requirements of the environment in which it is used. Insight into the customisation of agile methods is pivotal to uphold the evolutionary trajectory of software development methodology. The study adopted a ‘socio-technical’ orientation to enhance the implementation of Agile Methodology. The social component of the study was aligned to the role played by organisational culture in the adoption of software development methodology. The amorphous concept of organisational culture has been operationalised by implementing the Competing Values Framework to develop a model that aligns organisational culture to an optimal methodology for software development. The technical component of the study has a software engineering focus. The study leveraged experiential knowledge of software development by South African software practitioners to develop a customised version of a prominent agile software development method. The model has been developed so that it is compatible with a variant of organisational culture that is aligned with agile methodology. The study implemented a sequential research design strategy consisting of two phases. The first phase was qualitative consisting of a phenomenological approach to develop the study’s main models. The second phase was quantitative, underpinned by technology acceptance theory, consisting of a survey based approach to determine South African software practitioners’ acceptance of the agile-oriented technical model that was developed in the study. The results from the survey indicated an 80% acceptance of the model proposed in study. Structural Equation Modelling was used to demonstrate that the inclusion of organisational culture as an independent construct improved the predictive capacity of technology acceptance theory in the context of software development methodology adoption. The study’s overall theoretical contribution was to highlight the significance of organisational culture in the implementation of agile methodology and to extend the evolutionary path of software development methodology by proposing an agile oriented model that scales the software process to an organisational infrastructure level

The impact of digitalisation on the management role of architectural technology.

Building information modelling (BIM) is not only an authoring tool for architects and engineers, but also an analysis tool for all stakeholders in the supply chain procurement process. Analysis tools such as the code checking of building regulations and environmental simulations that can report on heating loads, daylighting and carbon use will influence the adoption of intelligent modelling faster and further than previously thought. The benefits for clients should not be underestimated either and some are already reaping them where project certainty is to the fore. However, the professional language that architects and engineers espouse is a latent force that can run counter to fostering collaboration. An emerging professional, the Architectural Technologist, can bridge that divide and adopt the adjunct role of manager in the integrated project delivery. The impact of digitalisation on the management role of architectural technology leads to four objectives namely; the practicalities of integrating drawing operations; the practicalities of design processes within the databased controlled programmes; the mapping of the overall process pitted against individual responsibility, data reliability and standard risk and the significant contribution to an understanding of how IMTs will drive changes within the discipline of Architectural Technology through the next decade. These objectives were then tested to establish whether there was an evolution in the manner in which the design team is structured. They included; how the opportunities for BIM are impacting design strategies, how they are impacting associated management structures and a deeper analysis of the changing role of the architectural technologist as a result of adoption. In conclusion, two streams were identified where one points to the educational set-up where primarily there is an apparent latent talent shortage waiting to be filled. Secondly, to the industry where project certainty will evidently drive the adoption of building information modelling and integrated project delivery as both clients and contractors will require projects to be delivered in BIM formats

American extreme: An ethnography of astronautical visions and ecologies

This dissertation is a coordinated ethnographic case study of environmental science, medicine, technology, and design in an American human spaceflight program. Its goal is to investigate how astronautics contributes to shaping "the environment" as an extensive contemporary category of knowledge, politics, and social action. Based on fieldwork conducted primarily at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas from 2005 --- 2008, the study argues that, in practical and meaningful ways, ecology and cosmology are co-constituting in American astronautics. Using participant observation and archival data, the study evaluates how astronautics practitioners know and work with "the human environment" on a scope that includes vehicle habitats and the heliosphere and on scales ranging from the molecular to the cosmic. In this work, people shore up and break down unusual human/environment boundaries, making sense of what it means to do so in technoscientific as well as sociopolitical, symbolic, and transcendental terms. The four cases analyzed are: (1) how space analogue missions operate as simulations but also make arguments that extreme environments foster progress through confrontation with adversity, (2) how space biomedical subjecthood is fundamentally environmental rather than biological, (3) how "habitability" works as a key elaborating concept among space architects so that they can connect extraterrestrial and terrestrial habitation problems and solutions, and (4) how Near Earth comets and asteroids have moved from being obscure astronomical objects to objects of environmental policymaking that extends into the heliosphere and into the far future. The study's analysis brings social theory about the spatial politics of knowledge into dialogue with conceptual frameworks from the social studies of science, technology, and environment. As an ethnography of outer space as extreme environment rather than territorial frontier, the study highlights astronautics' connections to broader domains of environmental science and technology, and by discursive and practical extension, to a spectrum of American environmentalisms and engagements with extremity. In doing so, the study elaborates astronautics' role in making ecological knowledge, and attendant concepts like adaptation and evolution, cosmologically scalable

Integration of Overlapped Design and Construction Stages Through Location-Based Planning Tools

The overlap of design and construction stages is a current practice in the construction industry, which aims to shorten the project lead time and cost. Apart from the construction industry fragmentation and its difficulties imposed on project management, this type of project faces some additional challenges, such as difficulties in optimising the design solution in a short period and in keeping the construction activities flowing smoothly. Furthermore, the advantages of this practice may be minimised if the time is badly managed, resulting in over-costs, time delays, and an increase in uncertainty. Although these problems can be avoided through the use of lean management practices, there is a lack of research on the application of lean for managing projects with overlap between design and construction stages. Moreover, the current literature in planning overlapped projects explores traditional methods of planning, such as the Critical Path Method (CPM), which have limited capacity to deal with the construction complexity. Hence, research on the use of lean tools for planning, namely location-based scheduling (LBS) tools, is needed and has a wide field of exploration to improve the performance of overlapped projects. The aim of this research is to devise a model to design, plan and control the stages of design and construction in the context of projects with overlap between these stages, using LBS tools and other lean practices to pull and align the project production regarding location, sequence and takt-time. The objectives are: (i) Determine how to use location-based tools to structure the work for design, suppliers and construction in alignment with their production sequences and production batches; (ii) Find out how to assemble design packages to meet suppliers’ and construction requirements; (iii) Determine the decoupling point of design development in order to apply pull production; (iv) Identify and analyse pros and cons of existing types of pull production systems that better suit the context of overlapped projects; (v) Explore how to measure and manage the work in progress and buffers in an integrated project system; (vi) Identify the best tools to control the production system, and to ensure that downstream information is achieving upstream processes. The research process contains three studies from the researcher’s professional experience: a fourth case study at the new university’s building in Norway; a fifth action research study in a highways depot maintenance project in the UK; and a sixth case study in a construction company in a residential project in Norway. The research approach used to develop the studies was the Design Science Research (DSR). The DSR is a mode of producing scientific knowledge through the creation and implementation of a solution (an artefact) for problems that affect the construction management. The production of the artefact is the aim of this research, and it is built throughout the studies. Findings indicate the use of LBS tools applied in construction to pull production in design and supply. The production control is conducted by an adapted last planner system to confirm and align deliverables with construction. Moreover, the BIM process is designed in connection with procurement and construction activities. The final model of this research can be used in the project management of construction projects with overlapping of design and construction phases, for example fast-track construction, flash-track construction, and complex projects with concurrent development of design and construction

The culture of curating and the curating of culture(s): the development of contemporary curatorial discourse in Europe and North America since 1987

Centred on the development of discussions around independent curatorial practice from 1987 to 2007 - a time of expanded understanding of the role of the curator - this dissertation illustrates how curatorial discourse has generated a significant body of knowledge within contemporary art discourses. This research has both theoretical and practical outcomes, represented within a dissertation that is divided into three parts: 1. An historical survey of key developments within curatorial practice and discourse, forming the main body of text in three chapters. 2. Four exhibition projects realised and analysed alongside this research (with Power Point presentation submitted as Appendix Two). 3. Forty-four original interviews with leading curators, artist-curators, exhibition historians, critic-curators, graduates from curatorial training programmes and leaders of these courses working between 1987 and 2007 (Appendix One). 1. Chapter One reveals how, with the first appearance of independent exhibition-makers, `demystification' of the curatorial position offered a critique of artistic autonomy in the late 1960s. It illustrates how curating became a form of self-presentation with the `curator-as- auteur' in the late 1980s, and how the `super-visibility' of a new generation of curators took place in the mid-to-late 1990s when curatorial debates and published anthologies began to appear as a way of correcting gaps in historical curatorial knowledge. Chapter Two traces the globalisation of Curating in the context of biennials and large-scale international exhibitions from 1989 to 2006. It considers how, since `Les Magiciens de la Terre' in 1989, curators have embraced globalism, transculturalism and a move towards collective models of curating. Chapter Three expands on the concept of the `curator«a bst' and reveals a convergence of istic and curatorial practice in the 1990s, which provides a theoretical hacktop to the Practical component of this research project. 2. Employing a curatorial strategy of dividing an exhibition into three spatial categories - the background, the middle-ground and the foreground - four related exhibitions were realised as practical examples of how differences between collaborative and authorial structures converge in processes of co-production. These exhibitions reflect upon the dominant issues of the theoretical research in order to practically demonstrate how the group exhibition is based on organisational structures that are the results of co-operation between artists and the curator(s), leading to co-authored exhibition formations. 3. Interviews represent the methodological approach employed as the main means of gathering knowledge and provide the primary basis of the analysis of key issues emerging during this period. They not only establish an historical trajectory for curatorial practice but also allow identification of key moments of historical conjuncture within the field. Through an examination of interview transcripts alongside literature published between 1987 and 2007 and the four inter-connected exhibitions, this research re-evaluates the relationship between artist(s) and curator(s) by demonstrating how the group exhibition form has become a creative medium of communication in and of itself