Intensive big room process for co-creating value in legacy construction projects

In construction projects the changes and refinements of client requirements are often seen just as a disturbance causing additional costs. However, today clients' business needs evolve constantly and therefore changes in the project requirements are inevitable. Simultaneously, the increasing competition forces companies to minimise unproductive capital costs. Therefore there is an economical pressure to shorten the construction time and the design and construction will be even more concurrent than today. There is clearly potential value to be created for customer by terms of collaborative design process. Fira is an innovative Finnish company which has developed its interactive and customer centric Verstas process since 2009. Fira is using service logic as a guiding principle in the development of collaborative design processes, such as Intensive Big Room (IBR), which is a combination of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and further development of Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE ) and Big Room methodologies. The traditional project management methods are not efficient in managing late changes in customer's requirements. This article presents a new method combining collaborative design process, requirements management and IBR in a small sub-process - locking and ironmongery - in legacy construction project models. The sub-process was selected for the development of the method because it is a perfect example of the traditional fragmented process where efficient coordination between different participants and management of requirements are very difficult. However, the same principles can be applied to many other sub-processes too. The method combines service logic, value co-creation and use of IBR concept in a standard contract environment in a unique way which can give significant benefits to the companies able to adopt the presented concept in their business models. Using these methods Fira can now change its business model, differentiate with more attractive value proposal for customer, create more value than its competitors and capture value for securing its competitiveness in future

Improving built-in quality by BIM based visual management

Efficient and flawless information management plays a key role in successful execution of construction projects, but it has been difficult to implement in the traditional document-based environment. A root cause for waste in construction projects is inaccessible, inadequate or missing information. Necessary information is produced by several parties and it is often fragmented, inconsistent or in an impractical format. A lot of time is wasted - meaning that value is destroyed - in searching information needed for activities on construction site due to the fact that even if the information exists somewhere in the documents, it is not easily available. Visual control systems defined in Lean methodology strive for improving the value added flow. Building Information Modelling (BIM) can facilitate organisation and visualisation of information for specific needs in the process. This paper explores how combining principles of Visual Control and BIM could improve information delivery from information producers to information users to reduce waste in searching and processing the information. The methods of literature study, Value Stream Mapping and Root Cause Analysis are used. Software-based Standardised Model Views (SMVs) and their automated creation from BIM, based on predefined use cases and end-user needs are proposed and illustrated. The use of SMVs facilitates Lean information management, thus reducing rework and time spent on waiting, increasing built-in quality and enhancing flow in production. Evaluated savings in a single subcontractor's work time are at least 10% when SMVs are used

The Use of Modified PPC Measurement in Design Management

PPC (Plan Percent Complete) is a measurement tool in Last Planner which has been used mainly in production phase. However, there are some other studies in which PPC measurement has been used in design phase and we believe it has an important role there too. The aims of this study were to test 1) how modified PPC measurement fits to the design management, 2) how to develop and measure PPC for this project 3) what are the participants’ opinions on this modified PPC. A modified PPC (task list) was used in this study. A total of six measurements were done. Five project participants were included in the measurement and their opinions on the modified task list were recorded. Measured PPC values varied from 30 % to 100 % and the average was 73 %. According to the participants, a task list had a positive effect on their work. The conclusion was that the modified PPC measurement seems to be an appropriate tool for design management. It was accepted by designers and will be used in future projects. However, BIM needs to be connected to the task list more closely. More data is also needed to set a target value for PPC in design phase and to find out how PPC predicts project success

Unified Theory for Biorthogonal Modulated Filter Banks

Modulated filter banks (MFBs) are practical signal decomposition tools for M -channel multirate systems. They combine high subfilter selectivity with efficient realization based on polyphase filters and block transforms. Consequently, the O(M 2 ) burden of computations in a general filter bank (FB) is reduced to O(M log2 M ) - the latter being a complexity order comparable with the FFT-like transforms.Often hiding from the plain sight, these versatile digital signal processing tools have important role in various professional and everyday life applications of information and communications technology, including audiovisual communications and media storage (e.g., audio codecs for low-energy music playback in portable devices, as well as communication waveform processing and channelization). The algorithmic efficiency implies low cost, small size, and extended battery life, bringing the devices close to our skins.The main objective of this thesis is to formulate a generalized and unified approach to the MFBs, which includes, in addition to the deep theoretical background behind these banks, both their design by using appropriate optimization techniques and efficient algorithmic realizations. The FBs discussed in this thesis are discrete-time time-frequency decomposition/reconstruction, or equivalently, analysis-synthesis systems, where the subfilters are generated through modulation from either a single or two prototype filters. The perfect reconstruction (PR) property is a particularly important characteristics of the MFBs and this is the core theme of this thesis. In the presented biorthogonal arbitrary-delay exponentially modulated filter bank (EMFB), the PR property can be maintained also for complex-valued signals.The EMFB concept is quite flexible, since it may respond to the various requirements given to a subband processing system: low-delay PR prototype design, subfilters having symmetric impulse responses, efficient algorithms, and the definition covers odd and even-stacked cosine-modulated FBs as special cases. Oversampling schemes for the subsignals prove out to be advantageous in subband processing problems requiring phase information about the localized frequency components. In addition, the MFBs have strong connections with the lapped transform (LT) theory, especially with the class of LTs grounded in parametric window functions.<br/

Limittäiskieleilyä lukutaitokoulutuksessa

Tässä tutkielmassa tarkastellaan limittäiskieleilyä vapaan sivistystyön lukutaitokoulutuksessa. Limittäiskieleilyssä kielenoppijat käyttävät eri kieliä joustavasti limittäin ja rinnakkain samassa tilassa, tässä tapauksessa oppituntikeskustelussa. Tavoitteena on kuvata, kuinka limittäiskieleily ilmenee monenkeskisessä, monikielisessä alkeiskielenoppijoiden vuorovaikutustilanteessa, miten kielenoppijat reagoivat limittäiskieleilyyn sekä miten opettaja toimii monikielisessä luokkahuoneessa. Tutkimus on luonteeltaan laadullinen analyysi. Aineisto koostuu kahdesta videoidusta ja litteroidusta pelitilanteesta luokkahuoneessa. Osallistujia on kahdeksan, ja he kaikki ovat muuttaneet Suomeen aikuisina. Aineistossa kuullaan lähinnä suomea, arabiaa ja englantia, hiukan myös kiinaa, sorania ja bulgariaa. Aineiston analyysiin käytetään keskustelunanalyysin metodeja. Analyysi jakautuu kahteen lukuun. Ensimmäisesssä luvussa paneudutaan limittäiskieleilyn tyypillisiin ilmentymiin. Luvun esimerkeissä osoitetaan, millaisena limittäiskieleily näkyy oppituntikeskustelussa, kun esimerkiksi haetaan yhdessä ratkaisua ongelmiin tai toimitaan odotuksenvastaisesti. Toinen luku käsittelee sekä kielenoppijoiden että opettajan toimintaa tilanteissa, joissa on limittäiskieleilyä. Limittäiskieleily näkyi aineistossani toimintana, jossa kielten vaihto oli luvallista ja luontevaa. Kielenoppijat pyrkivät pääsääntöisesti käyttämään suomen kieltä, mutta koska heillä oli vasta alkava kielitaito, se ei ollut aina mahdollista. Muita kieliä kuin suomea käytettäessä voi ilmaista itseään nopeammin, jolloin toiminta pystyi jatkumaan keskeytyksettä. Toisaalta muita kieliä käytettiin myös silloin, kun haluttiin vaikuttaa toisiin ja muuttaa toimintatapoja. Kielen valinta saattoi toimia myös vallan välineenä. Yhteistä kieltä voi käyttää jonkinlaisena salakielenä, jonka avulla pystyi viestimään joillekin osallistujille muiden ymmärtämättä. Limittäiskieleily mahdollisti myös huumorin tuomisen vuorovaikutustilanteeseen. Pääosin limittäiskieleily toteutui aineistossa toistuvana koodinvaihtona. Puhujat antoivat esimerkiksi vastauksia haettuun sanaan, kysyivät apua tai antoivat neuvoja sekä selittivät omaa toimintaansa jollakin muulla yhteisellä kielellä kuin suomella. Kielen vaihtoa tapahtui myös lausuman sisällä "take kissa" -tyyppisissä ilmauksissa ilman mitään epäröintiä. Tämä viittaa siihen, ettei kyseessä ollut ainakaan aina tietoinen koodinvaihto, vaan puhuja poimi omista kieliresursseistaan tilanteeseen ne sanat, joilla hän kykeni parhaiten ilmaisemaan sanottavansa. Tuloksista voidaan nähdä, että kun opettaja tarjoaa mahdollisuuden limittäiskieleilylle, siitä voi tulla ryhmälle luonteva vuorovaikutuskäytäntö, johon ei reagoida voimakkaasti. Reaktiot limittäiskieleilyyn olivat paria poikkeusta lukuun ottamatta neutraaleja tai myönteisiä. Keskustelu ja pelin pelaaminen jatkuivat yleensä jouhevasti ja selityksittä, vaikka joku olisi vaihtanut hetkeksi kieltä. Opettajan myönteinen suhtautuminen limittäiskieleilyyn näkyi hymyilynä, positiivisina sanavalintoina sekä tilanteen sanoittamisella toteavaan sävyyn: "Zaida muisti mikä se on ja sinä tiesit suomeksi". Yksikielisyyden normi on väistymässä. Tutkimukset ovat osoittaneet, että kielenoppija pystyy syventämään kielitaitoaan paremmin, kun hänellä on mahdollisuus hyödyntää koko kielirepertuaariaan. Limittäiskieleilyn toteutuminen luokkahuoneessa vaatii opettajalta positiivista suhtautumista ja aktiviista otetta. Lukutaitokoulutuksessa limittäiskieleilyn hyödyntäminen on luonnollista ja jopa välttämätöntä, sillä osallistujilla on vielä suppea suomen kielen sanavarasto eivätkä he voi tukeutua suomenkielisiin teksteihin. Lukutaitokouluksen arkea ovatkin muun muassa vertaisoppiminen sekä digitaalisten käännössovellusten käyttö. Limittäiskieleilyä on ollut olemassa niin kauan, kuin kielet ja kulttuurit ovat kohdanneet. Se on kuitenkin melko uusi tutkimuskohde kielitieteessä. Tämä tutkielma antaa yleiskuvaa siitä, millaisena ja millaisissa tilanteissa limittäiskieleily voi näyttäytyä oppituntikeskustelussa

The growth pattern and microvasculature of pancreatic tumours induced with cultured carcinoma cells

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most frustrating problems in gastroenterological surgery, since there is little we can do to improve the survival of patients with current treatment strategies. If one is to elucidate factors related to carcinogenesis, tumour biology, diagnostics and new treatment modalities of this malignant disease, then it is essential to develop a suitable animal model. In the present study we investigated rat pancreatic tumour growth after intrapancreatic injection of cultured pancreatic carcinoma cells (DSL-6A/C1), originally derived from an azaserine-induced tumour, as well as the features of tumour microcirculation using the microangiography technique. After intrapancreatic inoculation, tumours were detected in 64% of animals. A 1 cm3tumour volume was reached within 20 weeks after inoculation. The tumours were ductal adenocarcinomas. Larger tumours showed invasive growth and spreading into the surrounding tissues, mainly into spleen and peritoneum. Microangiography revealed that the pancreatic tumours had an irregular and scanty vessel network and there were avascular areas in the center of the tumour. The area between normal pancreas and the induced tumour had dense vascularization. Intrapancreatic tumour induction with cultured pancreatic carcinoma cells produced a solid and uniformly growing tumour in Lewis rats and it thus provides a possible model for pancreatic cancer studies. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaig