IPMA STANDARD ELEMENTS AND FEEDBACK IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT TEACHING

The paper proposes the concept of project management teaching including the International Project Management Association (IPMA) standard. The concept of teaching is theoretical and derives from the notion of competence, which the IPMA standard is based on. The paper presents a brief description of the IPMA standard and endeavours to define the notion of competence. The competence is worked with in respect to hierarchical recognition. The proposed teaching concept works with the concepts of information, knowledge and skills. The teaching proposal stems from the structure and contents of the IPMA standard elements. Furthermore, the paper elaborates the issue of embedding the elements of the IPMA standard competences into training courses. In the article, the eye of the IPMA competences is further enhanced with possible training courses and specialist areas in which the standard elements can thematically be included. The paper states that the competence elements and training courses cross one another and overlap in a manifold way. The authors also propose a way which could verify into what extent the students have actually acquired taught IPMA competence elements. The paper contains the proposal of feedback quantification for the IPMA standard and project management teaching. The results of the paper can be used as a starting premise for future research. Both the verification proposal and the embedding of the elements into teaching are derived from on-going academic experience of the authors of the article

Use of aerial thermography to reduce mortality of roe deer fawns before harvest

In agricultural landscape, there are thousands of young wild animals killed every year. Their deaths are caused mostly by agricultural fieldworks during spring harvest. Among the affected animals there are also fawns of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), which react to danger by pressing themselves against the ground in order to be protected from predators. There were various methods tested in the past aimed at decreasing roe deer mortality caused by agriculture machinery with varied levels of success. This contribution presents technology that documents the possibility of searching for fawns with a thermal imaging device carried by an unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The results are based on field research that estimated the ideal height of flight being ±40 meters above ground. If the climatic conditions are favourable, it is possible to monitor and mark fawn locations using GPS coordinates in an area of about 14 ha in 25 minutes, which is the average flight time of UAV on one battery charge. The thermo-camera is very reliable in finding fawns in early morning hours (4 to 6 a.m.) when there is the highest temperature contrast between the searched object and its surroundings. The main limiting factors are climatic conditions and the short time span in which the thermo-camera can be used. If the basic requirements are met, the rate of successful fawn detection can be even up to 100%. An undisputed advantage of this method is the possibility of involvement of local gamekeepers. Thus the agricultural fieldworks are not interrupted

Task criticalness potential: A multiple criteria approach to project management

summary:The paper proposes the method evaluating tasks criticalness potential, which has been analysed by various project management tools. The criticalness potential of tasks, as opposed to a simple differentiation of tasks to critical and non-critical using the CPM method, considers not only time, but also resource, cost and topological aspects of a project schedule. In the paper, the tasks criticalness potential is defined applying task criticalness indicators which are further used as input for three various multiple criteria decision models. These models enable taking into account the principal project success criteria, i. e. time, resources and cost. The tasks criticalness potential cannot be determined using one indicator or one characteristic only. A selected multi-criteria approach based on task criticalness indicators differentiates between tasks more and less threatening to a project. This paper suggests different multiple criteria approaches to the quantification of task criticalness potential, compares them and discusses their advantages and disadvantages