The determinants of successful partnering: a transaction cost perspective

Support is emerging for the assertion that partnering can have a significant beneficial influence on project relationships and project outcomes. However, not all of the evidence bears this out: there are some examples of less-than-successful experiments with partnering approaches. Questions quite naturally arise as to whether any particular elements or aspects of partnering have differed in some of the documented examples, thus giving rise to their relative success or failure. In order to answer such questions there is a need for a theoretical framework against which to analyse the relative performance of partnering projects. In this paper, the authors propose an approach based upon aspects of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) theory. It is argued that two main factors, contractual incompletedness and opportunism, are fundamental in determining whether project relationships are adversarial or not. The validity of the approach is examined by applying it retrospectively to a strategic partnering agreement involving more than 80 individual building projects. This agreement had been the subject of a four-year study and had been found to produce benefits in a number of areas, not least in the avoidance of conflict and disputes. After analysis, evidence for the reduction of contractual incompletedness was mixed, however the opportunistic inclinations of the participants (specifically, the contractors) were effectively attenuated by a clearly observable combination of factors, which included preselection criteria, and the use of appropriate management and commercial frameworks in which to operate. The case study suggests a prima facie validity to the analytical approach that was adopted, which merits further testing: the next stages being to develop and refine the framework, and to carry out comparative multi-case research on a number of different partnering projects

Sound insulation design of modular construction housing

This paper provides an insight into the acoustic issues of modular housing using the Verbus System of construction. The paper briefly summarises the history of the development of Verbus modular housing and the acoustic design considerations of the process. Results are presented from two sound insulation tests conducted during the course of the project. The results are discussed in terms of compliance with Approved Document E1 and increased performance standards such as EcoHomes2

A study of compressible turbulent boundary layers using the method of invariant modeling

Model equations for studying compressible turbulen boundary layer

The morphology of Sersic-Pastoriza galaxies

The authors present the preliminary results of their radio-continuum and neutral hydrogen observations of Sersic-Pastoriza (S-P) galaxies. They show that the central regions contain a population of compact features thought to be young supernova remnants (SNRs) and discuss the overall morphology of the nuclei

Sub-au imaging of water vapour clouds around four Asymptotic Giant Branch stars

We present MERLIN maps of the 22-GHz H2O masers around four low-mass late-type stars (IK Tau U Ori, RT Vir and U Her), made with an angular resolution of ~ 15 milliarcsec and a velocity resolution of 0.1 km s-1. The H2O masers are found in thick expanding shells with inner radii ~ 6 to 16 au and outer radii four times larger. The expansion velocity increases radially through the H2O maser regions, with logarithmic velocity gradients of 0.5--0.9. IK Tau and RT Vir have well-filled H2O maser shells with a spatial offset between the near and far sides of the shell, which suggests that the masers are distributed in oblate spheroids inclined to the line of sight. U Ori and U Her have elongated poorly-filled shells with indications that the masers at the inner edge have been compressed by shocks; these stars also show OH maser flares. MERLIN resolves individual maser clouds, which have diameters of 2 -- 4 au and filling factors of only ~ 0.01 with respect to the whole H2O maser shells. The CSE velocity structure gives additional evidence the maser clouds are density bounded. Masing clouds can be identified over a similar timescale to their sound crossing time (~2 yr) but not longer. The sizes and observed lifetimes of these clouds are an order of magnitude smaller than those around red supergiants, similar to the ratio of low-mass:high-mass stellar masses and sizes. This suggests that cloud size is determined by stellar properties, not local physical phenomena in the wind.Comment: 21 pages, including 14 figures and 8 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Exploring Supply Chains from a Technical Debt Perspective

Software development has evolved from software development organizations building custom solutions for every need and creating a backlog of applications needed by users to specialized organizations producing components that are supplied to other software development organizations to speed the development of their software products. Our objective is to illustrate how a manager might use supply chain information to evaluate software being considered for inclusion in a product. We investigated the Eclipse platform code to illustrate analysis methods that produce information of use to decision makers. The technical debt of the software pieces was measured using the Technical Debt plug-in to SONAR as one input into the evaluation of supply chain quality. The dependency graphs of uses relationships among files were analyzed using graph metrics such as betweenness centrality. There was a statistically significant moderate correlation between the technical debt for a file and the betweenness centrality for that file. This relationship is used as the basis for a heuristic approach to forming advice to a development manager regarding which assets to acquire

A five year record of high-frequency in situ measurements of non-methane hydrocarbons at Mace Head, Ireland

Continuous high-frequency in situ measurements of a range of non-methane hydrocarbons have been made at Mace Head since January 2005. Mace Head is a background Northern Hemispheric site situated on the eastern edge of the Atlantic. Five year measurements (2005–2009) of six C<sub>2</sub>–C<sub>5</sub> non-methane hydrocarbons have been separated into baseline Northern Hemispheric and European polluted air masses, among other sectors. Seasonal cycles in baseline Northern Hemispheric air masses and European polluted air masses arriving at Mace Head have been studied. Baseline air masses show a broad summer minima between June and September for shorter lived species, longer lived species show summer minima in July/August. All species displayed a winter maxima in February. European air masses showed baseline elevated mole fractions for all non-methane hydrocarbons. Largest elevations (of up to 360 ppt for ethane maxima) from baseline data were observed in winter maxima, with smaller elevations observed during the summer. Analysis of temporal trends using the Mann-Kendall test showed small (<6 % yr<sup>−1</sup>) but statistically significant decreases in the butanes and <i>i</i>-pentane between 2005 and 2009 in European air. No significant trends were found for any species in baseline air