Evaluating success levels of mega-projects

Today's mega-projects transcend the traditional trajectories traced within national and technological limitations. Powers unleashed by internationalization of initiatives, in for example space exploration and environmental protection, are arguably only temporarily suppressed by narrower national, economic, and professional disagreements as to how best they should be harnessed. While the world gets its act together there is time to develop the technologies of such supra-mega-project management that will synergize truly diverse resources and smoothly mesh their interfaces. Such mega-projects and their management need to be realistically evaluated, when implementing such improvements. This paper examines current approaches to evaluating mega-projects and questions the validity of extrapolations to the supra-mega-projects of the future. Alternatives to improve such evaluations are proposed and described

Traumatic lumbar hernia with abdominal skin loss

A traumatic lumbar hernia is a rare entity with <100 cases documented in the English literature. Here, we report the case of a 45-year-old man presented with severe abdominal trauma due to two-wheeler road traffic accident. There was a loss of the loin skin, the abdominal muscles severed from the attachment of the iliac crest exposing the cecum and degloving skin extending along the backup to the scapula. He underwent serial debridement to optimize the wound and tensor fascia lata flap skin graft. He had the recurrence of a hernia at 5-month follow-up; for which, he did not want any further surgical interventions. Autologous tissue cover and negative-pressure wound therapy can be considered for cover in a heavily exudating wound

Costs and Benefits of ISO9000-based Quality Management Systems to Construction Contractors

ISO9000-based Quality Management Systems(QMSs) have been widely applied by manycontractors with a hope to improve the productquality and hence achieve the desiredobjective of client satisfaction. However,setting up and implementing an ISO9000-based QMS is not without cost. Unless thecontractors can benefit from such system, it isunlikely that the senior management ofcontracting firms will commit to implement anISO9000-based QMS. In this paper, the costsof setting up and implementing an ISO9000-based QMS are assessed through aquestionnaire survey. The results arecompared with the benefits attained by thecontractors. It is found that contractors couldbe benefited from the use of ISO9000-basedQMS both tangibly and intangibly. Based on amore conservative estimation of some tangiblebenefits, a basic operational cost-benefit ratioof one to three was derived from the results ofthe survey. Since the latest version ofISO9000 has been fully implemented for anumber of years, the perception of contractorson the benefits gained after theimplementation of ISO9001:2000 is alsoexamined in this paper

Focusing on Best Value from a Source Selection Perspective

The emerging focus on "best value" in construction projects entails several crucial and complex decision-making tasks for appropriate selection of capable contractors and consultants. In many ways and thus could be correspondingly achieved at different levels. Although traditional "price based" selection approaches are still preferred on various grounds such as simplicity and/or public accountability, they may well result in some "false economy" or missed opportunities for producing a better value. Furthermore, the lower significance of price as compared to the higher risk transference in project delivery methods such as Design-Build and Build-Operate-Transfer type arrangements render the purely "price based" approaches even less useful. Therefore a structured value focused selection approach is considered as beneficial for meeting the client's goals and projct-specific needs. This paper presents discussions on some useful approaches to best value conceptualizations in "Source selection" perspectives, e.g. starting with the "right" selection of competent constructors in Design-Bid-Build type projects. Furthermore, a conceptualized basic framework for best value selection is also presented

Effects of teamwork climate on cooperation in crossfunctional temporary multi-organization workgroups

In this study, the formative roles of common goals, equal status, integrative interactions, and authority support as the optimal factors for engendering individuals’ cooperation with their proximal cross-functional project workgroups are examined. The four factors are properties of the workgroup environment, and have each been highlighted as being important in previous conceptual and critical success factors (CSFs) studies of project effectiveness. However, until now, there has been no systematic empirical test of the interactive effects of all four factors in a construction temporary-multi organization (TMO) workgroup setting. The four factors are conceptualized in this study as the reflective dimensions of a superordinate multidimensional latent construct, teamwork climate. An integrative test was undertaken of the construct validity of this multidimensional construct, its substantive utility relative to its dimensions, and of specific hypotheses connecting the multidimensional construct and its dimensions to individual’s in-role, extra-role, compliance, and deference behaviour; the test was performed using two cross-cultural samples of built environment professional managers (UK, N = 381; and Hong Kong, N = 140) and structural equation modelling. The results showed convergence in support of the multidimensional 18 conceptualization of teamwork climate, and also show that teamwork climate significantly and positively influences workgroup members’ in-role, extra-role, compliance, and deference behavior. These findings provide compelling indication that teamwork climate is an important and efficient determinant of cooperative behavior within TMO contexts and, in so doing, make an important contribution to the extant and construction engineering and management lines of literature on work climates. This study also makes an important contribution to the debate in the extant literature about how to model the four climate dimensions, in so far as it shows that a superordinate multidimensional conceptualization maximizes predictive utility, theoretical parsimony and bandwidth. Finally, this study makes an important contribution to practice, as it focuses project managers’ attention on creating the generative project environments for the four optimal conditions for teamwork

Selecting sustainable teams for PPP projects

Inherent complexities and high strategic impacts of public private partnership (PPP) projects call for careful team selection methodologies. While project-specific selection methodologies have been previously developed, it is shown that there is now a clear need for an integrated approach, which for example ties in Past Performance Scores on technical, sustainability and relational criteria into a unified framework for decision-making. This paper proposes such a framework. The first phase of the validation of this framework was carried out using a Delphi-type survey of industry and academic experts. The findings indicate a high consensus among experts on the suitability of the basic framework for further development. Following expansion and full operationalisation of the technical, sustainability and relational components, the developed framework will again be conceptually validated before recommending it for field testing and implementation

Correlation of cancer treatment related fatigue with biochemical & hormonal profile a prospective study

Background: Cancer treatment using chemotherapy or radiotherapy results in considerable cancer treatment related fatigue. Fatigue can induce significant stress causing hormonal alteration through hypothalamic pituitary axis leading to change in the internal milieu. We evaluated hormonal and biochemical profile to find out a putative corr~lation. Materials & Method: Fifty two histopathology documented cases of cancer patients were subjected to Pipers Fatigue Score (PFS) and blood test for hormone and other biochemical parameters before and after radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment. Human growth hormone, adenocorticotrophic hormone, thyroid stimulating hormone and serum free cortisol level were evaluated along with routine biochemical analysis before and after anticancer treatment. The individual fatigue score were compared with individual hormone levels and other biochemical parameters. Results: Fifty two cancer patients planned for anticancer therapy completed initial pretreatment evaluation however post treatment assessment was not possible in 8 cases as they died during therapy. There were 20 males and 32 females in the study with a median age of 50 years (range15-78 years). The stage distribution was as stage-1 (12°k), stage-11 (17°.4>), stage-Ill (44%) and stage-IV (26°/o).The primary cancer were in breast (19°/o), sarcomas (9°/o), head and neck (19°k), gynecological (19°/o) and miscellaneous sites (14o/o). The individual fatigue score were behavioral severity (26.6°.4>), affective meaning (28°/o), sensory (22.2%), cognitive mood (8.8%) and total score (22.2°.4>) respectively. There were significant rise in the fatigue score followi~g chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The serum human growth hormone and cortisol were positively correlated whereas serum TSH level was negatively correlated with fatigue. Conclusions: Cancer treatment related fatigue is a multidimensional event that affect stress hormonal ·milieu. The human growth hormone and corticotrophins were affected among cancer patients suffering from cancer treatment related fatigue. Probably this finding may help to improve therapeutic intervention in the management fatigue in cance

Accelerating Construction Industry Development

The needs for construction industry development are initially viewed from the broader perspectives of imperatives for infrastructure development and national development. All these are clearly more critical in developing countries. A non-exhaustive set of potential drivers and common barriers to construction industry development is identified from previous research. These suggest the usefulness of consolidating a cluster of recent proposals and exercises aiming at (a) construction organisation development in terms of an over-arching management support system model, as well as improved information and knowledge management; and (b) project team development in the context of relationally integrated teams and supply chains, joint risk management and ‘technology and knowledge exchange’ in joint ventures, as well as longer term public private partnerships. These apparently disparate research thrusts are threaded together into a pattern that may inspire, if not feed, specific research and development (R&D) agendas for construction industry development in different countries according to their own priorities, constraints and stages of infrastructure and national development

Effective TMO project workgroups: an investigation of antecedent conditions

In seeking to explain the antecedents of cross-functional TMO workgroup cooperation, Anvuur and Kumaraswamy (2007) [Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 133(3), 225-34] proposed a conceptual framework which emphasizes the formative role of four factors: common goals; equal status; integrative interactions; and authority support. This study tests this framework empirically, based on responses from a Hong Kong survey of built environment professional managers and using structural equation modelling. The findings support the role of the four factors, showing that a superordinate construct—teamwork climate for cooperation—formed from the four factors significantly and positively influences workgroup members’ in-role, extra-role, compliance, and deference behaviour. Therefore, project managers may usefully strive to create the generative project environments for the four optimal conditions for teamwork

Conceptual model of partnering and alliancing

Partnering as a concept has matured in its application and many empirical studies provide evidence of its impact on project performance beyond the rather prescriptive and anecdotal claims of earlier cookbooks on the subject. What has remained elusive, however, is a guiding theory on partnering. Drawing on the literature, partnering is explained within the framework of intergroup contact theory and teamwork in organisations. More specifically, partnering has the potential to create the essential conditions for optimal intergroup contact and hence, to reduce bias and increase cooperation among construction project workgroups and, consequently, favourably impact on project performance. Demonstrating a close fit with the published literature on partnering provides useful support for the proposed model. The model can clearly help project managers to focus their attention on the necessary aspects of workgroup processes that lead to high cooperation and performance