Values and value - two perspectives on understanding stakeholders

Whilst most teams understand that delivering value is the key goal of a project or business, many do not have structured ways to make explicit and measure aspects of value that go beyond functionality and cost. The aim of this paper is to present Value in Design (VALiD), a new approach to help project teams identify and maintain a value delivery culture. A value framework is outlined that could help stakeholders articulate, in a structured way, their values and judgements of value by consistently stimulating their discussions during project activities to express and agree stakeholder priorities and expectations. Ultimately it is hoped that project teams will critically appraise their own approaches to determine whether they are successfully integrating stakeholder values and value in their design delivery processes. VALiD (see www.valueindesign.com), has been developed by Loughborough University and adopted by Constructing Excellence in the UK as an approach to move away from a short term cost focus to a broader stakeholder view. It equips construction teams with a cultural toolkit, that can be customised and integrated with other methods that address more objective time, cost and quality criteria, to enable them to better understand stakeholders’ value judgements as they are framed by values and beliefs

Values driven policy in designing environments for children and young people's education, health and wellbeing

The new millennium coincided with a reappraisal of value in UK construction and calls from a wide range of influential individuals, professional institutions and government bodies for the industry to exceed stakeholders’ expectations and develop integrated teams that can deliver world class products and services. As such value is certainly topical, but the importance of values as a separate but related concept is less well understood. This paper addresses the construction industry’s need to deliver public buildings that can regenerate communities, transform schools, modernise healthcare facilities and inspire children in a way that will make a real difference to their lives. Doing this requires a strong service and estates vision driven not only by the technical building solutions, but also by practitioners aspirations. Stakeholder engagement is seen by the Government as a way to bring about this reform, however the stakeholder consultation tools that are being deployed by providers and clients alike may be limited in how they translate values, attitudes and good teaching, learning and healthcare practices into building design. The purpose of this paper is to present the need to understand with greater meaning the values and cultures of schools and healthcare facilities during construction briefing and delivery and how the spirits of users can be harnessed to ensure the success and transformation of a new facility. It presents a longitudinal case study in which various tools and approaches have been developed and applied to address this need within education capital projects. It also draws on value, values and stakeholder literature in education and healthcare. The importance of this paper is to extend the range of methodological tools used in construction to structure the effects of meaning, culture and values on the construction industry’s processes, products and building operation and to translate learning between the education, health and social care sectors. It also hopes to encourage construction providers to extend their service and explore the opportunity to employ a similar methodology, particularly in the public sector environment where there is a growing need for multi-agency service integration

Does evidence based design for healthcare built environments limit creativity?

Research into therapeutic built environments and Evidence Based Design (EBD) has increased during the past three decades and the concept more readily adopted in practice. However, some practitioners believe that, as with any approach that builds on previous experiences to develop standards and guidelines, EBD could limit creativity. Given that creativity is often regarded as a major source of competitive advantage for a design, if EBD is seen as a barrier to creativity this may hinder its acceptance and application. The extent to which EBD could limit creativity during the design process is explored through a literature review. The findings suggest that only a smaller segment of evidence-based information, which relates to concept development, would affect creativity. Such information could foster information-driven design strategy and result in a lower level of creativity. However, properly implemented EBD strategies should not limit creativity since expert designers in EBD would use their knowledge (of therapeutic evidence) and expertness in the design process and need not follow and information driven strategy

Toward collective organizational values: a case study in UK construction

Values have held a prominent place in business ethics and organisational theories in recent years. Some organisations now aim to integrate values into their business practices, which requires a thorough understanding of the organisational values. However, whilst many believe organisational values should reflect the collective values of the staff, the majority of values statements are generated by senior management with little examination of employees’ personal values. The difficulties surrounding the development of an organisation’s values are exacerbated by the dearth of literature offering practical guidance. The case study presented has been conducted in a UK construction company using Schwartz’s theoretical framework of human values as a starting point and framing device. Employees’ values profiles were collected and analysed through an organisational-wide values survey. Follow-up workshops and post workshop activities facilitated the sharing of common values and helped staff representatives develop their own organisational values statements, independent of the senior management, before a final stage of negotiation with them. The findings support the argument that the shaping of collective organisational values should be based on a clear understanding and communication of employees’ personal values, and Schwartz’s circumplex model of values and associated survey instrument are helpful framing devices to initiate and structure such a debate. Compared to the usual management-imposed approach, this bottom-up process could make organisational values explicit in a more understandable and useful way, and improve values congruence between individuals and host organisations

Chemotaxis cluster 1 proteins form cytoplasmic arrays in Vibrio cholera and are stabilized by a double signaling domain receptor DosM

Nearly all motile bacterial cells use a highly sensitive and adaptable sensory system to detect changes in nutrient concentrations in the environment and guide their movements toward attractants and away from repellents. The best-studied bacterial chemoreceptor arrays are membrane-bound. Many motile bacteria contain one or more additional, sometimes purely cytoplasmic, chemoreceptor systems. Vibrio cholerae contains three chemotaxis clusters (I, II, and III). Here, using electron cryotomography, we explore V. cholerae’s cytoplasmic chemoreceptor array and establish that it is formed by proteins from cluster I. We further identify a chemoreceptor with an unusual domain architecture, DosM, which is essential for formation of the cytoplasmic arrays. DosM contains two signaling domains and spans the two-layered cytoplasmic arrays. Finally, we present evidence suggesting that this type of receptor is important for the structural stability of the cytoplasmic array

Managing value and quality in design

This paper focuses on the role of stakeholders in defining project values, which in turn influence product quality expectations, and of designers in meeting these goals. Ultimately, these determine the functional, physical and symbolic product characteristics that are necessary to achieve customer satisfaction. The issues of value and quality are compared within the context of design management, including their theoretical and philosophical underpinnings as well as current management techniques. Value and quality can be misunderstood and confused; the authors suggest that it is vital for stakeholders to have a common understanding of terminology and meaning. This is particularly true of customers who need to be engaged in a straightforward manner. We describe our research into the management of value delivery in design and explore opportunities for incorporating design quality indicator (DQI) assessments. The paper discusses how the DQI can form part of a project management system that ensures the delivery of stakeholder value during the design stage. Opportunities for customisation of the DQI content and the context of application at this stage of a project (as opposed to assessments during and after construction) are explored and may be key to success in delivering value in addition to product quality

Practitioner understanding of value in the UK Building Sector

Purpose: For over a decade, UK public sector construction policy and industry rhetoric has advanced a value agenda that advocates the development of project-specific understanding of value. This study examines construction practitioners’ collective cognition of value to determine how their facilitation may bias this intent. A value continuum is contributed. Design/methodology/approach: Critique of the Design Quality Indicator (the primary value agenda instrument) finds that it overemphasises objective value, confirming the need for practitioners to help stakeholders develop broader understanding of value. The freelisting technique of cultural anthropology is used to model practitioners’ collective cognition of value and, thus, their bias over this process. The standard freelisting protocol is followed. Findings: Practitioners’ collective understanding is found to comprise related concepts that resolve to a one dimensional ‘value continuum’ with subjective and objective terminals and which fully embodies value agenda intent. In contrast, the concepts articulated by the Design Quality Indicator are biased towards the objective value continuum terminal, confirming the need for practitioners to facilitate stakeholder exploration of the full continuum if the value agenda is to be fully addressed. Research limitations/implications: The value continuum only reflects the views of a small but typical sample of construction practitioners. Further work must characterise model completeness and consistency through the supply chain. Originality/value: This is the first work to derive an empirical model of construction practitioners’ collective understanding of value. It achieves this by the novel linking of a cognitive modelling technique from cultural anthropology with an emic interpretation of the results

Addressing the subjective view of value delivery

The construction industry has a limited understanding of its role in creating and delivering customer value. Existing responses to requests for value delivery focus on Value Management and Value Engineering. These approaches do not necessarily consider the subjective nature of the value judgements made by individuals as they experience their built environment. This paper suggests that designers and stakeholders should address the personal, organisational and societies values against which value judgements are formed. A continuous dialogue of value delivery is proposed. The Managing Value Delivery in Design project at Loughborough University is seeking to help both designers and stakeholders express and communicate their values so that subjective value judgements can be anticipated in design development. A “Framework of Value” is presented to illustrate the issues that value delivery should address. The Framework has been synthesised from review of literature and current industrial practice and has been validated by industrial partners. The future work required to broaden the construction industry’s approach to value delivery is outlined

Applying a universal content and structure of values in construction management

There has recently been a reappraisal of value in UK construction and calls from a wide range of influential individuals, professional institutions and government bodies for the industry to exceed stakeholders' expectations and develop integrated teams that can deliver world class products and services. As such value is certainly topical, but the importance of values as a separate but related concept is less well understood. Most construction firms have well-defined and well-articulated values, expressed in annual reports and on websites; however, the lack of rigorous and structured approaches published within construction management research and the practical, unsupported advice on construction institution websites may indicate a shortfall in the approaches used. This article reviews and compares the content anda structure pound of some of the most widely used values approaches, and discusses their application within the construction sector. One of the most advanced and empirically tested theories of human values is appraised, and subsequently adopted as a suitable approach to eliciting and defining shared organisational values. Three studies within six construction organisations demonstrate the potential application of this individually grounded approach to reveal and align the relative values priorities of individuals and organisations to understand the strength of their similarity and difference. The results of these case studies show that this new universal values structure can be used along with more qualitative elicitation techniques to understand organisational cultures

Preeclamptic placentae release factors that damage neurons: implications for foetal programming of disease

Prenatal development is a critical period for programming of neurological disease. Preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication involving oxidative stress in the placenta, has been associated with long-term health implications for the child, including an increased risk of developing schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders in later life. To investigate if molecules released by the placenta may be important mediators in foetal programming of the brain, we analysed if placental tissue delivered from patients with preeclampsia secreted molecules that could affect cortical cells in culture. Application of culture medium conditioned by preeclamptic placentae to mixed cortical cultures caused changes in neurons and astrocytes that were related to key changes observed in brains of patients with schizophrenia and autism, including effects on dendrite lengths, astrocyte number as well as on levels of glutamate and γ-aminobutyric acid receptors. Treatment of the placental explants with an antioxidant prevented neuronal abnormalities. Furthermore, we identified that bidirectional communication between neurons and astrocytes, potentially via glutamate, is required to produce the effects of preeclamptic placenta medium on cortical cells. Analysis of possible signalling molecules in the placenta-conditioned medium showed that the secretion profile of extracellular microRNAs, small post-transcriptional regulators, was altered in preeclampsia and partially rescued by antioxidant treatment of the placental explants. Predicted targets of these differentially abundant microRNAs were linked to neurodevelopment and the placenta. The present study provides further evidence that the diseased placenta may release factors that damage cortical cells and suggests the possibility of targeted antioxidant treatment of the placenta to prevent neurodevelopmental disorders