e‐Maintenance Framework for Strategic Asset Management in Tertiary Institutions

Tertiary institutions require buildings such as its senate building, classrooms, laboratories, administrative rooms, hostels and other offices in order to function. Providing and maintaining these buildings require a lot of planning and capital investment. The study examined the prospects of using e‐ Maintenance platform for strategic asset management in tertiary institutions. This study noted that adequate maintenance of the building infrastructural base of tertiary institutions is crucial for sustainability in the face of dwindling funds in the education sector. In order to automate the e‐ Maintenance process for strategic maintenance of the institution’s building maintenance, a use case diagram, system block diagram, sequence diagram and activity diagram were designed and presented in this study. Three (3) main users are essential in the sequence of operation of the e‐Maintenance platform. These users represent the building occupants, the facility manager and the management personnel; for effective oversite and performance monitoring. The methodology of this research includes using the combination of HTML, CSS and the C‐Sharp programming language for the interface design and server side scripting while MySQL was the database platform used for storing and retrieving the data used for the application. In conclusion, the study developed an e‐Maintenance framework for strategic asset management in tertiary institutions. Keywords Asset management Automation Construction industr

Digital preservation in the Tertiary education sector : management implications

This paper assesses the future of long-term curation and preservation of digital assets with particular reference to Further Education (FE) in the UK. Reviews current requirements of digital preservation and the efforts underway to support them. Drawing on other recent work and the author's experience in a recent development project it subsequently comments on these efforts in the context of FE. Argues that the long-term curation and preservation of digital assets produced by further education colleges should not be the responsibility of those colleges

Pro-poor intervention strategies in irrigated agriculture in Asia: poverty in irrigated agriculture: issues and options: Indonesia

Irrigated farming / Poverty / Institutional development / Irrigation management / Colonialism / Policy / Privatization / Hydrology / Climate / Cropping systems / Soils / Participatory rural appraisal / Performance indexes / Crop production / Costs / Households / Income / Expenditure / Irrigation systems / Operations / Maintenance / Water users’ associations / Financing / Constraints / Indonesia

Framework for Facilities Management Services Procurement in Public Buildings in Abuja-Nigeria

Deciding what to provide in-house and what to outsource is not always easy, because of the pros and cons of each approach. This study assessed the suitability of outsourcing and in-house routes for procurement of facilities management (FM) services in public buildings in order to develop a framework to assist FM practitioners in making decisions on procurement of FM services in Abuja. Mixed methods research methodology was adopted involving the administration of 122 structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 10 International Facility Management Association (IFMA) members in Abuja-Nigeria. Findings show that the top three factors driving outsourcing of FM services delivery are cost reduction, improved performance standard and improved customer orientation and service. While, the top three factors driving in-house of FM services delivery are improved quality of services, improved performance standard and improved responsiveness and cycle times. This indicates that the framework to procure FM services includes provision of clear policy which should consist of a policy statement, methodology resource mobilisation, government policy regarding the maintenance of the facility mapping of the facility and a means of measuring performance of FM services providers. The developed framework provides a significant understanding that can support decision making on FM services in terms of whether the route to be adopted is either in-house or outsourcing

Balancing Financial Viability and User Affordability: An Assessment of Six WASH Service Delivery Models

This Topic Brief presents assessments of the financial performance of six WSUP-supported WASH service delivery models in Bangladesh, Madagascar, Mozambique and Zambia. Each model has been developed in partnership with locally mandated service providers to facilitate sustainable, at-scale improvements to low-income urban populations

Why Select and Remain in my University: Re-examining Higher Education in South Africa

Tertiary institutions have a major role in providing relevant education that best meets the needs of the various constituencies served. To meet these needs an assessment of factors that influence their choices becomes imperative. As a result of the governments' policy to transform higher education in South Africa and the challenges brought about by globalisation and internationalisation, tertiary institutions are facing new challenges. Attracting quality students in a highly competitive education environment is crucial as the numbers of students' dropping out especially call attention to wastage in government funding. This paper examines some of the criteria used by South-African students, when choosing or evaluating a tertiary institution. The main findings include a significant positive link among trust in management, satisfaction with transport, perception of readiness for change and overall satisfaction with the university. These variables have indirect relationship with satisfaction with transport and living arrangement of students. Practical implications, limitations and suggestions for future studies were articulated

Minimization of tool path length of drilling process using particle swarm optimization (PSO)

In the era of challenging economic, the industry in our country has been forced to produce a good quality product and increase the productivity of machining process simultaneously in order to compete with other countries. Drrilling process is one of a very important cutting process in industry. In a drilling for machining by Computer Numerical Control (CNC) such as drilling machines, the parameter of the tool routing path for the machining operation plays a very important role to minimize the machining time (Tiwari 2013, Rao and Kalyankar 2012) . This machine can be used with procedures for drilling, spreading, weaning and threading with a lot of the holes precisely. In order to increase the efficiency and productivity of drilling process, optimization on parameters of process can lead to better performance. Optimization of holes drilling operations will lead to reduction in time order and better productivity of manufacturing systems. Optimizing the tool path has played an important role, especially in mass production because reducing the time to produce one piece eventually lead to a significant reduction in the cost of the entire series (Pezer, 2016). In various publications and articles, scientists and researchers adapted several methods of artificial intelligence (AI) or hybrid optimization method for tool path artificial immune system (AIS), genetic algorithms (GA), Artificial Neural networks (ANN) Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) (Narooei and Ramli, 2014). These methods were been proven that can produce better performance and increase the productivity of drilling process. Therefore, in this study, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm was develop in order to minimizing the tool path length in the drilling process which can produce the better results for the required machining time process. For this study, the main purpose is to apply the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm for use in searching for the optimal tool routing path for in simulation of drilling proces

Electronic market as a strategic lever of an innovation virtual system - an integrative approach to territorial innovations management

During the last years, electronic market has become established very quickly in all areas of the business world. Moreover, according to the most recent forecasts, it will grow exponentially during the years. ?Electronic market? phenomenon highlights the most significant effect of the Information and Communication Technologies development: space and time independence of the economic and social processes; every people, every social group, every Organization can communicate or can share information, knowledge, objectives, anywhere and anytime. In this new socioeconomic context, a re-thinking of local system economic growth models becomes necessary. In this paper we present Innovation Virtual System, as a new model for local systems development. Innovation System is conceived as a set of interacting Organizations, embedded in a dense web of social and economic relationships, skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and at adapting their behavior according to knowledge about their external and internal settings. More specifically, we try to identify the effects of electronic market on these ?knowledge creating? Organizations, that is on their internal learning circuits and on their external relationships. Particularly we focus in the Internet based electronic market, highlighting the differences between Internet and the previous computing and communication environment, in order to give a clearer understanding of Internet as the strategic infrastructure of electronic market. After describing the impact of the Internet based electronic market on a single Organization, we present a framework of a local system collective learning process, and we describe some of the opportunities offered by the Internet based electronic market to this process.