Building Information Modelling for FM at Sydney Opera House

“SOH see significant benefit in digitising its drawings and operation and maintenance manuals. Since SOH do not currently have digital models of the Opera House structure or other components, there is an opportunity for this national case study to promote the application of Digital Facility Modelling using standardized Building Information Models (BIM)”. The digital modelling element of this project examined the potential of building information models for Facility Management focusing on the following areas: • The re-usability of building information for FM purposes • BIM as an Integrated information model for facility management • Extendibility of the BIM to cope with business specific requirements • Commercial facility management software using standardised building information models • The ability to add (organisation specific) intelligence to the model • A roadmap for SOH to adopt BIM for FM The project has established that BIM – building information modelling - is an appropriate and potentially beneficial technology for the storage of integrated building, maintenance and management data for SOH. Based on the attributes of a BIM, several advantages can be envisioned: consistency in the data, intelligence in the model, multiple representations, source of information for intelligent programs and intelligent queries. The IFC – open building exchange standard – specification provides comprehensive support for asset and facility management functions, and offers new management, collaboration and procurement relationships based on sharing of intelligent building data. The major advantages of using an open standard are: information can be read and manipulated by any compliant software, reduced user “lock in” to proprietary solutions, third party software can be the “best of breed” to suit the process and scope at hand, standardised BIM solutions consider the wider implications of information exchange outside the scope of any particular vendor, information can be archived as ASCII files for archival purposes, and data quality can be enhanced as the now single source of users’ information has improved accuracy, correctness, currency, completeness and relevance. SOH current building standards have been successfully drafted for a BIM environment and are confidently expected to be fully developed when BIM is adopted operationally by SOH. There have been remarkably few technical difficulties in converting the House’s existing conventions and standards to the new model based environment. This demonstrates that the IFC model represents world practice for building data representation and management (see Sydney Opera House – FM Exemplar Project Report Number 2005-001-C-3, Open Specification for BIM: Sydney Opera House Case Study). Availability of FM applications based on BIM is in its infancy but focussed systems are already in operation internationally and show excellent prospects for implementation systems at SOH. In addition to the generic benefits of standardised BIM described above, the following FM specific advantages can be expected from this new integrated facilities management environment: faster and more effective processes, controlled whole life costs and environmental data, better customer service, common operational picture for current and strategic planning, visual decision-making and a total ownership cost model. Tests with partial BIM data – provided by several of SOH’s current consultants – show that the creation of a SOH complete model is realistic, but subject to resolution of compliance and detailed functional support by participating software applications. The showcase has demonstrated successfully that IFC based exchange is possible with several common BIM based applications through the creation of a new partial model of the building. Data exchanged has been geometrically accurate (the SOH building structure represents some of the most complex building elements) and supports rich information describing the types of objects, with their properties and relationships.

Final report implementation of relational management

Construction teams and construction organisations have their own distinctive cultures. There also exists an infrastructure, both social and contractual, which ensures that these projects within which the teams operate are completed successfully. It is these issues which this research has addressed. The project was instigated by Queensland Department of Main Roads, Public Works and John Holland Group in order to address how they might better implement relationship management (RM) on their construction projects. The project was devised initially in order to facilitate a change in culture which would allow the project to be run in a relational manner and would lead to effective performance in terms of the KPIs that the organisations set for themselves, described as business better than usual. This report describes the project, its outcomes and deliverable and indicates the changes that were made to the project during the research process. Hence, the initial premise of the project and the problem to investigate was the implementation of relational contracting: • throughout a range of projects; • with a focus on client body staff. The additions that were made to the project, and documented in the variations to the project, included two major additional areas of study: • client management and stakeholder management; • a live case study of an alliancing project. The context within which the research was undertaken is important. The research was driven by main roads with their desire to improve their operations by focusing on the relationship between the major project participants (however, stakeholder and client organisation management became an obvious issue as the research progressed, hence the variations). The context was initially focussed on main roads, public works and John Holland group organisations but it became clear very quickly that this was in fact an industry-wide issue and not an issue specific solely to the project participants. Hence, the context within which this research took place can be described as below: The deliverables from the project are a toolkit for determining RM needs in an organisation, a monograph describing the practical implementation of RM and the outline for a RM CPD and Masters course

Strongly Secure Certificateless Key Agreement

We introduce a formal model for certificateless authenticated key exchange (CL-AKE) protocols. Contrary to what might be expected, we show that the natural combination of an ID-based AKE protocol with a public key based AKE protocol cannot provide strong security. We provide the first one-round CL-AKE scheme proven secure in the random oracle model. We introduce two variants of the Diffie-Hellman trapdoor the introduced by \cite{DBLP:conf/eurocrypt/CashKS08}. The proposed key agreement scheme is secure as long as each party has at least one uncompromised secret. Thus, our scheme is secure even if the key generation centre learns the ephemeral secrets of both parties.

Multi-Outcome Construction Policies : Industry-Focused Research Summary

The Multi-outcomes Construction Policies research project, funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (Project 2006-036-A), sought to explore the costs and benefits of leveraging social outcomes on public construction contracts. The context of the research project was the trend towards the contracting out of public construction works and the attempts that have been made to use new contractual arrangements with construction companies to construction achieve a wide range of social outcomes. In federal and state jurisdictions it is now common for governments to impose a range of additional requirements on public works contractors that relate to broad social/community objectives. These requirements include commitments to train apprentices and trainees; to provide local and/or indigenous employment opportunities; to buy local materials; and to include art works. The cost and benefits of using public construction contracts to achieve social/community goals have, to our knowledge, not been thoroughly researched in an Australian context. This is likely to reflect in large part the relatively short history of contracting out public works. As Jensen and Stonecash (2004) explain, most previous empirical studies of contracting out have attempted to measure the cost savings achieved through privatization, as this was the focus of policy debate in the 1980s and 1990s. Relatively few studies have addressed the ability of contracting arrangements to ensure the delivery of desired ‘quality’ outcomes1, or the costs of achieving these outcomes via contracting arrangements. One of the potential costs of attempting to leverage social/community outcomes on public construction projects is a reduction in the amount of competition for these projects, with obvious consequences for average bid prices and choice. In jurisdictions, such as Western Australia and Queensland, where currently construction market conditions are already

Coping with Generation Y in schools

In recent times, complaining about the Y Generation and its perceived lack of work ethic has become standard dinner-party conversation amongst Baby Boomers. Discussions in the popular press (Salt, 2008) and amongst some social commentators (Levy, Carroll, Francoeur, & Logue, 2003) indicate that the group labelled Gen Y have distinct and different generational characteristics. Whether or not the differences are clearly delineated on age is still open to discussion but in the introduction to "The Generational Mirage? a pilot study into the perceptions of leadership by Generation X and Y", Levy et al. argue that "the calibre of leadership in competing organisations and the way they value new and existing employees will play a substantial role in attracting or discouraging these workers regardless of generational labels". Kunreuther's (2002) suggests that the difference between younger workers and their older counterparts may have more to do with situational phenomena and their position in the life cycle than deeper generational difference. However this is still an issue for leadership in schools.

Building information modelling project decision support framework

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an information technology [IT] enabled approach to managing design data in the AEC/FM (Architecture, Engineering and Construction/ Facilities Management) industry. BIM enables improved interdisciplinary collaboration across distributed teams, intelligent documentation and information retrieval, greater consistency in building data, better conflict detection and enhanced facilities management. Despite the apparent benefits the adoption of BIM in practice has been slow. Workshops with industry focus groups were conducted to identify the industry needs, concerns and expectations from participants who had implemented BIM or were BIM “ready”. Factors inhibiting BIM adoption include lack of training, low business incentives, perception of lack of rewards, technological concerns, industry fragmentation related to uneven ICT adoption practices, contractual matters and resistance to changing current work practice. Successful BIM usage depends on collective adoption of BIM across the different disciplines and support by the client. The relationship of current work practices to future BIM scenarios was identified as an important strategy as the participants believed that BIM cannot be efficiently used with traditional practices and methods. The key to successful implementation is to explore the extent to which current work practices must change. Currently there is a perception that all work practices and processes must adopt and change for effective usage of BIM. It is acknowledged that new roles and responsibilities are emerging and that different parties will lead BIM on different projects. A contingency based approach to the problem of implementation was taken which relies upon integration of BIM project champion, procurement strategy, team capability analysis, commercial software availability/applicability and phase decision making and event analysis. Organizations need to understand: (a) their own work processes and requirements; (b) the range of BIM applications available in the market and their capabilities (c) the potential benefits of different BIM applications and their roles in different phases of the project lifecycle, and (d) collective supply chain adoption capabilities. A framework is proposed to support organizations selection of BIM usage strategies that meet their project requirements. Case studies are being conducted to develop the framework. The results of the preliminary design management case study is presented for contractor led BIM specific to the design and construct procurement strategy.

The evolution of a community of practice at the Queensland University of Technology for lecturers involved in large first year units

Communities of practice (CoPs) may be defined as groups of people who are mutually bound by what they do together (Wenger, 1998, p. 2), that is, they “form to share what they know, to learn from one another regarding some aspects of their work and to provide a social context for that work” (Nickols, 2000, para. 1). They are “emergent” in that the shape and membership emerges in the process of activity (Lees, 2005, p. 7). People in CoPs share their knowledge and experiences freely with the purpose of finding inventive ways to approach new problems (Wenger & Snyder, 2000, p. 2). They can be seen as “shared histories of learning” (Wenger, 1998, p. 86). For some time, QUT staff have been involved in a number of initiatives aimed at sharing ideas and resources for teaching first year students such as the Coordinators of Large First Year Units Working Party. To harness these initiatives and maximise their influence, the leaders of the Transitions In Project (TIP)1 decided to form a CoP around the design, assessment and management of large first year units.

Joint venture behaviour in construction industry : an Australia case study

Joint ventures can take many forms and can be formed for different reasons, from sharing resources to creating future business opportunities. At the same time, there is increasing interest and discussion of alternative procurement methods, moving away from traditional procurement systems to relational approaches. Business systems and strategies need to be redefined and move from a short-term project to project culture to a more strategic, long-term perspective. Joint ventures of construction organisations, global and local, have become increasingly popular to deliver large-scale infrastructure construction projects. However, successful strategic collaborations require project organisations to formulate a fit between contractual and operational arrangements for each situation. This study reviews the movement from traditional procurement methods towards relational contracting approaches in Queensland, Australia. The study examines the organisational factors that facilitates sustainable relationship between project organisations and hence, lead to long-term business success. This paper reports on initial findings captured from a survey undertaken with construction contracting organisations in Australia, focusing on the supply chain relationships. Contractors’ perceptions of the relationship management process and the engagement of the supply chain are also presented.

Spaces of care in the third sector : Understanding the effects of professionalization

Increasingly the health and welfare needs of individuals and communities are being met by third sector, or not-for-profit, organizations. Since the 1980s third sector organizations have been subject to significant, sector-wide changes, such as the development of contractual funding and an increasing need to collaborate with governments and other sectors. In particular, the processes of ‘professionalization’ and ‘bureaucratization’ have received significant attention and are now well documented in third sector literature. These processes are often understood to create barriers between organizations and their community groups and neutralize alternative forms of service provision. In this article we provide a case study of an Australian third sector organization undergoing professionalization. The case study draws on ethnographic and qualitative interviews with staff and volunteers at a health-based third sector organization involved in service provision to marginalized community groups. We examine how professionalization alters organizational spaces and dynamics and conclude that professionalized third sector spaces may still be ‘community’ spaces where individuals may give and receive care and services. Moreover, we suggest that these community spaces hold potential for resisting the neutralizing effects of contracting.

Contemporary behavioural influences in an organisational setting and implications for intervention development

Professional drivers and safety Within the industrialised world, work-related crashes are the most common cause of work-related death, injury and reduced productivity (Charbotel et al., 2001; Toscano and Windau, 1994). Likewise in Australia, road crashes are the most common cause of work-related fatalities, injuries and absence from work (Haworth et al., 2000), with the average time lost being greater than any other workplace claim (Stewart-Bogle, 1999). There are obvious costs related to work crashes such as vehicle and property repair costs. There are also many hidden expenses including third party costs, workers compensation, medical costs, rehabilitation, customer-related costs, increased insurance premiums, administrative costs, legal fees and loss of productivity (Collingwood, 1997; Haworth et al, 2000).

Contracting for community development : a case study based perspective of a public sector client initiative in Hong Kong

The construction industry is known to be an important contributor towards the gross domestic product of many countries. Moreover, the health of the construction industry is positively correlated to the economic growth of a country and in many economies public sector clients account for a major share of construction works. Given this strength, it is important for public sector clients to initiate innovations aimed at the betterment of the industry. In this context, concern about sustainable development has been a major driver of some innovative initiatives in construction industries worldwide. Furthermore, the Government of Hong Kong regards both sustainability and community development as important criteria when planning and procuring construction projects. This paper is based on a case study of a public sector development project in Hong Kong, and presents the salient features of the procurement and contractual systems adopted in the project, which foster sustainability and community development. The reported interim findings are based on a preliminary document analysis that is part of an ongoing longitudinal case study into the project. The document analysis takes a three-pronged approach in terms of how the procurement and contractual systems foster economic, environmental and social sustainability, and sums up their impact on the community as a whole.

Leadership construction : an exploratory case study of two exemplary female principals in urban primary schools in mainland China

Worldwide, education systems have undergone unprecedented change due to a variety of economic, social, and political forces (Limerick, Cunnington & Crowther, 2002). The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is no exception. Continuous educational reform at primary and secondary levels in Mainland China has created new challenges and accountabilities for school principals. The important role of principals in primary and secondary schools has been acknowledged in both policy documents and the broader literature (Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, 1985; F. Chen, 2005; Chu, 2003; W. Huang, 2005; T. Wang, 2003). Yet, most of the literature on primary and secondary school principals in Mainland China is prescriptive in nature, identifying from the perspectives of researchers and academics what principals should do and how they should enact leadership. Lacking in this research is an awareness of the daily practices and lived experiences of principals. Furthermore, within the small body of writing on primary and secondary school principals in Mainland China, gender is seldom given any attention. To date, only a small number of empirical studies have focused on female principals as a specific category of research (Zen, 2004; Zhong, 2004). This study aimed to explore the professional lives of two female exemplary school principals in urban primary schools in Mainland China. A qualitative exploratory case study was used. Semi-structured interviews with each individual female principal, with six teachers in each of the school sites and with the superintendent of each principal were conducted. Field observations and document analysis were also undertaken to obtain multiple insights about their leadership practices. The conceptual framework was based largely on the theory of Gronn (1999) and incorporated five core leadership practices (vision building, ethical considerations, teaching and learning, power utilisation, and dealing with risks and challenges) taken from the wider literature. The key findings of this study were twofold. Firstly, while the five leadership practices were evident in the leadership of the two principals, this study identified some subtle differences in the way they approached each of them. Secondly, contextual factors such as Chinese traditional culture, the contemporary societal context, and the school organisational context, in addition to the biographical experiences of each principal were significant factors in shaping the way in which they exercised their leadership practices in the schools.

The missing puzzle : birth of a format

The art of storytelling is one of the oldest forms of creative discourse. Apart from finding stories, the most important job in television is the construction of stories to have a broad audience appeal. This first-hand review of Missing Persons Unit, hereafter referred to as MPU, a prime time program on the Nine Network in Australia with immense audience appeal, is an original work by the executive producer (development and series producer Series One, executive producer Series Two and Three) based on an overview of two-and-a-half years of production on three series. Through a case study approach, this Masters project explores how story is constructed into a television format. The thesis comprises two parts: the creative component (weighted 50%) is demonstrated through two programs of MPU (one program for evaluation) and the academic component through a written exegesis (50%). This case study aims to demonstrate how observational hybrid series such as MPU can be managed to quick turn-around schedules with precise skill sets that cut across a number of traditional genre styles. With the advent of radio and then television, storytelling found a home and a series of labels called genres to help place them in a schedule for listeners and viewers to choose. Over recent years, with the advent of digital technology and the rush to collect the masses of content required to feed the growing television slate, storytelling has often been replaced by story gathering. Today even in factual series where a clear story construct is important, third party ‘quick fix’ specialists are hired to shape raw content shot by a field team, who never put their own work together and may never come into the edit suite during a project. This thesis explores the art of storytelling in fast turn-around television. In particular it explores the layer cake approach used in the production process of MPU, that enables producers of fast turn-around television to shepherd their own stories from field through to post-production. While each new hybrid series will require its own particular sets of skills, the exploration of the genesis of MPU will demonstrate the building blocks required to successfully produce this type of factual series. This study is also intended as a ‘road map’ for producers who wish to develop similar series.

Identity-based strong designated verifier signature schemes: Attacks and new construction

A strong designated verifier signature scheme makes it possible for a signer to convince a designated verifier that she has signed a message in such a way that the designated verifier cannot transfer the signature to a third party, and no third party can even verify the validity of a designated verifier signature. We show that anyone who intercepts one signature can verify subsequent signatures in Zhang-Mao ID-based designated verifier signature scheme and Lal-Verma ID-based designated verifier proxy signature scheme. We propose a new and efficient ID-based designated verifier signature scheme that is strong and unforgeable. As a direct corollary, we also get a new efficient ID-based designated verifier proxy signature scheme.

Service aggregators in business networks

This position paper examines the development of a dedicated service aggregator role in business networks. We predict that these intermediaries will soon emerge in service ecosystems and add value through the application of dedicated domain knowledge in the process of creating new, innovative services or service bundles based on the aggregation, composition, integration or orchestration of existing services procured from different service providers in the service ecosystem. We discuss general foundations of service aggregators and present Fourth-Party Logistics Providers as a real-world example of emerging business service aggregators. We also point out a demand for future research, e.g. into governance models, risk management tools, service portfolio management approaches and service bundling techniques, to be able to better understand core determinants of competitiveness and success of service aggregators.