The guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK Guide) : applicability and contribution to project success in Australia

The PMBOK Guide is one of the most influential publications concerning the knowledge of the project manangement. Moreover, the pervasion of this guide seems to be set to increase as the basis of accreditation - in conjunction with the increasing global trend toward obtaining project management professional status. However, despite the influence and strengthening profile of this guide, reports continue to be published that detail numerous project failures in a wide range of different industries. The PMBOK Guide comprises mainly declarative (know-what) and procedural (know-how) information. In this sense, the guide is largely normative and provides a very good example of the limitations of this approach as highlighted by proponents of a move to the genuine application of positibe theory in project management.----- The aim of this paper is to determine the applicability of the guide in Australia and to determine the extent to which project success can be attributed to the guide. Project Managers from a variety of organisations were surveyed. This postal survey yielded 48 replies. Descriptive statistics was used to assess the incidence and effectivieness of all the processes in the guide. The results indicate that there were no processes that could be considered as peripheral or as a candidate for elimination from the guide. More specifically, all the processes were identified as either a key routine process or a key selective process and positively related to the level of project success. However, the results also indicated that other major factors pertaining to causal knowledge (know-why) are, at least, equally important determinants of project success. It is concluded that declarative, procedural and causal knowledge are all valuable, and given the preponderance of the first two types of knowledge, there seems to be an urgent need to now ensure an equal quest for causal knowledge. In terms of developing causal knowledge, a good starting point would appear to be both positive theory from production and economics.

Screening for drugs in oral fluid : illicit drug use and drug driving in a sample of urban and regional Queensland motorists

Police services in a number of Australian states and overseas jurisdictions have begun to implement or consider random road-side drug testing of drivers. This paper outlines research conducted to provide an estimate of the extent of drug driving in a sample of Queensland drivers in regional, rural and metropolitan areas. Oral fluid samples were collected from 2657 Queensland motorists and screened for illicit substances including cannabis (delta 9 tetrahydrocannibinol [THC]), amphetamines, ecstasy, and cocaine. Overall, 3.8% of the sample (n = 101) screened positive for at least one illicit substance, although multiple drugs were identified in a sample of 23 respondents. The most common drugs detected in oral fluid were ecstasy (n = 53), and cannabis (n = 46) followed by amphetamines (n = 23). A key finding was that cannabis was confirmed as the most common self-reported drug combined with driving and that individuals who tested positive to any drug through oral fluid analysis were also more likely to report the highest frequency of drug driving. Furthermore, a comparison between drug vs. drink driving detection rates for one region of the study, revealed a higher detection rate for drug driving (3.8%) vs. drink driving (0.8%). This research provides evidence that drug driving is relatively prevalent on Queensland roads, and may in fact be more common than drink driving. This paper will further outline the study findings’ and present possible directions for future drug driving research.

Prediction of fluidization behaviour and a quasi-stationary approach to drying kinetics of irregular particulate food materials

Changes in fluidization behaviour behaviour was characterised for parallelepiped particles with three aspect ratios, 1:1, 2:1 and 3:1 and spherical particles. All drying experiments were conducted at 500C and 15 % RH using a heat pump dehumidifier system. Fluidization experiments were undertaken for the bed heights of 100, 80, 60 and 40 mm and at 10 moisture content levels. Due to irregularities in shape minimum fluidisation velocity of parallelepiped particulates (potato) could not fitted to any empirical model. Also a generalized equation was used to predict minimum fluidization velocity. The modified quasi-stationary method (MQSM) has been proposed to describe drying kinetics of parallelepiped particulates at 30o C, 40o C and 50o C that dry mostly in the falling rate period in a batch type fluid bed dryer.

Flow of a micropolar fluid bounded by a stretching sheet

We consider boundary layer flow of a micropolar fluid driven by a porous stretching sheet. A similarity solution is defined, and numerical solutions using Runge-Kutta and quasilinearisation schemes are obtained. A perturbation analysis is also used to derive analytic solutions to first order in the perturbing parameter. The resulting closed form solutions involve relatively complex expressions, and the analysis is made more tractable by a combination of offline and online work using a computational algebra system (CAS). For this combined numerical and analytic approach, the perturbation analysis yields a number of benefits with regard to the numerical work. The existence of a closed form solution helps to discriminate between acceptable and spurious numerical solutions. Also, the expressions obtained from the perturbation work can provide an accurate description of the solution for ranges of parameters where the numerical approaches considered here prove computationally more difficult.