Extending constructability concept to include operation and maintenance issues

The concept of constructability uses integration art of individual functions through a valuable and timely construction inputs into planning and design development stages. It results in significant savings in cost and time needed to finalize infrastructure projects. However, available constructability principles, developed by CII Australia (1993), do not cover Operation and Maintenance (O&M) phases of projects, whilst major cost and time in multifaceted infrastructure projects are spent in post-occupancy stages. This paper discusses the need to extend the constructability concept by examining current O&M issues in the provision of multifaceted building projects. It highlights available O&M problems and shortcomings of building projects, as well as their causes and reasons in different categories. This initial categorization is an efficient start point for testing probable present O&M issues in various cases of complex infrastructure building projects. This preliminary categorization serve as a benchmark to develop an extended constructability model that considers the whole project life cycle phases rather than a specific phase. It anticipates that the development of an extended constructability model can reduce significant number of reworks, mistakes, extra costs and time wasted during delivery stages of multifaceted building projects.

Prioritizing land and sea conservation investments to protect coral reefs

Background: Coral reefs have exceptional biodiversity, support the livelihoods of millions of people, and are threatened by multiple human activities on land (e.g. farming) and in the sea (e.g. overfishing). Most conservation efforts occur at local scales and, when effective, can increase the resilience of coral reefs to global threats such as climate change (e.g. warming water and ocean acidification). Limited resources for conservation require that we efficiently prioritize where and how to best sustain coral reef ecosystems.----- ----- Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we develop the first prioritization approach that can guide regional-scale conservation investments in land-and sea-based conservation actions that cost-effectively mitigate threats to coral reefs, and apply it to the Coral Triangle, an area of significant global attention and funding. Using information on threats to marine ecosystems, effectiveness of management actions at abating threats, and the management and opportunity costs of actions, we calculate the rate of return on investment in two conservation actions in sixteen ecoregions. We discover that marine conservation almost always trumps terrestrial conservation within any ecoregion, but terrestrial conservation in one ecoregion can be a better investment than marine conservation in another. We show how these results could be used to allocate a limited budget for conservation and compare them to priorities based on individual criteria.----- ----- Conclusions/Significance: Previous prioritization approaches do not consider both land and sea-based threats or the socioeconomic costs of conserving coral reefs. A simple and transparent approach like ours is essential to support effective coral reef conservation decisions in a large and diverse region like the Coral Triangle, but can be applied at any scale and to other marine ecosystems.

Capability for infrastructure asset capacity management

Infrastructure capacity management is the process of ensuring optimal provision of infrastructure assets to support business operations. Effectiveness in this process will enable infrastructure asset owners and its stakeholders to receive full value on their investment. Management research has shown that an organisation can only achieve business value when it has the right capabilities. This paradigm can also be applied to infrastructure capacity management. With competing needs for limited organisation resources, the challenge for infrastructure organisations is to identify and invest their limited resources to develop the right capabilities in the management of their infrastructure capacity. Using a multiple case study approach, the challenges faced in the management of infrastructure asset capacity and the approaches that can be adopted to overcome these challenges were explored. Conceptualising the approaches adopted by the case participants, the findings suggest that infrastructure organisations must strengthen their stakeholder connectivity capability in order to effectively manage the capacity of their infrastructure assets.

Project governance in Malaysia hillside developments

Hillsides in urban areas around the world are being developed at an accelerating rate, to accommodate population growth and rapid urbanization. Developments at hillside are attractive places to live because of the views, fresh air, exclusivity and the sense of being close to nature. Despite its attractiveness, hillside developments are prone to natural hazards such as landslides that can have environmental, social and economic consequences. To minimise these risks, it is necessary to consider the concerns of all stakeholders during the project review stage. This paper proposes that project governance concept can be used for this purpose by defining the rights, responsibilities and interests of the key stakeholders. It can also provide a framework within which decisions are made in order to minimise risks associated with natural hazards.

Green buildings : a framework for social sustainability

Despite the ongoing debate surrounding climate change, sustainability is increasingly a key consideration for building owners and tenants with the ‘triple bottom line’ as desired outcomes. The triangulated social, economic and environmental goals of sustainability are now the mantra of many businesses. While much has been written of the benefits of green buildings to its occupants, comparatively fewer studies have been devoted to investigating the perceived drawbacks and measures to improve the social sustainability factor, i.e., user satisfaction. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to consider the impacts of green buildings on its occupants by drawing together past empirical findings and summarizing the results. In addition, the paper will also present a case study of the Institute of Sustainable Development and Architecture, which is Australia’s first 6-green star, rated educational building. Through these methods, the paper will identify gaps between green building performance and user satisfaction. Thereafter, it will introduce a social sustainability framework that seeks to improve the social performance of green buildings. The 6-P model is a holistic framework targeting the following factors that can influence user satisfaction of green buildings. These factors are: public perception, price, policies, psychological, physical and personal.

Developing an intimate ''relationship'' with nature through extreme sports participation

This article explores the interplay between extreme sports and the natural world in which they take place. Prior theoretical work on extreme sports has often made anthropocentric assumptions about this relationship, taking for granted that extreme participants treat nature only as a resource for athletic consumption, valuable only for its human uses. From this perspective, the natural world is regarded as a playground or battlefield, as a means to test physical prowess and human capacity. In contrast, extreme sports participants involved in this study report developing an intimate and reciprocal relationship with the natural world. A phenomenological analysis of participant accounts reveals, among veteran extreme athletes, the development of a heightened respect for something greater than themselves and a realization that humanity is simply a part of the natural environment.

Reduction rules for YAWL workflows with cancellation regions and OR-joins

As the need for concepts such as cancellation and OR-joins occurs naturally in business scenarios, comprehensive support in a workflow language is desirable. However, there is a clear trade-off between the expressive power of a language (i.e., introducing complex constructs such as cancellation and OR-joins) and ease of verification. When a workflow contains a large number of tasks and involves complex control flow dependencies, verification can take too much time or it may even be impossible. There are a number of different approaches to deal with this complexity. Reducing the size of the workflow, while preserving its essential properties with respect to a particular analysis problem, is one such approach. In this paper, we present a set of reduction rules for workflows with cancellation regions and OR-joins and demonstrate how they can be used to improve the efficiency of verification. Our results are presented in the context of the YAWL workflow language.