An Information Model for Pension Fund Management

In this paper the issues of Ukrainian new three-level pension system are discussed. First, the paper presents the mathematical model that allows calculating the optimal size of contributions to the non-state pension fund. Next, the non-state pension fund chooses an Asset Management Company. To do so it is proposed to use an approach based on Kohonen networks to classify asset management companies that work in Ukrainian market. Further, when the asset management company is chosen, it receives the pension contributions of the participants of the non-pension fund. Asset Management Company has to invest these contributions profitably. This paper proposes an approach for choosing the most profitable investment project using decision trees. The new pension system has been lawfully ratified only four years ago and is still developing, that is why this paper is very important.

Availability estimation and management for complex processing systems

“Availability” is the terminology used in asset intensive industries such as petrochemical and hydrocarbons processing to describe the readiness of equipment, systems or plants to perform their designed functions. It is a measure to suggest a facility’s capability of meeting targeted production in a safe working environment. Availability is also vital as it encompasses reliability and maintainability, allowing engineers to manage and operate facilities by focusing on one performance indicator. These benefits make availability a very demanding and highly desired area of interest and research for both industry and academia. In this dissertation, new models, approaches and algorithms have been explored to estimate and manage the availability of complex hydrocarbon processing systems. The risk of equipment failure and its effect on availability is vital in the hydrocarbon industry, and is also explored in this research. The importance of availability encouraged companies to invest in this domain by putting efforts and resources to develop novel techniques for system availability enhancement. Most of the work in this area is focused on individual equipment compared to facility or system level availability assessment and management. This research is focused on developing an new systematic methods to estimate system availability. The main focus areas in this research are to address availability estimation and management through physical asset management, risk-based availability estimation strategies, availability and safety using a failure assessment framework, and availability enhancement using early equipment fault detection and maintenance scheduling optimization.

Success factors in an alliancing contract : a case study in Australia

Many studies have been carried out in relation to construction procurement methods. Evidence shows that there needs to be a change of culture and attitude in the construction industry, moving away from traditional adversarial relationship into cooperative and collaborative relationship. At the same time there is also an increasing concern and discussion on alternative procurement methods, drifting away from traditional procurement systems. Relational contracting approaches have become more popular in recent years, and have appeared in common forms such as partnering, alliancing and relationship management contracts. This paper reports the findings of a survey undertaken with a private organisation based on an alliance project during its design stage, identifying the critical factors that influence the success of the alliance project. Legal aspects focusing on dispute resolution in alliancing are also highlighted.

The impact of unique characteristics of projects and project-based organisations on knowledge transfer

Knowledge has been recognised as an important organisational asset that increases in value when shared; the opposite to other organisational assets which decrease in value during their exploitation. Effective knowledge transfer in organisations helps to achieve and maintain competitive advantage and ultimately organisational success. So far, the research on knowledge transfer has focused on traditional (functional) organisations. Only recently has attention been directed towards knowledge transfer in projects. Existing research on project learning has recognised the need for knowledge transfer within and across projects in project-based organisations (PBOs). Most projects can provide valuable new knowledge from unexpected actions, approaches or problems experienced during the project phases. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of unique projects characteristics on knowledge transfer in PBO. This is accomplished through review of the literature and a series of interviews with senior project practitioners. The interviews complement the findings from the literature. Knowledge transfer in projects occurs by social communication and transfer of lessons learned where project management offices (PMOs) and project managers play significant roles in enhancing knowledge transfer and communication within the PBO and across projects. They act as connectors between projects and the PBO ‘hub’. Moreover, some project management processes naturally facilitate knowledge transfer across projects. On the other hand, PBOs face communication challenges due to unique and temporary characteristics of projects. The distance between projects and the lack or weakness of formal links across projects, create communication problems that impede knowledge transfer across projects. The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that both social communication and explicit informational channels play important role in inter-project knowledge transfer. Interviews also revealed the important role organisational culture play in knowledge transfer in PBOs.