People and Facility Management. The team: The main asset of any management

From the moment we enter a large office building until we leave it, we receive a lot of attentions served by the management of services to the user. However, it is usually quite inappreciable the work that is being developed to keep things running smoothly. The services provided in a building are carried out by people. However, we often tend to forget these people when we talk about the tasks that make that a building operates properly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But, for example, what would happen if one day the service provided by the reception in a large building did not function as it should? What would it be like if one day the person performing the service of maintenance of the building's cleaning were not at his post? How would the working day develop if there were not a correct air handling system? People are the foundation of the proper functioning of a building. The work of the Facilities Manager and the Facility Management is the management of their functions: the responsible management of the team.

Management audit : Illinois School District Liquid Asset Fund Plus.

"This is our report of the Management Audit of the Illinois School District Liquid Asset Fund Plus. The audit was conducted pursuant to Senate Resolution Number 171, which was adopted April 22, 2004. This audit was conducted in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards and the audit standards promulgated by the Office of the Auditor General at 74 III. ADM. Code 420.310. The audit report is transmitted in conformance with Section 3-14 of the Illinois State Auditing Act."--Cover letter.

Social Security Administration's data communications contracts with Paradyne Corporation demonstrate the need for improved management controls : report to the chairman, Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives /

"B-213963"--Prelim. p.

Additional information on the Social Security Administration's management of data communications contracts with Paradyne Corporation.

"B-213963."

Energy management : DOE has an opportunity to improve its University of California contracts : report to the Chairman, Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate /

"B-246522"--P. 1.

The management of foreign exchange exposure on business contracts overseas

This thesis is a piece of applied research. It is the result of a joint project between the University of Aston Interdisciplinary Higher Degrees Scheme and International Aeradio plc (IAL). It considers the structure and organisation of overseas business and the effects that exchange rate movements have on financial performance. It looks in detail at a series of overseas contracts and factors which affect the monitoring and performance of those contracts. From this initial research is developed a series of conceptual models which attempt to capture the effects of foreign exchange rate movements on contract costing, the monitoring of performance on overseas contracts and a measure of company wide exposure. These models are then considered in the context of real IAL generated data and circumstances. The work is finally considered in the context of a survey of other companies with a similar mode of undertaking overseas business with the aim of placing the work in a general context.

Asset Price Instability and Policy Responses: The Legacy of Liberalisation

The debate about the dynamics and potential policy responses to asset inflation has intensified in recent years. Some analysts, notably Borio and Lowe, have called for 'subtle' changes to existing monetary targeting frameworks to try to deal with the problems of asset inflation and have attempted to developed indicators of financial vulnerability to aid this process. In contrast, this paper argues that the uncertainties involved in understanding financial market developments and their potential impact on the real economy are likely to remain too high to embolden policy makers. The political and institutional risks associated with policy errors are also significant. The fundamental premise that a liberalised financial system is based on 'efficient' market allocation cannot be overlooked. The corollary is that any serious attempt to stabilize financial market outcomes must involve at least a partial reversal of deregulation.

The structure of middle management remuneration packages: An application to Australian mine managers

This paper investigates the composition of remuneration packages for middle managers and relates the structure of remuneration contracts to firm-specific attributes. A statutorily defined position in a single industry is studied as an example of middle management. This allows us to control for differences in task complexity across managers and industry-induced factors that could determine differences in remuneration contracts. Higher-risk firms are expected to pay their mine managers a greater proportion of variable salaries and market and/or accounting-based compensation than low-risk firms. Results indicate that high-risk firms pay a higher proportion of variable salaries and more compensation based on market and/or accounting performance.

Key factors in working capital management in the Brazilian market

Many studies have been conducted in corporate finance regarding long-term investment and financing decisions. However, short-term asset investments play a significant role in the balance sheet of companies. Moreover, financial managers dedicate significant amounts of time and effort to the subject of working capital management, balancing current assets and liabilities. This paper provides insights regarding the key factors of working capital management by exploring the internal variables of a number of companies. This study used data from 2,976 Brazilian public companies from 2001 to 2008, and found that debt level, size and growth rate can affect the working capital management of companies.

Estratégias para negociação de contratos bilaterais em mercados multi-agente de energia eléctrica

A energia eléctrica é um bem essencial para a maioria das sociedades. O seu fornecimento tem sido encarado como um serviço público, da responsabilidade dos governos, através de empresas monopolistas, públicas e privadas. O Mercado Ibérico de Electricidade (MIBEL) surge com o objectivo da integração e cooperação do sector eléctrico Português e Espanhol, no qual é possível negociar preços e volumes de energia. Actualmente, as entidades podem negociar através de um mercado bolsista ou num mercado de contratos bilaterais. Uma análise dos mercados de electricidade existentes mostra que estes estão longe de estarem liberalizados. As tarifas não reflectem o efeito da competitividade. Além disso, o recurso a contratos bilaterais limita frequentemente os clientes a um único fornecedor de energia eléctrica. Nos últimos anos, têm surgido uma série de ferramentas computacionais que permitem simular, parte ou a totalidade, dos mercados de electricidade. Contudo, apesar das suas potencialidades, muitos simuladores carecem de flexibilidade e generalidade. Nesta perspectiva, esta dissertação tem como principal objectivo o desenvolvimento de um simulador de mercados de energia eléctrica que possibilite lidar com as dificuldades inerentes a este novo modelo de mercado, recorrendo a agentes computacionais autónomos. A dissertação descreve o desenho e a implementação de um simulador simplificado para negociação de contratos bilaterais em mercados de energia, com particular incidência para o desenho das estratégias a utilizar pelas partes negociais. Além disso, efectua-se a descrição de um caso prático, com dados do MIBEL. Descrevem-se também várias simulações computacionais, envolvendo retalhistas e consumidores de energia eléctrica, que utilizam diferentes estratégias negociais. Efectua-se a análise detalhada dos resultados obtidos. De forma sucinta, os resultados permitem concluir que as melhores estratégias para cada entidade, no caso prático estudado, são: a estratégia de concessões fixas, para o retalhista, e a estratégia de concessões baseada no volume de energia, para o consumidor.

Short-term scheduling considering five-minute and hour-ahead energy resource management

The introduction of new distributed energy resources, based on natural intermittent power sources, in power systems imposes the development of new adequate operation management and control methods. This paper proposes a short-term Energy Resource Management (ERM) methodology performed in two phases. The first one addresses the hour-ahead ERM scheduling and the second one deals with the five-minute ahead ERM scheduling. Both phases consider the day-ahead resource scheduling solution. The ERM scheduling is formulated as an optimization problem that aims to minimize the operation costs from the point of view of a virtual power player that manages the network and the existing resources. The optimization problem is solved by a deterministic mixed-integer non-linear programming approach and by a heuristic approach based on genetic algorithms. A case study considering a distribution network with 33 bus, 66 distributed generation, 32 loads with demand response contracts and 7 storage units has been implemented in a PSCADbased simulator developed in the field of the presented work, in order to validate the proposed short-term ERM methodology considering the dynamic power system behavior.

A multi-agent based approach for intelligent smart grid management

The spread and globalization of distributed generation (DG) in recent years has should highly influence the changes that occur in Electricity Markets (EMs). DG has brought a large number of new players to take action in the EMs, therefore increasing the complexity of these markets. Simulation based on multi-agent systems appears as a good way of analyzing players’ behavior and interactions, especially in a coalition perspective, and the effects these players have on the markets. MASCEM – Multi-Agent System for Competitive Electricity Markets was created to permit the study of the market operation with several different players and market mechanisms. MASGriP – Multi-Agent Smart Grid Platform is being developed to facilitate the simulation of micro grid (MG) and smart grid (SG) concepts with multiple different scenarios. This paper presents an intelligent management method for MG and SG. The simulation of different methods of control provides an advantage in comparing different possible approaches to respond to market events. Players utilize electric vehicles’ batteries and participate in Demand Response (DR) contracts, taking advantage on the best opportunities brought by the use of all resources, to improve their actions in response to MG and/or SG requests.

Emergency energy resource management in SmartGrids

Energy resources management can play a very relevant role in future power systems in a SmartGrid context, with intensive penetration of distributed generation and storage systems. This paper deals with the importance of resource management in incident situations. The paper presents DemSi, an energy resources management simulator that has been developed by the authors to simulate electrical distribution networks with high distributed generation penetration, storage in network points and customers with demand response contracts. DemSi is used to undertake simulations for an incident scenario, evidencing the advantages of adequately using flexible contracts, storage, and reserve in order to limit incident consequences.

A long-term risk management tool for electricity markets using swarm intelligence

This paper addresses the optimal involvement in derivatives electricity markets of a power producer to hedge against the pool price volatility. To achieve this aim, a swarm intelligence meta-heuristic optimization technique for long-term risk management tool is proposed. This tool investigates the long-term opportunities for risk hedging available for electric power producers through the use of contracts with physical (spot and forward contracts) and financial (options contracts) settlement. The producer risk preference is formulated as a utility function (U) expressing the trade-off between the expectation and the variance of the return. Variance of return and the expectation are based on a forecasted scenario interval determined by a long-term price range forecasting model. This model also makes use of particle swarm optimization (PSO) to find the best parameters allow to achieve better forecasting results. On the other hand, the price estimation depends on load forecasting. This work also presents a regressive long-term load forecast model that make use of PSO to find the best parameters as well as in price estimation. The PSO technique performance has been evaluated by comparison with a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based approach. A case study is presented and the results are discussed taking into account the real price and load historical data from mainland Spanish electricity market demonstrating the effectiveness of the methodology handling this type of problems. Finally, conclusions are dully drawn.