Research activities in the MaRINET project: keeping the European marine energy development facilities at world class level

The MaRINET project aims to build a synergy in the European marine renewable energy development infrastructure network, involving a total of 28 partners across the union. Its scope extends from small to large scale testing, in both tank and field. The main activities of the project are to standardize test procedures, to provide centralized free access for European technology developers, and to innovate for improving test infrastructures and techniques.
This paper presents the work carried in this last part, which focuses on research objectives identified to be current challenges for industrial development. They are distributed in 6 topics. On the one hand are issues that concern directly one of the 3 types of energy scoped in the project: wave, tidal, and offshore wind energy. Two examples are the real time estimation of incident waves, and the measurement of turbulence in tidal flows. On the other hand, collaborative effort is drawn on aspects that are common to those technologies: electrical components, environmental monitoring, and dedicated moorings.

A consumer research project as the basis for the development of a marketing plan for a new spirit brand producing gin in Germany

This work project is about developing a marketing plan for a new gin brand in Germany. It is based on consumer and market research, including Portugal as a trend market for the qualitative research. For the undertaking it is seen as fundamental to understand the industry as well as the consumer needs, attitudes and preferences. Furthermore, it is important to consider the estimation of opinion leaders and trendsetters in the industry. In this context it turned out that barkeepers have a key-influencing role for the stimulation of demand. Based on the insights from this research as well as on the gained market knowledge, the marketing plan was developed. The goal is to convince other brand users to switch brands.

The MaPS project: mapping teacher conceptions of musical development

The chapter starts from the premise that an historically- and institutionally-formed orientation to music education at primary level in European countries privileges a nineteenth century Western European music aesthetic, with its focus on formal characteristics such as melody and rhythm. While there is a move towards a multi-faceted understanding of musical ability, a discrete intelligence and willingness to accept musical styles or 'open-earedness', there remains a paucity of documented evidence of this in research at primary school level. To date there has been no study undertaken which has the potential to provide policy makers and practitioners with insights into the degree of homogeneity or universality in conceptions of musical ability within this educational sector. Against this background, a study was set up to explore the following research questions: 1. What conceptions of musical ability do primary teachers hold a) of themselves and; b) of their pupils? 2. To what extent are these conceptions informed by Western classical practices? A mixed methods approach was used which included survey questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Questionnaires have been sent to all classroom teachers in a random sample of primary schools in the South East of England. This was followed up with a series of semi-structured interviews with a sub-sample of respondents. The main ideas are concerned with the attitudes, beliefs and working theories held by teachers in contemporary primary school settings. By mapping the extent to which a knowledge base for teaching can be resistant to change in schools, we can problematise primary schools as sites for diversity and migration of cultural ideas. Alongside this, we can use the findings from the study undertaken in an English context as a starting point for further investigation into conceptions of music, musical ability and assessment held by practitioners in a variety of primary school contexts elsewhere in Europe; our emphasis here will be on the development of shared understanding in terms of policies and practices in music education. Within this broader framework, our study can have a significant impact internationally, with potential to inform future policy making, curriculum planning and practice.

MBA International Residency: The Derbi Project - Spain. ACES Working Papers (course development), 2012

The objective of this course is to complement and give closure to the work developed during MBAD204. There are two main components to this course. The first one is to provide the students with a firsthand experience of what doing business in Spain is like. This is accomplished by visiting a number of companies and government institutions in Barcelona and interacting with managers from a variety of industries. The other major component of this trip consists in learning how to present a business proposal or market analysis before a real client.

Building information modelling : an issue of adoption and change management

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an IT enabled technology that allows storage, management, sharing, access, update and use of all the data relevant to a project through out the project life-cycle in the form of a data repository. BIM enables improved inter-disciplinary collaboration across distributed teams, intelligent documentation and information retrieval, greater consistency in building data, better conflict detection and enhanced facilities management. While the technology itself may not be new, and similar approaches have been in use in some other sectors like Aircraft and Automobile industry for well over a decade now, the AEC/FM (Architecture, Engineering and Construction/ Facilities Management) industry is still to catch up with them in its ability to exploit the benefits of the IT revolution. Though the potential benefits of the technology in terms of knowledge sharing, project management, project co-ordination and collaboration are near to obvious, the adoption rate has been rather lethargic, inspite of some well directed efforts and availability of supporting commercial tools. Since the technology itself has been well tested over the years in some other domains the plausible causes must be rooted well beyond the explanation of the ‘Bell Curve of innovation adoption’. This paper discusses the preliminary findings of an ongoing research project funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (CRC-CI) which aims to identify these gaps and come up with specifications and guidelines to enable greater adoption of the BIM approach in practice. A detailed literature review is conducted that looks at some of the similar research reported in the recent years. A desktop audit of some of the existing commercial tools that support BIM application has been conducted to identify the technological issues and concerns, and a workshop was organized with industry partners and various players in the AEC industry for needs analysis, expectations and feedback on the possible deterrents and inhibitions surrounding the BIM adoption.

BIM : expectations and a reality check

BIM (Building Information Modelling) is an approach that involves applying and maintaining an integral digital representation of all building information for different phases of the project lifecycle. This paper presents an analysis of the current state of BIM in the industry and a re-assessment of its role and potential contribution in the near future, given the apparent slow rate of adoption by the industry. The paper analyses the readiness of the building industry with respect to the product, processes and people to present an argument on where the expectations from BIM and its adoption may have been misplaced. This paper reports on the findings from: (1) a critical review of latest BIM literature and commercial applications, and (2) workshops with focus groups on changing work-practice, role of technology, current perceptions and expectations of BIM.

Measuring safety effectiveness : literature review

Cohen (1977) reviewed the then current research on occupational safety and stated that both strong company commitment to safety, and communication between all levels of a company are the most influential factors to improving safety. Other relevant factors included careful selection of staff, and early and continuous training throughout the lifetime with the company. These continue to be important factors in OHS today. There has been a continued decrease in the injury rates since Cohen’s review within the Australian construction industry, however, the construction industry has far more injuries and ill-health than the Australian average, with one fatality occurring on average per week in the Australian Construction Industry. The Fatality rate in the building and construction industry remains three times higher than the national average, and 15% of all industry fatalities are in the building and construction industry. In addition the construction industry pays one of the highest workers’ compensation premium rates – in 2001 alone approximately 0.5% ($267 million) of revenue would have to be allocated to the direct cost of 1998/99 compensations (Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner, 2006). Based on these statistics there is a need to measure and improve safety performance within the construction industry.

Open Specification for BIM : Sydney Opera House Case Study

Executive Summary The objective of this report was to use the Sydney Opera House as a case study of the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM). The Sydney opera House is a complex, large building with very irregular building configuration, that makes it a challenging test. A number of key concerns are evident at SOH: • the building structure is complex, and building service systems - already the major cost of ongoing maintenance - are undergoing technology change, with new computer based services becoming increasingly important. • the current “documentation” of the facility is comprised of several independent systems, some overlapping and is inadequate to service current and future services required • the building has reached a milestone age in terms of the condition and maintainability of key public areas and service systems, functionality of spaces and longer term strategic management. • many business functions such as space or event management require up-to-date information of the facility that are currently inadequately delivered, expensive and time consuming to update and deliver to customers. • major building upgrades are being planned that will put considerable strain on existing Facilities Portfolio services, and their capacity to manage them effectively While some of these concerns are unique to the House, many will be common to larger commercial and institutional portfolios. The work described here supported a complementary task which sought to identify if a building information model – an integrated building database – could be created, that would support asset & facility management functions (see Sydney Opera House – FM Exemplar Project, Report Number: 2005-001-C-4 Building Information Modelling for FM at Sydney Opera House), a business strategy that has been well demonstrated. The development of the BIMSS - Open Specification for BIM has been surprisingly straightforward. The lack of technical difficulties in converting the House’s existing conventions and standards to the new model based environment can be related to three key factors: • SOH Facilities Portfolio – the internal group responsible for asset and facility management - have already well established building and documentation policies in place. The setting and adherence to well thought out operational standards has been based on the need to create an environment that is understood by all users and that addresses the major business needs of the House. • The second factor is the nature of the IFC Model Specification used to define the BIM protocol. The IFC standard is based on building practice and nomenclature, widely used in the construction industries across the globe. For example the nomenclature of building parts – eg ifcWall, corresponds to our normal terminology, but extends the traditional drawing environment currently used for design and documentation. This demonstrates that the international IFC model accurately represents local practice for building data representation and management. • a BIM environment sets up opportunities for innovative processes that can exploit the rich data in the model and improve services and functions for the House: for example several high-level processes have been identified that could benefit from standardized Building Information Models such as maintenance processes using engineering data, business processes using scheduling, venue access, security data and benchmarking processes using building performance data. The new technology matches business needs for current and new services. The adoption of IFC compliant applications opens the way forward for shared building model collaboration and new processes, a significant new focus of the BIM standards. In summary, 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. These BIM standards and their application to the Opera House are intended as a template for other organisations to adopt for the own procurement and facility management activities. Appendices provide an overview of the IFC Integrated Object Model and an understanding IFC Model Data.