Roadway safety hardware asset management systems case studies /

"HRDS-06/10-05(1M)E"--P. [4] of cover.

The chirurgical works of Percivall Pott, with his last corrections. : to which are added, a short account of the life of the author, a method of curing the hydrocele by injection, and occasional notes and observations /

Published in London in 1771 and 1808.

Technology transfer to developing countries : the case of physical asset management in South Africa

This research investigates technology transfer (TT) to developing countries, with specific reference to South Africa. Particular attention is paid to physical asset management, which includes the maintenance of plant, equipment and facilities. The research is case based, comprising a main case study (the South African electricity utility, Eskom) and four mini-cases. A five level framework adapted from Salami and Reavill (1997) is used as the methodological basis for the formulation of the research questions. This deals with technology selection, and management issues including implementation and maintenance and evaluation and modifications. The findings suggest the Salami and Reavill (1997) framework is a useful guide for TT. The case organisations did not introduce technology for strategic advantage, but to achieve operational efficiencies through cost reduction, higher quality and the ability to meet customer demand. Acquirers favour standardised technologies with which they are familiar. Cost-benefit evaluations have limited use in technology acquisition decisions. Users rely on supplier expertise to compensate for poor education and technical training in South Africa. The impact of political and economic factors is more evident in Eskom than in the mini-cases. Physical asset management follows traditional preventive maintenance practices, with limited use of new maintenance management thinking. Few modifications of the technology or R&D innovations take place. Little use is made of explicit knowledge from computerised maintenance management systems. Low operating and maintenance skills are not conducive to the transfer of high-technology equipment. South African organisations acquire technology as items of plant, equipment and systems, but limited transfer of technology takes place. This suggests that operators and maintainers frequently do not understand the underlying technology, and like workers elsewhere, are not always inclined towards adopting technology in the workplace.

Imam-Sadeque v Bluebay Asset Management 2012

Case law report - online

Intellectual property asset management:how to identify, protect, manage and exploit intellectual property within the business environment

In the new ‘knowledge-intensive economies’ Intellectual assets increasingly play a key part on balance sheets. There is an increasing global awareness that in order to promote innovation and the growth of the economy, businesses must fully recognise and exploit their intellectual assets. A company’s ability to innovate rapidly and successfully is now regarded as essential and most breakthroughs are made by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), usually with no in-house legal professionals to help them. It is essential that those working with or creating intellectual property rights (IPR) are aware of the basics of Intellectual Property Law. Intellectual Property Asset Management provides business and management students at all levels with an accessible-straight-forward explanation of what the main Intellectual Property rights are and how these rights are protected. Locating the subject squarely in a business context and using case studies and examples throughout drawn from a wide range of business organisations, it explains how an organisation can exploit their rights through licensing, franchising and other means in order to make the best possible use of their IP assets. This book will provide students with: • the basic Intellectual Property law knowledge needed to identify a potential IP issue • the tools and understanding to assess an IP breach • the ability to identify where the problem cannot be solved in house and where expert legal assistance is required • the knowledge required to work effectively with lawyers and other legal professionals to achieve the desired outcome

Towards an Understanding of Lodging Asset Management and its Components

Lodging asset management has emerged as one of the most important areas of strategic hotel management. Increasingly, lodging companies are soliciting the services of asset management firms or developing internal asset management competencies. This article synthesizes and discusses the essential components of dynamic lodging asset management. The article provides a detail background on asset management and its importance and explains the role of lodging asset managers and their working relationships with ownership and operators. The article also discusses the competencies and skills of asset managers.

Time, Cost, and Environmental Impact Analysis for Sustainable Design at Multiple Building Levels

Construction projects are complex endeavors that require the involvement of different professional disciplines in order to meet various project objectives that are often conflicting. The level of complexity and the multi-objective nature of construction projects lend themselves to collaborative design and construction such as integrated project delivery (IPD), in which relevant disciplines work together during project conception, design and construction. Traditionally, the main objectives of construction projects have been to build in the least amount of time with the lowest cost possible, thus the inherent and well-established relationship between cost and time has been the focus of many studies. The importance of being able to effectively model relationships among multiple objectives in building construction has been emphasized in a wide range of research. In general, the trade-off relationship between time and cost is well understood and there is ample research on the subject. However, despite sustainable building designs, relationships between time and environmental impact, as well as cost and environmental impact, have not been fully investigated. The objectives of this research were mainly to analyze and identify relationships of time, cost, and environmental impact, in terms of CO2 emissions, at different levels of a building: material level, component level, and building level, at the pre-use phase, including manufacturing and construction, and the relationships of life cycle cost and life cycle CO2 emissions at the usage phase. Additionally, this research aimed to develop a robust simulation-based multi-objective decision-support tool, called SimulEICon, which took construction data uncertainty into account, and was capable of incorporating life cycle assessment information to the decision-making process. The findings of this research supported the trade-off relationship between time and cost at different building levels. Moreover, the time and CO2 emissions relationship presented trade-off behavior at the pre-use phase. The results of the relationship between cost and CO2 emissions were interestingly proportional at the pre-use phase. The same pattern continually presented after the construction to the usage phase. Understanding the relationships between those objectives is a key in successfully planning and designing environmentally sustainable construction projects.

Costs, quality of life and cost-effectiveness of open and arthroscopic repair for rotator cuff tears : economic evaluation alongside the UKUFF trial

FUNDING & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme (project number 05/47/02) and is published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 19, No. 80. Further information available at: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hta/054702 This paper presents independent research commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The views and opinions expressed by authors in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NHS, the NIHR, MRC, CCF, NETSCC, the HTA programme or the Department of Health. Due to the confidential nature of the trial data supporting this publication not all of the data can be made accessible to other researchers. Please contact the UKUFF study principal investigator Andrew Carr (andrew.carr@ndorms.ox.ac.uk) for more information. The authors wish to thank the UKUFF trial collaborators for their contribution in managing the conduct of the trial, and for their comments on the interim economic results: Marion Campbell and Hannah Bruhn (Centre for Healthcare Randomised Trials, HSRU, University of Aberdeen), Jonathan Rees MD and David Beard (NDORMS, University of Oxford; NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre), Jane Moser (NDORMS, University of Oxford), Raymond Fitzpatrick and Jill Dawson (NDPH, University of Oxford).

Building public policy on shifting sands: the case of the National Asset Management Agency

Over the last thirty years, there has been an increased demand for better management of public sector organisations (PSOs). This requires that they are answerable for the inputs that they are given but also for what they achieve with these inputs (Hood 1991; Hood 1995). It is suggested that this will improve the management of the organisation through better planning and control, and the achievement of greater accountability (Smith 1995). However, such a rational approach with clear goals and the means to measure achievement can cause difficulties for many PSOs. These difficulties include the distinctive nature of the public sector due to the political environment within which the public sector manager operates (Stewart and Walsh 1992) and the fact that PSOs will have many stakeholders, each of whom will have their own specific objectives based on their own perspective (Boyle 1995). This can
result in goal ambiguity which means that there is leeway in interpreting the results of the PSO. The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) was set up to bring stability to the financial system by buying loans from the banks (which were in most cases, non-performing loans). The intention was to cleanse the banks of these loans so that they could return to their normal business of taking deposits and making loans. However, the legislation, also gave NAMA a wide range of other responsibilities including responsibility for facilitating credit in the economy and protecting the interests of taxpayers. In more recent times, NAMA has been given responsibility for building social housing. This wide-range of activities is a clear example of a PSO being given multiple goals which may conflict and is therefore likely to lead to goal ambiguity. This makes it very difficult to evaluate NAMA’s performance as they are attempting to meet numerous goals at the same time and also highlights the complexity of policy making in the public sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine how NAMA dealt with goal ambiguity. This will be done through a thematic analysis of its annual reports over the last five years. The paper’s will contribute to the ongoing debate about the evaluation of PSOs and the complex environment within which they operate which makes evaluation difficult as they are
answerable to multiple stakeholders who have different objectives and different criteria for measuring success.

Lebenszykluskosten von elektrischen Antriebssystemen

Insbesondere bei Antriebssystemen stehen die Energiekosten neben den Anschaffungskosten im Fokus. Jedoch bleiben weitere Folgekosten, die im Laufe des Betriebs eines Antriebssystems in einem Fördermittel entstehen, meist unberücksichtigt. Dieser Artikel beschreibt einen Ansatz, wie sich Lebenszykluskosten von Antriebssystemen in Stetigfördertechnik prognostizieren lassen. Mit Hilfe von allgemein bekannten Normen und Richtlinien kann der Lebenszyklus eines Antriebssystems von der Projektierung über die Herstellung bis zur Entsorgung nach dem Betrieb in Kostenarten eingeteilt und veranschaulicht werden. Unter Verwendung von direkter Verrechnung als auch der Kalkulation mit Prozesskosten wird eine hinreichende Genauigkeit anhand definierter Prozessketten erreicht. Auf Basis dieser Kostenkalkulationen kann ein mehrstufiges Prognosemodell gebildet werden. Somit konnten durch das entwickelnde Modell Anlagenbeispiele untersucht und berechnet werden.

Asset Management and Investment Banking

We find evidence that conflicts of interest are pervasive in the asset management business owned by investment banks. Using data from 1990 to 2008, we compare the alphas of mutual funds, hedge funds, and institutional funds operated by investment banks and non-bank conglomerates. We find that, while no difference exists in performance by fund type, being owned by an investment bank reduces alphas by 46 basis points per year in our baseline model. Making lead loans increases alphas, but the dispersion of fees across portfolios decreases alphas. The economic loss is $4.9 billion per year.

Books for asset management in hospitals in Seville.

Hospitals from ancient Seville had an important heritage for survival of the institution and its patients. In order to keep this heritage, the officialdom settled down several control mechanisms that would serve to manage a profitable management of their income and rights. For this purpose, they developed devising instruments able to preserve their possessions and put them into operation. This article attempts to identify the defining elements of these books, called “protocolos de bienes” (protocols goods), indicating their characteristics and evolution from archaic models until the final form. This final form was reached late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, at which time devoted use main codex of hospitality. To do this, we used the documentary collec-tions of Seville, preserved in different archives of the city, from where they have taken several significant examples showing the changes that occurred in both its internal structure and its mate-rials manufacturing, underlining the participation of official, booksellers, illuminators and calligraphers. Similarly, it has high-lighted the multifaceted and multifunctional character of this ins-titutions that became also a corporate identity. The multiplicity of hospitals in Sevilla had different types and features of protocols, which were modificated according to the different needs of each institution.

Techno-economic analysis of three HVAC retrofitting options

Accounting for around 40% of the total final energy consumption, the building stock is an important area of focus on the way to reaching the energy goals set for the European Union. The relatively small share of new buildings makes renovation of existing buildings possibly the most feasible way of improving the overall energy performance of the building stock. This of course involves improvements on the climate shell, for example by additional insulation or change of window glazing, but also installation of new heating systems, to increase the energy efficiency and to fit the new heat load after renovation. In the choice of systems for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), it is important to consider their performance for space heating as well as for domestic hot water (DHW), especially for a renovated house where the DHW share of the total heating consumption is larger. The present study treats the retrofitting of a generic single family house, which was defined as a reference building in a European energy renovation project. Three HVAC retrofitting options were compared from a techno-economic point of view: A) Air-to-water heat pump (AWHP) and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), B) Exhaust air heat pump (EAHP) with low-temperature ventilation radiators, and C) Gas boiler and ventilation with MVHR. The systems were simulated for houses with two levels of heating demand and four different locations: Stockholm, Gdansk, Stuttgart and London. They were then evaluated by means of life cycle cost (LCC) and primary energy consumption. Dynamic simulations were done in TRNSYS 17. In most cases, system C with gas boiler and MVHR was found to be the cheapest retrofitting option from a life cycle perspective. The advantage over the heat pump systems was particularly clear for a house in Germany, due to the large discrepancy between national prices of natural gas and electricity. In Sweden, where the price difference is much smaller, the heat pump systems had almost as low or even lower life cycle costs than the gas boiler system. Considering the limited availability of natural gas in Sweden, systems A and B would be the better options. From a primary energy point of view system A was the best option throughout, while system B often had the highest primary energy consumption. The limited capacity of the EAHP forced it to use more auxiliary heating than the other systems did, which lowered its COP. The AWHP managed the DHW load better due to a higher capacity, but had a lower COP than the EAHP in space heating mode. Systems A and C were notably favoured by the air heat recovery, which significantly reduced the heating demand. It was also seen that the DHW share of the total heating consumption was, as expected, larger for the house with the lower space heating demand. This confirms the supposition that it is important to include DHW in the study of HVAC systems for retrofitting.

Asset Management: Identifying and Evaluating our Roadway System

Historically SCDOT ranks in the top 10 each year for highway conditions and cost-effectiveness as rated by the Reason Foundation. With billions of dollars invested and billions to be invested it makes sense to invest the public's tax dollars as wisely as possible. Therefore, assessing what we have or better yet what condition what we have is in can be vital to public safety and setting priorities. The focus of this project is on the maintenance responsibility of Roadway Inspection as outlined in SCDOT Engineering Directive Memorandum #8. This memorandum is a portion of the way SCDOT provides for the safety of the traveling public and keeps South Carolina's most expensive asset in working order.

Materiais elásticos como elementos de protecção em vias balastradas

Nas últimas décadas o transporte ferroviário sofreu inúmeras alterações, devido as crescentes exigências impostas ao sector e a necessidade de o tornar num sistema de transporte mais competitivo, podendo assim rivalizar com os seus principais concorrentes, os transportes aéreos e rodoviários. Essas alterações, passam por, inovações a via balastrada nomeadamente, com a introdução de novos materiais, como sejam, por exemplo, os materiais elásticos, como complemento aos componentes da via tradicional, associados a métodos construtivos inovadores ou melhorados. Assim sendo, no presente estudo pretende-se dar uma visão do estado de desenvolvimento deste tipo de soluções relacionando-as com novas formas de olhar o projeto ferroviário, sendo certo que hoje em dia e fundamental não só dar enfase as fases de dimensionamento e execução, mas também as fases de manutenção e renovação, através de processos mais criteriosos e transparentes, nos quais a analise RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety) e LCC (Life-Cycle Cost) se assumem como cruciais para enfrentar os desafios futuros.