Interaction and cooperative effort among scientific societies. Twelve years of COSCE

The evolution of knowledge and technology in recent decades has brought profound changes in science policy, not only in the countries but also in the supranational organizations. It has been necessary, therefore, to adapt the scientific institutions to new models in order to achieve a greater and better communication between them and the political counterparts responsible for defining the general framework of relations between science and society. The Federationon of Scientific Societies of Spain (COSCE, Confederación de Sociedades Científicas de España) was founded in October 2003 to respond to the urgent need to interact with the political institutions and foster a better orientation in the process of making decisions about the science policy. Currently COSCE consists of over 70 Spanish scientific societies and more than 40,000 scientists. During its twelve years of active life, COSCE has developed an intense work of awareness of the real situation of science in Spain by launching several initiatives (some of which have joined other organizations) or by joining initiatives proposed from other groups related to science both at the Spanish level and at the European and non-European scenarios.

Industry culture: a need for change

Research indicates, one of the last available ‘mechanisms’ left for organisations to improve their competitive position within the construction industry is by considering its people (culture) along with its technology (Schein E. H. 1997). In other words, if one wants to make construction industry organisations, groups and project teams more efficient and effective, then one must better understand the role that culture plays within them.

Nation & internation practices in decision support tools in road asset management

This document provides a review of international and national practices in investment decision support tools in road asset management. Efforts were concentrated on identifying analytic frameworks, evaluation methodologies and criteria adopted by current tools. Emphasis was also given to how current approaches support Triple Bottom Line decision-making. Benefit Cost Analysis and Multiple Criteria Analysis are principle methodologies in supporting decision-making in Road Asset Management. The complexity of the applications shows significant differences in international practices. There is continuing discussion amongst practitioners and researchers regarding to which one is more appropriate in supporting decision-making. It is suggested that the two approaches should be regarded as complementary instead of competitive means. Multiple Criteria Analysis may be particularly helpful in early stages of project development, say strategic planning. Benefit Cost Analysis is used most widely for project prioritisation and selecting the final project from amongst a set of alternatives. Benefit Cost Analysis approach is useful tool for investment decision-making from an economic perspective. An extension of the approach, which includes social and environmental externalities, is currently used in supporting Triple Bottom Line decision-making in the road sector. However, efforts should be given to several issues in the applications. First of all, there is a need to reach a degree of commonality on considering social and environmental externalities, which may be achieved by aggregating the best practices. At different decision-making level, the detail of consideration of the externalities should be different. It is intended to develop a generic framework to coordinate the range of existing practices. The standard framework will also be helpful in reducing double counting, which appears in some current practices. Cautions should also be given to the methods of determining the value of social and environmental externalities. A number of methods, such as market price, resource costs and Willingness to Pay, are found in the review. The use of unreasonable monetisation methods in some cases has discredited Benefit Cost Analysis in the eyes of decision makers and the public. Some social externalities, such as employment and regional economic impacts, are generally omitted in current practices. This is due to the lack of information and credible models. It may be appropriate to consider these externalities in qualitative forms in a Multiple Criteria Analysis. Consensus has been reached in considering noise and air pollution in international practices. However, Australia practices generally omitted these externalities. Equity is an important consideration in Road Asset Management. The considerations are either between regions, or social groups, such as income, age, gender, disable, etc. In current practice, there is not a well developed quantitative measure for equity issues. More research is needed to target this issue. Although Multiple Criteria Analysis has been used for decades, there is not a generally accepted framework in the choice of modelling methods and various externalities. The result is that different analysts are unlikely to reach consistent conclusions about a policy measure. In current practices, some favour using methods which are able to prioritise alternatives, such as Goal Programming, Goal Achievement Matrix, Analytic Hierarchy Process. The others just present various impacts to decision-makers to characterise the projects. Weighting and scoring system are critical in most Multiple Criteria Analysis. However, the processes of assessing weights and scores were criticised as highly arbitrary and subjective. It is essential that the process should be as transparent as possible. Obtaining weights and scores by consulting local communities is a common practice, but is likely to result in bias towards local interests. Interactive approach has the advantage in helping decision-makers elaborating their preferences. However, computation burden may result in lose of interests of decision-makers during the solution process of a large-scale problem, say a large state road network. Current practices tend to use cardinal or ordinal scales in measure in non-monetised externalities. Distorted valuations can occur where variables measured in physical units, are converted to scales. For example, decibels of noise converts to a scale of -4 to +4 with a linear transformation, the difference between 3 and 4 represents a far greater increase in discomfort to people than the increase from 0 to 1. It is suggested to assign different weights to individual score. Due to overlapped goals, the problem of double counting also appears in some of Multiple Criteria Analysis. The situation can be improved by carefully selecting and defining investment goals and criteria. Other issues, such as the treatment of time effect, incorporating risk and uncertainty, have been given scant attention in current practices. This report suggested establishing a common analytic framework to deal with these issues.

Experimental methodology report

In architectural design and the construction industry, there is insufficient evidence about the way designers collaborate in their normal working environments using both traditional and digital media. It is this gap in empirical evidence that the CRC project, “Team Collaboration in High Bandwidth Virtual Environments” addresses. The project is primarily, but not exclusively, concerned with the conceptual stages of design carried out by professional designers working in different offices. The aim is to increase opportunities for communication and interaction between people in geographically distant locations in order to improve the quality of collaboration. In order to understand the practical implications of introducing new digital tools on working practices, research into how designers work collaboratively using both traditional and digital media is being undertaken. This will involve a series of empirical studies in the work places of the industry partners in the project. The studies of collaboration processes will provide empirical results that will lead to more effective use of virtual environments in design and construction processes. The report describes the research approach, the industry study, the methods for data collection and analysis and the foundation research methodologies. A distinctive aspect is that the research has been devised to enable field studies to be undertaken in a live industrial environment where the participant designers carry out real projects alongside their colleagues and in familiar locations. There are two basic research objectives: one is to obtain evidence about design practice that will inform the architecture and construction industries about the impact and potential benefit of using digital collaboration technologies; the second is to add to long term research knowledge of human cognitive and behavioural processes based on real world data. In order to achieve this, the research methods must be able to acquire a rich and heterogeneous set of data from design activities as they are carried out in the normal working environment. This places different demands upon the data collection and analysis methods to those of laboratory studies where controlled conditions are required. In order to address this, the research approach that has been adopted is ethnographic in nature and case study-based. The plan is to carry out a series of indepth studies in order to provide baseline results for future research across a wider community of user groups. An important objective has been to develop a methodology that will produce valid, significant and transferable results. The research will contribute to knowledge about how architectural design and the construction industry may benefit from the introduction of leading edge collaboration technologies. The outcomes will provide a sound foundation for the production of guidelines for the assessment of high bandwidth tools and their future deployment. The knowledge will form the basis for the specification of future collaboration products and collaboration processes. This project directly addresses the industry-identified focus on cultural change, image, e-project management, and innovative methods.

Safer construction : the development of a guide to best practice

In Australia, an average 49 building and construction workers have been killed at work each year since 1997-98. Building/construction workers are more than twice as likely to be killed at work, than the average worker in all Australian industries. The ‘Safer Construction’ project, funded by the CRC-Construction Innovation and led by a task force comprising representatives of construction clients, designers and constructors, developed a Guide to Best Practice for Safer Construction. The Guide, which was informed by research undertaken at RMIT University, Queensland University of Technology and Curtin University, establishes broad principles for the improvement of safety in the industry and provides a ‘roadmap’ for improvement based upon lifecycle stages of a building/construction project. Within each project stage, best practices for the management of safety are identified. Each best practice is defined in terms of the recommended action, its key benefits, desirable outcomes, performance measures and leadership. ‘Safer Construction’ practices are identified from the planning to commissioning stages of a project. The ‘Safer Construction’ project represents the first time that key stakeholder groups in the Australian building/construction industry have worked together to articulate best practice and establish an appropriate basis for allocating (and sharing) responsibility for project safety performance.

Supporting ICT diffusion in Australian construction organisations

Construction organisations comprise geographically dispersed virtually-linked suborganisations that work together to realise projects. They increasingly do so using information and communication technology (ICT) to communicate, coordinate their activities and to solve complex problems. One salient problem they face is how to effectively use requisite ICT tools. One important tool at their disposal is the self-help group, a body of people that organically spring up to solve shared problems. The more recognised term for this organisational form is a community of practice (COP). COPs generate knowledge networks that enhance and sustain competitive advantage and they are also used to help COP members actually use ICT tools. Etienne Wenger defines communities of practice as “groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise” (Wenger and Snyder 2000, p139). This ‘chicken-or-egg’ issue about needing a COP to use the tools that are needed to effective broaden COPs (beyond co-located these groups) led us to explore how best to improve the process of ICT diffusion through construction organisations— primarily using people supported by technology that improves knowledge sharing. We present insights gained from recent PhD research results in this area. A semistructured interview approach was used to collect data from ICT strategists and users in the three large Australian construction organisations that are among the 10 or so first tier companies by annual dollar turnover in Australia. The interviewees were categorised into five organisational levels: IT strategist, implementer, project or engineering manager, site engineer and foreman. The focus of the study was on the organisation and the way that it implements ICT diffusion of a groupware ICT diffusion initiative. Several types of COP networks from the three Australian cases are identified: withinorganisation COP; institutional, implementer or technical support; project manager/engineer focussed; and collegial support. Also, there are cross-organisational COPs that organically emerge as a result of people sharing an interest or experience in something significant. Firstly, an institutional network is defined as a strategic group, interested in development of technology innovation within an organisation. This COP principally links business process domain experts with an ICT strategist.