Report : school survey to collect data on material performance

A survey of a number of schools in a number of different climates was carried out to determine the condition of building components of interest in the project. Schools in Melbourne, the Victorian Surf Coast, Brisbane, Townsville and the Sunshine Coast were inspected. A rating system was devised to categorise the components and the results collated in tables. Analysis of the data (where sufficient examples permitted) resulted in formulae to predict the service of the components and a database was derived.

Final report : feasibility study linking best value procurement assessment to outcome performance indicators

This feasibility study was established to investigate the application of the concept of ‘best value’ in construction procurement in Australia. In the case of ‘best value’ in the business enterprise, ‘best value’ is that which returns greatest value to the business enterprise’s shareholders. However, in the case of the public sector, ‘best value’ is more complex. For that reason, this research project focuses mainly on public sector construction project procurement.

Safer construction : the development of a voluntary code of practice to improve safety performance in the Australian construction industry

In Australia, between 1994 and 2000, 50 construction workers were killed each year as a result of their work, the industry fatality rate, at 10.4 per 100,000 persons, is similar to the national road toll fatality rate and the rate of serious injury is 50% higher than the all industries average. This poor performance represents a significant threat to the industry’s social sustainability. Despite the best efforts of regulators and policy makers at both State and Federal levels, the incidence of death, injury and illness in the Australian construction industry has remained intransigently high, prompting an industry-led initiative to improve the occupational health and safety (OHS) performance of the Australian construction industry. The ‘Safer Construction’ project involves the development of an evidence-based Voluntary Code of Practice for OHS in the industry.

Youth Festival Music Performance : Kingston

Research Background - Young people with negative experiences of mainstream education often display low levels of traditional academic achievement. These young people tend to display considerable cultural and social resources developed through their repeated experiences of adversity. Education research has a duty to provide these young people with opportunities to showcase, assess and translate their social and cultural resources into symbolic forms of capital. This creative work addresses the research question, how can educators maximise the social and cultural capital they help young people acquire through live music performances and studio recordings? Research Contribution - This live music performance, built on existing artistic reputations of the artists, saw the lads support one of their local heroes from Brisbane Hip Hop music scene. In doing so they showcased what their three years of concerted musical engagement can achieve within supportive flexible learning environments. The new knowledge derived from this research focuses on the academic and self confidence benefits for disengaged young people using festival performances as authentic learning activities. Research Significance - This research is significant because it aims to maximise the number of tangible outcomes related to a school-based arts project. The young participants gained technical, artistic, social and commercial status during this project. Individual performances were distributed and downloaded via creative commons licences at the Australian Creative Resource Archive. This performance also contributed to their certified qualifications and acted as pilot research data for two competitively funded ARC grants (DP0209421 & LP0883643)

Performance Benchmarking of Australian Business Regulation : Submission to the Productivity Commission

The need to “reduce red tape” and regulatory inconsistencies is a desirable outcome (OECD 1997) for developed countries. The costs normally associated with regulatory regimes are compliance costs and direct charges. Geiger and Hoffman (1998) have noted that the extent of regulation in an industry tends to be negatively associated with firm performance. Typically, approaches to estimation of the cost of regulations examine direct costs, such as fees and charges, together with indirect costs, such as compliance costs. However, in a fragmented system, such as Australia, costs can also be incurred due to procedural delays, either by government, or by industry having to adapt documentation for different spheres of government; lack of predictable outcomes, with variations occurring between spheres of government and sometimes within the same government agency; and lost business opportunities, with delays and red tape preventing realisation of business opportunities (OECD 1997). In this submission these costs are termed adaptation costs. The adaptation costs of complying with variations in regulations between the states has been estimated by the Building Product Innovation Council (2003) as being up to $600 million per annum for building product manufacturers alone. Productivity gains from increased harmonisation of the regulatory system have been estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars (ABCB 2003). This argument is supported by international research which found that increasing the harmonisation of legislation in a federal system of government reduces what we have termed adaptation costs (OECD 2001). Research reports into the construction industry in Australia have likewise argued that improved consistency in the regulatory environment could lead to improvements in innovation (PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2002), and that research into this area should be given high priority (Hampson & Brandon 2004). The opinion of industry in Australia has consistently held that the current regulatory environment inhibits innovation (Manley 2004). As a first step in advancing improvements to the current situation, a summary of the current costs experienced by industry needs to be articulated. This executive summary seeks to outline these costs in the hope that the Productivity Commission would be able to identify the best tools to quantify the actual costs to industry.

Reading Squadron: Crossing borders in literacy experiences for preservice teachers.

Teaching literacy requires accurate and current knowledge in the field (Commonwealth of Australia, 2005). There have been persistent inquiries into what constitutes specialist knowledge and skills for teaching students to be literate. Preservice teacher education is fundamental to literacy development, which includes the approaches universities employ to prepare graduates for teaching literacy. Indeed, preservice teacher programs and literacy education also elicit insatiable media coverage. There is a continued push to improve literacy outcomes for school students across the nation and prepare the literacy knowledge and skills of Australian teachers. This study mainly focuses on 10 final-year preservice teachers attending a regional university campus who volunteered for further experiences to teach students to read traditional texts. These preservice teachers completed three university literacy units before commencing with practical applications. A literacy program, titled Reading Squadron, was developed in partnership between a local primary school and the university. Primary students were identified by the school as requiring literacy support. Preservice teachers attended a whole day training session run by school staff at the university and then visited the school for two one-hour sessions each week over a six-week period. Each preservice teacher was assigned two students and worked with each student for half an hour twice a week. The aim of this small-scale qualitative study was to investigate the perceptions of the preservice teachers and school staff as a result of their involvement in the Reading Squadron program. The preservice teachers completed a questionnaire to determine their views of the program and ascertain how it assisted their development. Further data were gathered from the preservice teachers through individual face-to-face interviews. Three school staff involved in the program also completed a questionnaire to determine the value of the program. Results indicated that the preservice teachers made links between theory and practice, and felt they gained knowledge about teaching reading. Three preservice teachers noted it was difficult to work around timetable commitments but gained from the experience and suggested embedding such experiences into university literacy units. Data gathered from school staff indicated that six-weeks was not sufficient time to measure improvements in the school students, however, they were supportive of such a program, particularly for its continuation. Collaborations between schools and universities can provide opportunities for preservice teachers to use theoretical knowledge gained from core university subjects with application to assist primary students’ literacy development in schools. Teachers in this study were supportive of the Reading Squadron program, however, more data needed to be collected to understand the literacy improvement of students. Longitudinal studies are required to ascertain specific knowledge and skills gained by preservice teachers to teach reading and how these programs enhance students’ literacy levels.

High-performance ceramic membranes with a separation layer of metal oxide nanofibers

In conventional fabrication of ceramic separation membranes, the particulate sols are applied onto porous supports. Major structural deficiencies under this approach are pin-holes and cracks, and the dramatic losses of flux when pore sizes are reduced to enhance selectivity. We have overcome these structural deficiencies by constructing hierarchically structured separation layer on a porous substrate using lager titanate nanofibers and smaller boehmite nanofibers. This yields a radical change in membrane texture. The resulting membranes effectively filter out species larger than 60 nm at flow rates orders of magnitude greater than conventional membranes. This reveals a new direction in membrane fabrication.

The interrelations among the project team’s conduit networks, knowledge network and its performance

From the perspective of network, a project team’s social capital consists of conduits network, and resource exchange network. Prior research intensively studies the effect of the structure of conduits network on the team’s performance, assuming knowledge transfer is the causal mechanism linking conduits network to performance. This paper attempts to explore the interrelations between conduits network and knowledge network, and further distinguish the different influence between various conduit networks, and hypothesizes that a project team’s knowledge network mediates the effect of various conduit networks on the team’s performance. This research can enrich our knowledge of disparate influence of the various conduit networks on knowledge transfer, and imply some management practices to enhance the organization’s social capital, and hence improve the organization’s performance.

Decision support system for improving construction companies’ business performance

As part of a decision making process, the controlling process in construction companies can be supported by computer application that provides faster and reliable decision. This paper discusses the development of a knowledge-based decision support system for controlling construction companies’ business performance. The knowledge-base was developed using questionnaire survey and case studies. A questionnaire survey was conducted to identify potential problems that can occur in construction companies as well as the source of the problems and their impact on companies’ performance. Case studies were used to identify and analyse various corrective actions. The result of the study shows that decision support system using knowledge-based management system improves the effectiveness and the efficiency of decision making process for selecting the most appropriate corrective action that can improve construction companies’ performance. The application, which had been developed in this research, was designed to support the process of controlling construction companies’ business performance and to assist young manager in selecting the most optimum corrective actions for the problems related to achieving companies’ objectives. This computer application can be used as a learning tool for identifying potential problems that a construction company faces and the most optimum corrective action.

The impact of internal and external market orientations on firm performance.

The role of internal marketing in developing organisational competencies is identified as a key area for continued research (Rafiq and Ahmed, 2003). One competence of particular interest to marketers is market orientation. This paper examines the impact of internal marketing, operationalised as a set of internal market orientated behaviours (IMO) on market orientation (MO), and consequently organisational performance, and provides the first quantitative evidence to support the long held assumption that internal marketing has an impact on marketing success. Data from UK retail managers were analysed using structural equations modelling employing LISREL software. These data indicate significant relationships between internal market orientation, employee motivation and external marketing success (market orientation, financial performance and customer satisfaction). Our results also support previous findings indicating a positive impact of external market orientation on customer satisfaction and financial performance. For marketing practitioners, the role of internal market orientation is developing marketing strategies is discussed.