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A New Productivity Benchmarking System Connected to Well-designed Labour Apprenticeship Framework for Construction Projects
Get PDFThis study primarily identifies the knowledge gaps that must be filled to apply conceptualised methods for rising and benchmarking productivity levels of various construction operational tasks. Accordingly, this study intended to evaluate labour productivity in relation to labour performance using potential apprenticeship instruments and systems. Comprehensive literature analysis and expert consultations were carried out to create a new mechanism with the collection of potential models, methods and systems connected to labour training, performance evaluation and productivity measurements. A total of 23 construction projects in Sri Lanka employed the created approach methodically. The results demonstrate the precise patterns of substantial shifts in labour productivity and performance index values, which have sparked new conceptual mechanisms for construction project planning methods. The outcomes demonstrate that the suggested approach can be used in a way that is reliable, generalisable, productive and sustainable. The study provides project managers, planners and engineers with a new road map and helpful techniques to raise the standard for measuring labour productivity levels across a variety of jobs. The overall study outcomes strengthen the chain relationship among the training elements, labour skills, performance and productivity. Though the study findings were limited to the construction industry and Sri Lankan context, the study outcomes are expected to make a significant impact on the current practices of various industry sectors in many developing countries for achieving higher productivity levels in work operations. This paper discusses some more implications and future scopes of the study elaborately
Analyzing the Influence of Organizational Culture in Projects using Last Planner System
Get PDFThe use of lean tools and techniques to reduce waste from the workflow has been prominently gaining popularity in the construction industry worldwide. Last Planner System (LPS) is one of such distinguished tools used by construction majors. Many research suggests that LPS plays a significant role in improving the collaboration among the project team members and the firm\u27s organizational culture. This paper reports the intermediating effect of organizational culture on construction projects that implement the Last Planner System and also identifies the effect of LPS on the project\u27s operational performance. Various survey items pertaining to each variable was identified and was validated through Content Validation. All the established items were then compiled into a questionnaire, and multiple data were collected from a variety of projects. The data were analyzed using bivariate correlation and multiple regression analysis. Additionally, the "organizational culture assessment instrument" was utilized to compare the organizational cultures of various construction sites. It was discovered that the Last Planner System had a positive but negligible relationship with the operational performance of the project, and the organizational culture. It was observed that all the projects implementing LPS had a balance culture. The contribution of this work is the knowledge that the implementation of the Last Planner System is not necessarily enhanced by culture to a great extent. However, it has a positive impact on both the operational performance of the project and the organizational culture
Effect of anti-corruption systems’ logic on corruption manifestations in project planning and execution in Nigeria
Get PDFThe absence of logical reasoning in the implementation of anti-corruption measures has exerted a significant influence, leading to misguided anti-corruption endeavours in nations such as Nigeria. The objective of this study is to discern the underlying rationale behind anti-corruption systems and ascertain their impact on the occurrence of corruption in the context of project planning and execution (PPE) within Nigeria. The research formulated a theoretical framework that classified the anti-corruption measures into three distinct systems and elucidated their underlying rationale. The model postulates that anti-corruption measures that exhibit a significant influence on corruption in the realm of PPE are those that prioritise the enhancement of reputation and remuneration. The hypotheses were extracted from the model and subjected to testing through the utilisation of multiple linear regression (MLR). The efficacy of all the classifications of anti-corruption systems was determined to be inadequate in mitigating the occurrence of bribery, fraud, and substandard documentation. The empirical findings indicate that the expansion of information access exhibits a robust logical framework and exerts a substantial influence on the prevalence of corruption within the realm of PPE in Nigeria. The results of this study propose a potential strategy for an anti-graft campaign and provide insights into the importance of consolidation
Review: The Winding Stair by Sir Rodney Brooke
No full textIn this autobiography Sir Rodney Brooke provides a variously funny, thoughtful, inciteful and depressing read as he takes us through his illustrious career of over 40 years in English local government. Alongside Brooke’s own climb up the stairway, he chronicles the decline of local government as an institution in Britain, sprinkled with anecdotes that show the diversity and idiosyncrasies which make local government so fascinating, and at times entertaining
Silencing the Voice: the fossil-fuelled Atlas Network’s Campaign against Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australia
Get PDFAustralians will soon vote in a referendum to recognise Indigenous Australia in its 1901 Constitution and establish a First Nations Voice to Parliament. A year ago, polling suggested the referendum proposal of the 2017 National Constitutional Convention and its Uluru Statement from the Heart enjoyed 60% support. Since lead anti-Voice campaign organisation Advance Australia began its media offensive, the Yes vote has declined to 40%. This article argues the No campaign is being conducted on behalf of fossil-fuel corporations and their allies, whose efforts to mislead the public on life-and-death matters reach back over half a century. Coordinated across the Australian branches of the little-known Atlas Network, a global infrastructure of 500+ ‘think-tanks’ including the Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs and LibertyWorks, I demonstrate that the No campaign shares the aims and methods of the longstanding Atlas disinformation campaign against climate policy. Opposition to long-overdue constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians can be traced to fears the Voice might strengthen the capacity of Indigenous communities and Australia’s parliamentary democracy to rein in the polluting industries driving us toward climate and ecological collapse
Social Licence to Operate: The Role of an Idea in the Colonial Logics of Extractivism
Get PDFIn this intervention article, we cultivate an anti-colonial critique of the ideational genealogy and conceptual materialisation of the social licence to operate (SLO) in the extractive industries in order to open a conversation about the racialised and colonial logics underlying its enactment and discursive practices. SLO functions to restrict the emergence of imaginary political potentials within communities impacted by extractive projects. We focus on the role of academics and social science researchers within and beyond the space of the university in engineering, shaping, and promoting dominant SLO frameworks, and endorsing the power and mythology of SLO. We do so in conversation with decolonial orientations that simultaneously analyse the colonial logics within corporate practice and galvanise epistemic justice beyond colonial and epistemic extractivism. The university, as a site for the refinement and promotion of hegemonic concepts like SLO, is an important space for post-extractive struggles
Faith-based community-academic partnerships: An asset-based community development strategy for social change
Get PDFFaith-based community anchor institutions are important collaborators in community development. They are respected social innovators who deploy their assets for the common good, especially good works aimed towards helping marginalised communities and those in poverty. More recently, the pace of faith-based social innovation and community development leadership has slowed substantially (Jones 2016). Seeking renewed imagination, will and ability for asset-based social innovation among faith-based communities, the Ormond Center at Duke University’s Divinity School has developed a curriculum, based on a human ecology framework, that engages faith-based ‘community- academic partnered participatory research’ (Chen et. al. 2006) towards social change.
Our approach starts by working with congregations to discover community-level barriers to thriving in their local context. We then walk alongside faith-based communities to identify strengths-based, relationship-centred opportunities to collaboratively integrate congregational assets with community assets towards positive social change. This curriculum has been tested by the Ormond Center with several diverse, multi- denominational congregations in communities located in North Carolina and Virginia. Its potential to encourage asset-based community development for social good is supported by tangible evidence. This article takes the reader through the process of changing a semester-long graduate course, designed by the academy for the academy, to a six-week course that walks alongside faith- based lay leaders and pastors in their local context, towards asset-based community development for positive social change. Five viable asset-based solutions to community-level social issues are shared, and lessons learned are offered
Integrating asset-based community development and community-based research for social change: A beginning
Get PDFThis themed volume is grounded in a set of diverse case studies that bring community and university partners together using two aligned methodologies: community-based research (CBR), which evolved from higher education, and asset-based community development (ABCD), which evolved from community practice. The volume places these methodologies in dialogue with each other, to examine and begin to answer the question that guided the volume’s call for articles: can CBR and ABCD be compatible agents in equitable and sustainable change? From the case studies emerge five themes that we explore in this guest editorial: (1) the benefits of community-university partnerships; (2) the risks of community-university partnerships; (3) notions of community expertise and ‘community partner’; (4) the centrality of relationship-based methodologies in partner-building; and (5) explorations of power, equity and justice. The editorial opens and closes with discussion on the important systemic question of power imbalances between universities and communities, which has to be addressed for these methodologies to be effective, whether used on their own or in combination within community-university partnerships. It concludes with a discussion of the ‘deep, wide and connected’ community engagement that the articles as a whole suggest is necessary to have equitable and sustainable impact
The Memorial Afterlives of Online Crowdsourcing: ‘Lives of the First World War’ at Imperial War Museums
Get PDFFrom May 2014 to March 2019 the Imperial War Museums launched a large-scale digital crowdsourcing project, ‘Lives of the First World War’. ‘Lives’ melded official and unofficial datasets to create an integrated database of people who had participated in the First World War. Over the course of the project 7.7 million individual histories were collected. After the initial collection phase, ‘Lives’ became a permanent digital memorial and database. This article investigates how ‘Lives’ contributed to public understandings of the First World War during and after its centenary. While undoubtedly an impressive and difficult undertaking, this article suggests that large scale data collection as a methodology on its own will replicate collection biases, unless married with specific collection drives. In the case of the First World War, this means that global majority narratives are subsumed by white British ones, at the expense of historically realistic data. The skewed datasets that come from large crowdsourced projects have widespread implications for cultural memories of events if they are to be digitally preserved within national collections
Public Histories in South Africa: Between Contest and Reconciliation
Get PDFPublic history has long been practiced in South Africa, yet its content and purpose have always been deeply contested. In a deliberate, state-driven process, it has undergone extensive change since 1994, helping to redefine the nation in the post-apartheid era. There have been two principal means of achieving this goal: the first has been to commission a large number of new memory sites and the second has been to insist on a renovation of older sites, whose previous incarnation served the narrow interests of a small white minority. While clear new narratives have emerged, the process has witnessed continuing contests over representation and competing claims to the heritage estate
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