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Production Capability Creation (PCC) for Collaborative Construction Projects – A Qualitative Study From Finland
Get PDFThe construction industry has been suffering from modest productivity development in recent decades. To address the recognized problems, collaborative delivery methods are replacing traditional project delivery models, especially in large and complex projects.The aim of this research is to describe the production capability creation (PCC) process as a solution for planning the production phase. The PCC process should be implemented parallel to the design phase and owned by the production. A qualitative and inductive approach, based primarily on case company interviews, is applied to identify the twelve most important challenges for preplanning in the design phase from a group of different types of stakeholders in construction projects. Based on these challenges, the main areas of PCC are structured, solving the depicted production challenges, enabling a wasteless and cost-efficient production phase to avoid unnecessary delays and problems. Parallel implementation of PCC and design processes of the building naturally also improve the result of the design itself. With PCC, contractors can recognize the need for improvement in their processes but, more importantly, can directly contribute to the design of the building. Described PCC process solves major challenges emerging from the case company interviews. Earlier literature on capability creation is scarce, and for the construction industry it is even more narrow. The PCC process presented in this research enables significant improvement in efficiency and effectiveness, and the elimination of waste in the construction industry
The Mediating Role of Benefit Management for Sustaining the Performance of Infrastructure Projects
Get PDFBenefit management is a valuable approach, promoted and supported by strategic management for maximizing organizational benefits. It has also been recognized as a means of improving project performance, though more research is needed to understand how it works. This research adds to the contemporary literature on public sector project management by studying the links between project governance, benefit management, and project performance from a developing country perspective. This study provides insights for project professionals who are working in government organizations for optimizing the benefits of investment. The study provides a reference to formulate strategies for managing and governing the performance of government-funded projects in developing countries like Pakistan. The research uses a positivist approach and quantitative design. The quantitative technique is employed to address all the aspects of the study. The structural equation modeling revealed that benefit management acted as a mediating factor in the relationship between project governance dimensions and public sector project performance. This study highlights the importance of incorporating a comprehensive benefit management approach to streamline the benefit management process by aligning projects with the organizational strategy for sustaining project performance. These findings stress the need for a comprehensive benefit management approach in improving the project performance of government-sponsored projects. The study attempts to improve the understanding of project professionals about the role and significance of benefit management, which will be helpful to get organizational support for the employees who are striving to improve the project performance in Pakistan
Curating divinity: Religious souvenirs, shopkeepers and bazaar curation
Get PDFThis paper explores the universe of souvenirs of Sikh Gurus and martyrs available in the bazaars around Sikhism’s most sacred shrine, the Darbar Sahib in Amritsar. Rather like objects in museum exhibitions, souvenir art actively produces ideas of divinity and martyrdom. The deliberate arrangements of Guru and martyr souvenirs in shopwindows demonstrate the ‘sense’ of curation of ordinary shopkeepers in the bazaar. Shop displays, I argue, resemble the care of sacred art by museum curators. But there is more to shop displays than mere imitation. I analyse the vis-à-vis between the souvenir displays of two modern martyrs, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the militant leader of separatist Khalistan, and Bhagat Singh, the nationalist hero, that express bazaar understandings of martyr souvenirs as affective objects, possessing both ritual and political value. The curated displays in museums and shopwindows are critical in creating a conscious, purposive aura around modern Sikh martyrdom
Street Art on TikTok: Engaging with Digital Cosmopolitanism
Get PDFUnder the influence of social media, aesthetic cosmopolitans have shifted from the real world to the digital world. This study exemplified Jingxuan Peng’s street art on TikTok to explore how street artists digitally increase the transcultural engagement with the cosmopolitan community on social media. As a result, a total of 243 videos and corresponding engagement responses were collected and investigated through text mining analysis. Overall, street art in these short videos was classified as fully exotic, partly exotic, and a combination of local and exotic art, and the study finds that the last category has the highest level of engagement in the digital cosmopolitan community. In conclusion, this study fills a gap in the limited analysis of street art and digital cosmopolitism on social media, and provides managerial insights for street artists and art appreciation in the age of Internet
The Public Good of Digital (Academic) History
Get PDFIs digital history public history? It does not have to be, but it probably should be. When we make our digital history products freely and publicly available, we not only make our scholarship more transparent, but also more accessible to a wider audience, in particular an audience who might usually be excluded from readership by paywalls. This article focuses on the author\u27s experience in presenting research and data collected for the Soldiers of Empire project in a digital and public facing way, the reasons for doing so, and the challenges faced
Sparking entrepreneurial tendencies in youth: Lessons from sport and life skills education in three African cities
Get PDFThis practice-based article describes a program that aims to instil an interest in entrepreneurship among African youth by helping them make a connection between the skills they have developed through their participation in sport and the skills required of successful entrepreneurs. The program was developed in partnership between scholars at four universities (University of Botswana, University of Dar es Salaam, University of Ghana and Michigan State University), as well as schools at other community organisations in three African cities: Gaborone, Botswana; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Accra, Ghana. The program, which seeks to contribute to the well-established need for job creation in sub- Saharan Africa, integrated basic entrepreneurship and life-skills training activities into a sports camp for youth athletes. The program appears to have developed entrepreneurial tendencies among youth sport participants in these African cities, suggesting that job creation efforts could benefit from targeting youth sport participants and helping them to recognise the important skills they have developed through their participation in sport, and helping them to identify ways in which that skill development could positively impact their futures
‘Histórias do Kakwaku’, An experience of collective documentary film-making in the periphery of Luanda, Angola
Get PDFThis article reflects on Histórias do Kakwaku, a documentary film about social activism in the urban margins of Luanda, produced as part of a partnership between myself, an academic working on urban citizenship, and an Angolan political youth organisation, Projecto AGIR. The article details the whole process of collective film-making and questions the impact of this method on the film-makers, both individually and collectively. From our initial brainstorming sessions to our final editing decisions on the computer, I show how we slowly drifted away from the initial political objectives dictated by the organisers of Projecto Agir and opened unexpected spaces for engagement that allowed us ‘to see together without claiming to be another’ (Haraway 1991).
Following the chronological steps of collective film-making, we used practice as a point of departure from which to approach storytelling more broadly. Although I provide practical details about our logistics, our equipment and our working documents, this is not a one-size-fits-all recipe for collective documentary film-making. Rather, the focus is on what can be described as an exercise in intersubjective writing, neither entirely under control nor totally serendipitous.
I argue that telling a story in images, words and sounds is a dynamic process, open to constant reinterpretation. Combining the unpredictability of collective writing with the somewhat narrow imperatives of audiovisual storytelling creates an opportunity to question participatory research beyond the binary of the researcher and the researched.
 
The implications of COVID-19 and Brexit for England’s town councils: views from the town hall, and beyond
Get PDFTown and parish councils are the English government bodies closest to local people. Hierarchically, they are subordinate to both national and higher tier local governments (unitary, county and borough/district councils). Town councillors represent approximately 11,000,000 people; one-fifth of the population of England. Their mainly small towns will be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union (‘Brexit’). To what extent is not known, but councillors will have roles to play in determining how their towns respond. This paper presents and discusses the views of 156 respondents to an online survey, some of whom were also interviewed. Councillors, town clerks, academics, and interested individuals with policy and practical experience of the sector contributed. Although respondents’ views differ (eg, as to whether town councils should have more powers), most believe they will have to do more. Indeed, they want to do more, especially in relation to planning, housing and transport. They are, however, uncertain about how to achieve their aims, given the constraints of time and resources on a mainly volunteer body, their partial dependence on higher-tier authorities, and the need for, as some strongly believe, effective monitoring of standards, performance, transparency, and accountability.
 
Betwixt agency and accountability: re-visioning street-level bureaucrats
Get PDFThis paper presents a critical assessment of the much-discussed tension between bureaucratic accountability and the contextual discretion of ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (i.e. front-line public sector workers). Based on an extensive literature review, the paper outlines the implications of the exercise of agency by street-level bureaucrats in everyday settings. It also looks at the challenges this agency engenders: loss of accountability and divergence from stated policy goals. The paper underlines the need for future research on institutional structures and organisational cultures around street-level bureaucracy. It suggests possible lines of enquiry to steer the debate in new, and hopefully productive, directions
A Framework for Integrating Green Highway Performance Data with the Carbon Footprint Calculator in Malaysia
Get PDFHighway concessionaires in Malaysia spend considerable assets in collecting, analysing and controlling different forms of data during highway projects’ life cycle. Considering this massive investment, nowadays the data use and information system reliability is becoming the key concern in terms of delivering value to consumers as opposed to the amount generated. The data generated is extensive and heterogeneous. This paper provides a new paradigm for integrating green highway performance data with carbon footprint data for green highway assessment. This framework is used to improve the active use of data in the generation of information and to assist comprehensively in decision-making at all levels of management. The network approach used in this study is the main component for interlinking data with knowledge and decisions, identifying the parameters of data integration for green highway assessment, determining the criteria data for integration, and assessing the overall performance of data usage. Real-time green highway data scenarios are used to demonstrate the applicability of this framework. A new monitoring performance measure called the MyGHI-Dashboard is proposed to control green highway assessment processes and evaluate the level of data usage, which will serve as a green highway performance scorecard. Through data-driven insights, this new paradigm can be used as a benchmarking model by highway authorities to make efficient and accurate decisions. This study is expected to become the central reference to mitigate the challenge associated with the use of highway performance data in real-time for Malaysian highway development
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