Framework for Objectively Determining Best Practices for Alternative Contracting Methods

2017 ◽  
Vol 2630 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas D. Gransberg ◽  
Eric Scheepbouwer ◽  
Carla Lopez del Puerto
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Best Value ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Procurement System

Alternative contracting method (ACM) usage has grown to the point where the industry has sufficient experience to provide a definitive set of best practices both to promote consistency in the nation’s procurement system and to leverage the lessons learned by early ACM adopters. The barrier to achieving this goal is that there is no uniform agreement on the definition of what constitutes a best practice. Both an objective definition and a framework for identifying and analyzing ACM practices are proposed that have been found to be effective by peer-reviewed research to determine whether a given practice deserves to be termed as a best practice. The framework is based on a series of indexes that are used to rank candidate practices in order of their importance and their effectiveness. The 24 ACM practices evaluated were identified from six NCHRP Synthesis reports on ACM topics. It was found that only four of the 24 candidates met the objective criteria to be termed a best practice. These candidates were formalizing and institutionalizing agency ACM procedures, using two-step best-value award procedures, appointing an agency ACM champion, and offering stipends for unsuccessful competitors.

scholarly journals Are Best Practices Really Best? A Review of the Best Practices Literature in Library and Information Studies

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Druery ◽  
Nancy McCormack ◽  
Sharon Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Library And Information Science ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Common Definition ◽  
Library And Information Studies ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

Objective - The term “best practice” appears often in library and information science literature, yet, despite the frequency with which the term is used, there is little discussion about what is meant by the term and how one can reliably identify a best practice. Methods – This paper reviews 113 articles that identify and discuss best practices, in order to determine how “best practices” are distinguished from other practices, and whether these determinations are made on the basis of consistent and reliable evidence. The review also takes into account definitions of the term to discover if a common definition is used amongst authors. Results – The “evidence” upon which papers on “best practices” are based falls into one of the following six categories: 1) opinion (n=18, 15%), 2) literature reviews (n=13, 12%), 3) practices in the library in which the author works (n=19, 17%), 4) formal and informal qualitative and quantitative approaches (n=16, 14%), 5) a combination of the aforementioned (i.e., combined approaches) (n=34, 30%), and 6) “other” sources or approaches which are largely one of a kind (n=13, 12%). There is no widely shared or common definition of “best practices” amongst the authors of these papers, and most papers (n=94, 83%) fail to define the term at all. The number of papers was, for the most part, split evenly amongst the six categories indicating that writers on the subject are basing “best practices” assertions on a wide variety of sources and evidence. Conclusions – Library and information science literature on “best practices” is rarely based on rigorous empirical methods of research and therefore is generally unreliable. There is, in addition, no widely held understanding of what is meant by the use of the term.

Evidence-Based Best Practices Collections

2011 ◽  
pp. 280-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Forrest Shull ◽  
Raimund Feldmann ◽  
Michelle Shaw ◽  
Michelle Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Specific Knowledge ◽  
White Board

For capturing and transferring knowledge between different projects and organizations, the concept of a Best Practice is commonly used. A similar but more general concept for knowledge capturing is often referred to as a Lesson Learned. Both best practices and lessons learned are frequently organized in the form of knowledge collections. Such collections exist in many forms and flavours: From simple notes on a white board, to paper file collections on a shelf, to electronic versions filed in a common folder or shared drive, to systematically archived and standardized versions in experience and databases, or even specific knowledge management systems. In the past few decades, many organizations have invested much time and effort in such specific knowledge collections (e.g., databases, experience repositories) for best practices and/ or lessons learned. The driving force behind all these activities is to disseminate knowledge about proven solutions to their workforce. Ultimately, the goal is to avoid mistakes and improve the overall workflow and processes to possibly save money and gain a competitive advantage.

scholarly journals 13.E. Workshop: How to improve the uptake of best practices?

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Health Promotion ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
General Information ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Prevention Programme ◽  
European Collaboration ◽  
Framework Conditions ◽  
Successes And Challenges

Abstract Background Several countries have a health promotion and disease prevention programme register (also known as good/best practice portal), designed with the aim of supporting policy and practice with evidence-based information. While some of the programme registers have been in use for many years (USA, the Netherlands, Germany, etc.), others have been established recently (France) or are even under development (Slovenia). Though there are differences in terms of categorising good/best practice, all prevention programme registers have many things in common, for instance submission and review processes. Another similarity lies in the common challenges by all programme registers, which relate to the question: “How to improve the uptake of good/best practices?”. Finding answers to this question might contribute to one of the major Public health challenges of today: The translation of evidence into practice. Objective The organisers of the workshop will present different strategies and approaches to improve the uptake of the prevention programme registers, and discuss the successes and challenges of different strategies with workshop participants, as experience shows that more is needed than just offering the prevention programme registers. Today we know that a range of framework conditions must be in place to ensure a supportive environment for the use of the portals. This starts with needs analysis, support in the selection of the most appropriate good/best practices and their transferability and goes as far as capacity building, incentivisation and fostering feedback on adaptations. In detail, the presentations will address: How to build capacity to best use good/best practice (by Netherlands); Whether and how a more comprehensive approach offering instruments for needs assessment, general information and good/best practice in one portal might facilitate uptake (by Germany); and Dissemination strategies: experience and lessons learned (by France) and the added value of European collaboration to improve the uptake of best practices and create a “centre of excellence” for health promotion portals in Europe with the objective to: discuss which framework conditions are most relevant to improve uptake of good/best practicesdiscuss successes and challenges of different strategies. Key messages This workshop will give participants insight into most relevant approaches and infrastructures to improve uptake of good/best practices. It will discuss which different strategies followed by several countries might be successful.

scholarly journals Use of Best Value Process for Inspection and Preventive Maintenance of Pumping Stations

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
Jannie Koster-Robaard
Keyword(s):  
Preventive Maintenance ◽  
Professional Services ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Performance Information ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Water Board ◽  
Best Value ◽  
Pumping Stations ◽  
Procurement System ◽  
And Control

The water board Velt en Vecht is a Best Value (BV) client who used the Performance Information Procurement System (PIPS) process to select professional services in 2012. The client had a procurement mission of integrity, transparency, objectivity, and non-discrimination that aligned them with the BV PIPS system. With a strategic plan of leadership instead of management and control, the water board is an example of a visionary owner that can be successful with BV PIPS. Lessons learned from the water board implementation of PIPS are that BV PIPS is a change of paradigm, even for a visionary owner. Both the owner who selects and the contractors who compete for the award must learn the new paradigm of minimized decision making, proactive planning, and risk management.

scholarly journals Challenges as enablers for high quality Linked Data: insights from the Semantic Publishing Challenge

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Dimou ◽  
Sahar Vahdati ◽  
Angelo Di Iorio ◽  
Christoph Lange ◽  
Ruben Verborgh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Semantic Web ◽  
Linked Data ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Data Publishing ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
Input Dataset ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Semantic Publishing

While most challenges organized so far in the Semantic Web domain are focused on comparing tools with respect to different criteria such as their features and competencies, or exploiting semantically enriched data, the Semantic Web Evaluation Challenges series, co-located with the ESWC Semantic Web Conference, aims to compare them based on their output, namely the produced dataset. The Semantic Publishing Challenge is one of these challenges. Its goal is to involve participants in extracting data from heterogeneous sources on scholarly publications, and producing Linked Data that can be exploited by the community itself. This paper reviews lessons learned from both (i) the overall organization of the Semantic Publishing Challenge, regarding the definition of the tasks, building the input dataset and forming the evaluation, and (ii) the results produced by the participants, regarding the proposed approaches, the used tools, the preferred vocabularies and the results produced in the three editions of 2014, 2015 and 2016. We compared these lessons to other Semantic Web Evaluation Challenges. In this paper, we (i) distill best practices for organizing such challenges that could be applied to similar events, and (ii) report observations on Linked Data publishing derived from the submitted solutions. We conclude that higher quality may be achieved when Linked Data is produced as a result of a challenge, because the competition becomes an incentive, while solutions become better with respect to Linked Data publishing best practices when they are evaluated against the rules of the  challenge.

scholarly journals Organizational Best Practices for Transportation Projects Delivered Using Alternative Contracting Methods

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 269
Author(s):  
Douglas D. Gransberg, PhD, PE ◽  
Carla Lopez Del Puerto, PhD ◽  
Ricardo M. Tapia, PhD, PMP
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Index Theory ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Index Number ◽  
Public Agency ◽  
Index Number Theory ◽  
Transportation Projects ◽  
Importance Index ◽  
National Cooperative

The use of Alternative Contracting Methods (ACM) to deliver US transportation projects has reached a point where a definitive set of best practices can be identified to leverage the lessons learned by early ACM adopters. The most pressing need is for guidance on how public agencies organize to implement ACMs in a budget-constrained environment where the possibility of increasing the number of public agency engineers is nil. This paper is based on mining the survey response data from 6 National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) synthesis reports on ACM topics and proposes a framework for analyzing ACM practices deemed effective by peer-reviewed research to determine if each practice can be classified as a best practice. Importance index theory provides the analytical foundation for the framework and provides a ranking of candidate best practices in order of each practice’s importance and effectiveness. Nine effective ACM practices were identified and evaluated with only one, “appointing an agency ACM champion,” meeting the objective criteria for a best practice. The paper’s major contribution is to provide the suite of 1 best and 8 effective practices that can be employed when developing the organization for an agency that has decided to implement ACM project delivery.Keywords: Alternative contracting methods, best practices, organizational structure, index number theory.

scholarly journals Challenges as enablers for high quality linked data: Insights from the semantic publishing challenge

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Dimou ◽  
Sahar Vahdati ◽  
Angelo Di Iorio ◽  
Christoph Lange ◽  
Ruben Verborgh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Semantic Web ◽  
Linked Data ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Data Publishing ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
Input Dataset ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Semantic Publishing

While most challenges organized so far in the Semantic Web domain are focused on comparing tools with respect to different criteria such as their features and competencies, or exploiting semantically enriched data, the Semantic Web Evaluation Challenges series, co-located with the ESWC Semantic Web Conference, aims to compare them based on their output, namely the produced dataset. The Semantic Publishing Challenge is one of these challenges. Its goal is to involve participants in extracting data from heterogeneous sources on scholarly publications, and producing Linked Data that can be exploited by the community itself. This paper reviews lessons learned from both (i) the overall organization of the Semantic Publishing Challenge, regarding the definition of the tasks, building the input dataset and forming the evaluation, and (ii) the results produced by the participants, regarding the proposed approaches, the used tools, the preferred vocabularies and the results produced in the three editions of 2014, 2015 and 2016. We compared these lessons to other Semantic Web Evaluation challenges. In this paper, we (i) distill best practices for organizing such challenges that could be applied to similar events, and (ii) report observations on Linked Data publishing derived from the submitted solutions. We conclude that higher quality may be achieved when Linked Data is produced as a result of a challenge, because the competition becomes an incentive, while solutions become better with respect to Linked Data publishing best practices when they are evaluated against the rules of the challenge.

scholarly journals Challenges as enablers for high quality linked data: Insights from the semantic publishing challenge

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Dimou ◽  
Sahar Vahdati ◽  
Angelo Di Iorio ◽  
Christoph Lange ◽  
Ruben Verborgh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Semantic Web ◽  
Linked Data ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Data Publishing ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
Input Dataset ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Semantic Publishing

While most challenges organized so far in the Semantic Web domain are focused on comparing tools with respect to different criteria such as their features and competencies, or exploiting semantically enriched data, the Semantic Web Evaluation Challenges series, co-located with the ESWC Semantic Web Conference, aims to compare them based on their output, namely the produced dataset. The Semantic Publishing Challenge is one of these challenges. Its goal is to involve participants in extracting data from heterogeneous sources on scholarly publications, and producing Linked Data that can be exploited by the community itself. This paper reviews lessons learned from both (i) the overall organization of the Semantic Publishing Challenge, regarding the definition of the tasks, building the input dataset and forming the evaluation, and (ii) the results produced by the participants, regarding the proposed approaches, the used tools, the preferred vocabularies and the results produced in the three editions of 2014, 2015 and 2016. We compared these lessons to other Semantic Web Evaluation challenges. In this paper, we (i) distill best practices for organizing such challenges that could be applied to similar events, and (ii) report observations on Linked Data publishing derived from the submitted solutions. We conclude that higher quality may be achieved when Linked Data is produced as a result of a challenge, because the competition becomes an incentive, while solutions become better with respect to Linked Data publishing best practices when they are evaluated against the rules of the challenge.

Academic libraries as community resource partners for entrepreneurs

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Griffis
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
National Study ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Community Agencies ◽  
Service Role ◽  
Conceptual Paper ◽  
Effective Service

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide examples and best practices of an academic library’s strategy of collaborating with community agencies in assisting community entrepreneurs. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper reflects on the evolution of a new service role for an academic library in providing outreach to community entrepreneurs and is limited to the best practices and lessons learned of one academic library. Findings – This conceptual paper reflects on an academic library’s outreach strategy for assisting community entrepreneurs; collaboration with community agencies is featured as a best practice with examples and lessons learned. Originality/value – A recent national study of academic business librarians’ outreach to entrepreneurs has established collaboration with community agencies as an effective service strategy. This conceptual paper reflects on the use of this strategy in a specific academic library’s outreach efforts to community entrepreneurs.

Organisational Sustainability Role in Supply Chain Best Practices

2015 ◽  
pp. 287-301
Author(s):  
Fawzy Soliman ◽  
Josiah Edmond
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Supply Chain ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter is targeted at identifying the relationship of supply chain best practices and organisational sustainability. Another objective of this chapter is to identify the definition of SC best practices and its level of adoption by SMEs. The findings of this research suggest a linear link between SC best practices and the benefits it has on firms; it also identified that the definition of SC best practice is endlessly evolutionary and sometimes circumstantially subjective. The research has moreover shown that the level of knowledge management plays a wider role on the effectiveness of SC best practices within a firm.

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