scholarly journals A Cross-Purchasing Portfolio Application of Best Value Procurement: Lessons Learned from Six Cases at Ballast Nedam

Author(s):  
Guido Koreman

Ballast Nedam like any other business in the industry encounters failure due to purchasing based on low cost. Research shows that these tend to arise because of poor planning, non-compliance to agreements and incomplete project evaluations among others. Taken into account the effort put into the purchasing process one wonders why this kind of purchasing approach is still practiced. Best Value Procurement uses the expertise of subcontractors to streamline the total value chain by making the potential values and risks explicit and the management of each accountable to one party in the chain. The question is whether this kind of purchasing approach could and should be the approach to any given purchase done. In this paper lessons learned from six cases at construction company Ballast Nedam are described. Successful and less successful implementations are shown, as well as lessons learned on each of the PIPS filters. Conclusion is that the BVP/PIPS can be used in both construction and non-construction purchasing and in onetime projects as well as with IDIQ contracts.

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 767
Author(s):  
Adriana Botto

The award-winning Subsea Equipment Australian Reliability (SEAR) Joint Industry Project (JIP) is a partnership led by Wood and has participation of a group of OGAS Operators namely Chevron Australia, ConocoPhillips, Inpex, Quadrant, Shell Australia and Woodside. Now delivering Phase 6, the JIP is focused on collaboration and knowledge sharing, so as to improve the competitiveness of Australia’s oil and gas sector by addressing critical challenges associated with equipment that is failing prematurely subsea. The SEAR JIP was initiated in 2014 and has since developed a reliability database to collect failure information from SEAR members with Australian offshore operations. The SEAR database provides a low cost–high value method of capturing and sharing failures and lessons learnt for Australia. Over the years, the JIP has focused on different but common industry challenges, such as the impact of marine fouling affecting operability during interventions. To address this challenge, the JIP is deploying ‘living laboratories’ at different geographical locations and water depths across various Australian waters, in collaboration with suppliers and local universities to identify game-changing technology. The ability to better understand failures and intervention requirements has the potential to offer operators significant cost savings, by optimising equipment reliability and availability. This paper will provide an overview of SEAR JIP and outlines lessons learned and value created, and discusses how a similar collaborative approach can create value in other parts of the Australian LNG value chain.


Author(s):  
Luiz Eduardo G. Martins ◽  
Hanniere de Faria ◽  
Lucas Vecchete ◽  
Tatiana Cunha ◽  
Tiago de Oliveira ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Turner-McGrievy ◽  
Danielle E. Jake-Schoffman ◽  
Camelia Singletary ◽  
Marquivieus Wright ◽  
Anthony Crimarco ◽  
...  

Background. Wearable physical activity (PA) trackers are becoming increasingly popular for intervention and assessment in health promotion research and practice. The purpose of this article is to present lessons learned from four studies that used commercial PA tracking devices for PA intervention or assessment, present issues encountered with their use, and provide guidelines for determining which tools to use. Method. Four case studies are presented that used PA tracking devices (iBitz, Zamzee, FitBit Flex and Zip, Omron Digital Pedometer, Sensewear Armband, and MisFit Flash) in the field—two used the tools for intervention and two used the tools as assessment methods. Results. The four studies presented had varying levels of success with using PA devices and experienced several issues that impacted their studies, such as companies that went out of business, missing data, and lost devices. Percentage ranges for devices that were lost were 0% to 29% and was 0% to 87% for those devices that malfunctioned or lost data. Conclusions. There is a need for low-cost, easy-to-use, accurate PA tracking devices to use as both intervention and assessment tools in health promotion research related to PA.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
JOERGEN OERSTROEM MOELLER

Over the last 25 years, Asia’s economic rise has been extraordinary. Its share of global gross domestic product (GDP) has risen from 5.8% to 22.9%. 1 The first phase of high economic growth — up to 1995 — saw Asia enter the global supply chain primarily with labor-intensive/low-cost manufacturing. Domestic consumption was a fairly low share of GDP; Asia was manufacturing mainly for consumption in the US and Europe. As such, it was primarily a rule-taker. In the second phase — from 1995 to 2020 — it gradually turned into an economic force joining the US and Europe in shaping the global economy, exercising significant influence upon the value chain, the cycles of the global economy, transport and logistics, the global capital markets and consumption patterns (consumer preferences and tastes). While not yet among the leading rule-makers, it had become difficult for policymakers (public and private) to make decisions without Asia’s consent. To form an opinion of today’s emerging third phase — post 2020 — the intriguing question is whether the Asian countries have adopted what may be termed Anglo-American economic thinking (basically, the primacy of the market). Or whether behind the curtain, the Asian economy works in its own way diverging from the American and British economic schools. Since demographics and sheer economic scale mean that Asia will dominate the global economy in the years to come, the nature of the Asian economy will be of crucial importance for the future global economy. The conclusion of this paper is that “Asia” in many respects differs — and fundamentally so — from market economy principles. How this prospect should be interpreted is also evolving, as circumstances change. Certainly, the repercussions of COVID-19 have not been the same in the US, Europe, East Asia and South Asia — and this may suggest that socio-political structures have a stronger impact on economic outcomes than economic theory teaches, thus calling into question the global validity of market economy principles.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3759 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abebe Alemu ◽  
Hossein Azadi

These days, one of the global challenges is the growing demand for food. To be more specific, seafood bases play a key role in filling the nutritional requirements of human beings. In Africa (Ethiopia) the public expenses to improve productive capacity in aquatic food are increasing. Additionally, the expenses in dams and in fishers’ capacity building have increased households’ engagement in the fishery sector in Ethiopia. Cooperatives’ productive capacity has been strengthened by the government and other non-government organizations with the supply of fishing boats, refrigerators, fish nets and other office supplies. However, the effect of such public expenses in bringing changes in the households’ livelihood and welfare has never been assessed in this study area. This paper aims to investigate what motivates the households to fish and assess the effect of fisheries on the households’ livelihood and welfare. A structured survey consisting of 313 rural households was administered using trained enumerators in two kebeles located close to the Tekeze dam, Northern Ethiopia. The result indicates that socioeconomic characteristics, such as age (young), sex, education, and active family size were driving the households to fishing. Access to market and access to support are driving farmers to fisheries. There is a significant difference in fishing households’ income which is higher than non-fishing households. The results also indicate that there are lesser income inequalities among fishery households operating in cooperatives compared to private fishery households.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Bajones ◽  
David Fischinger ◽  
Astrid Weiss ◽  
Daniel Wolf ◽  
Markus Vincze ◽  
...  

We present the robot developed within the Hobbit project, a socially assistive service robot aiming at the challenge of enabling prolonged independent living of elderly people in their own homes. We present the second prototype (Hobbit PT2) in terms of hardware and functionality improvements following first user studies. Our main contribution lies within the description of all components developed within the Hobbit project, leading to autonomous operation of 371 days during field trials in Austria, Greece, and Sweden. In these field trials, we studied how 18 elderly users (aged 75 years and older) lived with the autonomously interacting service robot over multiple weeks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a multifunctional, low-cost service robot equipped with a manipulator was studied and evaluated for several weeks under real-world conditions. We show that Hobbit’s adaptive approach towards the user increasingly eased the interaction between the users and Hobbit. We provide lessons learned regarding the need for adaptive behavior coordination, support during emergency situations, and clear communication of robotic actions and their consequences for fellow researchers who are developing an autonomous, low-cost service robot designed to interact with their users in domestic contexts. Our trials show the necessity to move out into actual user homes, as only there can we encounter issues such as misinterpretation of actions during unscripted human-robot interaction.


Author(s):  
SAA Nahid ◽  
PJG Henriksson ◽  
MA Wahab

Growth of the freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) sector in Bangladesh since 1970s has been supported by natural availability of freshwater apple snail (Pila globosa), used for on-farm prawn feeds. The present study identified the current configuration of the value-chain benefits and constraints of freshwater apple snail in south-western Bangladesh in August 2011, based upon Rapid Market Appraisal (RMA) approach. The site of snail collection was Chanda Beel in Gopalganj district, while trading, processing and final consumption was represented by Rayer Mahal Bazar in Khulna district. There were seven different nodes recognized throughout the value chain. Snail marketing was identified as a seasonal business and took place during June to November each year. Between 1995 and 2011 the price of whole snail, meat and shell has increased by 800%, 325% and 315%, respectively. The abundance of snail had been reduced and its demand has increased due to the expansion of the prawn farming industry. Prawn farmers preferred snail meat due to its’ low cost (US$ 0.21 kg-1) as a source of protein compared to commercial prawn feed (US$ 0.41 kg-1). Snail harvesting and processing were considered as additional livelihood options for the poor, where 60% of the labour involved in snail harvesting were women, and 95% the de-shelling workforce. Induced breeding in captivity and sustainable management in nature as well as development of commercial production of apple snails might reduce the pressure on ecosystems and positively contributed to the continued expansion of freshwater prawn farming in Bangladesh. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/ijarit.v3i2.17840 Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 3 (2): 22-30, December, 2013


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Szwed ◽  
Paweł Skrzyński

Abstract For contemporary software systems, security is considered to be a key quality factor and the analysis of IT security risk becomes an indispensable stage during software deployment. However, performing risk assessment according to methodologies and standards issued for the public sector or large institutions can be too costly and time consuming. Current business practice tends to circumvent risk assessment by defining sets of standard safeguards and applying them to all developed systems. This leads to a substantial gap: threats are not re-evaluated for particular systems and the selection of security functions is not based on risk models. This paper discusses a new lightweight risk assessment method aimed at filling this gap. In this proposal, Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) are used to capture dependencies between assets, and FCM-based reasoning is performed to calculate risks. An application of the method is studied using an example of an e-health system providing remote telemonitoring, data storage and teleconsultation services. Lessons learned indicate that the proposed method is an efficient and low-cost approach, giving instantaneous feedback and enabling reasoning on the effectiveness of the security system.


Author(s):  
Zhanibek Meiirkhanuly ◽  
Jacek A. Koziel ◽  
Baitong Chen ◽  
Andrzej Białowiec ◽  
Myeongseong Lee ◽  
...  

Environmental impact associated with odor and gaseous emissions from animal manure is one of the challenges for communities, farmers, and regulatory agencies. Microbe-based manure additives treatments are marketed and used by farmers for mitigation of emissions. However, their performance is difficult to assess objectively. Thus, comprehensive, practical, and low-cost treatments are still in demand. We have been advancing such treatments based on physicochemical principles. The objective of this research was to test the effect of the surficial application of a thin layer (¼"; 6.3 mm) of biochar on the mitigation of gaseous emissions (as the percent reduction, % R) from swine manure. Two types of biochar were tested: highly alkaline and porous (HAP) biochar made from corn stover and red oak (RO), both with different pH and morphology. Three 30-day trials were conducted with a layer of HAP and RO (2.0 & 1.65 kg∙m-2, respectively) applied on manure surface, and emissions of ammonia (NH3), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), greenhouse gases (GHG), and odorous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were measured. The manure and biochar type and properties had an impact on the mitigation effect and its duration. RO significantly reduced NH3 (19-39%) and p-cresol (66-78%). H2S was mitigated (16~23%), but not significantly for all trials. Significant (66~78%) reductions for p-cresol were observed for all trials. The phenolic VOCs had relatively high % R in most trials but not significantly for all trials. HAP reduced NH3 (4~21%) and H2S (2~22%), but not significantly for all trials. Significant % R for p-cresol (91~97%) and skatole (74~95%) were observed for all trials. The % R for phenol and indole ranged from (60~99%) & (29~94%) but was not significant for all trials. The impact on GHGs, isobutyric acid, and the odor was mixed with some mitigation and generation effects. However, larger-scale experiments are needed to understand how biochar properties and the dose and frequency of application can be optimized to mitigate odor and gaseous emissions from swine manure. The lessons learned can also be applicable to surficial biochar treatment of gaseous emissions from other waste and area sources.


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