Perceived service quality of architectural consultancy firms and client satisfaction in building projects in Nigeria

Purpose Clients in Nigeria have continuously questioned the quality of services being rendered by architectural firms in building projects. This study aims to investigate the areas of service responsible for determining client satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach The study uses questionnaire for data collection on perceived service quality and indicators of clients’ satisfaction. Findings The results of descriptive statistics suggest that efficient analysis and compliance with client brief along with buildability, flexibility and comprehensiveness of the design are the main technical determinants of clients’ satisfaction. Management measures for engendering clients’ satisfaction include team communication and collaboration as well as regular site visits when required. The study established a significant relationship between the perceived service quality and client satisfaction. At technical level, economical design and compliance with budget, buildability, optimal and error-free design and timely delivery have significant correlation with the perception of service quality, which could engender client satisfaction. At management level, collaboration and coordination, integrity and trust, regular site visits and project management knowledge and skills had significant relationships with perceived service quality. Originality/value To improve overall client satisfaction, architects are expected to focus on these factors in the process of service delivery. Architects’ expertise and skills can be further harnessed through continuous training and understanding of the project environment.

A National Hiv Clinical Mentorship Program: Enabling Zambia to Accelerate Towards the Controlling the Hiv Epidemic

Background Although Zambia has increased the proportion of people living with HIV (PLHIV) who are on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in recent years, progress toward HIV epidemic control remains inconsistent. Some districts are still failing to meet the UNAIDS 90/90/90 targets where 90% of PLHIV should know their status, 90% of those who know their status should be receiving sustained ART, and 90% of those on ART should have documented viral load suppression (VLS) by 2020. Providing consistently excellent HIV services at all ART health facilities is critical for achieving the UNAIDS 90/90/90 targets and controlling the HIV epidemic in Zambia. Zambia Ministry of Health (MoH), in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), aimed to achieve these targets through establishing a national HIV clinical mentorship program in which government-employed mentors were assigned to specific facilities with a mandate to identify and ameliorate programmatic challenges. Methods Mentors were hired, trained and deployed to individual facilities in four provinces to mentor staff on quality HIV clinical and program management. The pre-mentorship period was July 2018–September 2018 and the post-mentorship period was July 2019–September 2019. Results Review of key programmatic indicators from the pre and post-deployment periods revealed HIV testing yield improved from 4.2–6.8% (P < 0.001) as fewer HIV tests were needed despite the number of PLHIV being identified and placed on ART increasing from 492,613 to 521,775, and VLS increased from 84.8–90.1% (p < 0.001). Conclusions Key considerations in the establishment of an HIV clinical mentorship program include having a government-led process of regular site level data review and continuous clinical mentorship underpinned by quality improvement methodology.

A Technical Overview of the Kentucky Mesonet

The Kentucky Mesonet is a research-grade weather and climate observing network with redundant sensors that monitors the near-surface atmosphere at 71 locations across Kentucky. The network measures temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and wind speed and direction every 5 min, with soil moisture and soil temperature measured every 30 min. In addition, it operates a camera at selected locations. All observations are transmitted via cellular modem every 5 min and become available to the general public through the World Wide Web within seconds after arrival at Kentucky Mesonet’s Network Operations Center. In between arriving at the IT division and dissemination to general public, the data also go through automated data quality assurance (QA) procedures. Within that time, the data can be viewed through various graphical/visualization formats, developed based on feedback from the user community. The Kentucky Mesonet produces twice-daily QA reports and its technicians respond to these reports, making site visits when necessary to address issues. Mesonet technicians make regular site visits to all stations during spring, summer, and fall seasons. The network maintains a detailed database of station metadata that includes instrument and site maintenance history. The Mesonet delivers the data to the National Weather Service to aid forecasting. It also works closely with a variety of local, state, and federal entities so that the network can meet diverse needs.

A Particular Kind of Practice

Unlike the practices on which architectural critics and indeed ethnographers have tended to focus, MHW is not famous. Employing ten architects during the period I did my work, the practice is slightly smaller than the U.K. national average of just under fourteen.19 In their mid-thirties, the two directors are relatively young, as is the staff profile of the practice more generally. All are in their twenties and thirties, with the exception of David, the father of Tomas. This youth is something they often present as a virtue, making representational capital through coupling that word with others with which it is popularly associated; “dynamic,” “creative,” “innovative,” “fresh,” “original” are words that feature on their website. As a small-to-medium-size practice, MHW rarely takes on projects with budgets of less than £100,000 and is mostly focused on large domestic extensions and renovations, one-off new builds, and small public buildings. The firm’s projects involve close working relationships with individual clients, planners, builders, engineers, and other building specialists contracted as consultants when needed. Design and then construction work involves regular site visits. Involvement in these various aspects of the process of design and construction is at one level a necessity for a practice of this size. At another level they see these working practices as a virtue tying into a broader philosophy. Unlike larger practices where specialism and fragmentation are more common, the company takes pride in aiming to connect processes of design and construction, celebrates the “ownership” of projects by individual architects, and aims to keep organizational structures flat....

Hypertext technologies as the basis of native advertising

The article deals with native advertising (hidden advertising) disguised as regular site content. To analyze the advertising discourse on the treatment of a disease, we used a cognitive schema (frame) containing a specific set of slots. It was found that a hypertext nature of advertising leads to rupture of the schema and delayed submission of the main frame slot (means/ways to treat the disease), transferring it from the start of the message to its target portion. It was also shown how a frame nature of advertising predetermined semantics of positive evaluation of the words – slot fillers. Native advertising is represented as a means of manipulating individual consciousness and as a way of exercising individual mental (and verbal) aggression.

Geotechnical Aspects of a Pipeline Rupture in Ecuador: Factors and Mitigation

In February 2009 a pipeline rupture occurred along a sloped section of the Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados (OCP) Ecuador S.A. pipeline. The spill resulted in crude oil flowing down the hillside and into the Rio Santa Rosa. Post rupture investigations were initiated to identify the geotechnical factors that may have contributed to the incident and what mitigation may be necessary to ensure future pipeline integrity. The investigation consisted of several activities including detailed site reconnaissance by a geotechnical engineering team and installation of slope inclinometers to assess ground movements. The intent of the slope inclinometers was to determine the depth, areal extent and rate of ground movement, if any. The post rupture site reconnaissance identified a number of terrain features consistent with shallow ground movement mechanisms. The presence of hummocky terrain could be the result of ground movement or an artifact of the use of the slope as cattle pasture. Five slope inclinometers were installed to assess the slope movements within the project site. Four slope indicators were installed up-slope of the pipeline right-of-way to provide some lateral boundary to the ground movement area. The slope inclinometers showed that in the months following the pipeline rupture the terrain upslope of the pipeline right-of-way was moving at a relative constant rate of about 0.45 mm/day. As a result of the geotechnical investigations an integrity mitigation plan was developed. This included ongoing slope movement monitoring, regular site reconnaissance and placement of the pipeline above ground on “sleepers” to isolate the pipeline from the underlying creeping slope. To-date, these mitigations have been successful in reducing strain on the pipeline.

Six-Jump-Cycle Mechanism for Collective Correlations in Nonstoichiometric Intermetallic Compounds

The six-jump-cycle (6JC) mechanism is used to derive expressions for collective correlation factors in a nonstoichiometric binary intermetallic compound AB. The 6JC is used as a fundamental unit for the cycle involving a perfectly ordered configuration and a two-jumpcycle (2JC) as a fundamental unit for the cycle involving existing antistructural atoms. The jump frequency for the 6JC is calculated in terms of a four-frequency-model using the mean first passage concept of Arita et al., while the jump frequency for the 2JC is taken to be the harmonic mean of the individual jump frequencies. The expressions for phenomenological transport coefficients are obtained through the linear response approximation using the kinetic equation approach. The results for collective correlation factors are compared with Monte Carlo simulation and are found to be in reasonably good agreement when the ratio of jump frequencies of regular site and antistructural atoms is of the order of 10-1.

S Adsorption at Regular and Defect Sites of the MgO (001) Surface: Cluster Model Study at DFT Level

We have studied the adsorption of sulfur at regular and defect sites of the MgO (001) surface using cluster models embedded in a large array of point charges by the density functional method. The calculated results indicate that it is a chemical adsorption regarding sulfur at both the regular site and the defect site of the MgO (001) surface. Especially for sulfur adsorbed at different oxygen vacancy sites (F, F + and F 2+ centers) and different magnesium vacancy sites (V, V - and V 2- centers), it has very large adsorption energies, which reflects the fact that the MgO (001) surface with the vacancies is an excellent adsorbent for sulfur adsorption. Besides, we find that the adsorbed sulfur is almost inserted into the lattice for sulfur adsorbed at the magnesium vacancy site of the MgO (001) surface. The adsorption energy of sulfur on the MgO (001) surface with magnesium vacancies is much larger when compared to that on the MgO (001) surface with oxygen vacancies. At the same time, it is also found that the S behaves as an electron acceptor except that it is adsorbed at the magnesium vacancy site behaving as an electron donor.

Characteristics of Families Who Attend Free Vaccine Fairs

Objective. To determine the health care resources and perceived barriers to care of families attending free vaccine fairs. Design. A cross-sectional survey. Setting. Twelve free vaccine fairs in Denver, Colorado, in 1994. Participants. A total of 533 consecutive parents or guardians of children receiving vaccine at the fairs. Interventions. None. Measurements/Results. Survey respondents reported that their children received regular health care through a private physician or health maintenance organization (HMO) (47%), a public clinic (20%), or a hospital-based clinic (14%); 18% had no regular site for health care. Twenty-seven percent of the families carried private insurance, although less than half of these plans covered children's vaccines: 9% were enrolled in an HMO or a preferred provider organization and 13% had Medicaid, whereas 50% had no health insurance. Families who received primary care at a private physician's office (OR: 1.7; 95% CI: 1.01–2.7) and those with no regular site for health care (OR: 2.0; 95% CI: 1.01–4.0) were more likely than those who went to a public clinic or hospital clinic to report free vaccine as the most important reason for attending a vaccine fair. Conversely, families who received well-child care at a hospital clinic were more likely to identify no appointment needed as the most important reason (OR: 2.7; 95% CI: 1.4–5.1). Families with private health insurance (OR: 2.3; 95% CI: 1.05–4.0) or no health insurance (OR: 2.3; 95% CI: 1.1–4.6) were more likely to identify free vaccine as the most important reason for attending a vaccine fair, whereas those enrolled in an HMO or preferred provider organization identified convenient time as the most important reason (OR: 3.2; 95% CI: 1.2–8.3). Families with Medicaid (OR: 3.2; 95% CI: 1.3–8.3) or with no insurance (OR: 2.1; 95% CI: 1.02–4.6) were more likely than were those with private insurance to identify no appointment needed as the most important reason for attending a vaccine fair. Conclusions. Most families attending free vaccine fairs have a regular source of health care. For families with private health insurance or with no health insurance, the availability of free vaccine is the major reason to bring their children to a vaccine fair, whereas for families whose insurance routinely covers the cost of childhood vaccine (HMO, Medicaid), convenience is the major determinant.