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Effective procurement of infrastructure is partly dependent on infrastructure procurement personnel having the skills that are important for the discharge of their role. Addressing the infrastructure deficits in developing countries, therefore, calls for an understanding of the skills that are important for the discharge of the roles of public personnel that are involved in infrastructure procurement. This study aims to investigate these skills from the perspective of public infrastructure procurement personnel in the sub-Saharan African region.

A questionnaire survey of procurement personnel yielded 590 useable responses, which were analysed using t-tests and exploratory factor analysis (EFA).

EFA established eight key components of important infrastructure procurement skills to include skills related to: project success factors; social and environmental sustainability; marketing and e-procurement; project phase management, the application of procurement laws and procedures; soft skills, ICT and communication; and data analysis and team building.

The findings are crucial in developing infrastructure procurement capacity building programmes that would be appropriate for infrastructure procurement personnel in developing country contexts. Infrastructure procurement personnel ought to engage more in capacity development training that is aligned to enhancing skills within the eight components.

For construction organisations to be effective at implementing an integrated safety, health and environmental (SHE) management system, they require the right level of organisational capability. This capability includes the policies, systems and resources of the organisation. However, within the academic literature, it is unclear which organisational attributes of construction companies are important for implementing integrated SHE management. This study aims to explore the organisational attributes that determine integrated SHE management capability and their relative priorities.

The study used a literature review supported by expert verification and a subsequent three-round expert Delphi technique accompanied by applying the voting analytical hierarchy process.

The study identified 20 attributes grouped under five main thematic categories. These are strategy (the organisation’s vision and top management commitment); process (the organisation’s procedures and processes for SHE management); people (organisation’s human resources, their competence, roles, responsibilities and involvement in SHE management); resources (organisation’s physical and financial resources for SHE management) and information (SHE related documents, data, records and their communication across an organisation). While these thematic categories and the attributes within carry different weights of importance, the strategy-related attributes are the most important, followed by the people-related attributes.

The results of this study should enable construction companies and key industry stakeholders to understand construction companies’ capability to successfully implement an integrated SHE management system. Furthermore, construction companies should be able to prioritise efforts or investments to enhance their SHE management capability.

The communications audit may be defined as “the process whereby the communications within an organisation are analysed by an internal or external consultant, with a view to increasing organisational efficiency”. Why communications audits are particularly necessary at present is described, how they are carried out, the arguments for and against in‐house communications auditing, and whether they are worthwhile, are also discussed. Examples are given of two typical audits. One is concerned primarily with communications effectiveness in terms of motivating employees towards organisational goals. The other is orientated towards a consideration of more novel means of communication such as computer conferencing.

At the heart of any process of observation there are certain basic things which must happen. These might be analysed in abstract terms, or then again in terms of the quantum physical irreducibles. The paper links between these concerns. It starts by exploring the macroscopic processes which are essential to observation and from there it develops the outline of a path heading towards a continuum based model of quantum mechanics, and in particular, electrodynamics. It exposes attributes which are fundamental to the existence of an observer process, and then explores how the seat of those attributes may be found in the way we set‐up our notion of the basic properties of physical reality. Such a model is offered as a contribution to what is called “second‐order cybernetics”, namely the study of how we go about observing the observer process.

This step‐by‐step guide to searching the literature of librarianship and information science begins by defining the subject area and discussing the nature of the literature. A concise and ordered search strategy is detailed, after which the reader is guided through the principal sources, such as encyclopedias, bibliographies and journals. Having considered these the author discusses sources of information relating to the broader contextual issues of libraries, for example schools. Additional sources are also indicated and the book concludes by proposing methods whereby the reader can keep up to date. The characteristics and coverage of each source are discussed and the author makes a critical evaluation of each text.

THAT WAS a bold experiment that was sponsored by the NatWest Bank and which is reported in our news pages. They selected sixteen out of several hundred applicants, gave them a grant of £2,000 each and sent them off on a fact‐finding mission to Europe.

The Primary Communications Research Centre started its life at the University of Leicester in 1976, closing down ten years later in 1986. Its objective — to study all aspects of primary communication — was unique at the time. This retrospective survey by the Project Head looks at the thinking behind the foundation of the Centre and assesses its activities.

IT and society There oughta be a law. Too much of the UK legal profession is in the dark when it comes to information technology, says Professor Brian Napier. Speaking at his inaugural lecture as the first holder of the Digital chair at Queen Mary and Westfield College, itself the first established chair in IT at a British University, Napier called for law reformers to wake up to the ramifications of IT.

A number of observations are made about the nature of constructivism, with the suggestion that it is a less revolutionary development that has been claimed, and that some accounts imply an unwarranted disregard of the environment. The presentation is meant to be provocative and to invite discussion that may clarify the issues.