Double fellowship for Dr Roger Hooper. Fellowships of the Institute of Metals (IoM) and Institution of Corrosion Science and Technology (ICorrST) have been conferred on Dr Roger…
Abstract
Double fellowship for Dr Roger Hooper. Fellowships of the Institute of Metals (IoM) and Institution of Corrosion Science and Technology (ICorrST) have been conferred on Dr Roger Hooper, of Arthur Lee & Sons, Sheffield.
Shaomin Wu, Keith Neale, Michael Williamson and Matthew Hornby
The purpose of this study is to highlight special characteristics of building services systems and investigate how practitioners view reliability and maintenance. These…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to highlight special characteristics of building services systems and investigate how practitioners view reliability and maintenance. These characteristics include energy‐hungry services systems, operating modes, maintenance types, the relationship between procurement costs and maintenance costs.
Design/methodology/approach
The practitioners' viewpoints on reliability and maintenance are explored through a workshop. The authors wish to draw the attention of researchers in the reliability and maintenance community and furthermore emphasise the difference between building services systems and systems in industries other than construction.
Findings
It is shown that a lack of failure data and maintenance data is the main problem from both academic researchers' and industrial practitioner's points of view. The paper suggests that there exists no fixed cost ratio available to apply to building services systems; the analysis of RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety) should include duty cycles and the environment; and clients of the construction industry would benefit from mandating a LCC to be applied to the build.
Practical implications
The gap between academia and practitioners should be bridged through better understanding each other's needs. Accurately estimating the ratio between procurement and maintenance costs is needed from a whole life costing perspective.
Originality/value
This paper is a good reference for building designers, facility managers and maintenance staff of building services systems. It also offers reliability researchers references on special characteristics of building services systems.
Details
Keywords
He has been with the company, as personnel manager, since 1982. The new position of manager — customer services, will encompass spares and service, installation and commissioning…
Abstract
He has been with the company, as personnel manager, since 1982. The new position of manager — customer services, will encompass spares and service, installation and commissioning, rebuild and refurbishing and customer training.
Shaomin Wu, Derek Clements‐Croome, Vic Fairey, Bob Albany, Jogi Sidhu, Duncan Desmond and Keith Neale
The purpose of this research is to show that reliability analysis and its implementation will lead to an improved whole life performance of the building systems, and hence their…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to show that reliability analysis and its implementation will lead to an improved whole life performance of the building systems, and hence their life cycle costs (LCC).
Design/methodology/approach
This paper analyses reliability impacts on the whole life cycle of building systems, and reviews the up‐to‐date approaches adopted in UK construction, based on questionnaires designed to investigate the use of reliability within the industry.
Findings
Approaches to reliability design and maintainability design have been introduced from the operating environment level, system structural level and component level, and a scheduled maintenance logic tree is modified based on the model developed by Pride. Different stages of the whole life cycle of building services systems, reliability‐associated factors should be considered to ensure the system's whole life performance. It is suggested that data analysis should be applied in reliability design, maintainability design, and maintenance policy development.
Originality/value
The paper presents important factors in different stages of the whole life cycle of the systems, and reliability and maintainability design approaches which can be helpful for building services system designers. The survey from the questionnaires provides the designers with understanding of key impacting factors.
Details
Keywords
J. Keith Murnighan, Linda Babcock, Leigh Thompson and Madan Pillutla
This paper investigates the information dilemma in negotiations: if negotiators reveal information about their priorities and preferences, more efficient agreements may be reached…
Abstract
This paper investigates the information dilemma in negotiations: if negotiators reveal information about their priorities and preferences, more efficient agreements may be reached but the shared information may be used strategically by the other negotiator, to the revealers' disadvantage. We present a theoretical model that focuses on the characteristics of the negotiators, the structure of the negotiation, and the available incentives; it predicts that experienced negotiators will out‐perform naive negotiators on distributive (competitive) tasks, especially when they have information about their counterpart's preferences and the incentives are high—unless the task is primarily integrative, in which case information will contribute to the negotiators maximizing joint gain. Two experiments (one small, one large) showed that the revelation of one's preferences was costly and that experienced negotialors outperformed their naive counterparts by a wide margin, particularly when the task and issues were distributive and incentives were large. Our results help to identify the underlying dynamics of the information dilemma and lead to a discussion of the connections between information and social dilemmas and the potential for avoiding inefficiencies.
BTEC is about education and training for employment. It has been said that education is merely training done well; so I am particularly pleased that Sir Keith Joseph, Secretary of…
Abstract
BTEC is about education and training for employment. It has been said that education is merely training done well; so I am particularly pleased that Sir Keith Joseph, Secretary of State for Education & Science, is here with Tom King, the Employment Secretary. The accepted national approach that I, and many other employers, fail to understand is the division of responsibility for education and training across different Departments of State. As employers we believe this division is nonsense, as education and training must be two parts of a whole. Therefore I was very glad to sign an agreement last week between BTEC and the Engineering Industry Training Board for Joint Certification of both education and training for engineering technicians and technician engineers. Sir Richard O'Brien, EITB Chairman, who is abroad at the moment, shares my satisfaction that we have been able to come together. BTEC will be pursuing arrangements like this one in other fields.
Although different facets of managerial third‐party intervention in organizations have been explored, we know little about how managers should intervene in different disputes for…
Abstract
Although different facets of managerial third‐party intervention in organizations have been explored, we know little about how managers should intervene in different disputes for resolving them successfully. In this study, a prescriptive model of intervention strategy selection proposed by Elangovan (1995) is tested. Data on successful and unsuccessful interventions were collected from senior managers in different organizations. The results show that following the prescriptions of the model leads to a significant increase in the likelihood that an intervention would be successful as well as in the degree of success of the intervention, thereby supporting a contingency view of dispute intervention.
Mick Cunningham and JaneLee Waldock
A small number of studies have suggested that parental divorce may manifest during adulthood as low-level emotional distress characterized by painful feelings such as sadness or…
Abstract
Purpose
A small number of studies have suggested that parental divorce may manifest during adulthood as low-level emotional distress characterized by painful feelings such as sadness or self-blame. In light of the paucity of existing research on distress, the current study was designed to assess the presence of distress among a sample of young adults with divorced parents and to ascertain whether painful feelings accurately describe the primary ongoing consequences of parental divorce.
Methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews with a sample of university students were conducted to investigate the concept of distress after parental divorce. Interview guides were designed to elicit responses about ways that parental divorce continues to influence the lives of young adults.
Findings
The study identified a set of ongoing stressors that do not overlap substantially with previous measures of post-divorce distress and that are often rooted in logistical difficulties. Three specific sources of distress are discussed: family coordination difficulties, struggles balancing the politics of parental expectations about time with their children, and perceptions of family fragmentation. These sources of distress frequently originate in the physical separation of parents’ households. Interviewees reported spending extra time and energy arranging family visits. Their choices about visiting parents frequently led to both feelings of guilt about the allocation of family time and a reduced sense of family cohesion. Ongoing logistical difficulties were much more commonly cited by young adults than painful feelings.
Originality/value
This qualitative investigation of distress suggests a significant re-orientation toward our understanding of the consequences of parental divorce is needed.