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
Concern about special education's future is widespread. Now there are calls for special education's abandonment or its nonexistence in any environment other than general education…
Abstract
Concern about special education's future is widespread. Now there are calls for special education's abandonment or its nonexistence in any environment other than general education (i.e., for full inclusion or some form of general education only). Some advocates for reform consider special education obsolete, to be rejected in favor of newer ideas known as inclusionary education, and they advocate abandoning special education.
Now may be the time for a second revolution in thinking about what special education is and does so that it evolves into a service that more consistently realizes its promise. Special education is likely to become extinct if its devolution continues. Its collapse would hasten the abandonment of public education. Alternatively, it could evolve to become a viable part of public education, a distinct entity, a clearly identifiable and viable part of educating all children appropriately in public schools.
Among the many causes of special education's devolution, some stand out prominently: (1) confusing must and may; (2) accepting illogic and imprecision of language; (3) responding to all diversities in the same way; (4) spurning science; (5) confusing attribute and person; (6) putting the worst possible face on special education; and (7) misconstruing least restrictive environment.
Better thinking and clearer communication are required to achieve special education's revitalization. These include calling things what they are and relying on new, younger leaders. Clear and wide understanding – consensus – about what special education is and does and acceptance of the idea that we must have it as a separate and distinct part of universal public education would be revolutionary.
Paul Eden, Nancy Bell, Naomi Dungworth and Graham Matthews
Describes the development and testing of a standard assessment method for the preservation needs of paper‐based and photographic materials (including microforms) in libraries…
Abstract
Describes the development and testing of a standard assessment method for the preservation needs of paper‐based and photographic materials (including microforms) in libraries, which will facilitate an assessment of national preservation needs and priorities. After outlining how the research was carried out, it briefly describes the assessment method which was finally developed; explains why a sample‐based approach was adopted and how libraries should choose their samples; discusses the core preservation management issues identified during the earlier part of the research and shows how a set of questions relating to these issues was developed for inclusion in the method.
Details
Keywords
John Richard Edwards, Trevor Boyns and Mark Matthews
The use of accounting to help apply the principles of scientific management to business affairs is associated with the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control. This…
Abstract
The use of accounting to help apply the principles of scientific management to business affairs is associated with the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control. This first British industry‐based study of the implementation of these calculative techniques makes use of the case study research tool to interrogate archival data relating to leading iron and steel companies. We demonstrate the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control early on (during the inter‐war period) by a single economic unit, United Steel Companies Ltd, where innovation is attributed to the engineering and scientific background and US experiences of key personnel. Elsewhere, significant management accounting change occurred only with the collapse in iron and steel corporate profitability that began to become apparent in the late 1950s. The process of accounting change is addressed and the significance for our study of the notions of evolution and historical discontinuity is examined. The paper is contextualised through an assessment of initiatives from industry‐based regulatory bodies and consideration of the economic circumstances and business conditions within which management accounting practices were the subject of radical revision.
Details
Keywords
Further evidence was given on April 3 before the Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into questions relating to the butter trade.
In its simplest form, community engagement is a process whereby an organization works with the groups and individuals it serves to transform a shared vision into actions that…
Abstract
In its simplest form, community engagement is a process whereby an organization works with the groups and individuals it serves to transform a shared vision into actions that ultimately benefit them. This chapter presents a framework to assist library managers and administrators in reimagining their outreach efforts from a community engagement perspective where users actively shape their shared experiences with the library. Although there are resources that discuss how libraries can structure these initiatives through the ACRL Library Marketing and Outreach Interest Group, the Public Library Association, and publications such as Marketing Libraries Journal, some of the literature surrounding community-based work is not as directly tied to outreach. By reading this chapter, libraries will find information related to defining their role within their communities, outlining strategies for collaboration, conducting needs assessment, gap analysis, asset mapping, and identifying a variety of outreach activities and their accompanying assessment strategies.
Details
Keywords
ALL who have visited Liverpool for any length of time have affection for her. She lies alongside a noble river, watched over by the lofty Liver building and the perhaps more…
Abstract
ALL who have visited Liverpool for any length of time have affection for her. She lies alongside a noble river, watched over by the lofty Liver building and the perhaps more architecturally perfect offices of the Mersey Dock authorities. Even in these days, when the very largest ships have been diverted to Southampton, splendid vessels come from and go to the ends of the earth almost daily. The river is the essential fact about Liverpool; she was born of the river and her waterfront is one of the world's rendezvous. As a city she compares favourably with any English town, and perhaps excels most in her few splendid buildings, amongst which the new and rapidly growing Cathedral takes first rank.
It has been the custom for many years to preserve foodstuffs by drying, smoking, salting and pickling, and by the addition of sugar. The more modern methods include…
Abstract
It has been the custom for many years to preserve foodstuffs by drying, smoking, salting and pickling, and by the addition of sugar. The more modern methods include pasteurisation, sterilisation by heat or other means, refrigeration and the addition of chemical substances having an antiseptic action to a greater or less degree.