Visar resultat för..."J Ross Publishing"

Construction Project Management offers some of the best project management studies commissioned by ELECTRI International: The Foundation for Electrical Construction that were selected, coordinated, and monitored by some of the most progressive contractors and performed by outstanding scholars from top U.S. universities. Topics include pre-construction planning, early warning signs of project distress, impact of change orders, project sequencing, ideal jobsite inventory levels, tool and material control systems, recommended safety practices, partnering, total quality management, quality assurance, performance evaluations, and contract risk management. All specialty and general contractors will find value in this practical book. The concepts presented will improve your understanding of the main issues affecting construction project management and will provide you with tools and strategies to enhance your company's productivity and profitability.WAV offers downloadable files consisting of: Checklists for each one of the 10 categories that make up the model pre-construction planning process, including standard procedures for change orders, RFIs, submittals, transmittals, billing, progress updates, a sample requirements and expectations letter and a sample letter of intent.A Spanish translation of Chapter 7: Recommended Safety Practices.A methodology for assessing contractors' TQM program progress based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria.Materials to assist contractors in preparing a quality assurance manual and implementing an effective quality assurance program.A template for a partnering workshop that includes a sample partnering agenda, an introduction to the basic partnering concepts, sample mission statements, and a sample partnering charter.Sample evaluation forms that contractors can customize to evaluate supervisors, journeymen, and apprentices.

This full-color book contains the state-of-the-art knowledge and latest trends and developments in architectural acoustics research. This reference will play a fundamental role in the sustainable progress of architectural acoustics research and practical applications. World-renowned experts in the field from both the research and consulting communities contributed to the 15 chapters covering a wide range of sub-fields including computational modeling, noise, vibration controls, and environmental acoustics in the built environment and around buildings. With information not found anywhere else, this handbook is geared for architectural acoustics research, education in academia, and practical applications among acoustics consultants and industry engineers. It is divided into two Parts: Architectural Acoustics Essentials and Architectural Acoustics Practice.

Although currently not widely used, sulfur construction materials can offer improvements over more traditional materials, especially in specific applications. Sulfur construction materials include sulfur concrete and sulfur-extended asphalt pavements as well as pre-cast concrete components, extrusions, and cast-in-place forms. This one-of-a-kind book discusses the basic properties and behavior of sulfur cement and concrete materials and based on these properties, new sulfur market applications are evaluated and the technological aspects of material production are presented.

Over the past couple of decades, growth in the number of new service and not-for-profit organizations has out-paced manufacturing in the global economy. Six Sigma and Lean, two of the most successful initiatives for improving quality and productivity rooted in the manufacturing sector, are now needed by organizations in the non-manufacturing sectors of the economy. With the ever-growing demands of customers, ensuring quality and productivity in service organizations as a distinctive core competence is becoming essential to achieving a competitive advantage and maintaining customer loyalty for long-term survival.Current books on Lean Six Sigma for service or transactional organizations either require a significant technical background, or are rather conceptual in nature and lack the detail of the tools, how to use them, and the practical skill-building exercises needed to give readers the ability to actually implement Lean Six Sigma in their organizations. This book fills the void.Written for the typical business professional, Lean Six Sigma Service Excellence effectively translates the concepts of Lean Six Sigma from a manufacturing environment to a service delivery environment. It is a user friendly guide to successfully implementing Lean Six Sigma practices in non-manufacturing organizations. It is also an inexpensive path to Green Belt certification.Mr. Taylor provides an overview of the Lean Six Sigma concepts and step-by-step examples of how to apply each of the relevant tools in practical situations. Next, readers will work through several problems to exercise their new found understanding. This learning approach of application and exercise should be of particular interest to those interested in, but unable to afford the large expense of most Lean Six Sigma training courses. Dedicated to executives and managers of service and transactional organizations, Lean Six Sigma Service Excellence emphasizes how productivity can be used as a distinctive competence for achieving and maintaining competitive advantage in non-manufacturing environments.

In recent years, transportation systems have been judged on performance-based outcomes, thus, quantitative methods have become increasingly important to such assessments.  Transportation Statistics brings together the work of outstanding experts on the latest methods and the applications of those methods to the many modes of transportation statistics at the international level.  It details applications of the appropriate statistical methods and other quantitative methods such as operations research and performance measurement.  You'll find examples and explications of the techniques used in transportation modeling such as travel demand, travel demand forecasting, freight analysis, the environment and much more.  This one-of-a-kind, definitive technical reference will equip practitioners, policy-makers, and academic researchers with state-of-the-art statistical tools used in transportation modeling, how to interpret results and how to analyze the implications of those results.

Practicing engineers in the offshore engineering industry will find in this contributed handbook practical information on current oil field production development practices for foundations and subsea flowlines. The technical challenges associated with deepwater developments have led to significant innovations. The contributors are practicing engineers and academics who have been at the forefront of offshore geotechnic development for several decades. Until the 1980s, the most common design concerns for offshore foundation and pipeline engineering were associated with extreme storm loadings, earthquakes, mudflows, fatigue, and installation activities. Engineers today face additional concerns, including: submarine slope failures, thermal buckling of pipelines, catenary riser interaction with the seafloor, vortex induced vibration of flowlines, shallow water flows encountered during drilling operations, and thermal interaction of pipelines with permafrost. This handbook describes recent advances in geophysical data acquisition and evaluation as they relate to offshore developments, as well as foundation and pipeline design considerations. The presentation is focused on deepwater geotechnics as well as subsea and Arctic pipeline design considerations, but engineers will find much of it applicable to other situations.

The Elastic Beam Calculations Handbook presents a concise, yet mathematically rigorous treatment of beams based on elastic theory written at a clear technical level in order that practitioners can quickly learn the essentials and apply elastic beam calculations in their work. This much-needed comprehensive reference covers elastic beams with varying material and section properties, support conditions, span lengths, and other important geometric features. It provides simple and logical presentations of elastic beam problems by addressing each as corollaries of a more general theorem, consequently resulting in numerical work that can be planned and executed with ease, clarity, and optimal results. Structural engineers concerned directly with structural analysis of elastic beam problems will find many examples of useful and neat solutions and the rationale for their validity.

Extending upon the many traditional program/project management office (PMO) books that present theoretical concepts and knowledge, Business Driven PMO Setup presents practical experiences and wisdom for those responsible for, belonging to, and served by a PMO. This book is rooted in the shared experiences and business settings of all PMOs and it is organized to provide the reader with actionable solutions to the problems and execution difficulties that PMOs face.Most PMO books are written by academics, trainers and consultants from the PM community and present academic or theoretical approaches and models that too often fail. The more sophisticated books tend to be limited in application to the larger or more advanced project management organizations. This unique reference presents new material not available in other books that is applicable to PMOs of all shapes and sizes. It challenges and calls into question various traditional approaches and strategies for the PMO citing examples and explaining when and why such academic and theoretical approaches are wrong. Business Driven PMO Setup was written by over 20 contributing authors that are veteran line executives who either directly manage PMOs, have PMOs reporting to them, or are subject matter experts that service them. These veterans with centuries of business acumen managing both US and foreign companies, divisions, and departments provide valuable insights into ensuring the PMO is setup correctly and remains focused on meeting the needs of the business for which the PMO was created to serve.Many PMOs are often vulnerable in terms of their continued existence. PMOs with a business mindset never have to sell or promote themselves internally, explain what they do, or worry about funding or their existence. This book establishes a clear bottom-line business mindset and practical approach that any PMO can adopt.

Due to the profound growth in international trade, the need to pursue global supply and institute risk management practices has never been greater. The globalization of world markets has reconfigured supply networks, causing increasing complexities and challenges in sourcing and risk management. Managing Global Supply and Risk blends three distinct but interrelated topics—international purchasing, global supply management, and global risk management—to present the critical differences between companies that pursue international purchasing and those that have evolved toward a more sophisticated global supply management model. This book covers every aspect of global supply management and details what it takes to pursue supply management at the international level. Each chapter is loaded with critical concepts that supply managers must understand and includes company examples, cases, best practices, and strategies that offer prescriptions for success.Global supply management is a process that proactively integrates and coordinates common items and materials, as well as processes, designs, technologies, and suppliers across worldwide purchasing, engineering, and operating locations. It is a process that could very well provide your organization with its next quantum leap in performance.  Managing Global Supply and Risk: Best Practices, Concepts, and Strategies is a must read for every c-level executive and supply chain leader that wants to gain or maintain a competitive advantage during difficult economic periods.

As the environmental impact of buildings become increasingly recognized, the role of building designers and the initial decision making process that determines materials, systems, and construction processes becomes more critical. This timely book addresses sustainability in building design through a series of examples presented as three dimensional models of well integrated building systems. The book organizes buildings into three sections  –  structure, envelope, and mechanical systems  –  based on the integration of paired building systems. The book demonstrates the performance of each systems pair in terms of interaction and contribution of each individual system and the synergetic benefits resulting from the unique pairing. The last section of the book is devoted to buildings that have a higher degree of integration and cannot be studied as paired systems.  Each building is illustrated with full graphical display, text and analytical drawing to demonstrate its performance in a particular environment.

Geotechnical Engineering: A Practical Problem Solving Approach covers all of the major geotechnical topics in the simplest possible way adopting a hands-on approach with a very strong practical bias. You will learn the material through several worked examples that are representative of realistic field situations whereby geotechnical engineering principles are applied to solve real-life problems. There are a few carefully selected review exercises at the end of each chapter with answers given whenever possible. Also included are closed-book quizzes that should be completed within the specified times and will make you think and point you to what you have missed.

Residential Construction Management will provide construction managers a concise and practical guide to managing residential construction projects.  One of the fundamental reasons residential contractors fail to prosper is that they are poor managers.  By presenting project management tools in their appropriate context of the project lifecycle—initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closing—readers will more clearly understand the iterative nature of construction management, which is a key to successfully managing a construction project.  You can't afford to be without this indispensable working tool and its step-by-step instructions, project management templates, and real-world case studies.

Pulsation in Architecture highlights the role of digital design as the catalyst for a new spatial sensibility related to rhythmic perception. It proposes a novel critical reception of computational architecture based on the ability of digital design to move beyond mere instrumentality, and to engage with core aspects of the discipline: the generative engine of digital architecture reinvigorates a discourse of part-to-whole relationships through the lens of rhythmic affect.There is a paradigm shift in spatial perception due to the intense use of computational techniques and the capacity to morph massive amounts of data in spatial patterns; rhythm plays a pivotal role in the articulation of the topology of buildings, generating the atmospheric character that induces moods and throbbing sensations in space. Pulsation introduces the fundamental animate capacity of living form and reshapes our perception of architectural space across the multiple scales of a project, from digital inception to fabrication. An emerging thread of rhythmic sensibility loosely binds a survey of contemporary design practices, including contributions by Peter Eisenman, Jeff Kipnis, Greg Lynn, UNStudio, Preston Scott Cohen, Reiser + Umemoto, Asymptote, Ali Rahim, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Ruy Klein, Gage / Clemenceau, NOX, Evan Douglis Studio, kokkugia, and MONAD Studio.

Almost every software project begins with the utterances, ""What will this cost?"" and ""When will this project be done?"" Once those words are spoken, project stakeholders begin to wrestle with how to produce an estimate. Accurately estimating the cost or time to complete a software project is a serious problem for many software engineers, developers and project managers who struggle with costs running double original estimates, putting their careers at risk. It is reported that nearly 50% of all software projects are shelved and that one of the major causes is poor estimation practices. If developing software for internal use, poor estimates can represent a significant drain on corporate profits. Worldwide growth in the number of companies specializing in the development of software for use by other companies is staggering. India alone has nearly 20,000 such companies. Intense competition has led to an increased demand for fixed-bid pricing in client/vendor relationships, and has made effective cost estimation even more important and, in many cases, critical to a firm's survival. There are many methods of estimation. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses, proponents and opponents. Knowing how and which one to use on a given project is key to developing acceptable estimates for either internal or external projects.Software Estimation Best Practices, Tools, & Techniques covers all facets of software estimation. It provides a detailed explanation of the various methods for estimating software size, development effort, cost, and schedule, including a comprehensive explanation of test effort estimation. Emphasizing that software estimation should be based on well-defined processes, it presents software estimation best practices and shows how to avoid common pitfalls. This guide offers direction on which methods are most appropriate for each of the different project types commonly executed in the software development space and criteria for selecting software estimation tools. This comprehensive desk reference explains software estimation from scratch to help the beginner and features advanced techniques for more experienced estimators. It details project scheduling, including resource leveling and the concept of productivity, as applicable to software estimators, demonstrating the many benefits of moving from the current macro-productivity approach to a micro-productivity approach in software estimation. Software Estimation Best Practices, Tools, & Techniques: A Complete Guide for Software Project Estimators caters to the needs of all software project stakeholders, from novice to expert. It provides the valuable guidance needed to estimate the cost and time required to complete software projects within a reasonable margin of error for effective software development.

One of the biggest challenges for companies in today's competitive environment is to get products to customers when and where they need it, exactly the way they want it, with a competitive price and in a cost effective manner. Managing the value chain is becoming more complicated because of globalization, outsourcing, the need for shorter time to market, and the requirements for greater responsiveness and flexibility due to customer changes.Although the benefits of applying lean concepts or improving the flexibility of a value chain are clear and desperately needed in today's competitive environment, none of the current literature provides guidance on how to do this. Lean & Agile Value Chain Management fills that gap by providing a breakthrough start-to-finish roadmap for organizations to implement a lean and agile value chain transformation program successfully. It brings together the field's latest advances and offers practical, proven tactics and detailed guidance into every aspect of value chain process redesign, including mapping the existing process, intelligently leveraging new technologies, building a strategy for strengthening the relationship with suppliers and customers, identifying comprehensive related metrics, and much more.

Diagnosing Greatness is the first supply chain book targeted at all levels and functions of business management. It explains how business performance can be enhanced through a concerted effort to implement improvements across a full supply chain network. Using a significant amount of academic studies, published literature and documentation from annual global surveys among supply chain and logistics professionals conducted by Supply Chain Management Review magazine, Computer Sciences Corporation and Michigan State University, the authors combine their first-hand experiences to present a clear and impressive substantiation of what industry leading firms are accomplishing through supply chain efforts. Specifics are given across a wide variety of industries of how a limited number of firms have achieved positions of greatness as their supply chain efforts have matured and industry-best practices have emerged. The authors' basic approach was to isolate the best supply chains through documented accomplishments and then diagnose what led to their superior execution. Findings enabled the authors to articulate the top ten sustainable competencies or traits of greatness that distinguish the leaders from the followers. Each chapter within this book covers a trait which firms in any business can calibrate itself against and initiate a plan for achieving similar progress. Diagnosing Greatness shows how to achieve the greatest return, while better satisfying investors, suppliers, business customers and consumer groups. Using many case examples and actual action stories, the authors bring a new and higher dimension to business success by explaining how to optimize the process steps across an extended business enterprise; bring value to all constituents of a business enterprise, especially the end consumer; and achieve and maintain industry best business results.

This comprehensive reference on software development quality assurance addresses all four dimensions of quality: specifications, design, construction and conformance. It focuses on quality from both the micro and macro viewpoint. From a micro view, it details the aspect of building-in quality at the component level to help ensure that the overall deliverable has ingrained quality. From a macro view, it addresses the organizational-level activities that provide an environment conducive to fostering quality in the deliverables as well as developing a culture focused on quality in the organization. Mastering Software Quality Assurance also explores a process driven approach to quality and provides the information and guidance needed for implementing a process quality model in your organization. It includes best practices and valuable tools and techniques for software developers.

Worship Space Acoustics is a unique guide to the design, construction, and use of religious facilities for optimum acoustics. The book is divided into two parts: Part I discusses methods and techniques of room optimization, including how the acoustics of large and small spaces are designed, implemented, and adjusted; how acoustical privacy is attained; noise and its control; sound reinforcement; and numerical and physical modeling techniques. Part II provides the architect, student, and lay person a review of the characteristics of the religious services pertinent to various beliefs and how these are provided for in the acoustic design of spaces in churches, mosques, and synagogues.

This unique how-to implementation guide unifies project management, portfolio management, and requirements engineering into one proven, comprehensive best practice framework to help organizations deliver exceptional project results on a consistent basis. Delivering Exceptional Project Results transcends differences in the various ""types"" of project management, such as traditional or agile, and focuses on economic principles, methodologies, skills, tools, and techniques that can be applied successfully at companies in any industry.

This unique book is for anyone interested in how to justify and build light rail systems in the age of limited resources and green technologies. The historical introduction addresses how many of the problems faced by light rail promoters and planners are not new and how existing solutions can be used to save time and money. The planning chapter explains the process of route identification on the basis of travel patterns and maximizing modal switch. The engineering chapter shows the costs of infrastructure, equipping and commissioning a new light rail system. The economic evaluation chapter shows promoters how each line can be assessed for viability, comparing the capital cost of construction with expected revenue, including sensitivity to different fares, market conditions, and operating costs. In conclusion, the book reviews how to keep a light rail system attractive to riders and investors after opening.

The Definitive Source for Certified Process Design Engineers. IT organizations increasingly recognize the need to design, re-design, and improve their internal IT service management (ITSM) processes. While popular frameworks such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL ), Control Objectives for IT (COBIT ), Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF), and the ISO/IEC 20000 standard describe what to do, they do not describe the mechanics of how to do it. The ITSM Process Design Guide: Developing, Reengineering and Improving IT Service Management closes the knowledge gap by providing detailed guidance on assessing, designing, measuring, and integrating ITSM processes. The advice and techniques in this book apply unilaterally to every IT service provider and ITSM framework, standard, and maturity model. While other books may touch on process design methods and techniques, there is no other publication dedicated specifically to developing, re-engineering and improving ITSM processes. This guide is also the definitive reference source for the Certified Process Design Engineer (CPDE ) qualification. The CPDE qualification imparts and validates knowledge of best practices in the assessment, design, integration, implementation, and management of ITSM processes. It recognizes the value of having a qualified CPDE within an organization and has been endorsed by The APM Group (ITIL's official accreditor) as a complementary qualification for the ITIL Qualification Scheme.

Official reference material for the Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP) Credential ExaminationProject portfolio management (PPM) is a term that is used to describe methods for analyzing and collectively managing groups of projects based on numerous factors and considerations. The fundamental objective of PPM is to determine the best projects to undertake in support of the goals, objectives, and strategies of the organization. Business Driven Project Portfolio Management covers the top 10 risks that threaten PPM success and offers practical alternatives to help ensure achievement of desired results. Written from a business perspective, it contains the executive insights, management strategy, tactics, processes and architecture needed for the successful implementation, ongoing management, and continual improvement of PPM in any organization.

This extensively revised comprehensive textbook, covering a wide range of topics, is suitable for courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels, each with a different emphasis. There is more than enough material to cover two semesters of an undergraduate course, as well as a one semester graduate course. The pedagogy provides enough flexibility for an instructor to teach the topics in systems engineering she or he would like. Systems Engineering with Economics, Probability and Statistics, Second Edition is sufficiently broad-based for undergraduate and graduate programs in various branches of engineering and management.

This unique guide and professional reference presents a structured framework for practitioners and students of project, program, and portfolio management to enhance their strategic and analytic capabilities in the evolving discipline of project portfolio management (PPM). It provides a practical, step-by-step approach to building competencies in categorizing, evaluating, optimizing, prioritizing, and managing an IT, pharmaceutical, biotech or other complex R&D-oriented portfolio of investments.

Formally validated training material to pass Microsoft certification Exam 70-178: Microsoft Project 2010, Managing Projects! Designed for the busy, practicing project manager, Dynamic Scheduling With Microsoft Project 2010 will help you get up to speed quickly with the new features of Project 2010 and enable you to create effective schedules more efficiently using best practices, tips & tricks, and step-by-step instruction. Through the use of helpful screen shots, hands-on exercises, illustrations, and review questions, this guide instructs you on how to build dynamic schedules that will allow you to explore what-if scenarios and dramatically decrease the time you spend making static schedule changes. ""A must read, re-read, and use daily for all project managers"" is what PMI's Project Management Journal had to say about the previous edition. This updated version is even better.

In today's changing and competitive economic environment, CEOs, corporate executives, and shareholders are no longer strictly concerned with how well a project was executed even if it was finished on time and on budget. Most projects are now being viewed as strategic investments with the primary concern being the value that a project contributed to the company's bottom line. Project benefit attainment usually occurs after the project team has disbanded and handed over the project deliverables to the operational teams. It is in this transition and subsequent operation where much value is lost and the truly important business benefits that could have been achieved are not. Strategic Project Management Transformation demonstrates how to transform this trend of project management failure and sub-optimization into strategic and financial project management success. It shows project managers and business professionals how to establish processes that extend beyond closeout and enable stakeholders and operational teams to continue measuring and optimizing business value until all of a project's objectives have been achieved or exceeded, thereby maximizing financial returns, beneficial change and competitive advantage for their organizations.

Official reference material for the Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP) Credential ExaminationThis unique text provides a holistic view of project portfolio management (PPM) that includes people, process, tools, and techniques that work synergistically within the organization to produce portfolio decisions with the best chance of success. It illustrates the entire PPM process from strategic planning through portfolio evaluation and adjustment, including prioritizing objectives, identifying and evaluating candidate projects, selecting optimal portfolios using portfolio analysis, establishing project and portfolio performance metrics, measuring portfolio performance, and project portfolio governance. Rather than just an abstract discussion, Mastering Project Portfolio Management simulates real-world portfolio management through sample scenarios demonstrating advanced decision-making techniques and the use of decision-making software that readers are given access to. This book guides readers step-by-step through the entire project portfolio management process and is ideal for corporate and government training programs and as a primary text for graduate level academic courses.

This valuable guide provides an easy-to-follow game plan with strategies for procurement and supply management professionals to improve supplier relationships, secure measurable cost reductions, achieve operational effectiveness and efficiency, and positively impact margins and competitiveness for their organizations. The Procurement Game Plan offers the guidance needed to take the procurement professional's career and department to the next level. This tool is ideal for self-learning, training, and classroom instruction.

Contains a foreword by Jens Blauert! This book systematically details the basic principles and applications of head-related transfer function (HRTF) and virtual auditory display (VAD), and reviews the latest developments in the field, especially those from the author's own state-of-the-art research group. Head-Related Transfer Function and Virtual Auditory Display covers binaural hearing and the basic principles, experimental measurements, computation, physical characteristics analyses, filter design, and customization of HRTFs. It also details the principles and applications of VADs, including headphone and loudspeaker-based binaural reproduction, virtual reproduction of stereophonic and multi-channel surround sound, binaural room simulation, rendering systems for dynamic and real-time virtual auditory environments, psychoacoustic evaluation and validation of VADs, and a variety of applications of VADs. This guide provides all the necessary knowledge and latest results for researchers, graduate students, and engineers who work in the field of HRTF and VAD.