Stocks And Businesses

Having a sales contest for employees can help motivate them to sell. ?Having a little competition between employees can improve morale, help them to avoid boredom, and also help you to identify weaknesses and strengths in your staff. ?Train your staff to help them be successful. ?Use their customer interactions as coaching moments to improve the level of customer service that your employees provide.

First, get your employees interested in seeing the business succeed. ?Let them come up with promotional ideas, window displays, and have input in what inventory you sell. ?Not only will you benefit from the new ideas, but your employees will feel involved and start to see how their hand in the business is paying off.

Once they care about the business, explain how the success of the business is dependent on the customer experience. ?Providing customer service that exceeds expectations will ensure that the customer raves about your boutique to friends. ?Word of mouth is most definitely your most effective form of advertising. ?You can’t pay for a customer’s respect, you have to earn it. ?Once you have it, you could have a customer for life, plus a walking, talking, texting, advertising machine.

Teach your employees some basic ways to exceed customer’s expectations. ?Never point out where something is if a customer asks. ?Always say something to the effect of, “Let me show you where that is.” ?Never brush off a customer and say, “It’s over there by the shoes.” ?When you’re helping a customer, avoid distractions and store responsibilities. ?The display that you were straightening will be there when you’re done.

Give your staff selling tips or special deals to offer your customers. ?Once they are helping a customer, they can engage in conversation. ?Your staff could find out that this is the customer’s first visit and then inform them that if they provide their e-mail address at check out, they can receive 10% off of their entire purchase. ?When a customer feels like a deal is being made specifically for them, they are way more likely to purchase.

Reward employees for providing this type of service by incenting them. ?You could say that whoever accumulates the most e-mail addresses of first time customers in a month’s time wins $100 bonus. ?The extra sales, customers, and good customer experiences that you create in that month should far exceed the bonus money that you pay out.

Another way to improve the customer experience is to have your staff constantly move around the store. ?They can straighten and restock your displays and garment racks instead of looking bored at the register. ?Customers hesitate to “disturb” the staff if they look bored or involved in conversations with one another. ?Your employees should always approach customers and offer help. ?Moving around the store, managing clothing racks and displays, and offering help will further ensure that your customer’s every need is met.

Businesses in the UK have an environmental responsibility to make sure the documents they send to be shredded get recycled 100%. The security that document shredding provided outweighs the added cost. Unless your business makes sure that all confidential printed documents are disposed of securely, that is shredded, there is always the risk that they could fall into the wrong hands from the trash bin. The security of your business, or your clients or employees privacy could be threatened. A few businesses have tried cutting corners by not having their documents shredded but any business that wants to operate responsibly should use a shredding service that recycles paper documents.

Employees need to understand the importance of shredding any documents containing sensitive information. Ask your shredding service to provide secure contains and instruct your employees in the importance of their use. Make sure your employees understand that once the paper is shredded, it recycled, not just added to a landfill. They will be more apt to co-operate with your security efforts.

If you already have an office shredder, your employees will thank you for deciding to use a shredding service. They have probably wasted many valuable hours already looking through the shredder for an errant staple or a paper clip. Let them do the work you pay them for, not shredding.

Oil and petroleum products have entered every household in almost every corner of the world and it would be troubling to consider not having these valuable resources. Buildings, vehicles, airplanes, and anything else that is productive needs fuel, energy, and electricity to function. With breakthroughs in technology, oil and natural gas is another one of those industries that has room for improvements and experimentation. Tap Oil and Gas LLC takes full advantage of the many opportunities they have to make their already-successful business even more so.  In the field of oil and petroleum, the success of Tap Management Inc. is guaranteed more than in any other field.

Even amidst all the success, which includes a worldwide clientele and high profits, companies like Tap Oil and Gas LLC could still suffer from a diminishing supply of resources as the demand for resources increases. To confront these problems head on, Tap has begun to engage in solutions to confront the problems in the oil and gas industry. The people behind Tap know just as well as anyone else that conserving capital and resources is just as important as looking for them.

The employees at Tap Oil and Gas LLC already know many of the risks that are prevalent in the oil and gas industry. They also know how difficult it is to discover untapped sources for oil and gas. The process involves sufficient financial capital, good research, and hard labor. Nevertheless, Tap has the proper means and qualifications to deal with all of these situations.

School violence affects parents of most teenagers. One of the factors that cause violent behavior among teenagers is TV viewing. There are various TV shows on both foreign and local channels that a teen wants to watch. However, not all are good for them.

The numbers of teens, who listen to violent music, watch violent movies and TV shows, and play violent video games are increasing day by day. All of these media may serve as factors that affect teenagers and cause them violent behaviors.

Another problem in our present times is that teens can have easy access to weapons, shows and many others that could affect their way of thinking. Now if a parent wants to watch over her child for the sake of saving him from developing a violent behavior, there are things that need to be observed.

When a teen wants to display violent behavior, then it is time to be aware. If he has some excessive fascination with violent video games and wants to show remorse while playing or might be the inability to feel mercy, these can also be considered as signs.

It is always important that parents supervise what the teenagers do. They should be aware of the fascinations their kids are having. Parents’ supervision could help save teens from becoming violent as they will be aware of their wants and activities. It is very important that you get to know the kind of world your teens are into.

Song lyrics and melodies, TV shows and movie themes are types of media that could input violence into teenagers’ mind. Now, the source has become easier to access through the internet. A teen wants to get hold of those sources because it’s hip or out of curiosity. This makes parents even more worried about what’s developing into them.

One of the best things parents should do is teach teens very well. They should be aware about what they should avoid watching or singing, etc. If they know the things that could produce violent behavior in them, they might be cautious about those stuffs. It will also bring good results if they will learn how to deal with the anger they experience. A teen wants to learn, definitely about this thing.

There are many teen oriented entertainment channels on TV that teenagers would enjoy watching. They help the youngsters to develop values on love, friendship, family relationship and others. These programs are highly recommended and they appropriate for teens. They are worth watching and unlike the other media that bring about violent effects, these are safe to watch. Not only those teens will enjoy watching them but parents too.

A teen wants to be hip but it is not impossible anyway to be on the update without those stuffs that could input violence into their inexperienced minds.

In cities all across America, digital billboards are springing up, bringing the benefits of instantly changeable digital graphics, images and text, to a medium where advertising contracts were traditionally sold for months or longer at a time.

As of January 2007, about 400 digital billboards populated the U.S. landscape, according to an article in The New York Times. Quoting a forecast from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, OAAA, the article reported that about 4,000 digital billboards will be in use in 10 years.

A recent example of the use of a digital billboard probably encapsulates the reason why they’re so appealing better than a 10,000-word treatise on them ever could. Digital billboard operators in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque and Waterloo, Iowa, teamed up Jan. 3 to deliver news from the Iowa presidential caucuses that was updated every seven to 10 minutes till the process was complete and Senator Barak Obama and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee were declared the winners.

Having access to that sort of immediacy on such a scale in the outdoor advertising arena was unthinkable a few short years ago. What that translates to on a commercial basis is the same digital sign can be used to advertise hundreds and hundreds of products in the same day -not the same product for months on end.

To date, the dominant display technology responsible for these digital billboards is a particularly bright, particularly responsive light emitting diode -LED. Just as TVs -whether their LCD or plasma flat panels or old-fashioned cathode ray tube televisions- make pictures based on tiny discrete picture elements called pixels, light-emitting-diode-based billboards rely on an array of LEDs to display text, graphics and video. (Video is a major application in stadiums; it’s more doubtful how useful or safe it would be if the intention was to communicate with drivers zipping down the interstate at 70 miles per hour.)

While highly effective, large LED signs are quite expensive and power-hungry. A Washington Post article last spring quoted an executive with CBS Outdoor, one of the three largest outdoor advertising companies in the world, as saying a 14-by-48-foot LED digital billboard costs about $450,000. With that sort of price tag, it’s easy to understand why the OAAA forecasts their number to grow to only 4,000 in 10 years while there are about 450,000 billboards across America. It’s also not too hard to imagine that full-on, high-quality video-, text- and graphic-based LED signage may be out of reach for literally hundreds of thousands of other outdoor signage applications.

However, there is an alternative. New high-gain projection screens, such as the XL-A-Vision screen from AccelerOptics in Carthage, Missouri, have the ability to reject enough ambient light -even the intense noonday sun- to make the use of video projectors a practical, affordable alternative. Depending on the type of configuration specified, this approach to outdoor digital signage can cost in the tens of thousands or dollars, not several hundred thousand dollars as with the LED-based approach.

Recently, the first major outdoor application of an XL-A-Vision screen went online in Grants Pass, Oregon, where the developer of a modern office complex installed a double-sided outdoor projection-based sign based on the high-gain screen. The 10.5-by-15-foot sign, which the building’s owner has dubbed “The Paragon,” offers all of the advantages one would expect of a digital sign, including the opportunity for ad sales to offset the cost of the display.

However, what really drives home the point of why this approach to outdoor digital signage is significant is the fact that the building’s owner, Consolidated Financial, did not have the budget to pay for an LED-based digital sign. If projection-based signage made possible by a high-gain projection screen technology had not been available, the company would have abandoned the idea of installing an outdoor digital signage.

While the number of digital billboards using LED-technology will climb over the next 10 years, think of how many more applications for outdoor digital signage will be enabled by this revolutionary, affordable approach to projection screen technology. High-gain projection screens, like those used for The Paragon, may have as big of an impact on the outdoor advertising landscape -if not bigger- than LED-based approaches.

An oft-repeated, powerful statement by Henry Ford reads, “You can take my factories and burn up my buildings, but give me my people and I’ll build the business right back again.” Its relevance and realization has only increased over a period of time. Extending this logic further, the people with the responsibility of ‘talent management’ should be even more valuable because they take care of this most important asset of the organization. But, is it really so? And if not, why not?

First of all, we need to recognize the fact that with time, the paradigm of business has changed. While capital and cash flows remain important; brand, technology and intellectual capital have become the new measures of success. The role of HR has also changed accordingly. It is becoming increasingly important for an HR manager to understand business & what drives it. The HR has to move up from day-to-day operational level to the role of change agent and strategic partner. It may be perfectly alright for HR to focus on aligning employee-oriented processes; but what they need to ask themselves is the very purpose of this exercise… and the answer is very clear – Whatever does not make business sense, can not make HR sense!

The challenges before HR can not be seen in isolation. HR professionals need to understand the challenges before their organizations. They must respond to the requirements of today and prepare for tomorrow as well. With ever increasing use of technology, transactional functions are now much better performed by automated systems. Computerized processes can add a lot of speed and accuracy to data capturing and analysis, and facilitate decision making in much improved manner. As such, real value addition from HR will come from rising above the transactional level and operating at the strategic and transformational level.

HR is responsible to ensure that good people are adequately rewarded; but more important than that is realization that the rewards must come out of earnings. Performance Management System must be able to measure human capital’s contribution to business performance. HR role has to be as a consultative business partner rather than an employee advocate or people police. To repeat, whatever does not make business sense, can not make HR sense. HR needs to command respect, which is not available ‘on demand’. And to command respect, HR has to be an influencer, which is possible only by adding value and thus increasing its credibility.

The bottom line is that it is impact and not intention that matters. It is not how good your intentions are or how much you want things to improve; it is how measurable a difference you are making for the organization to achieve its business goals. HR people need to come out of their dream world of self admiration and reorient themselves for acquiring business acumen to understand operational systems and how to support and leverage these systems through their proactive approach, so as to achieve organization’s business objectives.

TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

KUMAH ERIC JUNIOR

MARCH 2009

ABSTRACT:

In today’s world, technology has invaded many aspects of human life. From its gigantic influence on our education and professional development, to the more subtle presence of little gadgets littering our homes, technology is almost everywhere.

The reasons for such pervasiveness would boil down to some characteristics that technology by itself possesses. One such characteristic, which is of major interest to many scholars, is the seeming lack of barriers to the spread of technology. It easily penetrates societies and even to remote communities, and once it reaches its destination and catches on, it becomes seemingly difficult to stop its spread. As a result of this, consumer technology like cellular phones, computers, PDAs, radios and televisions have become commonplace in places like Africa, even with all the barriers one would have envisaged.

Sadly, it does not need much analysis to realize that even though technology usage is growing rapidly in Africa, we still have numerous developmental problems in our continent. This is a situation where advanced technology is coexisting with underdevelopment in Africa. With all the power that technology wields, it will be a useful exercise to study the ways in which it can be used to solve some of those very problems it has come to meet. In essence, using our little gadgets to solve our big problems.

This is the background against which this study is undertaken. Asking whether our problems can be solved at all, then enumerating instances where development projects that utilize technology have been put to work, and concluding by examining the cases and drawing lessons from them.

CHAPTER. 1.

INTRODUCTION

The limits to what the human mind can conceive and achieve are increasing. More discoveries have been made, more things have been created, more theories have been proved and disproved, more machines have been made and more problems have been created. Scientific technology has been the driving force behind all these. Science has indeed proved to be a powerful tool which has touched many people and has shaped many communities.

According to the Concise Oxford dictionary 10th edition, technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. Clearly from this definition we can see that scientific knowledge may exist theoretically but it only becomes technology when it is used in practical settings. For example we may say the knowledge of the rules of up-thrust and buoyancy is theoretical, however practical utilization of these rules to manufacture airplanes could be termed aircraft technology.

Again according to the Concise Oxford dictionary 10th edition, a community is the people of an area considered collectively, while development is explained to mean to grow or cause to grow and become larger or more advanced. By deduction, community development could be explained to be the growth or advancement of a group of people.

Today, the world has become highly technological, and things which in the seventies would have passed for science fiction are now so commonplace that they have almost become necessities. From every corner of the world, technology has global acceptance, it is ubiquitous and has the ability to dramatically change situations.

Any attempt to ascribe reasons for this pervasiveness of technology will have many suggestions, some of which are that machines have been proven more efficient than humans at some tasks, machines are less error prone, impartial and never get tired like humans. Another could be the increased sophistication of humans and the attendant need for equally complicated messengers to help us perform many tasks, which is linked to the interesting nature of technology that once a more advanced way of doing something is found, it becomes almost unthinkable to try to do it by “old fashioned” means.

With such large scale interplay of these and many more factors, there is little reason to be surprised by the sudden emergence of automatic machines to handle the little tasks of old; cleaning floors, washing clothes, cutting bread, mixing cake etc. the list goes on and on.

And that is far from all and the list of innovative possibilities is endless. In truth, some of these innovations have shaped the world and there are many examples to cite. The discovery of electricity and the radio wave both changed the world. Today, computers are changing the world even faster. Now with cellular phones, new opportunities have come and our imagination has become the only limiting factor. We can only wait for the next big thing to be created and who knows what it will be?

The picture of technological advancement is not a completely rosy one. Indeed, there are some minuses to science as well, such as the introduction of new forms of danger which come as a consequence of innovative forms of technology, for example the nuclear bomb came from nuclear technology, unforeseen genetic mutations are as the result of genetic engineering, and the numerous and little talked about chemicals which can destroy the ozone or warm the planet.

The seriousness of the disadvantages of technology have prompted some people to argue that technological advancement, which is an example of scientific development, is making us more of advanced entities but less of humans. In other words, we have become better scientists, bankers and professionals and worse human beings. Martin Luther King puts this argument succinctly when he said “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power, we have guided missiles and misguided men.”

The disadvantages that technology brings are issues which require serious examination to ascertain what can be done to eliminate them or at least minimize their effects since technology has definitely come to stay, and it would be to our advantage to learn how to work with it in ways that will be the most beneficial to us.

But despite the disadvantages listed here and the many more unnamed, we have seen that we can still derive many benefits from science and given that we live in, or at least come from, a part of the world where development is still a big headache, we should be the first to start a serious study of this phenomenon and see how best we can use it to our advantage. We may be surprised to see that there is a great viability in using our little gadgets to solve our big problems.

Let us make it clear that the aim of this paper is not to present technology as the magic cure that will clear our multitude of problems in a whiff, technology alone will not solve Africa’s problems because our problems are too complex, too deep and too overwhelming for any simplistic scheme to be successful. We can only achieve success when if have a more comprehensive approach to the problem, to include solid commitment to serious research, establishment of the appropriate structures, and the taking of required initiatives. It will be incorrect to assume that technology in itself is inherently good, and just implementing it alone will be enough to achieve any good result3. Though technology may be able to do anything, people must have the vision to drive it in the right direction.

Only with this knowledge can we make any meaningful gains in the development agenda.

In our particular context, Africa has proved that advanced technology could coexist with underdevelopment. People have satellite televisions whilst there are no teachers in the classrooms, we have mobile devices and pocket PCs and devices but our streets are still not named properly, there is still a large number of illiterates among the people who own and use cell phones, spreading of healthcare information is still a challenge even though a lot of people have access to radio and TV. This sorry list is endless.






















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CHAPTER 2:

CAN TECHNOLOGY REALLY ADDRESS OUR PROBLEMS?



From healthcare, access to water and life expectancy, to governance, industrialization and even the quality of human life, there are numerous problems confronting African communities.

Today we are said to be living in the information age, an era where access to information is the new driving force of the world. The proliferation of the Internet and World Wide Web has reduced the whole world to a massive audience with unprecedented access to vast quantities of information. This communication is unencumbered and the formation of alliances is unhindered by physical distance, national or political borders4. With all the dynamics that this modernity brings, technology stands tall as a favourite to achieve any meaningful sustainable development for many reasons.

Principal among such reasons is the fact that there is improved awareness of underdevelopment among Africans themselves, which could be due to the information age, and an improved belief that our situations can be turned around. This is markedly different from decades ago when there was a lot of resignation and despair among black professionals. Evidence to support this would be the observation that much more thought is being directed at the Africa integration agenda and greater attention being paid to the Economic partnership agreements (EU- ECOWAS).

Another positive indicator is the growing number of trained and competent technological professionals on the face of the continent. Granted, the improved numbers by themselves will not be a good indicator, but with the holistic approach talked about earlier, one can see a sign of hope which shows that there is very high potential for success in a well though out scheme to utilize technology to solve our developmental problems.

Another good point is the individual work that is being carried out by different groups using different approaches (studies of the indigenous chieftaincy system for e.g.) at trying to solve the same problems. This is clear evidence to state that beyond the level of commitment, there have been actual attempts at problem solving. Even if some of such attempts have not been successful due to the numerous challenges in the way, the experiences have been gained and lessons have been drawn from them which would be utilized for future use.

Finally there are areas where major strides have already been made in Africa. Statistics show for example that there have been remarkable improvements in girl student enrollments in places like Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia5. This is definitely a feather in our cap and such areas may serve as boosters to face the remaining dark spots.

All these imply that we might be closer than ever to solving our problems, and all that may be left will be a few giant pushes forward.

This is where technology comes into the picture. It is the one thing that seems to know no barriers, catches on easily and has the power to transform even the most remotely inaccessible locations on earth to budding business towns. It is ubiquitous. Its innovations accelerate by the month. As a result, it is the most probable tool to achieve anything meaningful.

In the early 90′s, scholars described Africa as being left in a technological apartheid 6. Today however, with increased globalization perhaps a slightly better picture can be painted. Even though Africa is not in the league of the innovators of the most novel initiatives and we may not be making as good use of technologies as we ought to, or as some others are, we would still have something positive to report. For example, in some cases, Africa actually has comparable human and hardware resources. Therefore, “apartheid” would no longer be a precise definition of the situation as it stands.

As stated earlier in this paper, technology alone will not solve our problems. But with very serious considerations using active participation, a comprehensive and well though out scheme that incorporates technology will be a very viable solution.

However taking a look at all the attempts made so far and their attendant challenges and effects if any, one may say confidently that will all the proper accompanying compliments, technology will made very significant gains in spurring the development agenda on.











CHAPTER 3:

HOW IS TECHNOLOGY BEING USED TO SOLVE PROBLEMS?

Across many countries around the world, people have made serious strides at utilizing technological knowledge to solve all manner of problems. Many issues have arisen out of such attempts, and below are very brief summaries of some of those places where practical scientific knowledge has been utilized for the growth of the community.





3.1 ELECTIONS

In Africa’s recent governance history, elections have always been a challenge. It is hard to find a totally free and fair voting exercise, whilst contested elections, unfair processes, non transparent irregularities and simple ineffectiveness are commonplace. With a background of poverty, it is not too difficult to understand why the stakes are so high in African politics and why power is very lucrative in this part of the world.? This not withstanding however, there is a good number of unrests that could have been avoided if any election is proven to be fair, free and transparent to an appreciable degree.

Attaining this ideal degree has proved difficult for reasons of the complex interplay of some factors including, a government founded electoral commission, a winner takes all setting, and no motivation to commit to the right virtues. Knowing that power is so lucrative when you come from this winner takes all setting, it is really hard to let go of control of the electoral process. This is one motivation for the dishonourable acts that unfortunately we see quite often.

Because elections are highly involving and they require elaborate programs that span a series of locations (from a voter’s home to the polling station, the collation center, the electoral commission headquarters, the public domain and back to the voter’s home), It follows that unless you are trying to make public exhibition of your nefarious activity, you would need to be tactical to be successful at such dishonorable acts. The tactics employed may vary but they invariably entail series of acts that are designed to prevent information from getting into the public domain. So that for example, figures could be changed anytime so long as the original and authentic ones do not get into the hands of the public.

If democratic leadership were genuinely understood, there will be no attempt at election rigging. But since we are currently not in that ideal stage, election monitoring is one tool we can exploit to at least cut the ability for cheating.

Mobile phone technology is being used in election monitoring in some African countries under a new system of election monitoring called “parallel reporting”. Parallel reporting is simply an approach to election monitoring whereby independent observers spread news of the votes counted at the basic level, which is the polling station. The figures are then relayed to an independent center where they are collated and cross checked with official figures announced by the electoral commission.

One advantage of this scheme is seen that it will make it increasingly difficult for an electoral commission to attempt to fraudulently sway the results in the favour of any of the contesting parties. The spreading or relaying of the results figures are done largely with mobile phones. Senegal is an example of a country where this project has been successful.

3.2?????? HEALTHCARE

The statistics obtained from healthcare research are interesting. Figures show that a large number of the world’s HIVAIDS afflicted people live in Africa. At the same time, one of the growing markets for consumer electronics such as mobile
devices, handheld PC etc may be found here in Africa. This represents a population overlap, and it is only prudent that some amount of research has been directed towards attempting to find ways to incorporating technology in the treatment of the numerous diseases on the face of the continent7.

Tuberculosis (TB) has long been known to be one of the deadliest diseases known to man. Apart from the threat that this highly infectious bacterial disease presents to human life, it also enjoys some additional notoriety for lowering the sufferer’s immune system to make it easy for other diseases, which may have various degrees of harmfulness, to attack the sufferer.

As if that were not enough, TB has a deadly habit of mutating at the least case of drug non adherence. Therefore any TB caregiver knows that a patient who demonstrates non compliance with drug rules is clearly not interested in getting healed. As a result of this, over the years, ways to enforce religious adherence of medication have been tried but success has largely eluded caregivers.

In South Africa, there is a very laudable project, the SimPill’s award-winning Adherence System project, which uses a real-time management system to increase adherence to medications prescribed to treat chronic illnesses – particularly tuberculosis, which is a significant cause of death of people living with HIV.

3.3?????? SOCIAL ISSUES

Serious projects that utilize technology to address social issues have been implemented in South Africa. One such idea named Fahamu’s Umn Yango (meaning ‘doorway’ in isiZulu) has been implemented to curb domestic violence by equipping people with cell phones as tools to monitor and report abuse. Under this scheme, victims use cell phones to call a predefined and popular number and give details of the abuse.

The fear of being victimized has always made it difficult for victims, witnesses or relatives to step up and lodge complaints to the relevant authorities. There are examples of places where people had reported abuses and had been picked upon by the abuser. We have had friends of a victim reporting an abuse of their friend only to go home to be abused themselves by their spouses as punishment for “poking their noses in other people’s business”. These good citizens were made to pay the price for exposing a wrong thing. ?

This fear has been totally eliminated under this project because of the provision of anonymity, the telephone call could be made in secret, and even the details of the reporter are not always required. This is a sharp contrast to the situation in the past where victims, neighbours, or witnesses were required to walk into a police station to make a formal report.

Apart from successes chalked in the number of reports that are received, there has also been a reduction in the numbers of abuse cases. This may be partly due to the deterring feeling among would-be abusers that, any passerby holding a mobile phone might just make sure they get a visit from a police detective for spouse battering.

3.4?????? ANIMAL FARMING

Technology has also been put to good use in farming.

Farmers who rear cattle in small herds, over time, develop a personal relationship with the animals, the farmer knows all of them and can notice a missing animal or a sick one with just a glance. However, because it takes months of careful observation of the behaviour of every cow to know every animal well enough to take note when there is an infection or when an animal does not ruminate properly, this task would be ineffective if it were performed by a human shepherd with a large herd.

To remedy this situation, the technology of vocal tags has been developed in Europe. This project employs a tag, which is a belt fitted with sensors and worn around each animal’s neck. These sensors monitor several indicators such as the animal’s rate of rumination, voice clarity, digestion and breathing and send the data collected to a central computer.

Over time the computer knows what is normal for every cow and will notify the shepherd when something goes wrong with a cow.

The advantage of this project is that a farmer can take quick and specific action like giving treatment to the particular animal involved. This removes the need to give general treatments to the whole herd, which is both time and money wasting.

These are some of the ways that technology is being used towards increased development.

CHAPTER? 4

WHAT LESSONS HAVE BEEN LEARNT?

No matter how promising an idea or project sounds, there are bound to be problems encountered in the deployment of the project. In achieving the above projects, following are some of the problems one is likely to be faced with:

In the election monitoring program, misinformation has been identified to be one of the problems starring the program in the face. It is true that when all the information is not localized in the hands of government, then a lot more transparency will be achieved, but it is also true that mass misinformation remains an unpleasant possibility.

Another problem could arise when there is a situation where people do not necessarily trust the degree of independence of the so called independent observers. It may lead to a problem where parties could cast a slur on the reputation of the observers so as to use the resulting mistrust to set the stage for a possible rejection of the results.

Overall this is a laudable idea and if a means of verification were added, the figures would mean much more to a lot of people.

Whilst celebrating the successes chalked, it is important to note that a number of other factors needed to progress before a state could move towards a more democratic model of governance. According to African political expert, Sheldon Gellar, these changes include: strengthening independent media, growing and ensuring freedom of civil society, decentralizing power, ceding more control to local governments, empowering women and improving judicial systems to ensure independence and power to punish.

Governance is one area that is set to reap some benefits of this phenomenon when used judiciously, unilateral rule and arbitrary action may be reduced towards a more participatory approach to leadership in Ghana

Technology could help achieve those goals to some extent, as communication was the key to overcoming oppression.

In some of the cases, such as the election monitoring or domestic violence reporting, the internet could be used to provide communities with means to communicate, to organize and obtain good information which is not controlled by the government. However, this is not practical in Africa since only a tiny percentage of Africans have affordable access to internet.

In the healthcare project, basic mismanagement has been identified as one of the reasons why many projects seem to skid to halt after being piloted. Needed funds are not always available to those who need them.

Another problem observed was that the people who will be using the project are not always consulted in the designing and planning of the ideas, so there is a lack of communication between beneficiaries, health professionals, technologists, and managers.

Another problem was the theft of cell phones. Although cell phones are a relatively low-cost technology, they still hold considerable value in poverty-stricken areas, and are commonly stolen. And, such theft is likely to rise as these devices become more and more complex. However this is quite debatable since some analysts argue that losing a cell phone to a thief is less of a financial loss than losing a more costly machine.

In the domestic violence project one stumbling block was the communication gap between the various parties involved in the system. Feedback was largely missing and people could not tell whether their input was useful – or received, and in some cases, police officers who receive messages reporting violence against women may not be prep
ared to respond.

Another problem was the unfortunate situation where some unscrupulous people made the work more difficult for the authorities by raising false alarms. This could be addressed by education and the incorporation of punitive measures.

However to use effective punitive measures, even more advanced technology will be required, for example to pinpoint a particular cell phone subscriber, and take action against them like blocking their Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) Cards etc.

And the usual problem of financing in many projects is ever present as well, and it is the more predominant one in the animal rearing project.

CHAPTER? 5

CONCLUSION

Granted, there are challenges that exist in using technology to achieve development goals, but such efforts still hold great potential and the costs of any obstacle will not stand in comparison to the threat of underdevelopment and poverty. So we can only strive to work harder at such solutions.

Our development attempts and efforts should think more seriously about sustainability and scalability. One important consideration in this direction is the affordability of the programmes we plan and develop. The more affordable options have a higher chance of success, so the fact that most of the development projects do not require any extraordinarily complex or new gadgets is indeed pleasant to note.

Also throughout the creation and deploying of any project, enough consultation should be carried out to ensure that there is a general buy-in into the idea from the creators to the beneficiaries. This will make an idea command a common sense of ownership.

The quality of the management should also be improved and measures should be put in place to ensure the right things are done.

Identifying the problem is half the solution. We already now have greater awareness and we have made some attempts at solving them. Putting our acts together to draw the lessons and re-strategizing with a new approach -technology, is definitely the way to go. I am confident of the viability of this new approach.

CITED REFERENCES

1???????? Steere M. Cell phones promise fairer elections in Africa. Cable News Network [Online]2009. Available from http://edition.cnn.com/europe. Accessed 2009 Feb 6.

2???????? Wikipedia. Technology.Wikipedia.org[online]2009.

Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology. Assesed 2009 March 27

3???????? Macha N. Will Technology solve Africa’s problems?. Global Voices Online[Online]2009. Available from http://globalvoicesonline.com/ Accessed 2009 Feb 6.

4???????? Finnis A.J. Learning in the Information Age.Twinisles[Online]2009.

Available from http://dev.twinisles.com/research/learninfoage.htm. Accessed 2009 March 27

5 Kitetu, C. Gender in Education: An overview of developing trends in Africa.

Available from www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/groups/crile/docs/crile54kitetu.pdf. Accessed 2009 March 27

6 Castells M. Information Technology Globalization and Social Development.[Abstract]. In UNRISD Discussion Paper No. 114.September 1999.p11.



7 Walvaren K. Did you say cell phones for development? Association for Progressive Communications.[Online]2007.Available from http://www.acp.org/en/home. Accessed 2009 Feb 6.

Background

Albania is located on the Southeast coast of the Mediterranean Sea, with Italy to the West and Greece to the South. Rome, the Italian capital, is only one hour away by plane and Athens, the Greek capital, is about two hours away by plane. Albania has a population of about 3 million people, with Tirana, the capital of Albania, home of more than 1 million Albanians. The second largest city is Durrës, on the Adriatic Sea coast, of about 200,000 people. The Tirana International Airport is the only international airport in Albania and has direct flights to most European capitals.

Business etiquette Appearance

Albanians dress in European fashion and lively colours, with business attire being more casual than their European colleagues and their business behaviour more laid back. Albanians may dress casually for important meetings; women sometimes may dress in slightly revealing attire.



Meetings

Business meetings may often take place in unconventional places, such as café houses, residential dwellings, as well as during taxi rides. Often not much attention is paid to equipment in conference rooms or other meeting places and these auditoriums may be smaller than anticipated for large and important meetings. Contacts are frequently made verbally and payments for goods and services are conducted in cash.

Albanians do not seem bound by time; lateness for important events, including business meetings and lunch/dinner parties are not unusual.



Meeting etiquette

Albanians shake hands when meeting strangers and they kiss or hug the men and women they consider close acquaintances or good friends. Sometimes these circles will include the potential foreign business partners they have just met. Business cards are not mandatory and there is no custom of exchanging business cards at either the beginning or the end of a meeting. Assistants, secretaries and/or interpreters may not be introduced. Sometimes, especially when meeting high officials outside their own offices, bodyguards may accompany these officials up to the door of the meeting venue and may often wait immediately outside this door.



Communications

Most young Albanians (younger than 35 years old) speak fluent English and often other languages, mainly Italian. Most government officials speak English or some other European language (French, Italian, German, and Greek) to some extent. However, this may not always be true with private enterprises. In any case, interpreters are widely used for any types of meetings, sometimes the interpreter being the assistant or the secretary of the Albanian entrepreneur/businessman. Contracts can be made verbally and/or in written form. Albanians do not like much paperwork and try to keep things simple. Also, private businesses have very few layers of bureaucracy and the same person may serve as a manager, point of contact, secretary, accountant, as well as driver for a given company. There are many able Albanian translators and interpreters that may be hired at hourly or daily rates.

A nod of the head in Albania means “no” and shaking of the head means “yes”. This is very confusing; therefore it is safer to ask that your business partner verbalizes what he means when asked a “yes” or “no” question.



Payments

Bank transfers and credit card payments are possible, although most Albanians prefer cash. The Euro and the U.S. dollar are two of the most preferred currencies used for payments. In stores and markets foreigners may be charged more than locals, especially since most items may not have their prices advertised. Use of old and new “lek”, which is the local currency in Albania, is also very confusing and you should ask someone once in Albania for a detailed explanation. When shopping, it is better to go with your interpreter or someone who knows Albanian.



Eating etiquette

While Albanians love good food, at the same time they love to keep fit. You will rarely see overweight Albanians, although recently their number has increased. Albanian cuisine has been influenced by Greek, Turkish and Italian cuisines and the food served in Albania has many similarities to the typical food for these countries. Very few Albanians are vegetarians, therefore, it may be difficult to find suitable vegetarian food.

Albanians eat lots of meat; beef, pork, lamb, as well as chicken and fish. These will most likely be served at any business lunch or supper. Liquor is widely used in Albania and wine and beer, as well as strong spirits, will be served alongside lunch or supper. Albanians take pride in one of their most well-know spirit drink “raki” – (pronounced like “raikee”), made of grape juice and as strong as vodka – and will insist that their foreign guests at least try some of this drink.  It is an offence to refuse and just trying some is, in most occasions, quite acceptable.

Albanians usually pay for their guests’ meals, especially female guests the first time they are having lunch or dinner with guests. They will insist that they foot the bill, even when you have invited them to your favorite restaurant. There is a tacit understanding that the second time, their guests are expected to repay this courtesy. Sometimes lunches and dinners are not planned and it may happen that you will be invited for lunch or dinner immediately after concluding a meeting, especially if something good, like the signing of a contract, came out of that meeting. This will usually serve to ‘celebrate’ what has been achieved in this meeting.

Besides lunches and dinners, coffees are very popular in Albania. It seems that everyone drinks coffee, although sometimes ‘going out for a coffee’ may mean that strong drinks like ‘raki’ will be consumed. Coffees take time and there is no such thing as a ‘five minute coffee break.” Sometimes having a coffee may take longer than an hour or two.



Gifts

Gifts are very important for Albanians and mandatory for special guests. You are expected to give a gift in return if you have been given something. Money is never a good gift as it presumes you want a bribe or something illegal from the receiving party. Flowers are generally not given as gifts. Good gifts are generally works of art from your home country, such as small paintings, sculptures, and other memorabilia that will most likely decorate their offices. If you are aware that your potential business partner has children, a very good idea is to bring a gift for their children.



Business negotiations

Haggling is totally acceptable in most stores in Albania. When negotiating your business with your potential Albanian partner, keep in mind that no offer from them is ever final until you have accepted it. If you are going to negotiate some items, such as prices, places of delivery, etc, this needs to be done before the end of the meeting, unless it is clear that these items will be discussed at a follow-up meeting. Albanians are generally reasonable and willing to negotiate and accommodate their business partners.

Cultural awareness and conversation

Albanians are aware of their problems and they like their foreign friends to point them out. Women in Albania are usually considered as belonging to someone if they have a boyfriend, fiancé or husband and flirting or even remotely indicating an interest in them (for example by saying to someone, “Your girlfriend is very beautiful”) may cause very unexpected and unpleasant situations. It is wise to refrain from any comments about someone’s wife, fiancée or girlfriend.

Politics is another issue to avoid talking about to Albanians. In Albania everyone is very passionate about their political beliefs and one of the fastest ways to infuriate your potential business partner is unknowingly insulting his favorite politician or political party. Albanians, however, may initia
te political conversations and in these cases you may engage in exchanges of information about the political system in your country, especially if you are from a country which is geographically remote from Albania.

Smoking is allowed in public and in most restaurants, which typically will not have a non-smoking section. Sometimes it may be considered an insult to ask your business partner to put out their cigarettes, especially if they are already smoking them. If the meeting takes place in your company’s office, then you may choose to display “NO SMOKING” signs in advance of your business partner’s visit.

Homosexuality in Albania, although legal, is not fully accepted and it is looked down upon by most people as a sign of weakness and even sickness.

Religion

Albania is considered a Muslim country, with 70 percent of the population belonging to this religion. However, most of this Muslim population are Muslims because of their family origins and traditions and not because of choice. Albanian Muslims do not have any of the characteristics of the Muslim religion in the Arab countries, such as the teachings, the attendance in mosques, and the devotion to the practicing of their religious rites. Instead, Albanian Muslims gladly marry and cohabit with the rest of the Albanian population, which is 20 percent Orthodox Christian and 10 percent Catholic Christian. In addition, there are small numbers of Protestant believers.

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Delays are inherent in construction. If they can not be avoided, then they ought to be either mitigated or absorbed within the contract. A Contractor may be delayed by the effects of a change in the work or an event that was simply beyond his control, then the entity responsible for overseeing the contract, that is Employer, may be obligated to adjust the contract. All depends on the circumstances where the contract forbids or provides for.

Additional works are often a source of time extension provided there is no float to absorb within the existing program. Float is a buffer time allowed in the program as envisaged by the Contractor at the time of tender but whoever the first uses it in a delay may get the benefit of available float. This means the remaining float belongs to the project, as a principle. Omitted works on the other hand is not a cause to reverse the time for completion, unless the parties mutually agree. However, the effect on omitted works, if they are substantial, will and should alone have a minus effect on the contract completion.

Baseline – an always flooded road

A Contractor proceeds into work with an approved program, as usually called the clause 14 program (as it is tied with traditional clause 14 in many standard forms). The correct term is Baseline program which shows how the Contractor intends to execute the said works in terms of start and duration of each activity and their relationship (logic), together with any technical or legal constraints in the site process or the user imposed restraints such as a partial taking over date or a milestone completion.

With all, the Contractor has the liberty to organize himself in resource allocations, site operations, material procurements etc, etc as long as he can safely accomplish the scheduled completion or any other milestone completions. It is the Contractor’s prerogative to decide on the durations, logic, etc as long as they are not fundamentally erroneous from strict planning point of view. A minor error in calculations and unrealistic assignments here and there would not be minded by the Engineer in the approval. In fact, the Engineer’s approval does not relieve the Contractor’s obligation to maintain a reasonable rate of progress. Approval of a Baseline program is therefore a bird’s view appreciation but it should not mean to prevent the Contractor either in contractual commencement or completion, once the parties have entered into the contract. Ultimately, the ‘baby’ is Contractor’s.

Many argue that baseline program must receive the recognition similar to a contract document. Whether it theoretically forms part of the contract is a question of rather academic than practical. Only the major constituents must be binding the parties. These essentially include commencement date, completion date, and milestones if any and not exactly the duration, logic or sequence. This is because any program is a project management tool belonging not only to the Contractor but also the Employer in a living dynamic site environment. Simply, it is everyone’s program subject to hundreds of changes a day. Parties have to adjust the program because they can not adjust the eventualities. Making a program a contractual tool rather than a technical tool will definitely restrict everyone in a chaos, by very nature of construction. Program belongs to the project, therefore.

Programs – at all times to revise

It is a contractual obligation for the Contractor to submit revised programs as and when required. However, submission of monthly updates to reflect the actual progress against the planned progress is mandatory by contract and customary by practice. Maintaining a set of timely, accepted, schedule updates is very important to the delay analysis just because out of sight out of mind. The Engineer in all cases evaluates these updates and authenticates the accuracy of events and their impacts in his approval process. The question is what is to approve? It is the factual infrastructure the Engineer has to look into. The program should reflect the full scope of the work. For a trouble free analysis, the activities should be small in scope with relatively short durations, clearly reflecting their logical relationships between activities and groups of activities. There should be a continuous critical path without gaps from the first activity to the last activity. All activities except the first and last, should have predecessors and successors. Internal schedule constraints should be logically driven, not fixed in time.

The term Baseline goes away with these updates that provide the basis of comparison in a delay analysis. Of course, a delay in site possession may well be compared against the available Baseline program and the possible result is the shift of the entire schedule as a bunch in one-go making a new scheduled completion date right at the beginning.

In larger projects with more activities and more changes during performance, a single update is completely inappropriate. This is a case of a typical road project where a hundred of activities running in parallel, over a period of several years, with around hundred varied works. There could also be cases for instance in a concourse building project in an airport having five thousand varied works, under forty nominated sub Contractors, over a period of five years. There are, however, instances in which a single baseline may be appropriate such as if the project is of relatively short duration with relatively few activities. If accurate data is available, as-planned vs as-built method is fair enough on a monthly basis. This is sometimes been called a ‘windows’ approach, where the fragnets in software play no role.

Time to market and rights to reserve

The popular SCL protocol recommends that the time adjustment be made quickly, using a method appropriate to the actual delay scenario. The whole idea behind this recommendation would be to avoid blurring the true history as the time lapses. Also, a delay in approval of a time impact analysis (TIA) may result in a supplemental claim by the Contractor of constructive acceleration. At some point, delay in preparation and/or approval of a TIA so diminishes the value of the analysis that calls for a more detail, yet difficult, forensic analysis. This is why the conditions of contract require the Contractor to submit together with the interim payment application, or what is aptly called the monthly statement, detail particulars of claims, as he deems eligible for additional time and/or cost. These details once submitted after authenticated by the Engineer at site level turn out to be valid materials for a legitimate claim, as they become contemporary in nature. However, the Contractor must have preserved his rights to lodge claims such as notice requirements when they are condition precedent. Contractors lose their rights when conditions precedent requirements are not mistakenly or otherwise abided by.

Claims that are submitted with the chronology of events will help understand the prevalence but claims are always one sided. Therefore, any claim that are storey type alleging that the Employer is responsible without backups in support may in no doubt be subject to upfront denial. Also, a review of a time extension claim without allegations on records on the other party is so insensible in that the net resultant delay is a gross exaggeration that never reflects time extension ‘due under the contract’.

Contractors sometimes lodge their claims on interim basis. It is the Contractor’s choice as they deem strategic. Conditions of contract do not restrict the Contractor to lodge any number of claims at any time. In fact, there may be many claims on the same subject since the effects are continuing. Once effects cease, a final claim would follow. However, the practice of ‘splitting the baby’ into many claims applicable within the same period of concern is confusing simply because the effects once evaluated and established can not be reversed in
the contract to take account of another delay event on the same period. 

Why time impact analysis?

Contracts require the injured party to petition, in form of a claim, for a time extension, if they have been delayed by the actions or inactions of the other party. To this goal, many contracts specify that a time impact analysis (TIA) be prepared and submitted to objectively substantiate the request for a time extension. Once the duration of time has been agreed upon then the added time-related costs of such a delay are ascertained.  Prolongation cost means a replacement value paid back to the losing party by bringing him into the original position financially had there been no delay occurred. Cost is not necessarily a function of time. Hence a prolongation cost claim should reflect what actually sustained monetarily due to delay in question, instead of time extension. No party should unjustly enrich in the pursuit of prolongation costs.

TIA can be both prospective and retrospective. It is prospective when parties look forward to establish a future date as the new date for completion. It is a time forecast designed to facilitate a timely contract adjustment prior to the actual work being completely preformed. It is retrospective whenever historical delay events have been accumulated and inextricably intertwined so that parties have no choice but to assess it with the available means to establish a date in either past or future tense.

In both cases, the purpose is to avoid time becoming at large. If time extension is not granted, as many would agree, and of course well settled and confirmed in case law, the Contractor’s liability of completion extends to a reasonable period of time. Time extension secures therefore the Employer’s right to impose liquidated damages or penalty, as the case may be.

Modelling of the effects

TIA is typically associated with the modelling of the delay effects. It uses Critical Path Method (CPM) schedule that is able to show the difference between a schedule that does not include a delay and one that does include an activity modelling the delay event. The variance in project completion, between the non-impacted schedule and that of the schedule with the impact, is considered to be the impact of the delay for time duration considerations.

Planners prepare a schedule fragnet in the pursuit of this variance. A flagnet consists of a subset of the activities in the project schedule that will be involved directly with the delay. For easy review, the delay is termed as simply as possible by using the fewest number of activities and relationships in order to substantially reflect the impact of the delay to the schedule. However, care should be taken to correctly define the change or impact and the logical insertion into the fragnet. Existing activities and logic should be left intact whenever possible except to incorporate the fragnet. Added relationships may cause some of the existing relationships redundant to the CPM calculation, but relationships should only be deleted when the retention of that relationship negates the actual work restraints on the project. Redundant relationships caused by the additional inserted logic should be left in the schedule wherever possible and should not affect the overall result. It is acceptable to add a delay as a successor to an activity when in fact, that delay occurred during the activity and delayed its completion. It is also acceptable to split the existing delayed activity into two activities, with one representing the portion of the planned work to be performed before the delay, and the other portion of the planned work after the delay, as long as the combined durations of the split activities equals the original duration of that activity. This is where the art of planning comes into play even by a Contractor to internally evaluate his alternatives to regain or improve project completion in his own delays.

Just prior to actual delay

There are conditions under which a time impact analysis operates. It is the most recently accepted schedule update, just prior to the actual delay, correctly portrays the project status. TIA assumes that the Contractor’s and Employer’s responses to that delay are independent of the rest of the project. In effect, a TIA assumes that the CPM schedule at the time of the delay is ‘frozen’ and will not change anything other than the change brought about by the delay.

As stated, the baseline schedule should be used if the delay began prior to the first schedule update. If the time interval between the start of the delay and the last accepted schedule update is too great, the Contractor must elect to first provide a new schedule status and update with a status date immediately prior to the start of the delay. This pilot task is imperative before assigning any delay element.

An automated TIA is only valid if the CPM software, being used to model the effects of a delay event, properly shows the effects of the CPM calculations. This includes the consideration of a status date, out-of-sequence progress, and actual activity status. The schedule should not allow any unstarted activity to be scheduled prior to the status date. Also, it should not allow for a prediction of early completion for an unfinished activity prior to the status date. Works actually performed on activities that are not logically able to begin can be revisited as long as they have no actual starts or actual finishes later than the status date. Once updated, an accepted CPM schedule, with a status date immediately just prior to the delaying event, must be developed that has no reference to the delay in question.

Fragnet business

A fragnet is a fragment of a CPM logic diagram, having many characteristics. It contains one or more activities or events with a positive duration. Those activities are logically connected to each other; and the fragnet as a whole is logically connected into the project schedule by creating a logic tie to a predecessor activity and a successor activity.

Using the accepted fragnet as a template, the planner can add the impacted activities and their logic. Planner should make the accepted activity adjustments to the existing activities as necessary to mirror the fragnet and set the duration of the delay activities to zero and recalculate the CPM. At this point in the analysis, all computed and actual dates in the original schedule update should match that from the original schedule update. If all dates do not match, then the fragnet insertion must be corrected until they do match.

In order to ensure TIA accuracy, it is important to often develop fragnets for every change order proposal on the project. Such a policy assures in advance the likely time implications on the remainder of the project. Since many Contractors have a policy to develop change order proposals for every conceivable event not clearly within the contract scope, there can be, and often are, hundreds of fragnets. Further, these fragnets can, in and of themselves, be relatively complicated since they will mimic the changes in scope. However, it should be noted that most of these variations all along a typical construction project will have no impact on the completion of the project. This is why there should be a guard against strategic manipulations over the fragnets in terms of inclusions, exclusions, illogical connections and unrealistic durations.

Of these, the most fundamental decision an analyst makes is the decision to include or exclude a fragnet. For example, a planner for an Employer could choose not to include one or more fragnets under a theory that his expertise concluded it could not possibly have had an impact. Alternatively, a planner working on behalf of a Contractor could include every event conceivable fragnet to mimic the events. He might even divide a single event into multiple fragnets, possibly magnifying its effect. In either case, the planner controls the outcome through his preconceived decisions. Another possibility is the number an
d type of logic connections the analyst employs. For example, if an Employer were to decide to install a different air condition split unit after the original one had been installed, what is the planner’s approach to develop the fragnet whether is it actually happened or should have happened?

Using the original schedule update, planner can determine when the successor activity to the delay impact actually became a project critical activity. On schedules without negative float, the activity will be predicted to become project critical on the computed late start date. The first date of delay due to this impact will be the next day after the activity late start date. For original update schedules that do show negative float, the start or delay date will simply be the first day of the delay event. Every day after this start of delay will be labelled a counting down delay day until the number of delay days is exhausted. The above course of action assumes that project float belongs to the party who uses it first. It also assumes that the project does not meet all legal requirements for a declared early project completion.

Quantifying mitigation

Contracts require that the Contractor mitigates effects of any delay to the extent practicable. If the delay time period involved is long, or if substantial mitigation of the delay has occurred, then the effect of such mitigation matters. This is imperative if mitigation efforts by either the Employer or Contractor have modified the actual impact of a delay on project completion. There must be a correlation between calculated and actual for a proposed TIA to be acceptable.

However a planner may ignore quantifying mitigation in a frozen work plan, forward-looking impact analysis, and negligible duration of the delay. In lieu of actually redesigning the logic, that was in effect when the delay occurred, to that which was actually used after the delay occurred, the Contractor may elect to revise the remaining duration status of every activity in the schedule to the remaining duration status evidenced at the time of the actual end of the delay. This revision of the status to the impacted schedule will reflect the resultant effects of mitigation of the project. Activities performed out-of-sequence will still exist as successors to the impacted activity, but their remaining durations will be reduced to reflect the work performed during the delay period.

Concurrency – the sword and shield

There is no single definition of the term ‘concurrent delay’. Some consider this to be any day that the Contractor did not work during the delay period. Others consider it to be any identifiable delay to any activity with negative float. Still others consider this to be any delay to an activity that had the same or lower total float as the TIA delay. Parties should not hang around till a legal consensus comes in; instead they must attempt to set their limitations using common sense. Concurrent delays are not the delay events but impacts that fell on activities along the critical path. To consider an impact to be concurrent, the impact of which delay events where some of them are held liable by the Contractor and others by the Employer, must fall within the same period. To be more precise, only the overlapping period of impacts will be considered as concurrent, irrespective of their start and end. Also, these delay events once taken independently must critically affect the scheduled completion. This interpretation seems more logical than any other.

Many contracts require a TIA to include an analysis of concurrent delays because they consider concurrent delay days as excusable but non-compensable. This is a give and take policy that shares pains and gains. TIA findings help identifying the concurrent elements so that the prolongation cost can be treated accordingly. Since concurrent impacts are known to be non compensable, it is difficult to expect those elements in the Contractor’s submission. A prudent planner on the Employer’s side must take them account for an equitable time analysis.

In nutshell, TIA models actual performance using computer-generated schedules developed during the currency of the project at periodic intervals, adding specific activities (fragnets) that model delay impacts occurring during that interval. The result of the addition of these activities may change the completion date for the project as well as the critical path. This new impacted schedule is then updated with actual progress for the next period and the process is repeated. The goal of this methodology is to model the actual events on the project as accurately as possible and through that modelling, identify on a periodic basis the critical path, the delay or acceleration on a periodic basis, concurrency and the party responsible for delay. It results in both eligibility and quantum.

Prolongation – a costly roulette

Claim on prolongation costs may not necessarily come together with the claim for time extension. Once an extension of time has been granted, the evaluation of the additional prolongation costs is often related to the period between the contract completion date and the extended completion date. Prolongation cost is also calculated on time related preliminaries. This line of thinking is illogical.

The intention of most construction contracts is for the Contractor to be reimbursed the additional cost which results from Employer delays. It involves a comparison between the actual costs incurred and what the cost would have been had no delay occurred. Where, for example, time is lost awaiting details which causes a two weeks delay to the critical path, evaluating the prolongation costs associated with the extra two weeks on site, following the revised contract completion date, may not produce the correct answer. A more accurate evaluation would be achieved by reference to the costs incurred during the two weeks when the information was late in arriving. It is wholly a question of cause and effect.

The SCL protocol, with regard to this matter, states that ‘the recoverable prolongation compensation is to be assessed by reference to the period in which the effect of the Employer Event Risk was felt.’ It is clearly intended that, once it is established that additional payment is due for prolongation resulting from Employer delays, the evaluation should relate to the period when the effect of the delay occurs and not to the overrun period at the end of the contract.

The period to be priced for the delay has been contested in Courts. Should it be the period when the delay actually occurred or the extended period at the end of the Contract? It is a question of “Cause and Effect”. There is little doubt that what must be priced is the effect of the delay, and it boils down to a clear and careful analysis of the effects of the delay to ascertain the additional overhead resources which are incurred. Perhaps, one would argue that it is only if, and when, the project as a whole is extended or prolonged beyond its programmed completion period as a result of the delay to the progress of the structure that the Contractor would be involved in the extra employment of resources over and above that allowed in the contract price. Of course, certain resources could have been extended within the original contract period as a result of variations and those extended resources should, of course, be reimbursed to the Contractor.

If the party (A) suffers a loss which he is entitled to compensation from the party (B) causing the ‘injury’ (for example a delay), the damages are to put (A) back into the position he was nominally in before the event. Hence, prolongation costs shall be the costs that actually incurred at the period the delay events impacted on the progress, instead of the period of extension. What must be priced is the effect of the delay, and it boils down to a clear analysis of the effects of the delay to ascertain the additional overhead resources which are incurred. It is only if, and when, the project as a whole is
extended or prolonged beyond its programmed completion period as a result of the delay to the progress of works that the Contractor would be involved in the extra employment of resources over and above that allowed in the Contract Price. However, that certain resources could also be extended within the original contract period as a result of variations and those extended resources should, of course, be reimbursed to the Contractor.

Extended preliminaries – the prorata

Traditionally, prolongation costs had been priced by reference to preliminaries. The elements of fixed costs are usually only incurred once and not affected by a delay to the project; that element ought not to be claimed. The time related costs will, unless there is a full suspension of the site for instance, continue through any period of delay and can be claimed ‘at cost’. ‘Cost’ will be calculated in accordance with the terms of the contract. However as safe bet initially is to adopt the time related charge levels in the originally accepted bid, which is simple in approach that any one would prefer to adopt. However, during the 1980s this traditional basis fell into doubt, and that following various cases, standard forms of contract started to insist on the actual loss and expense incurred as a consequence of the Employer’s delay, may be because of the concerns as follows;

•           Rates quoted for preliminary items could be time, method or activity related or even in doubt as to what category a particular preliminary item would belong to, such as grouting as the tunnelling proceeds or dewatering in off shore cofferdam or wet blanketing in a dam defect whenever priced under preliminaries.

•           They are forecasted values quoted in competition. They are values that the Contractor thought might happen rather than actually happened.

•           They may have subjected to any pricing strategies such as front end loading, back end loading, or that gives maximum return at completion.

•           Rates quoted for preliminary items, similar to other unit rates, contain a profit element. Actual costs should exclude profit. A party should not profit from another’s loss out of eventualities beyond control of either party, say in a prolongation due to adverse inclement weather. This is in line with the principle of good faith and fair dealing.

•           The philosophy behind the compensation is to find the replacement value in order to bring back the Contractor into the original position where he stood financially had there be no delay.

•           The impact due to prolongation may also depend on the site involvement. For instance, the actual costs on preliminaries at the beginning and end of the progress along with the S-curve may be not as big as in the peak. The amount of additional burden taken over by a prudent Contractor varies with the period as-impacted.

•           A contract may well have many hundreds of variations, and many dozens of these could be critical and contributing to the delay.  Pro rated preliminaries may duplicate the amounts for variations individually priced under variation clause.  If a variation causes standing time (say in shotcreting in rock stabilization), then the Contractor may successfully recover the costs of that standing time as a variation even if it could be shown that the Contractor had no alternative work in any event and would suffer no loss from his idle resources.

•           Concurrent delays are excusable but not compensable, as a principle.

•           In contracts of civil Engineering nature such as mass excavation in a borrow pit, dredging work or in demolition, more than 90% of the cost would be on plant utilization, priced in a unit rate, say in a rate per m3, apart from preliminary items. Payment on time related basis would be wholly inapplicable when such a contract is prolonged.

•           Time extension due to suspension of whole of the works or delay in site possession (that pushes ahead the planned program as a bunch) may not necessarily cost the preliminaries in full. It may sometimes cost more than what is catered for in the preliminaries.

•           As there is usually a short ad-hoc preliminaries bill, the use of the prelims bill for pricing prolongation is not complete in a sense. For instance, the items under preliminary bill are set out in line with the conditions of contract and specifications (as guided for instance in the Principles of Measurement International 1979). Some items are neither measurable nor priceable.

•           Tender price break up is usually subservient to the contract once obtained after the contract has been let and any particular inclusion or exclusion does not bind the parties in a prolongation issue.

•           The intricacy of the issues when they are inextricably intertwined has made more difficult in using preliminaries as the basis of prolongation costs.

Overheads may be recovered in both payment for variations and in the pricing of prolongation costs. This is premised on the basis that the overheads in the BQ rate should not be adjusted where the variation may cause a critical delay when it would not be adjusted if the variation has not caused delay. To deduct this allowance in the BQ rate because the Contractor has incurred a delay would place the Contractor in a worse position than it would have been absent any delay. Usually, the overheads in the BQ rates which are used to price variations are not adjusted. However, it is the loss and expense which is adjusted, not the BQ rate. Not to do so would mean that the Contractor would be paid twice for some element of his additional overheads.

Hence, it is important to look at the entire scenario from a broad perspective. Since preliminaries are not ‘expenditure properly incurred or to be incurred’, the actual expenditure needs to be determined. This would eventually include time-related preliminary items, (for instance, the costs to be incurred in keeping the performance bond and insurance on extra premium) shall also be payable to the Contractor.

What a loss!

Also, the term ‘actual loss’ is more sensible than the term ‘actual cost’ for clarity. The Contractor should be entitled only for the actual loss and not the actual cost (in other words, the difference between the actual cost incurred in delay and the cost that would have incurred under normal circumstances as planned for which the contract rates are inclusive of basic cost, overhead and profit). The sum so arrived will eventually cover up any escalated component in prices of materials and labour and any loss of productivity. This will avoid possible over-compensation. All the cost items shall only be defensible with site records and other documentary evidence. The extent of entitlement and then the quantum has to be decided on the foregoing principles.

In nutshell, it is eligibility that follows quantum. The use of preliminaries on pro rata basis would not truly result the actual loss in prolongation. The level of compensation is what is reasonable in the circumstances. Each case shall be evaluated on its own merit. If the cost difference can be seen as being not too remote from the original event it may be recoverable. The industry has accepted that the correct means of evaluating prolongation costs is by reference to actual expenditure, justifiable upon contemporary records. 

Unless otherwise the parties have taken on board by contract the risk of pro-rata application of time related preliminaries, any method that is capable of finding the actual loss is admissible and the answer is ‘it depends on the issues’ where the expertise of the quantity surveyor triumphs.  Seldom does one size fit all.

It is in the interest of the Contractor to present his most favourable claim on his own basis. Therefore in the fi
rst instance, an entitlement within the contract should be shown, stated and proved. The practical problems that beset the Contractor are that the potential loss and expense situations must be identified, established, quantified and valued. Furthermore, it should be in a form which must convince the other party to accept the claim as valid and that the integral parts are claimable and are correctly valued. But surprisingly, there are cases where the Engineer himself intervenes in claims submission on behalf of the Contractor, or keeping the Contractor’s submission aside. This is not only a gross misunderstanding but a serious breach of ethics on the part of the Engineer to assume that he has the power to make his own assessment when the Contractor delays in submission or disagrees with the Engineer’s opinion.

The recoverability of compensation for prolongation depends on the terms of the contract and the event of delay that caused prolongation, depending on whether the event is at the risk of the Contractor or Employer.  A Contractor must demonstrate that it has suffered loss and/or expense before it becomes entitled to compensation unless the contract states otherwise. An agreed contractual amount per day for prolongation costs can reduce arguments over the proof of such loss which is a form of reverse liquidated damages.

Effect of variations

The SCL Protocol suggests that if a Contractor has made no or inadequate allowance for site overheads in its tender, it is not necessarily disentitled to compensation for prolongation and or disruption on the basis of recovery of actual costs incurred.  For compensation based on actual loss and or expense, the tender allowances will not be relevant.  However, the tender allowances may be a useful reference point for the valuation of prolongation and disruption caused by a variation, and could be used by the parties as a rough guide for the agreement of such costs to assess the value of varied work if that is what the parties wish to do.

Where delay was caused by variation orders, these variations were almost always priced at BQ rates without any allowance for prolongation costs. The reference to “direct loss and / or expense” in the standard phrase was thought to include prolongation costs. In building contracts, preliminaries have been set out fully in the opening section of the BQ, and that traditionally, prolongation costs had been priced by reference to these preliminaries. This obviously gave the result that the valuation of prolongation costs could be either high or low depending on the pricing of the preliminaries by the Contractor.

A contract may well have many hundreds of variations, and many dozens of these could be critical and contributing to the delay. A further large number could be causing concurrent delay. To assess prolongation costs by individually pricing each variation which causes critical delay is, for many contracts, simply not practical. Also, in a short preliminaries bill, this is not conducive at all.  All these have prompted a move away from the traditional approach towards an actual cost basis for prolongation costs. When this traditional basis fell into doubt, industry has accepted that the correct means of evaluating prolongation costs is by reference to actual expenditure, but it depends on the precise terms of the particular contract.

For instance, overheads in the bill rate should not be adjusted where the variation may cause a critical delay when it would not be adjusted if the variation has not caused delay. To deduct this allowance in the bill rate because the Contractor has incurred a delay would place the Engineer in a difficult position than it would have been absent any delay.

However, the Employer cannot profit from liquidated damages during a period of the Contractor’s culpable delay if the Employer has also prevented completion. Similarly, the Contractor cannot recover damages in respect of an extension of time if he is in a concurrently impacted period. The argument is that even in the event of a concurrent delay for which the Contractor is responsible, if the Contractor is delayed during that period by a variation then the Contractor should be paid for that prolongation necessitated by the variation.

It is normal to assess prolongation at Cost, but to extend the detailed preliminaries rates provided in the BQ may cause injustice for the Contractors who can establish his actual costs on contemporary records.

What matters then?

What matters are basically the records and the planner’s approach? Records of the Contractor alone will not help at all. Planners approach without Quantity Surveyor’s input also will not lend a hand. TIA is a combined exercise. Quantity Surveyor is to guide the planner in picking up delay events eligible under the contract and the planner is to guide the Quantity Surveyor in picking up the concurrent elements and so on. A checklist approach will help make sure every important aspect has been taken into account. A checklist neither takes precedence over contracts nor frames out the planning or surveying expertise but promotes good practice in absence of a protocol in some organizations to deal with claims that involve time and cost.

 

Technology disconnect is becoming a big issue, but most people are not aware of it or don’t want to talk about it. Isn’t that the problem in the first place? Let me just say, I love technology and gadgets too, computer, cell phones PDA, I pods and now the I pad. This stuff is cool, but what I see and I am sure you see it too. Most people are caught in this tech bubble and don’t know it. Have you walked into a store and checked out while still talking on the phone. Did you even say hello to the person cashing you out. How rude are we anyways? Do we ever experience the moment at hand? Are you seeing that people have discovered a new what to escape real communication. How do we share our lives, moment by moment. But lots of these moment are being lost because of lack of focus on the moment and people at hand. Have you ever experience a person who stops by to say hello and get a text message from somewhere in the stratosphere and now they are with you in body only, but having a so-called conversation with invisible texting buddy. What an intrusion this is. These people are missing the moment at hand. They don’t understand how the other person feels when this happen. We are losing respect for the people who are physically around us. I have to ask a question, are people afraid to share one on one these days. So to avoid openness and good conversation, they quickly answer cold text message instead of a warm “eyeball to eyeball” heartfelt talk. No wonder our society is getting cold and cruel.

Let us remember that when we are on the cell or text or pc or mac, whatever, remember there are warm live people who may want to talk to you, who need you, and want you to love them and to understand them. So the next time you look to use your toys remember not to try and escape, don’t get caught in the tech bubble or being a victim of the technology disconnect.