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Social infrastructure projects such as hospitals are increasingly being procured through public private partnerships (PPP). Due to their complex nature and very high operational requirements, these healthcare projects need special attention in developing robust output specifications at the early procurement stage. The purpose of this paper is to present a model framework of output specifications for adoption by public sector clients in jurisdictions planning to develop hospital PPP/PFI (Private Finance Initiative) projects.

The research is based on an in-depth analysis of best practices from standard and sample project output specification documents used in Australia and the UK for completed hospital projects, reinforced by interviews with key stakeholders in the two countries.

Drafting output specifications for hospital PPP projects is perceived to be a difficult and challenging task due to the complexity and changing needs brought about by evolving health policy, technology and medical advancement. The overarching target of preparing good output specification is to achieve value for money, innovation, risk transfer (including catering for changes), whole life asset performance and establishing performance criteria to link up with the payment mechanism.

The proposed framework is built up from public sector requirements on the physical asset, operational services provided by the private sector, with links to payment mechanism and performance evaluation. It also addresses change mechanism as well as conditions upon hand-over back to the public sector.

Unlike traditional projects which are procured using prescriptive specifications, PPP/PFI projects are procured using performance based output specifications. This paper provides the foundation and a model framework for preparing comprehensive output specifications based on best practices in Australia and the UK, using hospital as the contextual background.

One of the greatest challenges faced by the 1994 post-apartheid government in South Africa is the housing problem that has persisted for almost 30 years into democracy. Innovation in research and practice is required to address this problem. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

This paper presents an argument for housing knowledge management as one part of a much larger system of housing provision and critically compares information variations on one hypothetical, low-cost housing unit adapted for varying climatic regions. It aims to enquire if there is an overlap in information.

The findings do confirm a noteworthy overlap in the information of the varying units. Therefore, knowledge management of the information would prove effective and may contribute in part to housing provision.

The study is limited to assessing the information changes made to the contract documentation of the housing unit.

The paper argues that knowledge management of this overlapping information could impact housing provision by providing knowledge power to those affected by the housing problem.

The findings are a unique perspective presented through a knowledge management lens. In addition, the said knowledge management lens provides a platform to raise additional questions. When seeking answers to these questions, it is expected that research sub-themes would be identified focussing further research studies towards finding answers.

Organisations either keep spares for their own use, or‐for‐sale to other organisations. In either case, the ultimate need is to be able to replace worn or defective parts in operational machinery or equipment. In an economic sense, spares are kept to meet the needs of the situation in the cheapest way.

This paper aims to uncover potential contemporaneous relationship between foreign portfolio investment (FPI) and another popular type of cross-border investment outflow, namely, foreign direct investment (FDI).

The relationship between FPI and FDI are modeled using simultaneous equations approach to take potential endogeneity in to account. In a panel of 45 countries over the period of 2001-2009, FPI and FDI are found to be strategically complimentary to each other.

The two-stage least square estimates suggest existence of both statistically and economically significant relationship between these two types of outflows. In particular, the FDI outflow has empirically significant predictive power in explaining the FPI outflow. Similarly, the FPI outflow also has significant explanatory power for the observed level of FDI outflow. Second, the FPI has greater explanatory power for FDI outflow than the FDI for the FPI outflow.

The authors believe that the paper would contribute to the relevant literature in terms of its originality and scope. The empirical findings of the paper have valuable policy implications.

Distribution has been a major element of retailers′ marketing strategy in recent years as companies strive to control costs but at the same time seek competitive advantage through improving service to stores and gaining greater control of stock in the supply chain. In an interview survey of distribution directors from major multiple groups, all companies were reviewing their distribution strategy and many had made major changes to their distribution system. Centralisation of stock in strategically located RDCs and the use of third party contractors were main features of retail companies′ strategy. Contractors were much more aggressive in marketing their services to retailers than hitherto. This is partly related to the competitive and turbulent nature of the industry. In a survey of marketing directors/managers of distribution companies, it was clear that firms were trying to raise their profile in the market as they “went public” and/or because they were moving into new industry sectors away from their “core” specialist areas.

When advocating the use of certain psychological tests in the selection of life insurance salesmen, Schultz pointed out that if every salesman in the group he studied had been selected on the basis of test scores, total production for the whole group would increase by 75%.

Virtual reality (VR) technologies have expanded their application domains towards education with pedagogical benefits including fully immersive learning environment and in-depth user engagement through scenario-based virtual simulations. Motion sickness (MS), however, has become one of the long-standing key challenges of the VR utilisation, even in gaming industries. Thus, this paper aims to present a preliminary study on understanding the VR MS, referred as cybersickness, in the teaching and learning (T&L) context at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

A VR-based virtual classroom content was developed and tested for 60 undergraduate students having equal access to the same VR equipment. A two-step data collection, comprising qualitative and quantitative measures, was conducted for the participants. The aspects of how gender influences the cybersickness severity and how academic background affects the learning experience were investigated and analysed using analysis of variance F-test statistical approach.

The results demonstrated approximately 47% of the participants had experienced cybersickness, where 64% of them were females. With confidence level of 95% (a = 5%), the obtained p-value and F-statistical value for the respective gender and study discipline categories against the cybersickness symptoms confirmed the significance level between the two compared variables. Moreover, it is worth highlighting that the virtual movement speed, perspective angle and visual properties of the virtual environment were selected as the top three factors that caused the cybersickness.

The study is hoped to provide valuable pointers to current and future VR developers in minimising the cybersickness symptoms that would enable an effective T&L environment in higher education.

Outlines an objective model based approach for the functional specification of manufacturing planning and control (MPC) systems. It is based on the premise that there is factual information (company characteristics and management concerns) which can be used to make recommendations about suitable functionality of appropriate MPC systems. A generic MPC system architecture, applicable to medium‐sized batch manufacturing companies, is used to organise the information within the model. The model describes the relationships between the inputs (objective company characteristics and subjective management concerns) and outputs (MPC functional activities). The functional activities have been defined at a level of detail which represents significant choices in functionality and are useful for the functional specification of MPC systems. The model provides reasoning which describes the relevance of the activities in individual cases. Uses field studies to validate and test the elements of the model (inputs, outputs and reasoning). Uses the model output to create an outline functional specification at each of the field study sites. Concludes that the model can be used to obtain an objective view of necessary functionality in MPC systems in medium‐sized batch manufacturing companies. The output from the model can be used as the basis for the development of a final, detailed functional specification. Use of the model results in time savings.

Notes that rapid IT development changes the way of handling product data in sales, design and methods engineering (the specification process), and raises the important question, how to engineer systems for managing product data in order to utilise the IT possibilities. Presents, as a result of a project and a case study, concepts and methods for analysing the specification process and setting up a vision for an improved process. The theory bases for the project are; systems theory as applied in Wickam Skinner’s “manufacturing task”, concepts and methods from business process re‐engineering, and product data technology. The task concept is used for developing the specification process, where the functional demands to the specification process are outlined during an analysis of the so‐called “specification task”. As the task concept is used for another domain new descriptional dimensions for describing the specification task will be presented. Based on an analysis of the specification task the specification process is re‐engineered and a vision for the future process to be is formulated, evaluated, and a plan for the implementation set up.

Currently all organisations are being urged to become “information conscious”. Technology is being rapidly developed to aid and support such an approach and tremendous attention and publicity is being directed towards how businesses will operate in the future — the 21st century.