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In the UK healthcare sector, funding and provision of public care facilities has been primarily the responsibility of government through the National Health Service (NHS). After decades of under-investment and consequent effects on the quality of care, new procurement routes are currently being used to improve the standards of facilities to meet the requirements of modern care services. This paper critically reviews these new procurement routes in terms of concepts and suitable areas of application, and examines how the principal procurement methods have evolved into the forms used for UK healthcare facilities. The paper outlines recommendations for further research in assessing the suitability or otherwise of these new procurement methods, both for construction projects generally and specifically for healthcare facilities.

The idea of implementing supply chain management (SCM) principles for the construction industry was embraced by construction stakeholders to enhance the sector's performance. The analysis from the literature revealed that the implementation of SCM in the construction industry enhances the industry's value in terms of cost-saving, time savings, material management, risk management and others. The construction supply chain (CSC) can be managed using the pull or push system. This chapter also discusses the origin and proliferation of SCM into the construction industry. The chapter revealed that the concept of SCM has passed through five different eras: the creation era, the use of ERP, globalisation stage, specialisation stage and electronic stage. The findings from the literature revealed that we are presently in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. At this stage, the SCM witnesses the adoption of technologies and principles driven by the 4IR. This chapter also revealed that the practice of SCM in the construction industry is centred around integration, collaboration, communication and the structure of the supply chain (SC). The forms and challenges hindering the adoption of these practices were also discussed extensively in this chapter.

The model and existing practice of the construction supply chain (CSC) in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia was presented in this chapter. The policies and reports that support the practice of the CSC were examined in both countries. It was discovered from the review of literature that the UK has a more detailed report targeted at improving the CSC than Australia. However, both countries have a common factor affecting their CSC which originates from fragmentation experienced within their supply chain. Construction stakeholders in the UK and Australia believe that collaboration and integration are vital components for improving performance. The majority of the contractors in both countries embrace collaborative working for the sole purpose of risk sharing, access to innovation and response to market efficiency. However, most of the models developed for managing the CSC in the UK are built around building information modelling (BIM). Also, the reviewed studies show that supply chain management practice will be effective following the following principle: shared objectives, trust, reduction in a blame culture, joint working, enhanced communication and information-sharing. Finally, the UK has a more established framework and more CSC models compared to Australia.

Using a national data set from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort, we examined factors associated with approximately 700 young African American boys’ pre-academic skills. The factors examined included (a) family characteristics, behaviors, and beliefs; (b) nonparental care literacy activities; and (c) child health, aggression, and approaches to learning (e.g., curiosity, independence, and persistence). High achieving boys are contrasted with other boys, along the following dimensions: familial, early childhood program, child characteristics and practices and their pre-academic skills, and whether the association was moderated by achievement status. Regression analyses indicated that some aspects of family, preschool, and child characteristics were associated with African American boys’ early outcomes, especially parental caretaking (e.g., bathing and brushing teeth) and approaches to learning (e.g., persistence and attention). Recommendations for educational practices and policies were offered.

The dream of better relationships among different supply chain partners; trust and transparency during different construction activities; integrated supply chain; completion of projects on time, within the agreed cost, with promised quality products and services, and so on, have now been achieved within the UK construction industry due to innovation within the project procurement processes and activities. There has also been a growing realisation that the promotion of innovative thinking, in procurement processes for supply chain integration, offers all the involved parties some key benefits in terms of more flexibility and adaptability, commercial growth, and improved quality of products, and delivered service. This paper highlights the benefits of, and the motivation towards innovative procurement through two case studies done as part of a supply chain integration project at the SCRI research centre. The case studies demonstrate how organizations involved have promoted innovative thinking across the supply chain through innovative procurement. The case studies also highlight some of the critical factors that motivated people within those firms to move from traditional way of procurement, and search, innovate, and implement the new procurement thoughts and models. The paper concludes that these studies offer transferable learning opportunities and motivation for the staff of other construction firms seeking to promote integration within their supply chains through innovative procurement routes.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.

This chapter presented the model for the effective practice of construction supply chain management (CSCM) in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. The model was developed after discovering that the failure of adopting the 4IR component has hindered the synchronisation of construction supply chain (CSC) activities. While some stakeholders are willing to manage their CSC under the 4IR era, most have no clue how to go about it. Most stakeholders are familiar with an existing practice built around collaboration, integration, supply chain structure and trust. This chapter bridges the gap by introducing organisational culture and 4IR components for modelling the CSCM in the 4IR era. The model was backed and grounded with a robust theoretical framework. The theories include social identity theory, change theory and resource-based view theory. It was discovered that the organisational culture adopted by construction stakeholders determines their willingness to embrace the 4IR component for the management of CSC. The 4IR components were divided into smart management, virtualisation and cyber-physical systems. The chapter recommended that the practice of SCM in the Nigerian construction industry should be modelled around the six constructs that were used in developing the model for this study.

This chapter provides foundations of differentiating the sophisticated and various theoretical approaches towards safe spaces demonstrated in this book. For the purpose of framing the examples provided in this collection, we offer three broad ways of thinking about safe spaces: safe learning spaces as separate, counterhegemonic, or third spaces; safe learning spaces of difference, sameness, and intersecting identities; and deliberative and democratic learning spaces. It needs to be noted, however, that these are not mutually exclusive but different aspects to consider and that they each operate within and across, and are therefore influenced by, the five levels of inequity discussed in Chapter 2. That said, not all levels of inequity are necessarily addressed by any given space, regardless of the frame used to interpret it. This discussion respects the multiple paradoxes in education, especially the one of pluralism and sameness, offering approaches to modes and learning settings of inclusion and exclusion and how they create different, yet “safe,” spaces.

This chapter addresses adaptation to dynamic, novel and uncertain military environments. These environments require a shift from a maneuver warfare paradigm to an asymmetric world where shifting alliances, questionable civilian loyalties, opaque cultures, and the requirement to maintain peace one day and combat the next makes for a particularly confusing situation. This new warfare paradigm requires adaptation to an uncertain, complex environment.

The initial section discusses a general cognitive model of visualization called RAVENS and its importance for adaptation developed specifically to address complex military environments. RAVENS posits that humans are inherently flexible decision makers and situation awareness depends on the ability of humans to create narrative visualizations that capture the overall context of complex military environments. Using the framework as a guideline, we will examine two important visualization research programs whose purpose is to allow military operators to rapidly adapt to volatile situations. The first program investigates cognitive effects such as the framing bias and their possible interactions with a variety of display concepts during a series of missile defense simulations. The experimenters presented risk as a spatial representation of uncertainty and target value that emphasized either expected population lost or expected population saved. The second program investigated the feasibility of using visualizations generated from Scheherazade (a coevolutionary algorithm) to aid MI analysts in predicting emergent tactics of terrorist groups during urban operations. Finally, we discuss the value of these approaches for providing coherent narrative understanding as called for in the RAVENS model.

An algorithm for stable transient solutions was developed for a non‐linear constitutive model for void growth and nucleation with elasto‐plastic deformation of plate structures under bending loads. The Gurson model was used for void growth and plastic deformation. The constitutive model was incorporated into a plate element which includes both transverse shear and normal deformations. Numerical examples were provided to test the algorithm and to show the effects of the transverse normal deformation and void on plastic strains in plate structures.