Spreadsheets are becoming increasingly popular in solving engineering related problems. Among the strong features of spreadsheets are their instinctive cell-based structure and easy to use capabilities. Excel, for example, is a powerful spreadsheet with VBA robust programming capabilities that can be a powerful tool for teaching civil engineering concepts. Spreadsheets can do basic calculations...

Computer programs for building design, analysis, and maintenance typically can’t exchange data directly, even when the same team uses them. Buildings therefore take longer to design and build and cost more to construct and operate. Information sharing should be the starting point in applying information technology to building design, construction, and use. We developed the Active3D-Build (http:...

Nowadays, the implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in civil design represent a new challenge for the AECO (Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner and Operator) world, which will involve the interest of many researchers in the next years. It is due to the incentives of Public Administration and European Directives that aim to improve the efficiency and to enhance a bett...

BACKGROUND European Union strategies and programmes identify research and innovation as a critical dimension for future economic and social development. While European research policy emphasizes support for industry, the health field includes not-for-profit civil society organisations (CSOs) providing social innovation. Yet, the perspectives of CSOs towards health research in Europe are not wel...

Please ogies in Summary. — This paper examines public–private partnerships (PPPs) for development through the example of telecenters in two Indian states. How might a developmental state position itself with respect to civil society under a PPP model of service delivery? We find that each state’s political economy is reflected in its PPP strategy, but that in both states the emerging middle cla...

About the authors Victoria Metcalfe is a Research Fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group, where she leads research and public affairs projects on civil–military coordination, protection of civilians and forced displacement. Alison Giffen is a Research Fellow and the Deputy Director of the Future of Peace Operations Program at the Stimson Center in Washington DC. She is responsible for leading ...

This article focuses on the unlikely success of Peru’s top-down participatory budget experience. As part of democratization and decentralization efforts in the early 2000s, Peruvians mandated participatory budgeting in all subnational governments. The article suggests that, while success is constrained in many ways, Peruvians can point to two important accomplishments: 1) engaging a significant...

This article investigates the transition dynamics related to Jatropha developments in Mozambique. The analysis focuses on how structural conditions (infrastructure, institutions, interaction and collaboration and capabilities and resources) enable or constrain interactions between niche-level Jatropha experiments and incumbent energy, agriculture and rural development regimes in Mozambique. Inv...

This paper reports preliminary findings from a 3-year study investigating the capture and transfer of organisational knowledge and learning practices in the production of what have been termed complex product systems (CoPS). CoPS have been defined as capital-, engineering-, and IT-intensive, business-to-business products, networks, constructs and systems (Hobday, 1998). They tend to be high in ...