Innovative and Agile Contracting for Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0

Innovative and Agile Contracting for Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0
Author: Shalan, Mohammad Ali
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2020-12-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1799845028
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Digital transformation is reshaping the business arena as new, successful digital business models are increasing agility and presenting better ways to handle business than the traditional alternatives. Industry 4.0 affects everything in our daily lives and is blurring the line between the physical, the biological, and the digital. This created an environment where technology and humans are so closely integrated that it is impacting every activity within the organizations. Specifically, contracting processes and procedures are challenged to align with the new business dynamics as traditional contracts are no longer fitting today's agile and continuously changing environments. Businesses are required to facilitate faster, more secure, soft, and real-time transactions while protecting stakeholders’ rights and obligations. This includes agile contracts which are dynamically handling scope changes, smart contracts that can automate rule-based functions, friction-less contracts that can facilitate different activities, and opportunity contracts that looks toward the future. Innovative and Agile Contracting for Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0 analyzes the consequences, benefits, and possible scenarios of contract transformation under the pressure of new technologies and business dynamics in modern times. The chapters cover the problems, issues, complications, strategies, governance, and risks related to the development and enforcement of digital transformation contracting practices. While highlighting topics in the area of digital transformation and contracting such as artificial intelligence, digital business, emerging technologies, and blockchain, this book is ideally intended for business, engineering, and technology practitioners and policy makers, along with practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in understanding the scope, complexity, and importance of innovative contracts and agile contracting.

Reducing Construction Costs

Reducing Construction Costs
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2007-10-09
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 030917998X
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The National Academy of Construction (NAC) has determined that disputes, and their accompanying inefficiencies and costs, constitute a significant problem for the industry. In 2002, the NAC assessed the industry's progress in attacking this problem and determined that although the tools, techniques, and processes for preventing and efficiently resolving disputes are already in place, they are not being widely used. In 2003, the NAC helped to persuade the Center for Construction Industry Studies (CCIS) at the University of Texas and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to finance and conduct empirical research to develop accurate information about the relative transaction costs of various forms of dispute resolution. In 2004 the NAC teamed with the Federal Facilities Council (FFC) of the National Research Council to sponsor the "Government/Industry Forum on Reducing Construction Costs: Uses of Best Dispute Resolution Practices by Project Owners." The forum was held on September 23, 2004, at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Speakers and panelists at the forum addressed several topics. Reducing Construction Costs addresses topics such as the root causes of disputes and the impact of disputes on project costs and the economics of the construction industry. A second topic addressed was dispute resolution tools and techniques for preventing, managing, and resolving construction- related disputes. This report documents examples of successful uses of dispute resolution tools and techniques on some high-profile projects, and also provides ways to encourage greater use of dispute resolution tools throughout the industry. This report addresses steps that owners of construction projects (who have the greatest ability to influence how their projects are conducted) should take in order to make their projects more successful.

Contractor and Client Relations to Assure Process Safety

Contractor and Client Relations to Assure Process Safety
Author: William F. Early, II
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2010-09-07
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 047093512X
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Written and edited by engineering contractors and industry project/maintenance managers as an easy-to-use guide for other industry professionals, this book identifies important process safety issues in the contractor-client relationship,which are not addressed by other groups and publications. While the issues may arise at any point in the life cycle of a plant, they should be resolved early in the relationship to permit a clearer focus on process safety issues. Topics covered are a general discussion of contractor safety programs; EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contractual bases and work division as they address regulatory PSM issues; subcontractor relationships; and managing contractor-client risks.

Mastering the Risky Business of Public-Private Partnerships in Infrastructure

Mastering the Risky Business of Public-Private Partnerships in Infrastructure
Author: Manal Fouad
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 61
Release: 2021-05-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1513576569
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Investment in infrastructure can be a driving force of the economic recovery in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of shrinking fiscal space. Public-private partnerships (PPP) bring a promise of efficiency when carefully designed and managed, to avoid creating unnecessary fiscal risks. But fiscal illusions prevent an understanding the sources of fiscal risks, which arise in all infrastructure projects, and that in PPPs present specific characteristics that need to be addressed. PPP contracts are also affected by implicit fiscal risks when they are poorly designed, particularly when a government signs a PPP contract for a project with no financial sustainability. This paper reviews the advantages and inconveniences of PPPs, discusses the fiscal illusions affecting them, identifies a diversity of fiscal risks, and presents the essentials of PPP fiscal risk management.

Integrated Cost-Schedule Risk Analysis

Integrated Cost-Schedule Risk Analysis
Author: Dr David Hulett
Publisher: Gower Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2012-09-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1409459101
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Project managers tend to believe their cost estimates - whether they have exceeded budgets in the past or not. It is dangerous to accept the engineering cost estimates, which are often optimistic or unrealistic. Though cost estimates incorporate contingency reserves below-the-line, these estimates of reserves often do not benefit from a rigorous assessment of risk to project costs. Risks to cost come from multiple sources including uncertain project duration, which is often ignored in cost risk analyses. In short, experience shows that cost estimating on projects is rarely successful - cost overruns routinely occur. There are effective ways to estimate the impact on the cost of complex projects from project risks of all types, including traditional cost-type risks and the indirect but often substantial impact from risks usually thought of as affecting project schedules. Integrated cost-schedule risk anlaysis helps us determine how likely the project will go over budget with the current plan, how much contingency reserve is required to achieve a desired level of certainty, and which risks are most important so the project manager can mitigate them and achieve a better result. Integrated Cost-Schedule Risk Analysis provides solutions for these and other challenges. This book follows on from David Hulett's highly-praised Practical Schedule Risk Analysis. It focuses on the way that schedule risk can generate cost risk, and how to handle this relationship. It also applies the Risk Driver Method to the analysis so that you can clearly and transparently identify the key risks, rather than just the most risky cost line items. With detailed worked examples and over 70 illustrations, Integrated Cost-Schedule Risk Analysis offers the definitive guide to this critically important aspect of project management from surely the world's leading commentator.

Health System Efficiency

Health System Efficiency
Author: Jonathan Cylus
Publisher: Health Policy
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2016-12-15
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9789289050418
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In this book the authors explore the state of the art on efficiency measurement in health systems and international experts offer insights into the pitfalls and potential associated with various measurement techniques. The authors show that: - The core idea of efficiency is easy to understand in principle - maximizing valued outputs relative to inputs, but is often difficult to make operational in real-life situations - There have been numerous advances in data collection and availability, as well as innovative methodological approaches that give valuable insights into how efficiently health care is delivered - Our simple analytical framework can facilitate the development and interpretation of efficiency indicators.

The Owner's Role in Project Risk Management

The Owner's Role in Project Risk Management
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2005-02-25
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 0309181615
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Effective risk management is essential for the success of large projects built and operated by the Department of Energy (DOE), particularly for the one-of-a-kind projects that characterize much of its mission. To enhance DOE's risk management efforts, the department asked the NRC to prepare a summary of the most effective practices used by leading owner organizations. The study's primary objective was to provide DOE project managers with a basic understanding of both the project owner's risk management role and effective oversight of those risk management activities delegated to contractors.

Early Contractor Involvement in Building Procurement

Early Contractor Involvement in Building Procurement
Author: David Mosey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2009-11-24
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9781444309874
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Can contractors and specialists add value to a project by theirearly involvement in design, pricing, risk management andprogramming? How can this be structured and what role docontracts have to play? What is the impact on procurement andproject management? Commentators from Banwell to Egan have recommended earliercontractor appointments, and this has also been linked tosuccessful project partnering. How are the two related? Early Contractor Involvement in Building Procurementconsiders the case for a two stage procurement approach based on asystem of agreed project processes during the preconstructionphase. It examines the ways in which a contract can describeand support this model throughout its procurement, partnering andproject management, and is illustrated with case studies taken fromprojects and programmes across the construction and engineeringindustry. The roles of the various parties involved, the obstacles theyencounter and the benefits they can achieve are examined indetail. There is practical guidance on how to improve speed,economy, sustainability, change control, dispute avoidance, andclient satisfaction. This book bridges the gap betweencontract law, partnering and project management and will beessential reading for middle and senior management at constructioncontractors, consultants and clients in both the public and privatesectors.