Den svenska anläggningsmarknaden är under förändring. I ett initiativ att utveckla och effektivisera branschen har de statliga beställarna, med Trafikverket i täten, satsat på att renodla beställarrollen. En stor del av denna satsning bygger på att öka andelen projekt som upphandlas som totalentreprenader. Detta ger dock inte bara förändringar för beställarna, utan även entreprenörer och resten av marknaden måste anpassa sig efter de nya förutsättningarna. Syftet med examensarbetet är därför att undersöka hur förändringen av anläggningsmarknaden mot fler totalentreprenader påverkar entreprenörers förutsättningar att driva framgångsrika projekt, samt hur de bör anpassa sina projektorganisationer för att uppnå detta. För att svara på detta övergripande syfte behandlar arbetet följande forskningsfrågor: Hur påverkas entreprenörens möjlighet till framgångsrika och lönsamma projekt i totalentreprenader? Hur påverkar övriga delar av upphandlingsstrategin entreprenören då den är totalentreprenör? Hur ska entreprenörer anpassa sina projektorganisationer, avseende kompetens och roller, för att möta den förändrade rollen gentemot beställaren? Examensarbetet är skrivet hos Skanska Sverige AB, region Väg och anläggning Stockholm. Metoden är uppdelad i tre studier. Den första är en litteraturstudie på tidigare forskning, med fokus på vetenskapliga artiklar. Den andra är en kvantitativ studie på lönsamhetsdata från tidigare projekt, erhållen från Skanska. Denna studie omfattar dels en jämförelse mellan utförande­entreprenad och totalentreprenad, dels en analys av övriga delar i upphandlingsstrategin. Den tredje är en intervjustudie med personer som har haft olika roller i totalentreprenader. Resultatet visar på att entreprenörer som är medvetna om den skillnad totalentreprenader medför, samt är väl förberedda för dem, har goda chanser att uppnå framgångsrika och lönsamma projekt. Det är också viktigt för entreprenören att vara medveten om alla förutsättningar i entreprenaden, inte bara entreprenadform. Utvecklingen går mot entreprenader med högre grad av samverkan än tidigare. Detta medför att entreprenören både måste vara samarbetsinriktad samt välja beställare, konsulter och underentreprenörer som är detsamma. Entreprenörens ökade osäkerheter och risker i totalentreprenader medför ökade krav på dess kompetens och organisationsstruktur. En viktig del är att tillsätta en projekteringsledning som klarar av att leda projekteringen så att rätt handlingar tas fram. Därutöver tillkommer även en rad ytterligare kritiska faktorer, så som en tydlig riskfördelning, tidigt upprättad riskanalys, kunskaper i ABT och kontraktsfrågor, tydlig ansvarsfördelning samt tilldelning av nyckelroller så tidigt som möjligt. Ökningen av anbudsutvärderingar på mjuka parametrar, främst på totalentreprenörens projektorganisation, visar på att även beställarna värderar vikten av totalentreprenörens kompetens högt. / The Swedish infrastructure and construction market is changing. To develop and improve the efficiency of the industry, the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) have made an initiative to change their role towards more of a professional client. A large part of this initiative is based on increasing the percentage of projects procured as design-build projects. This will, however, not only lead to changes for the clients, but also contractors and the rest of the market must adapt to the new conditions. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the change of the infrastructure and construction market towards more design-build projects affects contractors’ possibilities for successful projects, and how they should adapt their organizations to achieve this. To answer this general objective, the thesis is based on the following research questions: How are the contractor’s possibilities for achieving successful and profitable projects affected in design-build projects? How does the rest of the client’s procurement strategy affect the design-build contractor? How should contractors adapt their project organizations, in terms of expertise and roles, to meet the changing role towards the client? This thesis is written at Skanska in Stockholm, Sweden. The method comprises three studies. The first is a literature review of previous research, with a focus on scientific articles. The second is a quantitative study on profitability data from previous projects, obtained from Skanska. This study includes both a comparison between design-bid-build and design-build projects, and an analysis of other parts in the client’s procurement strategy. The third is an interview with people who have had different roles in design-build projects. The results indicate that contractors who are aware of the difference design-build projects entails, and are well prepared for them, have good chances to achieve successful and profitable projects. It is also important for the contractor to be aware of all parts in the contract, not just the project delivery system. The trend is toward a higher degree of client–contractor collaboration. This indicates that the contractors, clients, consultants and subcontractors must be able to be cooperative. The contractor’s increased uncertainties and risks in design-build projects entail increased demands on its expertise and organizational structure. An important part is to appoint a design manager capable of managing the design so that the right documents and drawings are produced. In addition, other critical factors are a clear allocation of risks, an early established risk analysis, knowledge in contract issues, a clear division of responsibilities and to assign key roles as early as possible. The increased usage of soft parameters in tender evaluations, mainly on the contractor’s organization, show that the clients value the contractor’s competences highly.

This diploma thesis describes the legal regime of the building land, which is regulated by the legislation of the private and public law, and focuses on the recent amendment of the building code as amended by the act no. 225/2017 Sb. The use of the legal regulations is displayed in the case study analysing the legal regime of the specific lands designated for the construction. The main aim of this thesis is to characterize the process and the institutes of the public and the private law as having the crucial influence on the building land, to focus on their mutual connection and to demonstrate their application in the case study. According to the last amendment of the building code the aim of this thesis is to refer to the new or modified institutes influencing the legal regime of the building lands and to define the relevance of the amendment for the construction. The diploma thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter includes the introductory information. The general listing and the description of the legal sources, the fundamental legal terms connected with the building lands and the characterization of the case study of the shopping centre is described in this chapter. The second chapter deals with the civil law regime of the building lands and analysis the civil law institutes such as the...

In modern software development, continuous integration has become a integral part of agile development methods, advocating that developers should integrate their code frequently. Configura currently has one dedicated machine, performing tasks such as building the software and running system tests each time a developer submits new code to the main repository. One of the main practices of continuous integration advocates for having a fast build in order to keep the feedback loop short for developers, leading to increased productivity. Configura’s build system, named Build Central, currently uses a sequential build procedure to execute said tasks and was becoming too slow to keep up with the number of requested builds. The primary method for speeding up this procedure was to utilize the multi-core architecture of the build machine. In order to accomplish this, the system would need to deploy a scheduling algorithm to distribute and order tasks correctly. In this thesis, six scheduling algorithms are implemented and compared. Four of these algorithms are based on the classic list scheduling approach, and two additional algorithms are proposed which are based on dynamic scheduling principles. In this particular system, the dynamic algorithms proved to have better performance compared to the static scheduling algorithms. Performance on Build Central, using four processing cores, was improved with approximately 3.4 times faster execution time on an average daily build, resulting in a large increase of the number of builds that can be performed each day.

Magister Chirurgiae Dentium - MChD (Prosthodontics) / The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the physical properties of two core build-up materials (ParaCore and CoreXflow) and compare this to conventional composite material (Filtek Supreme Plus and SDR Flow) used as core build-up material.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Stephen A. Dyer / Steven Warren / Embedded systems control nearly every device we encounter. Examples abound: appliances, scientific instruments, building environmental controls, avionics, communications, smart phones, and transportation subsystems. These embedded systems can fail in various ways: performance, safety, and meeting market needs. Design errors often cause failures in performance or safety. Market failures, particularly delayed schedule release or running over budget, arise from poor processes. Rigorous methods can significantly reduce the probability of failure. Industry has produced and widely published “best practices” that promote rigorous design and development of embedded systems. Unfortunately, 20 to 35% of development teams do not use them, which leads to operational failures or missed schedules and budgets. This dissertation increases the potential for success in designing and developing embedded systems through the following: 1. It identifies, through literature review, the reasons and factors that cause teams to avoid best practices, which in turn contribute to development failures. 2. It provides a framework, as a psychologically unbiased mediator, to help teams institute best practices. The framework is both straightforward to implement and use and simple to learn. 3. It examines the feasibility of both crowdsourcing and the Delphi method to aid, through anonymous comments on proposed projects, unbiased mediation and estimation within the framework. In two separate case studies, both approaches resulted in underestimation of both required time and required effort. The wide variance in the surveys’ results from crowdsourcing indicated that approach to not be particularly useful. On the other hand, convergence of estimates and forecasts in both projects resulted when employing the Delphi method. Both approaches required six or more weeks to obtain final results. 4. It develops a recommendation model, as a plug-in module to the framework, for the build-versus-buy decision in design of subsystems. It takes a description of a project, compares designing a custom unit with integrating a commercial unit into the final product, and generates a recommendation for the build-versus-buy decision. A study of 18 separate case studies examines the sensitivity of 14 parameters in making the build-versus-buy decision when developing embedded systems. Findings are as follows: team expertise and available resources are most important; partitioning tasks and reducing interdependence are next in importance; the quality and support of commercial units are less important; and finally, premiums and product lifecycles have the least effect on the cost of development. A recommendation model incorporates the results of the sensitivity study and successfully runs on 16 separate case studies. It shows the feasibility and features of a tool that can recommend a build-or-buy decision. 5. It develops a first-order estimation model as another plug-in module to the framework. It aids in planning the development of embedded systems. It takes a description of a project and estimates required time, required effort, and challenges associated with the project. It is simple to implement and easy to use; it can be a spreadsheet, a Matlab model or a webpage; each provides an output like the model for the build-versus-buy decision.

The purpose of this study was to determine which type of bevel in a class IV dental composite restoration is the most esthetic and has the best blend to natural tooth structure via clinical and spectrophotometric evaluations. The null hypotheses were as follows: (1) there is no difference in visual evaluation rank scores among five groups of evaluators for each type of bevel; (2) there is no agreement in the visual evaluation rank scores of the seven groups of bevels among all evaluators or within each group of evaluators; (3) there is no difference in the lightness values among seven types of bevels at each of eight measurement points or for the whole tooth as measured by a spectrophotometer; and (4) there is no correlation between the visual evaluation and the spectrophotometric evaluation. The class IV samples were made via CAD/CAM milling for standardization. There were seven groups: negative control (no bevel); short (1mm) and straight bevel; short (1mm) and scalloped bevel; long (2mm) and straight bevel; long (2mm) and scalloped bevel; infinite (3+mm) and straight bevel; and infinite (3+mm) and scalloped bevel. The fractures were restored with the same type of dental composite via a digitally designed mold fabricated with a 3D printer. Once completed, the samples were randomized and evaluated visually by 91 people in five groups (faculty, graduate residents, pre-doctoral dental students, assistants/hygienists, and auxiliary staff). Evaluators placed the samples in the order they deemed least to most esthetic within a lightbox set to CIE Standard Illumination D65. After the visual evaluation, the lightness (L*) values were measured optically with a reflectance spectrophotometer at eight points on each of the seven bevel groups, as well as on an un-prepared typodont tooth used for reference. One-way ANOVA on ranked data with the post-hoc Bonferroni test was conducted to detect a significant difference in median rating score among five groups of evaluators, and Kendall’s W was used to evaluate an agreement among multiple raters. One-way ANOVA with the post-hoc Tukey’s HSD was used to find a significant difference in mean lightness values among seven types of bevels. Dunnett’s test was used to compare the reference group with each of the seven bevel groups when evaluating the lightness values. Pearson Correlation test along with the simple linear regression analysis were used to determine whether a significant relationship existed between visual evaluation scores and lightness values. The groups were ranked from least to most esthetic as follows: no bevel, short and straight bevel, short and scalloped bevel, long and straight bevel, long and scalloped bevel, infinite and straight bevel, and infinite and scalloped bevel by the 91 evaluators and Kendall’s W was 0.80 (strong agreement). Moreover, no significant difference in rating scores was found among the five groups of evaluators regarding each type of bevel (p>0.05). The overall mean lightness values observed in groups 1-3 were significantly higher than those in groups 6 and 7 (P< 0.05), but no significant difference was noted among groups 1-5 or among groups 4-7. As the lightness values measured by the spectrophotometer decreased, the overall visual evaluation score increased. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient of -0.89 indicated there was a strong negative correlation between the two variables (p=0.0066). Linear regression analysis revealed that the predictor of lightness was significant (strong negative correlation, R-square 0.99, p< 0.0001). The first null hypothesis was accepted and the second, third, and fourth were rejected. There was no difference in median visual evaluation rank scores among five groups of evaluators for each type of bevel, however, there was agreement in the ranked order as the findings of this study indicated that infinite and scalloped bevel was the most preferred and no bevel was the least preferred via a strong agreement the evaluators. There was a significant difference in lightness values among the seven bevel groups; the shorter bevels had higher L* values that were closer to the L* values of the reference tooth while the longer bevels had lower L* values. The correlation data showed that placing a longer bevel (3+mm) allowed for a more gradual transition and better blending capabilities between the tooth structure and dental composite. The overall conclusion from this study was the longer the bevel, the more gradual the change in Lightness (L*), which correlated to the more esthetic restoration, as determined by the evaluators.

The purpose of this study was twofold in that it explored the relationships in which transformational and transactional leadership impact particular subordinate outcomes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Secondly, once transformational leadership was tested and shown to be a better predictor of both job satisfaction and organizational commitment when compared to transactional leadership, employee motivation and one’s broaden-and-build schema, building off of concepts from the Broaden-and-Build theory, were proposed as mediators of the relationship between transformational leaders and their subordinate’s outcomes in terms of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Transformational leadership is a strong predictor of many subordinate outcomes, but the goal of this study was to better understand the “why” in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee outcomes. After pilot testing the Broaden-And-Build Schema Questionnaire, a cross-sectional sample of employees were surveyed to assess the mediation of broaden-and-build schema and employee motivation on the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinate outcomes, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Participants (N = 390) responded to a survey consisting of four scales previously developed and one scale developed specifically for this study. Examining seven different hypotheses, regression analysis and SEM models were utilized to analyze the data. Regression analyses was used to analyze hypotheses 1 through 3 and it was found that transformational leadership predicted both subordinate outcomes and the mediating variables better than transactional leadership. Mediation analyses was used to analyze hypotheses 4 through 7 and it was found that while the mediations were positive, the proposed mediators did not significantly mediate the relationships. This study strived to reiterate the importance of transformational leaders and help to give direction to leaders as to what focus is important when job satisfaction and organizational commitment are the desired outcomes. These findings add to the extensive research on transformational leaders and their subordinate outcomes.

The goal of this research is to create a methodology that evaluates the security posture of container images and helps improve container security. This was done by first searching for any guidelines or standards that focus on container images and security. After finding none, I decided to create an evaluative methodology. The methodology is composed of actions that users should take to evaluate the security of a container image. The methodology was created through in-depth research on container images and the build instructions used to create them and is referred to as the Security Evaluation Methodology for Container Images. The entire Methodology was reviewed by experts in containers, information technology, and security; updated based on their feedback; and then reviewed again for further feedback. Four of the most popular container images—nginx, redis, mbabineau/cfn-bootstrap, and google/cadvisor—were evaluated using the Methodology. The evaluation revealed security issues in each image and provided direction on how to resolve each issue. Based on the positive feedback of experts and the performance of the Methodology, I propose that the Methodology be used to evaluate all container images, as it provides valuable security insights about, and suggestions for, an image.

This thesis chronicles my experiences with developing a panelized wall system for use by Habitat for Humanity and with testing that system in the design and construction of a house. Presented as a series of narratives, it follows the progress of the project from August 2003 to December 2005. Described is my motivation to test my theories through design and construction, the applicability of prefabrication to Habitat for Humanity’s use of unskilled volunteer labour, the incorporation of panelization into the design of a house for the Waterloo Region affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, the prefabrication of preclad wood framed wall panels for this house by students at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, the erection of these wall panels on-site, and the completion of the house to a weathertight state. The thesis concludes with discussions of the understanding I gained through my experiences, the necessity for further development and testing of the panelized wall system, and the future use of prefabrication by Habitat for Humanity.

Abstract: How to secure the power supply for future generation vehicles is an open question. This thesis uses Web-HIPRE as a tool of Decision Support System to predict the main compositions of future generation vehicles and also analyzes the advantages and shortages of currently existing solutions. The method of system approach is utilized to find out common problems of those existing solutions and to form an integrative solution. A model for this integrative solution is built under PowerSIM environment and the main objective of the model is to simulate the energy balance between power supply and demand. Finally, a brief discussion mainly focuses on the social and economic impact of the solution is made under PEBOSCA framework.