No description available.

Different cost effective design methods have been developed to reduce the cost of buildings, of which structural optimum design methods and cost effective designs methods using estimating data, are the most common. However, there is no record of the use of cost effective design methods in practice. Consequently, potential benefits of such methods remain untapped. This research evaluated the cost savings through cost effective design methods, identified difficulties involved in their use and examined favourable conditions for the implementation of such methods in design practice. The research aimed at investigating whether or not the opinion among practising designers, (structural engineers and architects) that "cost benefits through cost effective designs are insignificant and methods are not practical" is justified. Previous researchers have developed cost effective design methods, but very little has been done to change the opinion of building designers regarding these methods. A proper evaluation of cost effective design methods and a study of the design process are therefore necessary to gain the attention of designers in practice. The opinion among practising designers is that cost savings through optimum methods are less than 10% of elemental cost and 1% of total building cost. The analysis of cost savings of 22 historical buildings have shown that this is not the case. Optimum design methods using the computer to find the minimum cost from a set of feasible designs were developed for reinforced concrete elements; slabs, beams, columns and independent footing foundations. These optimum methods were applied to the design of 22 historical buildings. More than 10% of elemental cost savings were observed. 2.91% of total building cost can be saved using optimum methods for design of reinforced concrete elements, which is more than 45% of the total design fee of a building. The study proved that for a given building, probabilities of total building cost saving exceeding 1%, 2% and 3% are 0.96, 0.79 and 0.47 respectively. Design and build contracts provide not only a facility but also an incentive, to designers to use cost effective design methods. On the contrary, percentage fee contracts act as a disincentive. Therefore, the legal procedures in design practice, may sometimes serve as obstacles for the use of cost effective design methods. Furthermore, current design practice lacks motivating factors to designers to use cost effective design methods. Therefore building construction industry may need to pay additional fee to get benefits from cost effective design methods.

There are three approaches to health economic evaluation for comparing two therapies: cost minimization, incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER), and incremental net benefit (INB). Of the three, the ICER method has long been the standard in the assessment of the cost-effectiveness analysis of a new treatment. However, due to concerns with interpretability and statistical inference inherent to the ICER statistic and its confidence intervals, authors have suggested the use of incremental net benefit (INB) approach as an alternative. The INB can be expressed either in units of effectiveness or costs. When analyzing data from a clinical trial, expressing incremental net benefit in units of cost allows the investigator to examine all three approaches in a single graph, complete with the corresponding statistical inferences. Furthermore, if costs and effectiveness are not censored, this can be achieved using common statistical procedures. The standard INB analysis assumes that the willingness-to-accept (WTA) compensation for the loss of a unit of health benefit (at some cost saving) is the same as the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for it. Theoretical and empirical evidence suggest, however, that in health care the WTA is about twice the WTP. In this thesis we show that the method of INB analysis can be adapted to capture the WTA vs WTP disparity. Using the Bayesian theory, statistical procedures are provided for the cost-effectiveness analysis in the comparison of two arms of a randomized clinical trial that allows WTA and WTP to have different values. An example that adjusts the disparity between WT A and WTP is provided. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

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After the Water Utilities Corporation adopted outsourcing as a policy initiative and operational directive various non-core functions were outsourced. This raises obvious questions as to why the Corporation suddenly decided to do this. Does the Corporation indeed benefit in terms of value addition from outsourced functions? Some of the pertinent questions include: To what extent did policy guidelines and operational measures govern the said outsourcing initiatives? What are the costs and benefits of the following: fleet management, IT/functional/Technical/and Infrastructure support? This paper argues that Public Utility Companies such as the WUC are not implementing outsourcing initiatives the right way. As a result, outsourcing at WUC is ridden with more costs than benefits. Using multiple data collection methods thirty respondents, employed at various WUC work stations completed the questionnaires. The results from the questionnaire suggest that outsourcing is the right business decision to be made, but cost benefit assessment must be undertaken in order to derive more benefits from outsourcing initiatives. In tackling the problems of the predominance of costs versus benefits an overhaul of the policy and implementation framework needs to be done. In carrying out a cost benefit analysis of outsourcing initiatives at Water Utilities Corporation, a three-tier dimensional model in which quantitative data, qualitative data and cross quantity-quality data was analysed and tabulated. According to the cost benefit analysis variant model, a negatively discounted cost benefit ratio indicates more costs over benefits for any particular analysis of data. While measures of non-monetary outsourcing costs are improving, at least four other key areas warrant more attention: First, routine savings derive from routine precautions to determine an efficient working model of outsourcing. Second, models of vendor (provider) and the Corporation (service provider) and the Corporations' clients (consumer) are underdeveloped in this field . Third, outsourcing externalities occur when entities (such as the Corporation, Premises Managers, some persons and environments) produce targets and situations that provide outsourcing opportunities. These entities externalise or do not bear the outsourcing costs to the corporation and society that they produce. This can be explained by the convergence of qualitative responses from respondents, the efficiency and effectiveness of the vendors and the overall saisfaction of the Coporation of the services provided by the vendors. This report has been conducted on Water Utilities Corporation ,Botswana. Data has been collected by observing total outsourcing process, taking personal interviews, analysis cost and revenue data and searching through data archives. / Thesis (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2011

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / Economics / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Organisations managing recreational sites commonly need to understand the factors influencing visitation choices made by the public and the impact they have on the value of their sites. This need is particularly pertinent with an increasing societal reliance on cost benefit analysis for project appraisal. Whilst on-site visitor surveys can provide information on preferences and values, the potential to transfer findings to predict visitor numbers and values at unsurveyed sites provides an attractive policy option. Indeed, the demand for these benefit transfer methodologies is increasing as more Government emphasis is placed on evaluating the economic potential of rural outdoor recreation. This research concerns the development of benefit transfer models to estimate visitor numbers from outset zones to British Waterways and Forestry Commission sites. Employing a GIS, the research uses multilevel statistical modelling techniques to quantify the impacts of the proximity to competing recreation sites, resource accessibility and quality, and the characteristics of visiting populations. The models are constructed using visitor survey data and applied to unsurveyed sites, testing their use in benefit transfer. Methods are also developed that allow their output to be used to estimate the non-market value of the recreational opportunities afforded by the resources. The findings show some robust relationships determined visit patterns, with travel times from outset zones being a consistent predictor of visitor numbers. A range of other indicators were also significant including socio-demographic measures, site characteristics and substitute availability values. Nevertheless, when individual sites were compared, considerable variability was detected in the strength and direction of these relationships. The methodology developed explicitly addresses the frequently ignored spatial dimension of benefit transfer. Here the GIS provides the functionality to produce a range of measures of the underlying determinants of recreational visits. Although further refinements are needed, the future for spatial benefit transfer models appears promising.

The research examines the difficulties relating to the construction of a computer model for the automation of the design and cost estimation practices in engineering. The research has been carried out in an industrial context and the work has included both theoretical and pragmatic issues relating to the modelling of expertise for the production of commercially useful software in the field of combustion system design. The difficulties relating to the capture of ill-defined knowledge and subjective human decision-making with 'traditional' programming languages is examined and a study undertaken regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques. A particular emphasis has been placed on decision-making under uncertainty. The work has resulted in the construction of a prototype expert system that can be used to produce design quotations relating to single burner gas-fired combustion systems. An important aspect of the decision-making characteristic of engineering design, and particularly for the cost estimating stages of a project, is the mannner in which engineers combine both cost and technical data in order to arrive at design solutions on the criterion 'value for money'. The formal mathematics of probability theory and confirmation theory provide tools for modelling expertise of this kind and the research has developed and examined two parallel systems. The first is based on the use of Bayes' theorem and the second makes use of ideas from both confirmation and fuzzy set theory. The general approach, developed within the research, of combining knowledge types relating to 'fitness for purpose' and 'cost' into ordinal measures of 'value' is fundamental to many areas of decision-making and has many applications. The research also addresses the use of rule-based methods for application domains where the knowledge is continually changing and the expertise of users is variable.