No description available.

Suborbital flights will soon take flight as a viable commercial operation. Operators such as Virgin Galactic, along with their designer Scaled Composites, will be responsible for safety of the flight crew, Spaceflight Participants and indeed the uninvolved public beneath their flight trajectories. Within the United States, the Federal Aviation Authority’s Office of Commercial Transportation (FAA-AST) has provided Launch License Regulations and Guidelines for prospective design organisations and operators alike. The aim of this thesis is to analyse suborbital spaceflight approaches to safety management and to determine whether effective safety management is being or could be applied to influence vehicle design and subsequent operation. The thesis provides a review of current safety-related information on suborbital spaceflight, existing space safety information and also existing aviation safety information. The findings of the review concern two main areas; firstly that a gap exists within suborbital safety management criteria, and secondly that a gap exists in existing aviation-based safety guidelines. In the first case, the research concluded that FAA-AST safety management criteria did not present sufficiently explicit and rationalised guidelines for this new industry. Indeed, the thesis argues that the scope of the FAA-AST regulations (covering both orbital and suborbital aspects) is too broad, and that regulations and guidelines should be split into distinct orbital and suborbital sections so as to provide more effective directives. In Europe, no such regulations or guidelines exist as there has until now been no requirement (a ‘customer’) for the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to implement such a framework. This thesis sought to address this gap by using a safety tool (Goal Structuring Notation) to construct a goal-based regulatory approach, which was included in a draft EASA suborbital Policy. Secondly, the main significant finding of this research is that a gap (literally) exists between current aviation-based design organisation safety guidelines and operator safety risk management guidelines. This absence of communication means operators are not managing their safety risks as effectively as they could. The thesis argues that the suborbital domain should take heed, as most vehicles are based on aircraft designs and therefore suborbital operators will, no doubt, apply ‘best practice’ either from the aviation or commercial space domains. Neither is appropriate or effective. As a result of the main finding a contiguous safety model has been developed which employs a ‘key (platform) hazard’ to join the design organisation analysis to the operator safety risk management, therefore completing an explicit sequence from the initiating causal event to the accident. The model is demonstrated using case studies from space disasters (Space Shuttle) and also from aviation accidents (Air France flight AF447); the model details the explicit accident sequence and shows missing or failed controls leading up to the accident. The research enabled models to be constructed and also proposed additional and explicit guidelines for the suborbital industry such as medical and training standards and separate safety criteria for vertical launch vehicles; these are included as recommendations and need to be ratified by recognised bodies such as the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety’s Suborbital Space Safety Technical Committee for inclusion in their Space Safety Standards Manual. In the latter case these recommendations are already agenda items for the Technical Committee to address.

In today's competitive environment, there is a continual need for organisations to invest substantial amounts of resource into the development and manufacture of products and processes, and Automotive Manufacturing Organisations are no exception to this. However, if the success rate of the projects undertaken by these organisations could be increased, then the level of resources invested in these projects could potentially be reduced. The management of risk offers a method through which the success rate of projects can be increased. However, as yet, many organisations within the Automotive Manufacturing Sector have not undertaken to integrate a rigorous method of managing the risks to their projects. This work focuses on the development and implementation of a project Risk Management Methodology into the Automotive Manufacturing Industry. The methodology was developed from a rigorous examination into the use of project and risk management into the Automotive Manufacturing Industry, as well as an investigation of risk management and project risk management processes within both the industrial and academic domains. Therefore, the Risk Management Methodology was designed to fit the needs of the users within the Automotive Manufacturing Industry, and as such, is compatible with the project management methods used within this industrial sector. The deliverables of the Risk Management Methodology were compared to 9 risk management processes and were found to give additional benefits to these processes. These were identified as the realisation of quality benefits, improvements to the technology and changes to working practices from reactive to pro-active management, which indicate that the Risk Management Methodology is more suited to Automotive Manufacturing Organisations than the other risk management processes. The Risk Management Methodology is a cyclic process, consisting of 5 stages; identification, assessment, analysis, reduction and/or mitigation and monitoring of the risks. Various tools have been developed as part of the Risk Management Methodology. They are the Front-End Assessment Tool to determine if there is a potential need to use the Risk Management Methodology, a Risk Register Database System to document the identified risks irrespective of geographical location, and the Risk Assessment Tool to enable the level of risk within the project to be reported. In addition to this, a Tracking Tool for Research and Technology Projects, based on the requirements of Rover's Technology Strategy Team, was developed to enable the probability of success of technology projects to be determined and tracked throughout their lifespan. The application of the Risk Management Methodology into 7 projects within the Rover/BMW group enabled the methods through which the assessment of the risks as well as the use of numbers within the tools themselves to be critiqued, as well as benefits of the use of the methodology and the tools to be ascertained. What was determined from its implementation was that it enabled the risks to be made visible through their identification, assessment, analysis and management. Deviations from the proposed plan could be identified, and an effort made to reduce and/or mitigate against the effects of the risks. In addition, the decision making process was improved, through increasing the amount of relevant information within the project and that there was identified a change in the working practices of the individuals and teams, from reactive, firefighting to pro-active management of the project. In conclusion, the Risk Management Methodology and its associated tools and techniques provides the means by which the risks and potential problems within projects in the Automotive Manufacturing Sector can be actively managed and as such, enables the projects to be completed successfully.

This thesis examines how to implement financial statement analysis to form some investment ideas. Specifically, we are looking at strategies such as value (going long on stocks with a high F-score and short on stocks with a low F-score), and a momentum strategy going long on stocks that have an increase in return on equity (ROE). Findings suggest that we are able to generate excess returns even after controlling for risks and recommend that the understanding of financial statement can help investors to form investment decisions and give a competitive edge over other investors in the market. There are a few lessons that investors can learn from the findings of this thesis. Value investors should focus on value firms. Momentum investors should pursue an investment strategy among firms with an improvement in return on equity. They could also benefit from forming a portfolio based on both investment ideas, which should protect them from economic downturn and offer an interesting portfolio.

The majority of risk events in Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects are due to the complexity of these projects. It requires the best of risk allocation to the appropriate party that is able to manage and control the allocated risks in order to achieve best value for money. Many researchers stated that the influence of a risk might trigger another risk event. Sterman (1992) identified that large-scale projects are complex and they have extremely dynamic and interdependent risks and uncertainties over their life cycle. Williams (2002) also state that in a large scale construction project the risk generally interact with each other in a nonlinear manner over time. Investigating the interaction between risk factors can help to decrease uncertainties. Dey and Ogunlana (2004) state that there it is necessity to analyse the interactions between risk events in complex projects. In recent approaches to risk management in PPP projects, experts tend to consider risk factors as being independent and ignore the influence of interaction between risk events over the project life cycle. This undermines the effectiveness of project risk estimation. In this work, further investigation on the interaction between risk factors and their impact on the risk cost in PPP projects will be investigated in Saudi Arabia based on first hand data collected from practitioner working in the kingdom. A questionnaire was designed and sent to a representative set of 250 practitioners in the field of Saudi PPP projects. 68 practitioners completed and returned the questionnaire with a 27% response rate. The collected data was pre-processed, processed and analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Using this statistical tool, regression analysis was carried out to build the equation of impact of risk events in each risk category. After that, the BestFit software was used to find best probability distribution fit for each risk factor. In This study, a new modelling approach for mapping risks and analysing the impact of risk events interaction considering the best distribution fit for each risk factor is developed using System Dynamics (SD) techniques (VENSIM software). This proposed model can help to estimate outturn construction unit cost of PPP projects and risk cost that is influenced by risk events interaction. Based on comprehensive prototyping and validation, the proposed approach is found to be robust valid tool for addressing real impact of risk events and evaluating the expected risk cost, which can help to improve risk allocation in PPP projects.

Part I: This chapter develops a lattice method for option evaluation aiming to investigate whether the option prices reflect the shifts in the distributions of the underlying asset returns and the risk-free interest rate. More precisely we try to investigate whether the option prices reflect the switches in the correlation between the underlying and risk-free bond returns that characterise different states of the economy. For this reason we develop and test two models. In the first model we allow all the parameters to follow a regime-switching process while in the second model, in order to isolate the regime-switching correlation effect on the option prices, we allow only the correlation to follow a regime-switching process. The models developed use pentanomial lattices to represent the evolution of the regime-switching underlying assets. Our findings suggest that the option prices reflect the regime-switches and that a model which considers these switches could produce more accurate results than a single-regime model. Part II: This part develops a class of closed-form models for options on commodities evaluation under the assumptions of mean-reversion in the commodity prices and factors’ values and regime-switching in the volatilities and correlations. At first we develop novel closed-form solutions of the 1-, 2- and 3-factors models and later in the paper these three models are transformed into regime switching models. The six models (three with and three without regime-switching) are then tested and compared on real market data. Our findings suggest that the by increasing the stochastic factors and assuming regime-switching in the models their flexibility and thus their accuracy increases.

Risks and uncertainties are inherent in construction projects and if neglected these risks often lead to project cost and time overruns. Traditional methods of forecasting risks rely upon intuition and 'feel' which has proved inadequate for the needs of investors in modern construction projects. To cope with these recognised risks, a risk management framework, which consists four components (risk identification, risk classification, risk analysis and risk response), has been developed. The present research focuses on financial risks in construction management, and in particular, the development of enhanced quantitative, probabilistic methods for risk analysis. A comprehensive review of the treatment of risk and uncertainty in the construction industry is undertaken. Background knowledge of probability theory and Monte Carlo simulation is reviewed, as is previous investigations into construction network analysis and project economics. A comparison of the Programme Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and the Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) methods in construction networks risk analysis is carried out. Two example projects are analysed by both methods. When applying the MCS method, a sensitivity analysis is carried out by investigating the effect of different probability distributions (Normal, Log-Normal, Beta, Triangular and Uniform) for individual activity durations, the number of simulations used and the effect of the manner of how the mean and standard deviations are set for the different probability distributions. A new analytical method, the Modified Stochastic Assignment Model (MSAM), is proposed for the prediction of project duration. Five example projects are used to demonstrate the validity of the MSAM and to illustrate its application in construction project evaluations. The accuracy of the MSAM method is assessed by comparison to the MCS method. A comparison of the MSAM with other analytical methods commonly used in construction network analysis, such as PERT and the Probabilistic Network Evaluation Technique (PNET), is also presented. The First Order Second Moment (FOSM) method, a methodology previously used solely in system reliability analysis is applied to project economics. The definition of the FOSM method is given and detailed mathematical treatments of these methods are described. The methodology of using the FOSM in construction economics is explained and ten examples are analysed using both the FOSM method and the MCS to show the applicability and the degree of accuracy of these methods. The current research shows that the MSAM method yields the probability of project completion within a prescribed target time, or the required project time at a specific probability. The research also shows that it is possible to use the FOSM methods for risk analysis in decision-making in construction economics in such areas as selection of project, elemental cost analysis, cash flow streams and setting of plant hire rates. Both methods require computational time that is significantly less than an equivalent MCS.

This thesis sets out a journey which culminates in the development of an analytical framework, the "Organisational Creativity Appraisal" which is intended to assist organisations in evaluating their ability to support and develop creativity. This framework is derived from the common thread of the thesis, which is drawn from a range of research and consultancy projects, and the resulting published work, spanning an eight year period, centring on the role of knowledge and creativity in the strategy and performance of organisations. The literature of strategy, learning and creativity increasingly recognises that organisational context is critical to the formation of strategy, to the content of the strategy and to its successful implementation. The thesis explores the ways in which learning and creativity, the basis of knowledge-based strategy, are influenced by organisational context or social architecture. The research explores the ways in which managers can gain greater understanding of the social architectures of their organisations so as to assist in supporting their strategic development. The central core of the thesis is the nine published papers upon which it is based but it also derives from the broader perspective of my published work in the form of both articles and books. The thesis further draws upon my own experience as a leader and manager in the context of university business schools and as a consultant, researcher and developer in the context of a range of international private and public sector organisations. The work is based upon a premise that theory should inform practice and that practice should inform theory. The "Organisational Creativity Appraisal" framework is informed by both theory and practice and is intended to assist in management practice. There is no assumption that management research can arrive at prescriptions for managerial and organisational behaviour. On the other hand management research can usefully inform management and organisational behaviour, as long as it is employed in a critically reflective manner. The "Organisational Creativity Appraisal" presented in this work should be regarded as the framework in its present form which is likely to develop further as my research progresses in the future.

User-friendly systems of human factors (HF) analysis are not presently available to the managers of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). It is therefore difficult for such professionals to assess the safety culture within their own workplaces without the assistance of externally sourced experts. Large companies have implemented methods of HF analysis with a significant degree of success using HF experts. The aim of this research project was to confirm that SMEs could also benefit from these methods using in-house personnel with a specially-created HF assessment tool. Human error is often cited as the cause of accidents and incidents. A system of HF analysis was created as part of this research project to allow the technique to be implemented by non-experts within SMEs to identify human-related risks and thereby to assist in improving safety culture and safety performance by implementing measures to minimise those risks through HF methods. This research project found that potential collaboration partners that were initially keen to take part soon withdrew from the research project after realising what was involved in terms of required resources. For those companies that participated, the workforce was surveyed to determine the workplace safety culture. Some positive results were obtained but the overriding findings of this research project were that, of the majority of SMEs that were keen to collaborate, they did not actually want to change their safety culture; rather, they were content to continue to implement safety by enforcement of rules & regulations (antecedents) with little scope for implementation of behaviour-based safety systems of control. Although most companies approached knew of the potential benefits it was clear that they had no desire to allocate the resources necessary to achieve those benefits.

The analysis of the interdependence between international equity markets has been a key issue in international finance as it has important practical implications for asset allocations, risk management, and economic policy. The objective of this thesis is to re-examine the interdependence amongst international equity markets at the industry sector level. In particular, the thesis investigates time varying, long run and short run dynamic relationships between industry sectors of the United States of America and three leading emerging markets/countries: Brazil, Malaysia, and South Africa between January, 2000 and December, 2009. The thesis advances previous studies on international industry sector relationships in three specific aspects. Firstly, it examines a large number of heterogeneous industry sectors from the global economy. Secondly, existing empirical studies in this area need to be updated to include the recent turbulent global economic and financial crisis period. Thirdly, the thesis offers a deeper analysis into the intra-industry sector interdependence than previously presented. Such analysis has important implications for international diversification strategies. A crucial empirical contribution of the study is by applying liner and non liner econometric time series techniques for the evaluation for long run global relationships and causality linkages, including testing for asymmetric causality relations both in linear and nonlinear settings. This thesis also represents [to the best of my knowledge] the first study that extensively considers time-varying relationships amongst international industry sectors by examining time varying correlations and beta stability, as well as time varying cointegration and causality relationships. Another empirical motivation of this thesis is the need to extend existing empirical studies on industry sectors by examining the impact of the recent economic and financial crisis period. Specifically, the thesis investigates the shifts in cross correlations and the dynamic causality linkages between the US and emerging markets' industry sectors before and during the 2007-2009 economic and financial crisis. The initial exploratory analysis of the return cross-correlations indicate that, though small or in a moderate range, the existence of co-movements amongst international industry sectors as all correlations coefficients are positive and significant at the one per cent level. The results for long run relationships provided by linear (without seasonal dummies) and nonlinear cointegration tests show no significant evidence of cointegration relations between the US and the emerging markets industrial sectors. Similarly, the results of the dynamic causality linkages, between the US and emerging markets industrial sectors indicate, there exist some significant short-run causal linkages (linear and nonlinear) between these markets' industry sectors, weak linkages. Overall, the results of time varying analysis indicate unstable relationships between the returns of US and the emerging economies' industry sectors over the sample period. The empirical results of crisis suggest increased cross correlations and causality relationships among the industry sectors of US and the emerging markets under study during the crisis of the sample period than pre-crisis period of the same sample. In summary, the empirical results of the research indicate relatively weak interdependence between the US and the emerging markets industry sectors, which suggest potential diversification benefits for US investors in diversifying their portfolio investment across industrial sectors of the emerging markets.