Oil is one of the most valuable resources. For a country like Uganda, which is one of the least developed countries in the world with more than one third of the population still living below the poverty line; the discovery of this valuable resource has the capacity to radically alter the economy of the country. But on the other hand, oil exploration, mining and refining are complex, costly, long duration projects with many challenges that require sophisticated financial management, planning, scheduling and cost control. The project management profession is charged as a single point of responsibility for initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling projects in order to meet stakeholder’s needs and expectations. The research objectives were: 1. To identify and examine the challenges and risks associated with the oil industry in Uganda. 2. To investigate the effectiveness of project management practices in the Ugandan oil industry in terms 1 above. 3. Identify how project success can be measured in the Ugandan oil industry. A case study was the research technique adopted and interviews were conducted with the major stakeholders in the Ugandan oil industry. The research findings reveal the challenges and risks that continue to plague the Ugandan oil industry and the role of project management in the exploration phase of the project. The research findings were used to evaluate the role, responsibility and service that project management professionals are expected to render and the actual role, responsibility and service that the professionals have been rendering to the stakeholders in the Ugandan oil industry. The research then concludes by proposing ways of improving the chances of project success in the Ugandan oil industry.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1992. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

The rise of on-demand platform work typified by Uber has intensified a decades-long trend away from standard work relationships and toward contingent work structures, characterized by the unbounding of work in space and time. Yet many workers have always toiled outside of a traditional workplace and “standard” schedule. My dissertation examines how contingent workers in four different industries navigate unstable work schedules across unsettled work geographies, drawing on 120 interviews with agricultural and oil and gas workers in Texas and on-demand delivery workers and university adjuncts in New York City. Across these “old” and “new” cases of contingent work performed across rural and urban landscapes, work processes restructure space and time in such a way that workers do not know when, for how long, or where they will have work. I call this temporal and spatial instability positional uncertainty – repurposing an oilfield term for the inability to pinpoint precisely where one is at any given moment in the drilling process. The experience of positional uncertainty forces workers to subordinate the rhythms and geographies of their own lives to the temporal and spatial imperatives of their respective labor processes, leading to time struggle (unpaid periods of waiting or “zombie time” and overwork) and challenges in space (related to the bifurcation or unbounding, respectively, of the spaces of work and home). Workers respond, first, by doing boundary work, and second, by telling both critical and anchoring stories in attempts to bring coherence and meaning to the day-to-day and the long-term. The dissertation highlights the integral role of time and space in structuring social life, the active maneuvers by which workers struggle to re-configure time and space to produce coherence and make a life for themselves, and the short- and long-term costs of the transfer of risk onto workers through positional uncertainty. The strategic comparison reveals parallel strategies across disparate cases in response to the warping of time and space and illuminates how positional uncertainty exacerbates deep-set structural inequalities.

Thesis (MFamMed)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / Background: Coronary heart disease is a global public health problem. Formerly considered rare in sub-Saharan Africa, evidence has shown that urbanization and the adoption of more affluent and sedentary lifestyle in subpopulations of this region, may result in increased prevalence. One such subpopulation is workers in the Nigerian petroleum industry and this study examines their risk factors for coronary heart disease. In addition the study compares the risk profile of onshore and offshore workers. Method: This is a descriptive cross sectional study undertaken to determine the level of risk factors for the development of cardiovascular disease in two groups of male workers of the petroleum industry in Nigeria; the onshore and the offshore workers. Four hundred workers were randomnly selected and invited to participate, with a desired sample size of 234. The data was collected by using an electronic questionnaire to explore life style factors like exercise, diet, and smoking that predispose to this disease. Anthropometric indices included body mass index, waist circumference and waist to hip ratio. Biochemical tests included lipid profile and fasting blood glucose. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure was also recorded. The prevalence of known hypertension and diabetes as well as the metabolic syndrome were determined. The questionnaire data was analysed and compared with the chi-square test using the software, Epi-info 2008 Windows Version 3.5.1 and the means of the continuous variables were determined and compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results: 121 onshore and 110 offshore workers participated. Overall the cardiovascular risk profile of onshore versus offshore workers in the oil industry was worse. Onshore workers had increased waist circumference,; though there was no significant difference in the Waist-Hip Ratio, increased rates of metabolic syndrome, diabetes and hypertension and were less physically active. Dietary differences were less marked, but more beef and chicken were consumed by onshore while more fish was consumed by offshore workers. Conversely the offshore workers had a higher BMI and lower levels of protective HDL. Overall, in this population, the BMI and the umber of diabetics were higher and the HDL lower than the country figures. Conclusion The obesity profile of the two groups was comparable to that of the Western nations and could become worse. This also reflects the fact that within Nigeria there are sub-populations with cardio-metabolic profiles that depart significantly from the national average. This is most probably due to dietary factors and poor exercise habits and calls for intervention through health promotional activities / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Nie beskikbaar