Disruptions can cause projects to fail. Within the project management literature, approaches to managing disruptions consist of uncertainty, risk, opportunity, change, and crisis management. These approaches focus on developing strategies to manage perceived threats and also work towards predicting risk, therefore, reducing vulnerability. This vulnerability-reduction only focus is limiting because it takes the focus away from the development of a general capacity for readiness and for responding to uncertain situations. A resiliency approach enables a simultaneous focus on vulnerability reduction, readiness and response and thus ensures recovery. Given the context and discipline specific nature of the resilience concept, and the little or no attention in projects, this thesis conceptualises resilience in projects. This conceptualisation is to enable the identification of factors to consider and indicators to ensure overall project recovery, through the identification of dimensions and antecedents of resilience respectively. The aim of this study therefore, is to develop a framework to conceptualise resilience in projects. To achieve this aim, three case studies, namely; building, civil engineering and engineering construction projects were investigated. Within each case study, the critical incident technique was employed to identify disruptions and their management through direct observations of human activities, narration of critical incidents and review of documents on disruption. Following this, a comparative analysis and synthesis of the case studies was carried out and findings revealed definition, dimensions, antecedents and consequences of resilience in projects. Specifically, resilience in projects is defined as; the capability of a project to respond to, prepare for and reduce the impact of disruption caused by the drifting environment and project complexity. The dimensions of resilience are; proactivity, coping ability, flexibility and persistence. Proactivity can be defined as an anticipatory capability that the project takes to influence their endeavours whilst coping ability can be defined as the capability to manage and deal with stress caused by disruptions within the projects. Furthermore, flexibility can be defined as the capability of a project to manage disruption by allowing change but ultimately making sure that the aim is maintained and persistence is the capability to continue despite difficult situations. Several antecedents of these dimensions of resilience are identified. For proactivity these include contract, training, monitoring, contingency and experience. For coping ability these include the contract, training, contingency and experience. For flexibility these include open-mindedness, planning, continual monitoring and continual identification of ideas and for persistence these include continual monitoring, planning and negotiation. Also, the consequence of resilience in projects is recovery through response, readiness and vulnerability reduction. This conceptualisation of resilience is then synthesised into a validated framework for resilience in projects. Theoretically, this research provides definition, dimensions, antecedents and consequence for resilience in projects and a theoretical starting point for the concept of resilience in projects. The significance of this research to practice is the identification and development of a more holistic perspective of managing disruptions in projects through the identified dimensions, antecedents and consequences. These dimensions, antecedents and consequences provide clarity for the roles of project managers and team members in managing disruptions and thus, expand the eleventh knowledge area; project risk management, of the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK). In addition, the dimensions, antecedents and consequences of resilience in projects contribute to the curriculum development in project management and thus, provide factors and indicators that project managers require in managing disruptions.

In spite of the benefits of implementing whole life costing technique as a valuable approach for comparing alternative building designs allowing operational cost benefits to be evaluated against any initial cost increases and also as part of procurement in the construction industry, its adoption has been relatively slow due to the lack of tangible evidence, “know-how” skills and knowledge of the practice i.e. the lack of professionals in many establishments with knowledge and training on the use of whole life costing technique, this situation is compounded by the absence of available data on whole life costing from relevant projects, lack of data collection mechanisms and so on. This has proved to be very challenging to those who showed some willingness to employ the technique in a construction project. The knowledge generated from a project can be considered as best practices learned on how to carry out tasks in a more efficient way, or some negative lessons learned which have led to losses and slowed down the progress of the project and performance. Knowledge management in whole life costing practice can enhance whole life costing analysis execution in a construction project, as lessons learned from one project can be carried on to future projects, resulting in continuous improvement, providing knowledge that can be used in the operation and maintenance phases of an assets life span. This study aims to use knowledge management as a tool to address the obstacle of whole life costing outlined in this study by developing a framework for knowledge capture and recovery in whole life costing practice in construction. An extensive literature review was first conducted on the concept of knowledge management and whole life costing. This was followed by a semi-structured interview to explore the existing and good practice knowledge management in whole life costing practice in a construction project. The data gathered from the semi-structured interview was analysed using content analysis and used to develop the framework. From the results obtained in the study, it shows that the practice of project review is the common method used in the capturing of knowledge and should be undertaken in an organised and accurate manner, and results should be presented in the form of instructions or in a checklist format, forming short and precise insights. In order to efficiently and swiftly recover knowledge from previous whole life costing project, the knowledge must be characterised based on whole life costing processes and activities, by means of an IT system with components designed to manage knowledge and locate expertise. However; the framework developed advised that irrespective of how effective the approach to knowledge capture and recovery, the absence of an environment for sharing knowledge, would render the approach ineffective. Open culture and resources are critical for providing a knowledgesharing setting, and leadership has to sustain whole life costing knowledge capture and recovery, giving full support for its implementation. The framework has been evaluated by academics and practitioners who are experts in the area of whole life costing practice. The results have indicated that the framework and its components are both suitable and efficient.

Submitted by Maria Aparecida (cidazen@gmail.com) on 2017-08-29T14:58:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Eduardo Vieira.pdf: 6054087 bytes, checksum: 24f8532bfdfaeef177aa46b9f5974869 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-29T14:58:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Eduardo Vieira.pdf: 6054087 bytes, checksum: 24f8532bfdfaeef177aa46b9f5974869 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-02-12 / This work introduces PROPOST (Project Portfolio Support Tool), a knowledgebased software tool for supporting Project Portfolio Management – an increasing management model nowadays. This tool focuses on a project definition process, and was modeled using the MAAEM methodology and the ONTORMAS ontology-driven tool, as well as by reusing the ONTOINFO and ONTOWUM ontologies, which describe software product families for the development of Information Retrieval and Filtering applications, respectively. PROPOST looks for providing resource optimization by supporting reuse of existing information systems as well as avoiding duplicity on project definition for the composition on the organization’s software portfolio. The tool was created not only as a contribution for solving a current problem related to redundancy on portfolio definition, as well as support for several activities related to portfolio management (select, prioritization and evaluation). The development of PROPOST provides references on how ontology-based development can help in the software development process. It also contributes as a case study for evaluating the MAAEM methodology and the ONTORMAS ontology used in modeling process, having provided several hints for their improvement. / Este trabalho apresenta a PROPOST (Project Portfolio Support Tool), uma ferramenta baseada em conhecimento, para suporte à Gestão de Portifólio de Projetos – um modelo de gestão em ascensão na atualidade. Esta ferramenta possui seu foco no processo de definição de projetos, e foi modelada usando a metodologia MAAEM e a ferramenta dirigida por ontologias ONTORMAS, bem como pelo reuso das ontologias ONTOINFO e ONWOWUM, as quais descrevem famílias de produtos de software para o desenvolvimento de aplicações nas áreas de Recuperação e Filtragem de Informação, respectivamente. A PROPOST objetiva promover a otimização de recursos através da reutilização de sistemas de informação existentes, bem como evitar duplicidade na definição de projetos para a composição do portifólio de software das empresas. Sendo assim, a concepção desta ferramenta objetivou contribuir para a solução de um problema da atualidade, relacionado à redundância na composição do portifólio de projetos, bem como suporte a outras atividades relacionadas à gestão do portifólio (seleção, priorização e avaliação). O desenvolvimento da PROPOST também serve de referência sobre as contribuições das ontologias no processo de desenvolvimento de software. Adicionalmente, esse trabalho também constituiu um estudo de caso para avaliação da metodologia MAAEM e da ontologia ONTORMAS usadas no processo de modelagem, tendo proporcionado várias contribuições para a melhoria das mesmas.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-13T17:10:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LidianeSN_DISSERT.pdf: 4629879 bytes, checksum: d28e312771a5a0b81c006b055f5b7eb1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-02-24 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The coastal zone has been studied worldwide with a focus on the coastal erosion. In the present days, much of the world's coastlines are being affected by erosion, which causes great damage to the economy. This work had as study case the beaches of Areia Preta, Artistas, Meio and Forte located in Natal in Rio Grande do Norte. It shows as result the monitoring of the beach strip that makes possible to obtain quantitative and qualitative data, allows the study of the coastal dynamics of the beaches and the Recovery Project of the Areia Preta beach interference on adjacent beaches. This research was guided by the integrated analysis method on the systemic perspective. The pratical procedures adopted were: bibliographic research; fieldwork during eleven months (environmental characterization, collection of hydrodynamic data, topographic leveling, collection of sediments) and; sedimentological analysis of samples collected. By monitoring of the points A, B, C, D and E we were able to find the occurrence of the coastal erosion on their biggest part except by the C and D profiles. It was noted the need for the government to complete the hydraulic fill, as it made only 60% of the landfill planed. It was found that the spikes built on the beach of Areia Preta are preventing the natural transport of sediments that the longshore performs towards South-North. This interference is causing the lack of sediment on the beaches of Forte and Meio and their coastal erosion in consequence / A zona costeira tem sido estudada em escala mundial com o enfoque na eros?o costeira. Atualmente, grande parte das linhas de costa mundial est? sendo afetada pela eros?o, o que gera grande preju?zo para a economia. O trabalho teve como ?rea de estudo as praias de Areia Preta, dos Artistas, do Meio e do Forte, localizadas em Natal/RN. Apresenta como resultado o monitoramento da faixa de praia, que possibilita a obten??o de dados quantitativos e qualitativos, permite o estudo da din?mica costeira das praias e da interfer?ncia do projeto de recupera??o da praia de Areia Preta nas praias adjacentes. Esta pesquisa foi norteada pelo m?todo da an?lise integrada, na perspectiva sist?mica. Os procedimentos pr?ticos adotados foram: pesquisa bibliogr?fica; trabalho de campo durante onze meses (caracteriza??o ambiental, coleta de dados hidrodin?micos, nivelamento topogr?fico e coleta de sedimentos) e; an?lise sedimentol?gica das amostras coletadas. Atrav?s do monitoramento dos pontos A, B, C, D e E, foi poss?vel constatar a ocorr?ncia de eros?o costeira em todos os perfis. Notou-se a necessidade do poder p?blico completar o aterro hidr?ulico, j? que este efetuou apenas 60% do aterro previsto. Constatou-se que os espig?es constru?dos na praia de Areia Preta est?o impedindo o transporte natural de sedimentos, que a deriva litor?nea realiza no sentido Sul-Norte. Essa interfer?ncia est? acarretando na falta de sedimentos nas praias do Meio e do Forte e, conseq?entemente, na eros?o costeira das referidas praias