Dynamics of Development of Folklore Festivals in Volyn in the Late 20th Century. Features of Formation

The paper addresses the problems of Volyn festival movement. The aim of this study is to consider the specifics of Volyn folklore festivals “Berehynia” and “Polissia Summer With Folklore” as prominent international projects. The research included collecting information from various sources (books, magazine and newspaper articles, interviews with organizers and participants, observations), analytical processing of this information, description of important facts, comparison of festivals by project size, age and social status of the audience, festival goal and scope, frequency, as well as social, demographic, geographical, professional status of their participants, conceptual differences and features, place and nature of events, ways to present projects to the general public and others. As a result, it was concluded that “Berehynia” is a festival of a classical mode while “Polissia Summer With Folklore” is a festival of a non-classical mode.

Relationship between Energy and Atmosphere (EA) Credits and Project Size in the LEED-NC Version 3 (v3) and 4 (v4) Projects

This study aims to explore the influence of project size on the Energy and Atmosphere (EA) credits in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for New Construction and Major Renovations (LEED-NC) version 3 (v3) in California and version 4 (v4) in the United States (US) in office-type projects. If the relationship between the ordinal data of EA credits and project size changed monotonically, then Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used. If the relationship between the EA credits ordinal data and project size did not change monotonically, then the EA credit data were divided into below and above the median project size groups, and, as a consequence, the Cliff′s δ effect size and exact Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney tests were used. If the EA credits were binary or dichotomous data, then the natural logarithm of the odds ratio and Fisher’s exact 2 × 2 test with Lancaster’s mid-p-value were used. The results showed that the performance of operational energy, enhanced the refrigerant management and that the renewable energy credits in LEED-NC v3/v4 Certified, Silver, and Gold projects depended on the project size. We concluded that the LEED project size is an important variable for developing LEED-NC strategies for office-type projects.

Generic concepts for organising data management in research projects

<p>Since few years Research Data Management is becoming an increasingly important part of scientific projects regardless of the number of topics or subjects, researchers or institutions involved. The bigger the project, the more are the data organization and data management requirements in order to assure the best outcome of the project. Despite this, projects rarely have clear structures or responsibilities for data management. The importance of clearly defining data management and also budgeting for it is often underestimated and/or neglected. A rather scarce number of reports and documentations explaining the research data management in certain projects and detailing best practice examples can be found in the current literature.  Additionally, these are often mixed up with topics of the general project management. Furthermore, these examples are very focused on the certain issues of the described projects and thus, a transferability (or general application) of provided methods is very difficult.</p><p>This contribution presents generic concepts of research data management with an effort to separate them from general project management tasks. Project size, details among the diversity of topics and the involved researcher, play an important role in shaping data management and determining which methods of data management can add value to the outcome of a project. We especially focus on different organisation types, including roles and responsibilities for data management in projects of different sizes. Additionally, we show how and when also education should be included, but also how important agreements in a project are.</p>

Software evolution: the lifetime of fine-grained elements

A model regarding the lifetime of individual source code lines or tokens can estimate maintenance effort, guide preventive maintenance, and, more broadly, identify factors that can improve the efficiency of software development. We present methods and tools that allow tracking of each line’s or token’s birth and death. Through them, we analyze 3.3 billion source code element lifetime events in 89 revision control repositories. Statistical analysis shows that code lines are durable, with a median lifespan of about 2.4 years, and that young lines are more likely to be modified or deleted, following a Weibull distribution with the associated hazard rate decreasing over time. This behavior appears to be independent from specific characteristics of lines or tokens, as we could not determine factors that influence significantly their longevity across projects. The programing language, and developer tenure and experience were not found to be significantly correlated with line or token longevity, while project size and project age showed only a slight correlation.

Analyzing bidding competitiveness and success rate of contractors competing for public construction projects

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze and evaluate bidding competitiveness and success rate of contractors bidding for public construction projects (PCPs). Additionally, this research determines the effect of work sector, contractor’s classification category (experience), project size and number of bidders on contractors’ bidding competitiveness, and the influence of work sector and classification category on their success rate. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected through 2,296 bidding attempts for 289 tender projects that were announced by the Government Tenders Department in Jordan between 2013 and 2016. The research uses bid competitiveness percentage (BCP) to evaluate contractors’ bidding competitiveness. Pearson correlation is used to investigate the correlation among variables. Hypothesis testing using ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the effect of the abovementioned factors on contractors’ bidding competitiveness, and their success rate. Findings The results of the analysis indicate that contractors’ average BCP and success rate in Jordanian PCPs are 83.8% and 13.3%, respectively. The analysis also reveals that work sector, contractor’s classification category, project size and number of bidders significantly affect contractors’ bidding competitiveness, whereas classification category and work sector do not affect bidding success rate. Therefore, experience of contractors affects their bidding competitiveness, but does not affect their success rate. Originality/value The present research uses contractors’ bidding success rate as a measure to evaluate their bidding competitiveness for PCPs. The novel model of this research can be applied in any country, after considering local regulations, to measure and evaluate contractors’ bidding competitiveness, and success rate when bidding for PCPs. Also, contractors cannot depend on their experience (i.e. classification category) or increasing bidding attempts to win bids and improve bidding success rate, rather than enhance their bidding strategy.

Design Practitioner’s Insights Regarding the Use of Co-Location in Design-Build

Co-location is a process that involves bringing the constituents of a project together in a shared space with the intent of enhancing team effectiveness. When used with the design-build delivery method, formal communication barriers are circumvented. However, do all the project constituents perceive the same value from co-location? This research examines the benefits of co-location when used for a design-build project and includes the perceptions of 101 Design Build Institute of America (DBIA) design practitioners. Within the responses, communication, collaboration, and team chemistry were the most highly ranked benefits with this group. However, the open-ended feedback indicated that project size and complexity, disruptions to intra-organizational collaboration, organizational structure incompatibility for co-location, the absence of the owner and the use of technology were found to be barriers against the use of co-location. Analyzing these perceptions and the barriers shed awareness into a process that may be perceived differently among its constituents – allowing for focus on ways in which to improve co-location.

Examining sensitivity of financial performance at construction projects prequalification stage

Construction projects are complicated in nature and require many considerations in contractor selection. One of the complicated interactions is that between performance with the project size, and contractor financial status, and size of projects contracted. At the prequalification stage, the financial ‎requirements restrict the ‎contractors to meet minimum limits in financial criteria such as net worth, working capital and ‎annual turnover, etc. In construction projects, however, there are cases when contractors meet these requirements but show low performance in practice. The model used in the study predicts the performance by training of a neural network. The data used in the study are 72 of the most recent roadwork projects‎ in Bahrain. The results are shown in terms of the sensitivity of changing one variable on the performance of all the 72 projects. These results can reflect on the methods currently used on contractors’ assessments in the tendering stage and support decision-makers in assessing contractors and selecting the best bidders.