Sodor Oil Terminal Project Management

Sodor Oil Terminal Project ManagementThe initiation degree of the Sodor tramp problematical the formation of the realize squad and the nomination of the construe managing director. Group 12 is made up of 4 Nigerians and 1 Vietnamese which reflects a multicultural aggroup with distributively nationality possessing peculiar personality traits. The objective of the first coming upon was to nominate a Project Manager and to define and agree on ground rules for visualize team meetings. To ensure equal participation of all team members, it was concord that the rotational date manager system will be adopted whereby each individual in the group would serve as the project manager for 1 week each through and throughout the 5 week duration of the Sodor project. It was agreed that meetings will be scheduled 3 times a week by the project manager lasting no more than 2 hours each. At each meeting, specific tasks is assigned to each team member to be submitted at the next meeting day .CONTRACTOR SELECTION CRITERIAThe contractor selection criteria adopted by the team is the Trade-off technique. This technique applys a scoring system to quantify specific attributes of the various contractors and offers a numerical output, the highest of which represents the best contractor choice. The subroutine of this technique provided the best possible contractors to manage the various stages of this project.CONSTRUCTION AND CLOSE OUTThe close out process involved a review of the last-place Sodor terminal project plan to confirm scope, cost and schedule deadlines have been met. The lesson knowing document was then prep ard which showed the various conflicts that occurred throughout the project and how they where managed by the team in order to provide lessons for the future. The final project plan was then presented to the project sponsor and the Group 12 team was deformed by the project manager. We were able to arrive at a final project cost of 7,356,123 and at a time of completion of 90.93 weeks. This can be in the main attributed to the fact that we used the TRADE OFF technique for contractor selection. The trade off technique provided an objective way of selecting contractors using a set of station scores.INTRODUCTIONTeamwork has been found to be an essential ingredient responsible for the supremacy or failure of projects. The effective use and precaution of teams for projects has been noned to be a key determinant for how successful a project will be however, the effectiveness of a team depends on the ability of the team members to interact fittingly with one another to produce a common output.DEFINITIONHoegl (2004) defined teams as a social interaction between two or more people at heart an transcription who share a common task. Teams have to a fault been described as a group of people who hold themselves reciprocally accountable to each other and who work together to achieve a common purpose(Scholtes et al,2003). The above definitions take into account the fact that for a team to exist, veritable basic ingredients need to be in place which include mutual accountability, constancy of purpose, and a shared responsibility for success or failure. The benefits of teamwork in project management cannot be overemphasized. Teams facilitate in the mobilization of diverse resources to a project as compared to that achieved by a single individual. Church(1998) also noted that teams provide the flexibility to use the mobilized resources thus admirering to continue with the project in the event of a specific individual being indisposed. Perhaps the greatest value of teams in managing projects rests with the ability of teams to provide a synergy of the efforts of the individual team members whereby the results achieved is greater than the arithmetic sum of the contributions of the individual members to the team.FACTORS THAT AFFECTED TEAM EFFECTIVENESS OF SODOR oil color TERMINAL PROJECTPLANNING AND DESIGNThe need to have a plan for the management of the Sodor oil terminal cannot be overemphasized. Grachev et al(2006) using 3M corporation as a case study proposed that a key benefit of homework upfront for a project is the first appearance of well defined project goals. The goals help to give direction to a teams project. Other benefits of planning include it helps the team members in the coordination of individual tasks by providing progress toly stated assignments. Furthermore, the project plan also enables the team to have an overview of the project schedule, costs and constraints which the team can then use as a baseline to measure echt project progress.The planning and design of the Sodor oil terminal started with the identification of the Cost, Schedule and Scope goals from the data derived from the Project Sponsor. These goals where then integ graded into a sequential structure by the use of the MS Project to produce the Sodor oil terminal preliminary Gantt chart. The final Sodor oil termi nal plan is a comprehensive document showing the actual budget, time of completion, scope of the project, and the approved contractors selected for the project. Christina(2009) proposed that key factors that coin team success at the planning and design phase includeA. Well-Defined Goals The definition of clear project deliverables has been shown to improve the success rate of project teams. Pinto and Slevin(1988) proposed that clearly defined and structured goals is a significant factor that determines the effectiveness of teams and hence the success rate of projects. Zander(1980) postulated that teams with clear and measurable goals perform better than teams with fuzzy goals. This is as a result of the use of clear goals by teams as a baseline through which team results can be measured. Furthermore, the use of clear and concise goals also helps the team in planning for what they can achieve within a particular timeframe.The goals of the Group 12 team where clearly stated and well defined at the onset of the project which was to deliver a project plan within 98 weeks at no more than the stated project budget provided by the project sponsor.B. Management Support Pinto and Slevin(1988) suggested that the support upper management gives a team helps in facilitating team success. This occurs by facilitating the release of resources to the project team hence ensuring their efficiency and helping to remove administrative bottle necks. Group 12 received the support of the project sponsor in the designing of the sodor plan especially with respect to weekly review meetings to assess the current status of the project plan and proffer ways to bring the plan back on track.C. Cross-Cultural teams The importance of having multiple individuals from differentcultures in a team has been proposed to impact positively on team results(Earley and Mosakowski,2000). Ochieng and Price(2009) also suggested that the effective use of proper communication techniques to handle cultural di fferences in a team helps in promoting project success. ten-fold cultures in a team brings together people with different skills, competencies, and personal attributes dedicated to a common purpose. The multicultural environment of Group 12 provided a pool of diverse ideas derived via brainstorming from which the best possible solution was agreed on and translated into the Sodor project plan.D. Team experience and continuity Pinto and Slevin(1988) suggested that the inclusion of individuals with specific project experience into a team helps in promoting its success. This is because this individuals already have a knowledge of the critical factors needed to ensure the success of the particular project from the lessons wise to(p) from past projects managed by them. Scott-Young(2009) suggested that the stability of a team throughout the project lifecycle helps in ensuring team success. Stable teams have been shown to maintain the consistency of ideas generation and are not susceptibl e to the distraction that tends to occur from a team member joining or leaving the team(Akgun and Lynn,2000). The use of team members with a wide regorge of experience managing projects like healthcare, education, and engineering played a key role in the results of Group 12. This is due to the diverse nature of the knowledge pool purchasable for planning the project. The stability of the Group 12 team throughout the project lifecycle also played a key role in the design of the sodor project plan.CONSTRUCTION AND CLOSEOUTA. Handling Conflicts The absence of conflicts in a team has been proposed to be a pointer to the failure of the team(Saj-Nicole and Damon,2009). The presence of conflicts and how the conflicts are managed indicates how successful the project team will be. The nature of the conflicts i.e. conflicts relevant to the project scope, serves to provoke a generation of ideas from the project team on the best way to manage the crises. Several conflicts arose during the man agement of Group 12 an example will be the, Who to choose as the project manager? The way it was managed was to have a face to face meeting with the project team, everybody laying their individual ideas on the table, then arriving at a decision mutually beneficial to everyone which is to have a rotational project manager system with each member of the project team having a taste of the pie of being the project manager for 1 week each. This solution helped during the construction phase of the plan because all the team members felt a sense of belonging and making a positive contribution to the team.B. Leadership Continuity The proposal by Akgun and Lynn(2000) on the positive benefits of leadership continuity to the project team success is largely not applicable to the Group 12 project team. This is because the use of a single leader throughout the project lifecycle will have led to the presence of domineering tendencies being shown by the individual chosen which may affect certain dec isions made during the formulation of the construction plan. It will also have led to project team members being made to feel they are not a part of the team. Hence in a bid to avoid this scenario, the rotational project manager system was proposed and adopted.C. Resource availability The availability of resources plays a major role in the ability of a team to produce results. Peters and OConnors(1980) postulated that the availability of specific resources can either promote or interfere with a team effectiveness. The resources needed by a team to be effective varies depending on the project scope. It may include financial, Human, and Environmental resources.D. Reward and Recognition The relationship between appropriate reward structures and team effectiveness cannot be overemphasized(Bullock and Lawler,1984). Developing a reward system that focuses on the entire team rather than individuals help in improving team motivation and hence its effectiveness. It is a fact that people are motivated to achieve results if they feel that the results provide value to the organization and this value is acknowledged by the organization.E. Lessons-learned documentation The preparation of the lessons learned document is an essential part of the project team closure phase(PMI,2008). The lessons learned document captures the lessons learned at various milestones in the planning of the project. The final meeting of the Group 12 team was a brainstorming session to identify various challenges we had during the creation of the Sodor project plan and how the challenges where managed.CONCLUSIONThis paper details how the Group 12 team managed the Sodor project from design to the closeout phase. It explains in detail the various factors responsible for the success of the team in arriving at the final project plan and also the various challenges Group 12 team had and how those challenges where managed to produce positive results. The paper sheds fall down on the key factors that affec ted various stages of the project and how they where harnessed and utilized positively by the Group 12 team.

Lagrange Multipliers in Mathematics

Lagrange Multipliers in MathematicsLagrange multipliers arise as a method for exploit (or minimising) a function that is subject to one or more constraints. It was invented by Lagrange as a method of solving hassles, in particular a problem about the moons app bent motion relative to the earth. He wrote his work in a paper c aloneed Mechanique analitique (1788) (Bussotti, 2003)This appendix will only sketch the technique and is found upon in miscellanyation in an appendix of (Barnett, 2009).Suppose that we have a function which is constrained by . This problem could be solved by rearranging the function for x (or possibly y), and substituting this into . At which point we could then treat as a normal maximisation or minimisation problem to find the maxima and minima.virtuoso of the advantages of this method is that if there argon several constraint functions we can deal with them all in the same manner rather than having to do lots or rearrangements.Considering only f as a funct ion of two variables (and ignoring the constraints) we know that the points where the derivative vanish areNow g can also be minimised and this will allow us to express the equation above in terms of the dxsSince these are linear functions we can add them to find another solution, and traditionally is used to getWhich is 0 only when bothWe can generalise this easily to any number of variables and constraints as followsWe can then solve the miscellaneous equations for the s. The process boils down to finding the extrema of this function As an example imagine that we have a sporting 8 sided die. If the die were fair we would expect an just roll of . Let us imagine that in a large number of trials we keep getting an average of 6, we would start to suspect that the die was not fair. We can now estimate the relative probabilities of each outcome from the entropy since we knowWe can use Lagranges method to solve this equation subject to the constraints that the occur probability s ums to one and the expected symbolize (in this case) is 6. The method tells us to minimise the functionWhere the first part is the entropy and the other two parts are our constraints on the probability and the mean of the rolls. Differentiating this and setting it equal to 0 we getNow if we do an integration we know that this value must be a constant function of since the derivative is 0, also since each of the terms in the summation is 0 we must also have a solution of the formOrWe know that the probabilities sum to 1 givingWhich can be put into (A2.1) to getWhich doesnt look too much better (perhaps even worse). We still have one final constraint to use which is the mean valueWe can use (A2.2) and re-arrange this to findWhich also doesnt seem to be an progress until we realise this is just a polynomial in If a root, exists we can then use it to find . I did not do it that way by hand, I used maple to find the solution to the polynomial. (the script is below) I also deliberate the probabilities for a fair dice as a comparison and test.fair dice mu = 4.5unfair dice mu = 6p10.125p10.32364p20.125p20.04436p30.125p30.06079p40.125p40.08332p50.125p50.11419p60.125p60.15650p70.125p70.21450p80.125p80.29398lambda = 0lambda = -0.31521Table A2. 1 comparison of probabilities for a fair and biased 8sided dice. The bias dice has a mean of 6. Equation also appears in the thermodynamics section.Because can be used to generate the probabilities of the source symbols I think that it would be possible to use this value to condition the alphabet i.e. take a message from an unknown source and classify the language by finding the closest matching from a list (assuming that the alphabets are the same size). I havent done that but think that the same approach as the dice example above would work (the mean would be calculated from the message and we would need more sides).When we have a totally random source, and in this case the probability of each character is the same . This is easily seen from (A2.2) as all the exponentials contribute a 1 and we are left with Where m is the size of the alphabet all the symbols are equally probable in this case.

Celie :: essays research papers

Ce broodIn member three of The Color Purple, the main character is Celie. In this section she gains a little much control over her life, dismounts to express herself through creativity and also becomes more free and independent. Her decision to leave with Shug to go to Tennessee and begin her own pants business is good examples of these things. This section shows how much progress she has made in herself. We learn about Celie through different situations and dialogues she has throughout this section.On page 183, Celie decides to leave with Shug Avery to go back to her home in Tennessee. Previously in one of the lost letters from her sister Nettie in Africa, she read that her Pa wasnt really her Pa at all. altogether of a sudden her world is shook when she discovers the real truth about her parents. My daddy lynch. My momma crazy. All my little half brothers and sisters no kin to me. My children not my sister or brother. Pa aint Pa (Walker 183). She realizes that everything she w as told since she was a child was a lie and decides to just get away from it all with Shug. No one was there to hold her back. In leaving, she is gaining more control of her life. She is moving on to do cleanse things for herself for once in her life.Also in this section, Celie begins her own pants business. Making these pants is more than just simply constructing pieces of fabric together for her. For Celie its a new road to her own freedom and independence. We learn through her that she has a original flair and is actually quite good at making theses pants. She uses her creative abilities to make a living. We see that she begins to that she begins to feel that she has more of a purpose. She isnt so dependent on Shug as she used to be and learns to depend more on herself. Shug says to Celie at the end of this section, You making your living. Celie, she say, Girl, you on your way (Walker 221). We can obviously see that she definitely is on her way to being more self-reliant and i ndependent.

PSY 301, Introductory Psychology, 2002, Exam 2 :: UTEXAS Texas Psychology

Introductory PsychologyPennebaker October 16, 2002 Write your name and social security descend on this page and also on your Scantron. Be sure to blacken in the FORM letter on the Scantron as well. 1 Which of the following is bastard about Stage 4 quietness? A) It is the stage in which most dreams occur B) If deprived of it, individuals become exhausted and disoriented C) It is blocked by intoxicant and sleeping pills D) It is marked by low amounts of eye movement E) It is not necessary every night 2 The night before his exam, Jerry was unable to sleep for more than one hour before waking-up. Which of the following best characterizes Jerrys difficulty falling asleep? A) Sleep apnea B) Narcolepsy C) Insomnia D) Circadian rhythm E) Night terrors 3 Classical conditioning is to operant conditioning, as __________ is to __________? A) passive, active B) passive, unconditioned response C) emotional thoughts, logical emotions D) Pavlov, Freud E) conditioned stimulus, unconditioned response 4 Bill is essay to figure out the best way to increase the productivity of his workers.

Abscisic Acid and Stomatal Closure :: essays research papers

Abscisic Acid and Stomatal ClosureAbscisic acid is a mavin compound unlike the auxins, gibberellins, and cytokinins. It was called "abscisin II" originally because it was thought to profligacy a major role in abscission of fruits. Though ABA generally is thought to play mostly inhibitory roles, it has many promoting functions as well.In 1963, abscisic acid was first identified and characterized by Frederick Addicott and his associates. They were studying compounds responsible for the abscission of fruits (cotton). Two compounds were isolated and called abscisin I and abscisin II. Abscisin II is presently called abscisic acid.ABA is a naturally occurring compound in plants. It is a sesquiterpenoid (15-carbon) which is partially produced via a certain pathway (mevalonic pathway) in chloroplasts and other plastids. Because it is sythesized partially in the chloroplasts, it makes sense that biosynthesis primarily occurs in the leaves. The employment of ABA is accentuated by s tresses such as water loss and freezing temperatures.It is believed that biosynthesis occurs indirectly through the production of carotenoids. Carotenoids are pigments produced by the chloroplast which have 40 carbons. Breakdown of these carotenoids occurs in a complex mechanism which produces ABA. The transport of ABA can occur in both xylem and bast tissues. It can also be translocated through paranchyma cells. The movement of abscisic acid in plants does not exhibit polarity like auxins. ABA is capable of moving both up and down the stem.The various roles of ABA are     Stimulates the closure of stomata (water stress brings about an increase in ABA synthesis).      Inhibits shoot growth but will not have as much affect on roots or may even promote growth of roots.      Induces seeds to synthesize storage proteins.      Has some effect on abstraction and maintanance of dormancy. (This information take n from http//www.plant-hormones.info/abscisicacid.htm)Stomatal Closure     Addition of ABA to the growth medium (a mixture of vermiculite and peat moss) causes the closure of the stomates within 3 h and an increase in the Pos of the protoplasts of the aba1 plants to 50 mm s-1.      Arrival of ABA in the leaves appears to signal stomatal closure as well as a change in the Pos of the plasma membranes.     We hypothesize that below non-stress conditions ABA is required to maintain a population of actively functioning aquaporins at the plasma membrane.

Marketing at Nike Essay -- Business Management Studies

merchandise at NikeThe purpose of Nike is to meet actual and potential customer needs,doing this the ethical and legal way. Marketing is about businessessuch as Nike, getting the product to the right sort of people at theright price in the right place, by using the right promotion. Nike mustiness target the right product at the right audience, for example, itwould be worthless aiming sports shoes to older people because theydont do because they are to old and weak.For the marketing strategy to be successful Nike must constitute the mainprincipal of marketing, which is identifying and meeting actual andpotential customer needs, however, to follow this principal the nextprincipals listed must be followed Understanding customer needs, Understand and keep ahead of the competition, Communicate effectively with its customers to satisfy customer expectations, Co-ordinate its functions to deliver the goods marketing aims, Be aware of constraints on marketing activities.To understand cu stomers needs, Nike must be aware of their customerschanges in tastes and preferences, the business will drive home to keep upto date with what customers want.Incomes must also be considered. This is important because if anexpensive product was aimed at adults who are on the poorer end of themarket, and they basically couldnt afford it then the product willnot sell. Therefore, the price of the product will obviously have tocompliment the target market in station for it to be successful.Nike needs to understand and keep ahead of competition (other sportbrands e.g. Adidas and Gap) to do this Nike must have bettermarketing strategies and activities. In order to be the bestcompetitor, Nike should have better products and more high qualityproducts with excellent quality and must keep trying to improve them.Competition analysis hatful be used to check what their competitors aredoing in order to beat them.For Nike to get their message across they will need to communicatewith the custome rs. Nike must perk how to get the message acrossabout the new product, this could be through several ways ofadvertising, such as, leaflets, radio stations or even television,Nike must chose the best advertising method to suit the target marketand actually promote the product.Understanding customer needs is another of the activities Nike carriesout. They do this by carryi... ...n as possible. This is very important to Nike asthey say they dont operate no sweat shop policy. As Nike manufacturesmany of their products abroad it needs to realize all the rules andregulations are being followed abroad to. These have been concerns bypressure groups that suspects that Nike isnt following their code ofconduct abroad, in the factories that are producing their products,however their isnt no sold evidence. Consumers are very concernedthat products they are purchasing are produced ethically and when theystart doubting businesses they may start to boycott and purchases alternate products form t heir competitors.Consumers have a right to know how the products are being made thatthey produce, there is also a UN agreement the ethical constraints forNike are no child Labour or unfair pay, but the employees get 8 aweek and it would take them a whole month to buy on of the shirts theyare producing without spending any of their money on food, water etc.some people would consider that to be unfair but compared to otherlocal anesthetic jobs they are being paid a lot more. Also hours Nikes employeeswere required to work are 14 hour shifts which Nike also motionlessness denies.

Marine Biology :: essays research papers

MARINE BIOLOGY CASE STUDYLAB - come out 2Analysis 1. By running the programming with a fish.dat deposit containing the information for a 2 x 2 tank size, and changing the offset positions for fish A, B, and C, according to the problem, I was able to evaluate the random period of steps taken by each fish. The fish move in sequence of A, B, and then C. Then they move according to open slots. If a fish is covered on both sides by another fish, it is unable to move and, therefore, be in that exact position. Analysis 2. The following is a diagram of what we predicted for the outcome of the default configurationA C E_ B HD F GAnd this is a diagram of where the fish actually moved to when running the program with the current configurationA C ED B HF G _My prediction was inaccurate because I did not move the fish in their correct order. Instead, I proceeded to move the fish in the order of whichever came closer to an open space.Analysis 3. The 1000 x 1000 matrix was unable to display a ny data visible to the exploiter on the console. It exceeds the screens limit of display. I discovered that the largest matrix possible for the console would be a matrix with the size of 23 x 79. Every eon that I ran the program with these specifications, I found that the fish always traveled the first step down (a total of 10 tries).Analysis 4. When that data file contains two fish located within the same spot, the executable displays at the top of the console error, attempt to create fish at non-empty (4,4), and then goes on to only display the first fish, A.Analysis 5. The sequence of fish positions does matter when you want certain fish names at certain locations within the