Impact of Disturbance on Performance

The following reasons are help us to ask excuse from our boss, when we did not complete our task.

• Official meetings and appointments

• Telephone calls

• Personal breaks and lunch breaks

• Official visitors

• A need to interrupt current activity to make a copy of something, sends a fax, or coordinates with another worker

• Fire drills, hazard alarms, or other emergencies

• Adverse weather

• Power outages

• Equipment breakdowns

• Holds for quality checks or coordination

• Absentees whose work must be absorbed by others

• Turnover of key personnel-new ones must be brought up to speed

• Higher headquarters or outside agency inspections, audits, and reviews

• Secretaries/clerks delivering mail and messages

• Noise and conversations from adjacent work areas

• Unusual activity outside office windows

• Running out of something-paper, staples, etc.

• Misplacing something; and

• Forgetting something

Certain actions or policies may minimize the disruption and time loss effect of some of the above items, but the potential is not significant.

Safety-Management

"The quality of being safe; freedom from danger or injury" # Safety

The dictionary definition is not applicable and should not be used in the context of safety management. The word "safety" should be defined with such a meaning that reflects the reality. There are a number of such definitions by various academics and authorities. Some of these definitions are quoted on below:

U.S. National Safety Council

"Safety" is the control of hazards to attain an acceptable level of risk.

Gloss and Wardle in Introduction to Safety Engineering

"Safety" is the measure of the relative freedom from risks of dangers. Safety is the degree of freedom from risks and hazards in any environment.

Willie Hammer in Occupational Safety Management and Engineering

Safety is a matter of relative protection from exposure to hazards; the antonym to danger.

Lowrance in Of Acceptable Risk: Science and the Determination of Safety --

Safety is a judgment of the acceptability of risk...... A thing is safe if its risks are judged to be acceptable.

Everybody is responsible for their safety. It is not depends on a person or a team.

Chinese farmer gets 5 days in jail for his story on alien invasion

A Chinese farmer received a five-day jail sentence after admitting to authorities that he made up a story about electrocuting an alien, reports the Telegraph.

The man, identified as Li, told authorities he was inspired by the 2011 science fiction comedy "Paul" starring Simon Pegg and Seth Rogan as the voice of the titular alien. Li created his own alien out of rubber, wire, and bone glue and then photographed it, claiming that he had electrocuted the space creature, according to a report from Reuters.

He posted a tall tale about the aliens and a UFO on a Chinese website.

"I was setting an electric trap for rabbits by the Yellow river when I saw a bright light," Li wrote, according to the Telegraph. "Above my bike, a UFO was floating. One by one, five aliens came down, but one of them stumbled into one of my rabbit traps and was electrocuted. The others went back into their ship and flew away."

The story and accompanying photos were a hit online and drew the attention of Chinese authorities. They questioned Li, who eventually admitted that he had made the whole thing up because he wanted other people to believe in little green men.

"After the police interrogated me, I confessed I was a fan of UFOs and the alien was a fake. I just wanted other people to believe that aliens existed," Li told the Shandong Evening News, according to the Telegraph.

Li was charged with disturbing the public order.

Qatar has highest density of millionaires

SOURCE: Trade Arabia News Service (http://www.linkedin.com/)

 

Qatar has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world with 143 out of every 1,000 households having private wealth of at least $1 million, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group.

 

The country is followed by Switzerland (116), Kuwait (115), Hong Kong (94), and Singapore (82). 

 

The US had the largest number of billionaires in 2012, but the highest density of billionaire households was in Hong Kong (15.1 per million), followed by Switzerland (9.4 per million), said the BCG’s annual report on the global wealth-management industry.

 

According to the report, global private financial wealth grew by 7.8 percent in 2012 to a total of $135.5 trillion. The rise was stronger than in either 2011 or 2010, when global wealth grew by 3.6 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively.

 

Wealth increased measurably in the old-world regions of North America (7.8 percent), Western Europe (5.2 percent), and Japan (2.4 percent), mainly owing to the sharp rebound in equity markets in most countries, particularly in the second half of the year. 

Meanwhile, new wealth creation fuelled stronger, double-digit growth in the new-world regions of Asia-Pacific ex-Japan (13.8 percent), Eastern Europe (13.2 percent), and Latin America (10.5 percent). 

 

Wealth in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) saw near-double-digit growth (9.1 percent). New-world regions will account for nearly 70 percent of the growth in global private wealth over the next five years.

 

The total number of millionaire households reached 13.8 million globally in 2012, or 0.9 percent of all households. The US had the largest number of millionaire households (5.9 million), followed by Japan (1.5 million) and China (1.3 million). China should surpass Japan in 2013.

 

Offshore wealth, defined as assets booked in a country where the investor has no legal residence or tax domicile, rose by 6.1 percent in 2012 to $8.5 trillion. Despite this increase, stronger growth in onshore wealth led to a slight decline—to 6.3 percent from 6.4 percent, compared with 2011—in offshore wealth’s share of global private wealth. While offshore wealth is projected to rise modestly over the next five years, reaching $11.2 trillion by the end of 2017, wealth is increasingly moving onshore due to the intense pressure that tax authorities are exerting on offshore centres, it said.

Construction Company Organization (LLC)

How a construction company organizes for its work depends on number and size of projects, project complexity, and geographical distribution of the work.

 Limited Liability Company

A form of organization known as the limited liability Company (L.L.C.), permitted in most states, and combines many of the attributes and advantages of the corporation and of the partnership. For example, the owners of an L.L.C., who are known as ‘‘members’’ after executing the required legal articles of organization, enter into an operating agreement in which one of their number is designated as the manager of the company.

The company does not pay taxes on its profits, but rather the individual members have the prorate share of their percentage of ownership of the company added to their income for taxation purposes. On the other hand, there is no individual liability of any of the members for losses or debts of the company as there would be if the ownership were in the form of a partnership. Additional members may be added to or dropped from the company by a vote or written consent of 100% of all of the members.

No member, other than the manager, has any power or authority to bind the company, unless such a person has been specifically authorized in writing by the manager to act on behalf of the company. A manager may be removed in the event of his or her neither willful or intentional violation nor rack less disregard of the manager’s duties to the company. The manager’s replacement will be selected by the members who originally selected the manager. Such replacement will be decided by a majority vote of the members.

Reference
BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION HANDBOOK

Robert F. Borg

Chairman, Kreisler Borg Florman General Construction Company

Scarsdale, New York

Manage Political Problems as Issues

This article copied from some other website.
The larger your project gets, the more you will find that the issues you encounter are political in nature. "Politics" is all about interacting with people and influencing them to get things done. This can be a good thing, a bad thing, or a neutral thing, depending on the tactics people use. Let’s consider some examples of how utilizing political skills might be good, but can also be bad.

You are able to move your ideas forward in the organization and get people to act on them (good), by currying favor, suppressing other opposing ideas and taking credit for the ideas of your staff (bad).

You have an ability to reach consensus on complex matters with a number of different stakeholders (good), by working behind the scenes with people in power, making deals and destroying people who don’t get on board (bad).

You receive funding for projects that are important to you and to your organization (good), by misrepresenting the costs and benefits, and by going around the existing funding processes (bad).

The point of the examples is to show that influencing people and getting things done in a company is a good thing and “office politics” can have good connotations or bad. 

Dealing with office politics is not a standard project management process. However, once the politics start to impact the project adversely, the situation should be identified as an issue, since it is a problem whose resolution is outside the control of the project team. You can’t utilize a checklist to resolve political issues. Political problems are people-related and situational. What works for one person in one situation may not work for another person in the same situation because people, and their reactions, are different. Identifying the problem as an issue will bring visibility to the situation and hopefully get the proper people involved in the resolution. Keep three things in mind to manage a political issue.

Try to recognize situations and events where politics are most likely to be involved. This could include decision points, competition for budget and resources, and setting project direction and priorities.

Deal with people openly and honestly. When you provide an opinion or recommendation, express the pros and cons to provide a balanced view to other parties. Make sure you distinguish the facts from your opinions so the other parties know the difference. 

If you feel uncomfortable with what you are asked to do, get your sponsor or your functional manager involved. They tend to have more political savvy and positional authority, and they should be able to provide advice and cover for you.

If you feel good about what you are doing, how you are influencing and how you are getting things done, then you are probably handling office politics the right way. If you feel guilty about how you are treating people and if you have second thoughts about the methods you are using to get things done, you are probably practicing the dark side of office politics.

Terms of the Week-Business Dictionary (Part II)

Cost control
The process or activity on controlling costs associated with an activity, process, or company. Cost control typically includes

(1) Investigative procedures to detect variance of actual costs from budgeted costs

(2) Diagnostic procedures to ascertain the cause(s) of variance

&
(3) Corrective procedures to effect realignment between actual and budgeted costs.

Marginal cost

The increase or decrease in the total cost of a production run for making one additional unit of an item. It is computed in situations where the breakeven point has been reached: the fixed costs have already been absorbed by the already produced items and only the direct (variable) costs have to be accounted for. Marginal costs are variable costs consisting of labor and material costs, plus an estimated portion of fixed costs (such as administration overheads and selling expenses). In companies where average costs are fairly constant, marginal cost is usually equal to average cost. However, in industries that require heavy capital investment (automobile plants, airlines, mines) and have high average costs, it is comparatively very low. The concept of marginal cost is critically important in resource allocation because, for optimum results, management must concentrate its resources where the excess of marginal revenue over the marginal cost is maximum. Also called choice cost, differential cost or incremental cost.

Net price

A final price after deducting all discounts and rebates.

Vision statement

An aspirational description of what an organization would like to achieve or accomplish in the mid-term or long-term future. It is intended to serves as a clear guide for choosing current and future courses of action.

Opportunity cost

A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else. Since every resource (land, money, time, etc.) can be put to alternative uses, every action, choice, or decision has an associated opportunity cost. Opportunity costs are fundamental costs in economics, and are used in computing cost benefit analysis of a project. Such costs, however, are not recorded in the account books but are recognized in decision making by computing the cash outlays and their resulting profit or loss.

Austerity budget

A budget that is imposed on a country by its government with the purpose of reducing the national deficit by way of cutting down on consumer spending.

Earmark

The act of setting something aside for a specific use or purpose in the future. For example, goods may be earmarked prior to being exported in the future. Most commonly used to refer to funds that have been set aside in order to pay for a specific project.

Masters of Business Administration (MBA)

An advanced college degree, earned by those who successfully graduate from their college or university's MBA program. As with other advanced degrees, traditionally a student will have already received a Bachelors degree in some area of study, before working towards his or her MBA. A typical MBA program deals with multiple aspects of business, including finance and management skills. Also called Masters in Business Administration or Master of Business Administration.

Yankee bond

Dollar denominated bond sold in the US by a foreign bank, corporation, or government utility. It the US equivalent of Eurobond.

Tax holiday

A temporary period, during which time the government removes certain taxes (usually sales tax) on certain items, in order to encourage the consumption or purchase of these items. The most common application of this is a tax-free weekend, which most states hold shortly before school begins in the fall, during which time sales tax is removed on clothing, school supplies, and/or other similar items. Not all areas engage in tax holidays; it is up to the government of that area.