• Designing hypermedia documentation for safety critical training applications

      Newman, Robert (Taylor & Francis, 2001)
      This paper discusses the requirements for authoring methodologies for large multimedia systems to be used for technical education documentation in the domain of "safety critical" industries and presents work which contributes to the development of a methodology for their design. Such documentation is typically required to serve both for training purposes and for direct support of engineers in the field. This dual-purpose nature means that documents are typically complex with multiple navigation paths. The documentation used to train for and support maintenance and repair may itself be safety critical, in that incorrect documentation can lead to incorrect maintenance procedures. Research into "industrial strength" hypermedia has tended to concentrate on the issues of robustness and data integrity, while the issues of design methodologies for such systems have not received as much attention. These issues include those of the verifiable correctness of such systems, both in terms of their content and other issues such as sequence of presentation. It is argued that the addressing of these issues is essential to the development of technical documentation systems that are of sufficient quality to be used for safety critical applications such as within the transport industry. The requirements that viable design methodologies for these applications must address are discussed, and a methodology is proposed, based on traditional authoring methods and process algebra-based formal specification and verification.
    • Late disputes and the NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract

      Ndekugri, Issaka E. (Institution of Civil Engineers, 2016-03-07)
      One of the reasons for project owners’ choice of the NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract (ECC) is the avoidance of the risk of claims and disputes long after project completion. In a number of cases the court has been presented with difficult questions concerning adjudication after project completion and delayed reference of adjudicated disputes to the applicable final tribunal. The cases have not been from projects procured with NEC contracts. This paper critically examines these questions, the court’s answers to them and their implications for the NEC3 ECC family of contracts. It concludes that, in the drafting of future editions of the contract, the promoters of the contract should consider provisions targeted at: ensuring that the test of awareness for the purposes of the Clause 61.3 time-bar is on an objective basis; conclusive evidence clauses that impose a disincentive against seriously delayed challenges to assessment of compensation events and payment; and providing that the decision of an adjudicator becomes finally binding if the dispute decided is not referred to the tribunal within a stated period.
    • Which academic subjects have most online impact? A pilot study and a new classification process

      Thelwall, Mike; Vaughan, Liwen; Cothey, Viv; Li, Xuemei; Smith, Alastair G. (MCB UP Ltd, 2003)
      The use of the Web by academic researchers is discipline-dependent and highly variable. It is increasingly central for sharing information, disseminating results and publicising research projects. This pilot study seeks to identify the subjects that have the most impact on the Web, and look for national differences in online subject visibility. The highest impact sites were from computing, but there were major national differences in the impact of engineering and technology sites. Another difference was that Taiwan had more high impact non-academic sites hosted by universities. As a pilot study, the classification process itself was also investigated and the problems of applying subject classification to academic Web sites discussed. The study draws out a number of issues in this regard, having no simple solutions and point to the need to interpret the results with caution.