Beyond the ‘iron triangle’: Stakeholder perception of key performance indicators (KPIs) for large-scale public sector development projects (journal article)
By Sharmas-ur-Rehman Toor and Stephen Ogunlana
from International Journal of Project Management Vol 28 Issue 3 Apr 2010, pp. 228-236
"Performance measurement criteria vary from project to project. Despite much work on the subject, there is no commonly agreed framework of performance measurement on mega projects. To bridge this gap, this research targets to investigate the perception of the key performance indicators (KPIs) in the context of a large construction project in Thailand. The study explores the significance of key performance indicators in perspective of various construction stakeholders (client, consultants, and contractors). Findings indicate that the traditional measures of the iron triangle (on-time, under-budget and according to specifications) are no more applicable to measuring performance on large public sector development projects. Other performance indicators such as safety, efficient use of resources, effectiveness, satisfaction of stakeholders, and reduced conflicts and disputes are increasingly becoming important. This implies that the Thai construction industry is slowly departing from the traditional quantitative performance measurement to a rather mix of both quantitative and qualitative performance measurement on large-scale public sector development projects."
Contact the Library to obtain a copy of this article.

Top 10 Energy Events in 2009 (journal article)
from Beijing Review, No 6 Feb 11 2010
"Recently, China's State Council decided to set up the National Energy Commission led by Premier Wen Jiabao to step up strategic policymaking and coordination. As a closely related topic to the national economy and people's livelihoods, the energy issue has always attracted considerable attention. The country's energy industry also witnessed a series of significant changes in 2009. The top 10 energy news events of 2009, as selected by the Economic Information Daily under Xinhua News Agency, are in this article."

House Bill Would Authorize Grants For 'Green' Infrastructure. (journal article)
by Jay Landers
from Civil Engineering, January 2010, Vol. 80 Issue 1, p10-11, 2p
"A summary is presented of the bill H.R. 4202, the Green Infrastructure for Clean Water Act of 2009, prepared by U.S. House Representative Donna F. Edwards, December 3."
See also two Letters to the Editor concerning this article
The Politics of Green Infrastructure

Delivering Transportation Infrastructure Through Public-Private Partnerships: Planning Concerns. (journal article)
by Matti Siemiatycki
from Journal of the American Planning Association; Winter2010, Vol. 76 Issue 1, p43-58, 16p
"The types of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in which private sector partners take on increased responsibility for project design, construction, financing, and operation have become popular in the United States and around the world as means of delivering large-scale transportation infrastructure. However, it is unclear what implications this model of project delivery has for planning theory and practice as distinct from public policy more generally.
This research identifies the need for new ex ante evaluation tools, risk transfer mechanisms, community engagement processes, and data tracking and performance monitoring procedures, to prevent negative consequences from transportation PPPs. "

Groundwork for growth : building the infrastructure that Australia needs [book]

Author: Rob Sims, Business Council of Australia

"The report warns that as economic growth returns and the population continues to expand, infrastructure bottlenecks that appeared towards the end of the last boom are certain to reappear. Infrastructure efficiency and capacity is particularly important to Australia because of our small and dispersed population and distance from markets." - press release.

Find it at: 363.60994 GRO 2009 or Click here, and request a copy from the library!

Has Anyone Told The Transport Planners About Climate Change? (article)
by Elliot Fishman
from New Matilda, 22 January 2010
"Government investment in transport and land-use planning needs to reflect the new reality of oil depletion and climate change. Outer suburbs without rail lines and streets without bicycle lanes need to become a thing of the past. Without a change in mindset and investment, by 2030 we might just be left with empty freeways, perhaps better described as gigantic bike lanes, several bankrupt toll road operators and a number of energy analysts saying "I told you so". Let's make 2010 the year in which we confront the reality of peak oil and climate change. "

Total quality in the construction supply chain [book]

Authors: John Oakland & Morton Marosszeky

"Organizations in the construction industry struggle with three key issues: quality management or better meeting customer expectations, supply chain management or more effectively working with suppliers to provide a seamless service to customers, and knowledge management, the challenge of learning between collaborating organisations and between people working on similar projects around the world. Excellence in these key aspects of business is the hallmark of great companies. This book tackles each of these themes, demonstrating their significance as strategic concepts for the construction sector and illustrating how development goals in each of the areas can be met." - cover.

Want to read this book? Click here, & request a loan through your library.

Changing Climate, More Damaging Weather (journal article)
By Robert Repetto and Robert Easton
from Issues in Science & Technology Vol. 26 Issue 2 Winter 2010, pp. 67-74
"The article discusses the impact of changing climate on infrastructure and public safety investments in the U.S. It notes that the failure to acknowledge the effects of climate change results to dangerously inaccurate guidance for significant infrastructure and public safety investments. It suggests to speed up research programs which associate climate change and extreme weather events on the embodiment of its estimates. It states that underestimation of future weather probabilities can lead to unreliable decisions regarding investment and programs that make communities and infrastructure resist extreme weather. It explains that climatic change impact will heighten the possibilities that New York will be hit by more severe hurricanes in which infrastructure investors will be affected."

Investigating the Ipswich to Brisbane commuting pattern: a quantitative approach (journal article)
by Jonathan Corcoran et al.
from Australian Planner, Vol 46 No 2 2009
"Through a quantitative analysis of JTW data available in the Census of Population and Households we add to the current planning debate on traffic congestion in the Ipswich·Brisbane corridor. The analysis of JTW data enables investigation of the notion that there are high levels of leakage of Ipswich's residents commuting from Ipswich to the neighbouring Brisbane Local Government Area (LGA). In doing so we use quantitative methods to firstly calculate the degree of self containment (i.e. the proportion of people living and working within an area) within the Ipswich sub-region and secondly to map the mean direction of commuting. More specifically, the policy problem addressed in this paper is to determine the extent to which commuters living in Ipswich have a tendency for an easterly direction of JTW travel (i.e. towards Brisbane City and Brisbane's CBD using the main east-west corridor). We suggest
that the visual exploration of the JTW data can enhance the analytical capability through the integration of statistical and cartographic measures to assist in transport planning."

Welcome to the City Planning Blog
Brisbane is a growing city which, according to the State’s SEQ Regional Plan, must accommodate 138,000 additional dwellings through in-fill development, by 2031.
Brisbane City Council’s City Planning branch is working hard to plan for our City’s heart, inner city and outer suburbs so they remain places in which people love to live, work and play.
The City Planning Blog was established to enable us to provide Brisbane residents and the development community with regular updates as to the latest planning news and information. Not only will it provide urban planning news, but will showcase landscape architecture and interesting developments from around the world.

Boomtown 2050 : scenarios for a rapidly growing city [book]

Author: Richard Weller

"Perth, a city of 1.5 million relatively complacent people, is changing at a phenomenal rate. Latest predictions are that the city will grow from 1.5 million people to 4.2 million by 2056. To meet this increase the entire city and its infrastructure needs to double in the next 4 decades. This will have huge consequences for the culture and ecology of the city: Perth's long term survival is at stake. The book is designed to help the community visualize the results of planning decisions and get everyone involved in the debate about how the city should grow. This is an important and timely book for Perth, but it also presents a model piece of research that could be emulated in any city experiencing rapid change." - from publisher.

Want to borrow a copy from the library? Click here to email through your request.

Land acquisition : an examination of the principles of law governing the compulsory acquisition or resumption of land in Australia [book]

Author: Douglas Brown

"Outlines the principles of one of the more difficult branches of law. It aims to digest the many judicial decisions into a form that reveals the essential elements and also seeks to summarise and abbreviate the critical statutory provisions in each jurisdiction." - from publisher.

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Spatially varying effects of re-zoning on housing price (journal article)
by Seong-Hoon Cho, Seung Gyu Kim and Dayton M. Lambert
from Review of Urban and Regional Development Studies, Vol 21 No 1 2009
"A hedonic price equation is estimated at the parcel level to capture the spatially-varying effects of rezoning on housing prices using a geographically weighted regression - spatial autoregressive error model (GWR-SEM). The empirical results highlight a number of points. Firstly, the positive amenities from rezoning to office use act as a buffer and transition the zones between single family housing to commercial zones near downtown areas may be applicable to approving the same kind of rezoning in other areas. Secondly, when approving rezoning from agriculture to residential or commercial use, it may be necessary to anticipate the positive amenities from rezoning in less well-off neighborhoods and the negative amenities from rezoning in well-off neighborhoods. Thirdly, the positive amenities from well-designed open space preservation districts may encourage county planners to consider similar types of projects in the future."

Urban Form and Housing Density, Australian Cities and European Models: Copenhagen and Stockholm Reconsidered (journal article)
by Greg Bamford
from Urban Policy and Research, Vol 27 No 4 December 2009, pp. 337-356
"Stockholm and Copenhagen have been widely regarded in English-speaking countries as exemplifying aspects of the compact city—from well planned, mixed use, higher density, transit-oriented development to sociable urban spaces. So how is it that the development of these two cities has also been located in the garden city tradition? This article tackles this question in the context of the implications European cities are often thought to have for low-density Australian cities. Comparisons of the urban form of Stockholm and Brisbane and of higher density housing in Copenhagen and Brisbane emphasise that the 'Scandinavian model' is as much about the role of open space in shaping urban form and in housing design as our current preoccupation with density"

An analysis of the relative efficiency of wastewater utilities in non-metropolitan New South Wales and Victoria (journal article)
by Joel Byrnes, Lin Crase, Brian Dollery and Renato Villano
from Australasian Journal of Regional Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2009
"A recent policy issue in Australian local government has centred on a so-called ‘skills shortage’ in the sector, particularly in regional jurisdictions. In this paper, we estimate the relative efficiency of non-metropolitan water utilities in New South and Victoria and consider the role of divergent governance structures in order to measure the impact of unique managerial factors upon relative efficiency in wastewater service delivery. We find that larger utilities, governed by skills based boards, are relatively more technically efficient than those operating as a business unit of local government. We argue that this is partly explained by the ability of those utilities to attract and retain relatively more skilled staff. A number of policy recommendations are advanced."
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New urbanism : best practices guide [book]

Authors: Robert Steuteville & Philip Langdon

"Helps architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, builders, developers, public officials, students, and citizens understand one of the most vital planning movements of our time - a movement that is reshaping cities, suburbs, small towns, and neighborhoods." Chapters include: Architectural styles and building types; Land development; Health and aging; Shaping the region; Revitalizing cities and towns; Urban retail; The Human-scale workplace; Planning and transit; Civic buildings and spaces; Affordable placemaking; and Building community.

Want to borrow a copy from the library? Click here to email through your request.

Theory and Practice in Metropolitan Strategy: Situating Recent Australian Planning (journal article)
by Raymond Bunker and Glen Searle
from Urban Policy and Research, Volume 27, Issue 2, June 2009 , pp. 101 - 116
"Over the last several years, metropolitan strategies have been produced for the five mainland state capital cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. The distinctive characteristics of Australian urban planning mean that they can be shown to reflect an Australian paradigm of planning. However, this paradigm is rewritten in different ways in each strategy reflecting the particular institutional circumstances and political culture of each state. In doing so there is some strong reaffirmation of this paradigm, but also indications of a more relational and transactive manner of planning adding further process to product. Here there is some resonance with recent developments in planning theory and to some extent in practice, largely in Europe. "

Deindustrialisation, Gentrification and the Re-invention of the Inner City: London and Melbourne, c.1960-2008 (journal article)
by Seamus O'Hanlon and Chris Hamnett
from Urban Policy and Research, Volume 27, Issue 3 September 2009 , pp. 211 - 216
"This special issue examines some of the major changes that have taken place over the last
40 years in the economy, social structure, housing markets and physical character of the
inner areas of London and Melbourne. Although the two cities are very different in terms
of their size and global economic position—London having a population of 7.5 million at
the 2001 Census compared to 3.7 million in metropolitan Melbourne in 2006, and London
with New York, emerging as one of the two major world financial centres in the 1980s and
beyond—they have historically shared many economic, social and cultural ties, largely as
a reflection of their common British and Victorian heritage."
See the whole issue of this journal here

Squeezing more oil from the ground (journal article)
by Leonardo Maugeri
from Scientific American, October 2009, pp. 36-43
"Amid warnings of a possible"peak oil", advanced technologies offer ways to extract every last possible drop. Key concepts of tha article are: forecasts that global oil production will soon start to deciline and that most oil will be gone in a few decades may be overly pessimistic; thanks to advanced technologies wells will be able to extract half of the oil known to be underground, up from the current 35%; increased productivity could make oil last at least another century."
Ask us for a copy of this article

Water Utilities Cite Aging Equipment, Regulations, and Funding As Top Challenges. (journal article)
by Jay Landers
from Civil Engineering, September 2009
"The article presents a survey developed by the University of Cincinnati relative to the most formidable challenges facing U.S. drinking water and waste water utilities for the next 50 years. The survey includes 42 questions distributed to the members of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, National Association of Clean Water Agencies, and the National Association of Water Companies. It shows that the challenges include aging infrastructure and funding shortfalls."