Parameter prediction for cash flow forecasting models

The paper describes the application of the DHSS formula to 27 completed construction projects comprising four types - steel-framed low rise buildings, new build housing developments, housing refurbishment projects, and multi-house ‘pre-paint’ maintenance contracts. Application of the formula to individual projects indicates that the ‘best’ parameter values offer a ten-fold improvement over the published values based on project size. Similar results occur when using the best parameter values for other two parameter models.

Various approaches are considered in attempting to predict the best parameter values of the models based on known characteristics of the project. A multiple linear regression with project value, duration, and type independent variables is shown not to produce any significant improvement on standard DHSS formula predictions. However, a reduction in the number of independent variables by cross validation produces an approximately 25% improvement on standard DHSS formula forecasts outside the data base. Examination of the models derived from this analysis indicate the type of project to be of major importance.     

Lawyering Landscapes: Lawyers as Constituents of Landscape

Landscape and law cross-influence each other. Legal rules shape landscapes, while landscapes shape the culture from which rules emerge. In describing this interplay, landscape can seem passive, as a canvas on which laws paint visions of society; or active, as a matrix for the creation of law and culture. An alternative view is suggested: landscapes are opportunities for action, fields within which individuals interact with context in a mutually adaptive relationship. Lawyers are specialized constituents of this adaptation. Lawyers' acts and practices help to constitute the adaptations that shape a given landscape. A teaching module in which it was sought to prompt law students to become aware of the adaptive role of lawyering in landscape is described. The results suggest useful theoretical and methodological insights into landscape as a field of human activity, and the need for further study of lawyering as a force in the construction of landscape.     

Planning as a Professional Career: Discussion

AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEN OF “LOW COST HOUSING FOR THE LOWER INCOME GROUP”, By George F. Lindsay. Dec. 10, 1937. 80 pages. 81/2 × 11 inches. Mimeographed.     

Data Processing for City Planning

In city planning, data-processing machines permit the rapid handling and summarization of data in housing, renewal, land use, transportation, and basic urban research. Electronic computers. specifically, are exciting because they offer a means of solving complex city planning problems, especially in forecasting land use and travel demand.

For most planning operations punched card data processing is superior to other processes. The functions of these machines are described herein and three examples of data processing are elaborated on. In future years, planning techniques may have to be altered considerably to take advantage of the potentials of data processing.     

Retail Change in Southern Sydney: Lifestyle-Linked Restructuring?

Examination of the changing composition of shopping centres in suburban Sydney between 1969 and 1998 suggests that retail restructuring is linked to lifestyle changes. The growth in the number of shops appears to have matched population growth in the 1990s, suggesting that the suburbanisation of retailing has stabilised. At the same time there has been increasing diversification in terms of the retail functions which are available and in terms of the places where these are available. These changes appear linked to a blurring of the distinction between shopping and leisure and to the use of shopping as a way of signifying identity.     

Development of a continuous respirometer

A continuous oxygen uptake meter or continuous respirometer was developed which produced a rapid and reliable response to systemic shocks. The respirometer basically is a 101. Plexiglas laboratory activated sludge unit with a variable volume air tight side car. The feed enters the completely mixed aeration basin and is pumped into the side car. The side car is the site of the oxygen uptake measurements as indicated by a continuously monitoring dissolved oxygen probe. The system was most sensitive to changes in influent concentrations when run at an F/M = 0.1. Response time for a change in DO of 0.1 ppm was less than 4 min. The continuous respirometer was tested employing both synthetic and raw industrial wastes.