Consistency and Reliability of Construction Arbitration Decisions: Empirical Study

While construction arbitration is analyzed in a plethora of information, there is a paucity of hard data about the consistency and reliability of the construction arbitration decision. The assumption that an industry familiar adjudicator will provide a reliable and consistent decision in comparison with the expectation of the industry as a whole has not been tested. This paper presents the results of a study on the reliability and consistency of construction arbitration through the examination of a variety of arbitrators’ decisions on the same construction dispute scenario. Data was collected from attorneys, owners, owner representatives, contractors, and subcontractors. Compilation of the survey results finds little consistency in the arbitrator’s awards, but with much thoughtful care in award consideration. The results suggest that the arbitrator’s industry background does not influence the arbitrator’s award. There is also no significant award bias due to the arbitrator’s education level or years spent in construction business. The results also indicate that previous arbitration experience does not predict the award outcome. This paper concludes that construction arbitration is wholly unpredictable. However, the result will be a well-reasoned and unbiased decision.     

Indirect adaptive control for interconnected systems

An indirect adaptive controller for interconnected systems is introduced. Each subsystem is subject to bounded disturbances and to possibly unbounded interconnections with other subsystems. A variable dead zone is incorporated into a gradient estimation scheme to limit the effects of the interconnections and disturbances. An adaptive state feedback control law is described which stabilizes the interconnected system, forcing the input and output signals of each subsystem to remain bounded     

Adaptive regulation of MIMO linear discrete-time systems without requiring a persistent excitation

An adaptive regulator which does not require a persistent excitation is developed for multiinput multioutput (MIMO) linear discrete-time systems. The assumptions on the plant are 1) an upper bound on the system dimension is known; 2) the unknown system parameters belong to known bounded intervals; 3) the plant is stabilizable for all possible values of the unknown system parameters. The stabilizability condition can be tested before the system is put into operation. A recursive parameter estimation scheme is given which forces the parameter estimates to converge to the known intervals. Using this estimator, an adaptive regulator is derived which results in a globally-stable closed-loop system.