Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production process, i.e. output per unit of input, typically over a specific period of time. The most common example is the (aggregate) labour productivity measure, one example of which is GDP per worker. There are many different definitions of productivity and the choice among them depends on the purpose of the productivity measurement and data availability. The key source of difference between various productivity measures is also usually related to how the outputs and the inputs are aggregated to obtain such a ratio-type measure of productivity.
Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. Some researchers refer it to “various materials joined together to form a component of the final installation procedure“.
Kornelis Antonie "Kees" Schouhamer Immink is a Dutch engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur, who pioneered and advanced the era of digital audio, video, and data recording, including popular digital media such as compact disc (CD), DVD and Blu-ray disc. He has been a prolific and influential engineer, who holds more than 1100 U.S. and international patents. A large portion of the commonly used audio and video playback and recording devices use technologies based on his work. His contributions to coding systems assisted the digital video and audio revolution, by enabling reliable data storage at information densities previously unattainable.
In economics, total-factor productivity (TFP), also called multi-factor productivity, is usually measured as the ratio of aggregate output to aggregate inputs. Under some simplifying assumptions about the production technology, growth in TFP becomes the portion of growth in output not explained by growth in traditionally measured inputs of labour and capital used in production. TFP is calculated by dividing output by the weighted geometric average of labour and capital input, with the standard weighting of 0.7 for labour and 0.3 for capital. Total factor productivity is a measure of productive efficiency in that it measures how much output can be produced from a certain amount of inputs. It accounts for part of the differences in cross-country per-capita income. For relatively small percentage changes, the rate of TFP growth can be estimated by subtracting growth rates of labor and capital inputs from the growth rate of output.
Sound Transmission Class is an integer rating of how well a building partition attenuates airborne sound. In the US, it is widely used to rate interior partitions, ceilings, floors, doors, windows and exterior wall configurations. Outside the US, the ISO Sound Reduction Index (SRI) is used. The STC rating very roughly reflects the decibel reduction of noise that a partition can provide. The STC is useful for evaluating annoyance due to speech sounds, but not music or machinery noise as these sources contain more low frequency energy than speech.
Frances Moore Lappé is an American researcher and author in the field of food and democracy policy. She is the author of 20 books including the 2.5-million-copy selling 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet, which the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History describes as "one of the most influential political tracts of the times." She has co-founded three organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty, and environmental crises, as well as solutions emerging worldwide through what she calls "living democracy". Her latest work is a report entitled Crisis of Trust: How Can Democracies Protect Against Dangerous Lies? with Max Boland and Rachel Madison. Recent books by Lappé include Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want, co-authored with Adam Eichen, and It’s Not Too Late: Crisis, Opportunity, and the Power of Hope. In 1987, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "revealing the political and economic causes of world hunger and how citizens can help to remedy them."
A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard.
A heat flux sensor is a transducer that generates an electrical signal proportional to the total heat rate applied to the surface of the sensor. The measured heat rate is divided by the surface area of the sensor to determine the heat flux.
An electrical contractor is a business person or firm that performs specialized construction work related to the design, installation, and maintenance of electrical systems. An electrical contractor is different from an electrician; an electrician is an individual tradesman and an electrical contractor is a business person or company that employs electricians. Both usually hold licenses and insurances to properly and safely operate a business, protecting the employees and home owners/business owners from insurance liabilities. These requirements vary from state to state. Electricians may work for an electrical contractor, or directly for individuals or companies.
The international roughness index (IRI) is the roughness index most commonly obtained from measured longitudinal road profiles. It is calculated using a quarter-car vehicle math model, whose response is accumulated to yield a roughness index with units of slope. Although a universal term, IRI is calculated per wheelpath, but can be expanded to a Mean Roughness Index (MRI) when both wheelpath profiles are collected. This performance measure has less stochasticity and subjectivity in comparison to other pavement performance indicators, such as PCI, but it is not completely devoid of randomness. The sources of variability in IRI data include the difference among the readings of different runs of the test vehicle and the difference between the readings of the right and left wheel paths. Despite these facts, since its introduction in 1986, the IRI has become the road roughness index most commonly used worldwide for evaluating and managing road systems.
Disciplined agile delivery (DAD) is the software development portion of the Disciplined Agile Toolkit. DAD enables teams to make simplified process decisions around incremental and iterative solution delivery. DAD builds on the many practices espoused by advocates of agile software development, including scrum, agile modeling, lean software development, and others.
Willie Hobbs Moore was an African American physicist and engineer. She is the first African American woman to earn a PhD in physics.
Agile construction is an integrated system of principles and methods, and a philosophy of doing business adapted to jobsites and overall project delivery in the construction industry. It is born from agile manufacturing and project management, which is mostly used in manufacturing production, automotive and software developing teams. It is the application of the Toyota Production System to the construction industry, with two parallel paths: Measuring and improving productivity, as well as segregating and externalizing work through prefabrication and supply chain management.
Perry (Parviz) Daneshgari is an Iranian-American entrepreneur, engineer and author born in Ahvaz, Iran. He founded MCA, which appeared on the TV Program World Business Review, in 1990 and has written many books and articles in specialized magazines and websites. Perry has an MBA from Wayne State University and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Karlsruhe, as well as B.S. in civil and mechanical engineering from Northwestern University. He specializes in Agile Construction, a way of doing business that focuses on adaptation and quick changes on job sites and production lines.
Heather Ann Thompson is an American historian, author, activist, professor, and speaker from Detroit, Michigan. Thompson won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2016 Bancroft Prize, and five other awards for her work Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. This book was also a finalist for the Cundill Prize in History as well as the National Book Award and the LA Times Book Award. She is the recipient of several social justice awards as well, including the Life-Long Dedication to Social Justice Award. Alliance of Families for Justice and the Regents Distinguished Award for Public Service.She was awarded the Pitt Professorship of American History and Diplomacy in 2019-2020 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022. Thompson was also named a distinguished lecturer by the Organization of American Historians.
Ellen Ernst Kossek is an American academic and social scientist who is known for research on work, family, and personal life. She is the Basil S. Turner Distinguished Professor at Purdue University’s Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business. She previously served as the Research Director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence for Purdue University’s Provost’s Office and as a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University’s School of Human Resources and Labor Relations. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Holyoke College, her Master of Business Administration from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and her Ph.D from Yale University. She has work experience in international and strategic human resource management working in Asia, Europe and the U.S. for Hitachi, IBM & GTE. Dr. Kossek works globally to advance knowledge on gender and diversity, employment practices to support work and family, and the development of leader and positive workplace cultures to support well-being and productivity. Her research has been featured in national and international media such as the Financial Times, National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes magazine, Time magazine, Marketplace, and the Washington Post.
Grace Marie Bochenek is an American industrial engineer and the current director of the School of Modeling, Simulation and Training, and the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida. She is former Director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory within the United States Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy. She also served as the acting United States Secretary of Energy in early 2017. She previously had spent much of her career at the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center.
Alice Orcutt Nakamura is an American-Canadian economist and writer. She is a fellow of the Canadian Economics Association, which is the highest honour of the association. She is currently a professor of finance and management science at the University of Alberta where she has taught since 1972. Alice Nakamura was also the first female president of the Canadian Economics Association in 1994–1995. She was also the president of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth from 2014 to 2016.
Heather Ashton was a British psychopharmacologist and physician. She is best known for her clinical and research work on benzodiazepine dependence.
The industrialization of construction is the process through which construction aims to improve productivity through increased mechanization and automation. The process commonly involves modularization, prefabrication, preassembly, and mass production.
