Critical Barriers to Traditional Project Progress Measurement: Perspectives of Ghanaian Construction Professionals

Accurate project progress measurement is critical for effective project management. Besides guarantying smooth work progress, it affords project managers the chance to identify early warning signs for peremptory remedial actions to keep the project on schedule and to budget. However, pertinent barriers can suppress the realization of the benefits of an accurate assessment of construction progress. This study aims to identify, examine and prioritize the critical barriers militating against accurate project progress measurement in the Ghanaian construction industry. Sixteen barriers identified from the literature were administered in a questionnaire survey to professionals with tier one construction firms and consultants. Sixty experienced construction professionals practising with tier-one construction firms and consultancy services took part in the survey. The relative importance index technique was used to rank the factors and correlation in responses of the two parties tested by the Mann-Whitney U statistics. The most critical barriers perceived by the professionals were 1) Reliance on Supervisor’s Judgement, 2) Generic and Non-Systematic Approach, 3) Variable Quality of Data and 4) Intricate Measurement Reports. Other highly ranked barriers include 5) Lack of Timely Information, 6) Laborious Data Gathering and 7) Quality Integration Constraint. The findings underpin the need to minimize dependence on subjective opinions and mere experiences of supervisors for assessment of project progress in this age of information technology. Incorporation of a level of automation into traditional progress methods will not only reduce human errors introduced into manually collected data but facilitate visualization of progress reports. Contiguous to a clear specification of the method of progress measurement in the contract document, a system that conveniently integrates cost, time and scope of work into progress measurement must be pursued. Addressing these identified critical barriers will consolidate current construction progress management practices.

A study of making use of computer-aided projection fringe system to measure breast dimension

To measure breast basic dimension by using computer-aided projection fringe system.Methods A system has been developed for measuring breast basic dimension based on computer-aided projection fringe measurement and programming software.Plastic manikins breast’s SN-N (sternal notch to nipple distance),N-ML (nipple to midline distance),N-N (internipple distance),MBW (base width of breast) and N-IMF (nipple to inframammary fold distance) are measured with this system.At the same time,these items are also measured with routine ruler.Results This study indicate that the system has some merits:① non-touching measurement;② it is very rapid,the patient measured need hold his breath only 0.5 second,and all the time it takes is about 2.5 minutes;③ the measurement’s sensitivity is as high as to 0.6 mm,which meets the clinic requirement entirely;④ the measurement’s accuracy of the system is not significantly when comparing to the routine ruler’s.Conclusion Computer-adided projection fringe system for measuring breast basic dimension is feasible and advanced.14 refs,1 fig.

Phase unwrapping based on deep learning in light field fringe projection 3D measurement

Phase unwrapping is one of the key roles in fringe projection three-dimensional(3D)measurement technology.We propose a new method to achieve phase unwrapping in camera array light filed fringe projection 3D measurement based on deep learning.A multi-stream convolutional neural network(CNN)is proposed to learn the mapping relationship between camera array light filed wrapped phases and fringe orders of the expected central view,and is used to predict the fringe order to achieve the phase unwrapping.Experiments are performed on the light field fringe projection data generated by the simulated camera array fringe projection measurement system in Blender and by the experimental 3×3 camera array light field fringe projection system.The performance of the proposed network with light field wrapped phases using multiple directions as network input data is studied,and the advantages of phase unwrapping based on deep learning in light filed fringe projection are demonstrated.

Deterministic Remote State Preparation via the χ State

Two deterministic schemes using the χ state as the entangled channel are put forward to realize the remote preparation of arbitrary two-and three-qubit states. To design the schemes, we construct sets of ingenious measurement bases, which have no restrictions on the coefficients of the prepared state. At variance with the existing schemes via the χ state, the success probabilities of the proposed schemes are greatly improved.

A universal protocol for bidirectional controlled teleportation with network coding

We investigate bidirectional teleportation that works in a fair and efficient manner. Two explicit protocols are proposed to realize bidirectional teleportation with a controller. One is a symmetric protocol for two-qubit states. The other is an asymmetric protocol for single-and two-qubit states. We then devise a universal protocol for arbitrary n_(1)-and n_(2)-qubit states via a(2n_(1)+2n_(2)+1)-qubit entangled state, where n_(1)≤n_(2).The receiver only needs to perform the single-qubit recovery operation, which is derived by a general expression. Moreover, a(2n_(1)+1)-bit classical communication cost can be saved within the controller’s broadcast channel by the use of network coding technology.