The purpose of this Master Thesis has been to investigate the possibilities for a new type of noise reduction solution that could decrease the negative effects resulting from larger traffic roads. The idea has been to construct a noise barrier with a roof ? like a tunnel placed on a road. The choice of material has been focused on transparent materials in order to lower visual intrusion and barrier effects. This project idea is called the Noise tunnel.After having investigated the current offer of noise solutions, it has been concluded that these solutions rarely provide a sufficient level of noise reduction ? at least not when government regulations of acceptable noise levels are applied.

Quality is the key to a well executed product or service. The construction industry hasn?t highlighted the quality in recent times which have contributed to the construction industry receiving much criticism in the field. The public sees it as an offhanded industry where errors and delays are common.The reason for this is considered to be primarily the lack of time, constant pressure to reduce costs and skills and the ability to communicate between the parties about what the correct quality really means. The industry has begun to realize that it must start setting clearer standards and that there are great opportunities for improvement.This report will give Peab an opportunity to develop their quality work.

This essay notice film and TV-series as a resource, which can be utililized by the tourism industry. To be more concrete, the aim of this essay is to examine if and how the Television series ?Midsomer murders? can be utilized as a tourism product. To fulfill the purpose of this essay, two different methods have been used: the study off literature and a content analyses, the later in form of a picture & film analyses. The results of this study showed that ?Midsomer murders? have qualifications enough to be a successful tourism product.

Reinforcement is of great importance to fulfill the dimensioned strength of a concrete construction. This requires that the work needs to be carried out with adequate results that neither endangers the workers or the safety of the construction. Progressive development of the planning phase, construction documents, and construction methods is in constant need since the technology constantly evolves.In order for contractors to be able to get acceptances from their quotations requires that they have to increase their working pace in order to be able to leave a quotation with a lower price than the competition.Due to the increasing pace the different parts involved in the construction process is subjected to time pressure. The design stage, construction documents, work preparation and the execution are all affected when everything has to be finished quickly. To avoid problems, it is required that all parts are able to deliver good quality solutions and results under the influences of time pressure, which is not always easy.

Between 1965 and 1974, the Swedish Parliament decided to build one million dwellings, called Million Program. The million program buildings were erected with new, untried design solutions, in a short range of time, and at low cost. The residential buildings from that time are now greatly in need of renovation. The municipal housing company, Gavlega?rdarna, renovates and improves the energy efficiency at some of it?s apartment buildings in the district Sa?tra, Ga?vle.

Several cities have implemented various projects to improve traffic safety in city centers.During 1970s and 1980s the city centers changed as the suburbs grew and large shopping centers were located outside the center. At the same time, several projects were initiated with construction of pedestrian streets and restriction of traffic in the center. In year 1994,shared-used areas were introduced in Sweden and these areas are often used in center environments.In Sweden, municipalities are responsible for integrating security in public places and in comprehensive plans and detailed development plans. The National Board of Housing,Building and Planning is the authority for administrating planning issues and develop general guidance about planning. Traffic is one of their key issues, although today there are no concrete guidelines from the National Board of Housing, Building and Planningfor the design of traffic safety in city centers.Traffic safety in city centers affects many people because the city center is a public place.It is therefore important that there are current guidelines available that are helpful for changes and improvements in traffic safety in the city center.The purpose of this report is to formulate guidelines for planning city centers from a traffic safety perspective.

Since the nineties the words customer, effectiveness and quality have become part of everyday school life. Municipalities? makes regular customer surveys to measure both independent schools as municipal schools ' quality. A common method for customer research and background studies is that parents and students are asked to respond to simple Web-based surveys. Customer satisfaction and/or customer dissatisfaction options are presented in tabular form, based on the percentage that expresses a particular position within a query.

This report presents suggestions and recommendations on how to convert an old industrial building, built in 1958, to an office hotel. One of the main criteria was that the floor plan should be flexible. The building is situated at Jonsereds Fabriker and the study was conducted for Hantverkslokaler i Göteborg AB, the estate owner.The survey is initiated with study visits at various office hotels, together with studies of literature regarding office planning. One conclusion from the study visits is that meeting-places, where the different companies can meet and exchange ideas and services, are important. Another one, and probably the most important parameter when planning offices is that they should have windows.

The world around us is shrinking and globalization and capitalism are processes affecting the world. Global trends, like outsourcing and relocation of firms to low-cost countries, have become more common. This creates a huge vulnerability in the municipalities that today are concentrated around a single large company. One of these is Olofström which today is one of the most vulnerable municipalities in Sweden and whose survival today lies in the hand of the company ?Volvo Cars Corporation?.

Högre byggnader i Sverige stabiliseras vanligen med väggar som dimensioneras för att uppta både skjuv- och tryckkraft, så kallade ?Shear-Walls? eller stabiliserande väggar. Vid dimensionering av dessa element refererar den aktuella normen, SS-EN 1992-1-1 (EK2) till fackverksmetoden. Då det råder brist på praktiskt applicerbara dimensioneringsregler för fackverksmetoden för stabiliserande väggar används i dagens läge ofta den amerikanska betongnormen, ACI som med sitt enklare och mer praktiska tillvägagångssätt konkurrerar ut fackverksmetoden. Eftersom dessa hus byggs i Sverige ska Eurokoderna tillämpas, därför är det intressant att veta hur stor skillnaden i både armering, men även styvhet blir om båda metoderna tillämpas på ett väggelement.

This degree project concludes the Innovation and Design Engineering programme at Karlstad University. The project was carried out by David Brocker, Erik Hallberg and Andreas Hertzman during the spring of 2006 and corresponded to 15 weeks of work per student. Assigner was Martin Larsson at Arexor and instructor at Karlstad University was Monica Jakobsson.Arexor has a patent to a construction of an electrical skirting board with moveable wall sockets, called Electrical Track System. The lowest parts of the interior walls along the floor are today almost always covered by a conventional skirting board. Arexors patented product replaces that with the possibility to move and increase the number of wall sockets by choice along an electrical skirting board.

The level of increased central government that we have experienced during the last decades in school, for the purpose of increasing equality and to adapt the Swedish school to a certain international standard, clearly shows that increased control scarcely leads to improvement.The aim of this paper is to examine whether teachers believe that national tests contribute to equivalent assessment and increased goal attainment. Furthermore the teachers? attitude towards and work with national tests is described. The paper is written from a school improvement perspective, where good examples from current research on what creates increased quality in school meaning increased goal attainment and equivalent assessment are related to research on school effectiveness and increased testing in schools. The study builds upon a quantitative survey among teachers in upper primary - and secondary school in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden.The result shows that the teachers have a somewhat more positive than negative attitude towards national tests, as a whole.

Librarians like to think that libraries contribute substantially to the progress of research. However, libraries still seem to have serious problems getting integrated in their parent organization on equal terms with other parts of that organization. The degree of integration of the library is thus the main topic of this thesis and the purpose is to examine how the interaction between librarians and scientists is formed and can be developed. That issue leads to concrete questions concerning what part librarians play in the scientists work and which factors influence the cooperation or lack of cooperation. We have chosen, for reasons of comparison, to make two case studies; one is a branch of a university library and the other is a library in a large pharmaceutical company.

From the pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age, a number of different fossil agrarian landscapes can be found in southern Sweden - clearance cairn areas, celtic fields, stone-wall complexes and geometrically laid-out strip fields. With two different comparative analyses, this paper tries to explain some of the differences between clearance cairn systems and the other fossil field systemsThe shape of the early Iron Age agrarian landscape varies between different provinces of southern Sweden. At Gotland, celtic field systems were laid-out before 500 BC. In Småland at the same time, areas with clearance cairns were created. How can the difference be explained? The different physical appearance of clearance cairn areas and celtic fields can be explained by the different ways to handle the ard in till and in sandy soil.

The thesis has been made for NCC Teknik in Gothenburg. The NCC Corporation is one of the largest leading companies in Scandinavia within the construction industry. NCC is active throughout the whole construction process, where one part is to carry out soil investigations prior the construction of various buildings, for example residential buildings. NCC Technology wants to visualize the samples taken at the construction sites in 3D for clients, authorities and also internally to show in a simple and understandable way how contamination is spread out in the soil.The thesis includes the area of Limhamns läge in Malmö, previously an industrial area. The area has previously included a concrete factory and the contamination from that factory has lingered in the soil.