Calculations are an important part of planning around a construction project. From concept to completion of the project calculation is a tool to try to predict the actual cost. During the production stage in particular, deviations occur which makes the actual cost different from the calculations.This thesis is done in collaboration with JM Residential Stockholm. The study includes a cost follow-up in which a comparison was made between the calculated production cost and actual cost for the five projects. The aim of the study was to observe the most common reasons that a project deviates from the calculated production cost and then summing these causes in a number of categories.

Does goodwill affect the cost of capital? Goodwill is an asset which is characterized by much uncertainty regarding both what it is and how much it is really worth. Based on economic theory about information risk and principal-agent problems as well as theory regarding the cost of capital we test for the hypothesis that debt and equity investors perceive goodwill as something risky and hence demand compensation for taking on this extra risk. The proxies used for the cost of capital are cost of debt, beta and the EP-ratio. On a general level we find that increasing the level of goodwill seems to result in higher cost of capital as represented by the three proxies.

The background for my thesis is the fact that with rising electricity and oil prices it becomes interesting to calculate on alternative heating systems. I have chosen to calculate upon my parents? farm, which today heats the dwelling house with wood. This is very time-consuming work, time which could be spent on other work. The main objective for this study is to compare three different heating systems to decide how they differ considering effort and cost. The result from the calculations was that grain-heating system demanded the least amount of work, but the total cost was a little higher compared to chips heating. Chips heating required half as much work as today?s wood heating and had a little lower total costs compared with the corn heating. Which system to choose largely depends on how the own work is valued.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and propose improvements to the cost accounting system in use at an airline operating on the Swedish market. The choice of study object is based on the airline?s desire to have its cost accounting system evaluated. During the analysis we have identified a number of points where the current cost accounting system does not correspond to its intended purpose. These points include significant groups of costs not being considered in the current system, potential over capacity is not visible and logic connections between distribution keys and the use of resources are sometimes lacking.

The cost of capital for traded companies is basically assessed on information from thefinancial market. Small and non-traded companies are lack of this necessary financialmarket information in order to determine an appropriate equity risk premium and tocompute the cost of capital.In the absence of financial information necessary for an external investor, it is difficult toevaluate a non-traded company with the Capital Asset Pricing model (CAPM), which isbased on the financial market information. It measures only the systematic risk, which isthe contribution of one share to the market risk of a portfolio. It is therefore important tofind models that reflect the small and non-traded companies? real business value and theirunique characteristics.

An important task for Region Skåne is to allocate resources to the health care districts. From 1999 to 2002 Region Skåne used needs-based resource allocation as a model for allocating resources. In a needs-based resource allocation individuals with the same socioeconomic and demographic characteristics are assumed to have the same level of need and are therefore allocated the same amount of resources. During the period of needs-based resource allocation a matrix model was used as a method. In the matrix model individuals were divided into cells after each combination of the socioeconomic and demographic variables.

Life Cycle Cost, often abbreviated as LCC, is a common tool for comparing the total cost of different alternatives, such as heating and cooling methods. Common heating and cooling methods in Sweden are geothermal energy, district heating and district cooling. This report aims to evaluate how different heating and cooling methods differ from each other while being applied on three different types of buildings, using selected LCC-models. Information about the selected LCC-models wasretrieved from each separate model and its website. Reports and agencies were used as sources for information about the heating and cooling methods.

Scana-Booforge is a Swedish company which specialize in heat treatment of various metal. The treatments take place in quenching ovens, where fans are used to circulate the hot air. The fans used today do not have a satisfactory lifespan. This thesis aims to develop a new design of the fans for the quenching ovens, and the goal is that the new fans will bring cost savings for Scana-Booforge.The design development process started with mapping out the environment in which the fans operate, and with analysis of the existing fan structure and damages, in order to establish the cause of failure and of short durability. The performance of the fan were also established at this stage.

In this essay, we have compared a conventional house to a passive house. The housesshared the same local conditions; they have the same living area and the same layout. Thedifferences between the houses were the different construction solutions for the roof, theouter walls, the floor and the heating system. Both the houses qualify the standards fromBBR and the passive house also lives up to FEBY?s special conditions.The purpose with the essay was to examine if it really is profitable to build small hoses aspassive houses.

The guest harbor on Utö, Utö Gästhamn, is currently using electricity for heating all of the water used in the showers and taps. Because of the large amount of visitors, especially during the summer months, the hot water usage gets very high and that is also the case for the electrical bills. During the year of 2011 the cost of electricity for Utö Gästhamn reached a total of 257 500 kr. Out of these 257 500 kr approximately 142 000 kr, 55 % of the total cost, were because of the water heating.The report is the result of a cooperation with Skärgårdsstiftelsen, the Green Islands-project and Utö Gästhamn where the mutual goal is to dimension a solar energy system, to promote the sustainable development.Initially the different techniques for the solar energy system are researched. The techniques are plane solar collectors, evacuated tube collectors, pool collectors and photovoltaic cells.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, OTEC, is a sustainable energy conversion technology that is not yet commercialized. OTEC is a technology that utilizes the temperature difference in oceans between the warm surface water and the cold water at 1 000 m depth to run a Rankine Cycle. This technology can produce electricity and provide synergies like fresh water, air conditioning and aquaculture. A simulation program for three alternative OTEC systems has been created in order to decide which OTEC system is most profitable; closed, open or hybrid system. In this simulation a production cost analysis is performed in order to investigate and decide which one of the three systems that has the lowest production cost. The production cost analysis also analyzes if the profitability is affected by the size of the facility. After these analyzes, the most profitable of the three different OTEC-systems is expanded by an installation of solar collectors in order to see if the thermal efficiency is improved. The result shows that the most profitable system varies with the size of the facility.

Unit testing is a type of testing technique which is becoming quite fashionable to the developers and companies that are in the business of creating and managing software. Alas there are seldom any concrete data to support the positive claims of the authors in unit testing methodology books. These claims are instead based on empirical studies and the experience of the authors. The problem that arises from this situation is that it becomes problematic for managers and also the developers themselves to convince both customers and their own management to use this type of testing as there is no exact return of investment model. This essay examines this problem from two points, the first point is from the literature itself and interviews conducted with a number of developers at a software company located in Umea, Sweden.

Sweden?s District councils and Country councils are in itself to a large extent responsible for the state financed welfare. Because of this, Sweden has a contribution- and adjustment system. The reason for this system is to create equal chance, for all District councils and Country councils, to be able to give the citizens service independently of their income and non-influential structural differences. The adjustment is built upon the so-called standard cost method, which contains four different parts.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and propose improvements to the current procedure for cost estimations of purchased maintenance work at Banverket, the Swedish rail administration. This governmental institution is responsible for the procurement of maintenance services for the country?s railroad network through open tenders. Due to the generally low number of contractors, it is particularly necessary to establish accurate cost estimates in order to assess the offers and ensure that a fair price is being paid to the suppliers. Several flaws associated with the current practice are identified and analyzed according to cost accounting theories.

This report provides a comparison between the products cellular concrete, foam concrete and LECA concrete. The questions to be answered during the work is how the cellular concrete stands up in cost terms to the existing competitors on the market, how the concrete products differ in design work, and in which situations the concrete varieties are preferred to use.Cellular concrete is a variant of ordinary concrete, with the difference that the ballast is exchanged from stone materials to expanded polystyrene beads (EPS). This substitution gives a product with higher insulation values but lower weight than ordinary concrete.The work was carried out by designing a survey which was sent to two hundred randomly chosen companies across Sweden, to see the building industry?s opinion of the product cellular concrete. The survey showed that cellular concrete was equals its competitors in terms of price, while the product was said to be more flexible, quicker and easier to cast.Then some of the companies, who participated in the survey, were interviewed to see more carefully, how the price, the workmanship and the time for casting and dehydration differed between the products.