This report was undertaken at the request of the Management and maintenance department of Swedish National Road Authority (Vägverket Region Sydöst) in Jönköping.In 1992, the management and maintenance of Swedish roads were laid out on external Constructors. When putting out a tender for the work, the foundation is from a national set of rules which are in constant change. This report is limited to winter road upkeep.The trend in the invitation for tenders is that it is moving from the more conventional executional demands towards the less controlling demands. The downside of functional, less controlling demands is that it is difficult to articulate how to measure them. The order authority therefore has to find ways to make sure to get what has been paid for.In connection to the invitation for tender of winter road upkeep for 2005, the new set of rules, ATB Vinter 2003 was deployed.The main purpose of this thesis is to see which the big changes in the set of rules are and how these changes affect the organisation and activities of the Constructor.It is also studied how the changes in execution is perceived by road users and how it affects the possibilities of the Constructor to come as a newcomer to a new area of administration.Interviews and examination of sets of rules has led to a list of a number of changes that the Constructors feel affect their work in any sense.Views from road users that have come in to the order authority have been scrutinized to see how they have experienced the change.

In the EU there are EC Directives that Member States of EU should follow. Sweden has undertaken to transpose EC Directives regarding the working environment to Swedish Provisions.  In 4 April 2006, the European Commission had some criticism against the Swedish implementation of the Construction Sites Directive. The Swedish Work Environment Authority has in response to this criticism reworked the Work Environment Act and related provision about building and civil engineering work. The changes came into force 1 January 2009.These changes have resulted in some working methods and even new responsibility subjects must be reviewed. The purpose of this exam project was to investigate if contractors and clients in the construction sector, had have time to update themselves on this front and adapt to these changes.

Partnering is a new and exciting way of cooperation in the Swedish construction industry. In countries like Denmark and the United Kingdom the concept has been developed during a number of years while the Swedish construction industry has been more reluctant.Partnering is seen by many as the solution to the problems that often occur in design and build contracts. Many others believe that it is a way for the big entrepreneurs to gain unfair advantage. Never the less the concept is fast getting more and more appreciation, especially in the region of Karlstad where many new buildings are built that way.We have focused on the new development of Carlstad Conference Center (CCC) which is currently built with a partnering concept. The main method that have been used in this thesis are interviews with personnel on different positions in the project.

Calesco Foil AB is a manufacturer of thin flexible circuits for heating or electric conduction.The plant is located in Kolbäck, Sweden.One of the company?s products, the conducting polymer pasta is in present situationunpredictable. Unpredictable in the way that the same type of heater shows differentresistance, depending on which time they have been produced. The desired repetitivelyprocess is almost non-existing.The aim of this master thesis is to primary identify those parameters that effects theresistance, observe and if possible to perform tests on them. The results from this analysisstand as base for recommendations to achieve a repetitive and standardized printing process.The results and the observations from the tests indicate that a repetitive process is possible toachieve.

We have carried out a study of a classification system for the Swedish collection at The Royal Library in Stockholm from 1887. It was printed in 50 copies. The Constructor, Bernhard Lundstedt, and his colleagues used it as guidance in lack of a catalogue. We regard it a local classification system. Little research has been done on old classification systems, but Francis Miksa points out the importance of examining them.

WebGL is a standard for drawing graphics in a web browser. Currently it isn?t widely understood how consistently WebGL performs across a majority of the de- vices that support it. Determining if an image looks correct to a human observer is an interesting problem. The solution for this is useful when developing WebGL applications, since a developer could make better informed decisions during de- velopment.

This thesis examines and measures differences in effciency between L1- and L2 language use for solving referential problems. Quantitative measures used in the study were time and error frequency. Qualitative measures, such as how the tasks and the participants own performance were experienced, were measured by an post interview and two questionaires. Two different tasks, a sorting task and a construction task, in which each informant was given the role as a Constructor or instructor, were used for data gathering. A total of 20 dyads, divided in two language groups (English and Swedish) participated in the study.

This thesis has been carried out at the Building and Civil Engineering Programme at Chalmers University of Technology in cooperation with NCC Technology. The study aims to investigate the optimal design of a library of standardized structural solutions for in-house multi-family buildings and what benefits it brings. Today NCC use technology platforms to improve efficiency and simplify the construction process. The platforms provide the Constructors guidelines on how construction details should look like, but the details are not complete. NCC Technology started in the spring of 2013 a project to investigate what benefits there are to create a library of standardized structural solutions for the Constructors, with more detailed solutions than in the platforms.

When the Eolshällproject was completed for the first time, a great deal of moisturedamage was discovered. Therefore the structure completion was removed andreinstalled. The project was originally planned to cost a total of 126 million SEK, but thefinal costs landed on 271 million SEK. What caused this failure? Were the designs poor,was the technology used too advanced, or was the project not managed properly?Based on the Eolshällproject, theses will be presented about what may have caused themoisture damage.

This thesis applies a discourse theoretical approach in order to examine in whatways and with what possible meanings the library at KVINFO participates in the overall gender discourse in society. This means that our reading takes place at a metatheoretical level, focussing on the library as a Constructor of meaning in relation to society's gender discourse.Besides the actual reading, the thesis argues for the fruitfulness of using both a discourse theoretical and a feministic perspective in the field of Library and Information Science. By looking at libraries in general through a lens provided by these perspectives, libraries are staged as battlegrounds for competing discourses,that attempt to promote its particular knowledge claim on how reality should be perceived.The reading shows that it is possible to perceive the library at KVINFO as amaterial articulation that takes shape by and is part in a feministic counterdiscourse against the masculinistic hegemonic discourse, which throughout ?hisstory? has positioned women as ?the other?, and established men as the normative category in society, including the libraries. Through its practise KVINFO has contributed to a change in the collective identity ascribed to women.

The purpose of this thesis project was to study how different companies are working with LastTime Buy and through that study propose improved ways of working with this for Scania CVAB. The project aimed at studying the work processes from three different perspectives:decision models, quality aspects and liability aspects between companies.To study this, qualitative interviews with one or several representatives from differentcompanies that are affected by or involved in Last Time Buy were used. Representatives wereselected partly from Original Equipment Manufacturers, suppliers, component manufacturersand companies offering third part solutions for Last Time Buy. The companies also reflecteddifferent industries. The interviews aimed to create an understanding for the methods used atthe different companies but also the ways of thinking and the knowledge behind the choice ofthese working methods.The analysis shows that the Original Equipment Manufacturers used very similar decisionmodels for Last Time Buy, but that external factors or the company strategy made them reachdifferent results.

Byggbranschen anses vara en konservativ bransch både vad gäller teknik och samarbetsformer. Det oerhörda trycket på byggbranschen och det stora antalet byggprojekt som utförs idag gör att en del komplikationer uppstår. Detta kan bl. a. bero på tidsbrist, kompetensbrist och samarbetsproblem.I vissa projekt fungerar samarbetet utmärkt mellan projektets olika parter men i allt för många projekt är samarbetet mellan parterna bristfällig.

Bakgrunden till denna rapport är att det sportvarumärke jag samarbetat med ville utveckla en modell av längdskidåkningsjacka som fanns i deras sortiment. Undersökningen gällde att identifiera förbättringspunkter på en dam- och herrvariant av denna jacka. Avsikten var att bevara plaggens design och genom förändringar i mönstrens konstruktion förbättra passform och rörelsefrihet, och därigenom plaggets funktion. Genom att konstruera, sy toiler och prova av dessa på provmodeller, har rörelsefrihet och passform kunnat utvärderas. Resultatet visade att viktiga punkter var raglanärmens konstruktion, böjningen av ärmen, kragens form, ärmhålsdjup och placering av skärlinjer.

In my work I have received a lot of concrete advice about improving the cooperation between landscape architects and contractors. Here is a list of suggestions from both cathegories: Landscape architect's advice: ? Be humble, show respect. ? A practical approach makes cooperation easier. ? Call together a startup meeting with all the consultants and builders. ? Establish a network of contacts with serious contractors whom you can recommend to customers. ? Don't hesitate to ask the contractor for advice; they often have lots of useful knowledge. ? It is important to have clearly written and thoroughly worked out documentation. ? Never let a newly graduated landscape architect visit the buiding site without the company of an experienced colleague.