Non-technical issues

In addition to some technical difficulties outlined earlier, a number of non-technical issues must be satisfactorily addressed before its practice becomes widespread. Chief amongst these issues are the questions of public perception, ethics and costs. 

Table 5.1. Traditional perspectives of forest and wood quality do not identify with the pull of the market. Industry must switch from being production-driven to being consumer-led in which individual preferences matter. This table ignores non-technical issues such as cost, sustainability and eco-labelling.

Sustainable development and the multidisciplinary use of the underground are also debated within the electives related to tunnelling and geo-risk management. The speeifieity of these courses is to help to raise awareness among students of any possible ethical, social, environmental, aesthetic, economic and legal implications of their work, to which they will act appropriately. The importance of the human factor and a clear communication line between all parties involved in a construction project is stressed. Site visits also provide the opportunity to introduce non technical issues, to students not willing to follow a full course on the topic. 

Within individual risk stories, most of the coverage is not about the risk. It is about blame, fear, anger, and other non-technical issues such as outrage rather than hazard. ... 

Doom, M., J. Pacey, and D. Augenstein, 1995, Landfill Gas Energy Utilization Experience Discussion of Technical and Non-Technical Issues, Solutions, and Trends, EPA-600-R-95-035, Washington, DC, March. 

A P2 audit differs from most other types of audits because it makes use of a dual benchmarking approach namely, it uses both technical (environmental performance) and financial performance as its basis for making corrective actions. The status quo most often serves as the benchmark, though other standards certainly can be devised. A P2 audit can also affect non-environmental issues. The types of corrective actions can affect other types of wastes, energy, occupational safety, product quality, and worker productivity. 

The above planned maintenance manual system provides a firm basis on which a computer-planned maintenance system may be developed. Having such knowledge and experience from working the manual system, the benefits that can be accrued from planned maintenance systems compared to the corrective or other non-planned methods previously used are numerous. It can be found that, due to the large amount of assets to be managed by the administration, it would be beneficial for the planned maintenance system to be transferred onto a computer system. A major non-technical weekly task is one of producing work dockets for issue and the subsequent entry into the maintenance records on completion of the work task. 

To best achieve the benefits of hybrid systems, improved dynamic system models are needed. Much of the opportunity for innovation and ultimate commercial success for this technology lies in the area of system dynamics and control. To achieve commercial success, it is critical that the technical issues surrounding system dynamics are identified. Dynamic models can play a helpful role in that regard. Chapter 9 describes dynamic modeling of the primary device, the SOFC itself. This chapter s section will expand on this to discuss a full non-linear hybrid system dynamic model. 

The second set of constraints is related to the displacement of the drilling mud from the annulus. This is a fairly difficult technical issue, that is, the displacement of a non-Newtonian fluid by a series of non-Newtonian fluids—most of them exhibiting a yield stress—in an eccentric annulus (the casing is rarely perfectly centered in the hole). At each interface, drilling mud-spacer and spacer-cement slurry, the process is governed by buoyancy forces and viscous forces. 

In order to adequately address this problem, the analyst does not need to know much at all about how direct-broadcast satellites work. So long as he or she knows what the technology costs, who they need to run it, and similar details, a non-technical policy analyst can address this problem very well. Indeed, getting too bogged down in the technical details could easily distract the analyst from the most important issues. 

The identification of non-technical skills rests partly on studies and direct observation of experts, but also on analyses of accidents in many different arenas where a lack of these skills has precipitated or failed to prevent disaster. As Flin, O Connor and Crichton point out, these skills are essential for day-to-day work as well as in crises, but emerge as particularly critical at times of danger. Front line personnel are the last line of defence, whether in acting promptly to prevent an oil refinery fire or in controlling bleeding during an operation. These skills are not soft skills but critical skills that are essential to safe and efficient technical operations communication usually means communication about technical issues, decision making usually means decisions about technical issues and so on. Nor are these skills tied to particularly personalities. Perhaps some people are naturally better communicators or... 

Systems Engineering has provided a means whereby the impact of non-technological issues that arise in the Defence Acquisition Process canbe identified, captured and managed this is central to the L125 situation, as the principal reasons for project failure are not technical in nature, and yet technical issues remain the main focus of Science and Technology (S T) inquiry as it relates to project support. Changes to the L125 scope over the past 17 years have been... 

Following issue of the document, the primary author received a number of complements relaying how simple the document was to read and understand. These conunents came from both technical and non-technical staff, proving the benefit of GSN in representing the argument in a clear and unambiguous fashion. 

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