Introduction

This report will look at:

• the sequence of events

• the subcontractors involved

• the responsibilities of the subcontractors

• the financial compensation from the subcontractors

• recommendations to avoid future incidents of this nature

Findings

1. Fire broke out at 17.30 on Friday 1 3 October in the working area around the emergency generator. All personnel were cleared from the site and the fire service informed by 17.45. The fire service arrived at 1 8.00 and the blaze was extinguished by 1 8.30.

2. The electrical contractors Mullet & Sons started the fire accidentally when carrying out the connection work of the generator to the main power line. Packing material left on the ground by another subcontractor Harvest Macdougall plc caught fire and this quickly spread.

3. Although Harvest Macdougall are obliged to remove any packaging material they bring with them it seems that the electricians from Mullet told them to just leave it. We assume they wanted to get their own work done as quickly as possible so that they could finish for the weekend. Starting welding work without first making sure there is no inflammable material around is in direct contravention of contract regulation 2.3.8.

Conclusion

Mullet & Sons must pay for the replacement of the generator (€90,000) as they are solely responsible for the damage.

Recommendations

1. Mullet & Sons should not be offered any more work on site if they do not accept these terms.

2. Harvest Macdougall should receive a formal warning.

3. All subcontractors must be reminded of their obligation to follow all fire and safety regulations.

Normal Poole Site Manager 19 October

Some rulers for writing a report:

1. A report should be well organized with information presented in a logical order. There is no set layout for a report. The layout will depend on:

• the type of report

• the company style.

2. The format used for this example is common for many formal reports:

• title

• executive summary

• introduction

• findings

• conclusion

• recommendations

3. Another possible structure would be:

• title

• terms of reference

• procedure

• findings

• conclusions

• recommendations

4. The executive summary is a summary of the main points and conclusions of the report. It gives the reader a very quick overview of the entire situation.

5. The introduction defines the sequence of points that will be looked at.

6. The findings are the facts you discovered.

7. The conclusion is what you think about the facts and how you interpret them.

8. Recommendations are practical suggestions to deal with the situation and ideas for making sure future activities run more smoothly.

Tasks and exercises:

1. Write a report on research project into the TV-watching habits of school students.

Unit 7

E-commerce

Business brief

Six months in e-commerce is like six years in any other business. At least, that's true way it seems at the time of writing (mid-2000). The e-commerce landscape is still very much in its formation. Let's look at three e-commerce operations that illustrate the fluidity of the situation.

Amazon is prehistoric by Internet standards. Using its vast accumulated expertise, It has gone beyond books to sell CDs, videos and other things as well, and its site acts as a 'host' for other suppliers, too. It benefits from a very good reputation for service, especially in delivery: the massive investments in warehouse automation and dispatch seem to have paid off. But it is famous for not making a profit, and there are now reports that it risks not being able to meet debt repayments.

Lastminute.com was founded on the original and attractive idea of catering for people who'd like to do something at the last minute, even if you can buy tickets for flights, etc. several weeks ahead. Its founders are famous and feted, at least in the UK, and there has been some clever PR to build the hype. It recently sold shares to outside investors for the first time, but the timing was bad. There was increasing scepticism about the real value of companies like Lastminute.com: the multi-billion valuation implied in the share issue bore no relation to the money it actually made. Its income (commissions from selling tickets, etc.) in 1999 was less than £1 million: peanuts. People who bought its shares presumably hoped to get in early on a company that might one day be very profitable, even if no profits are forecast for several years to come.

Boo.com was one of the first major casualties of e-commerce. It sold sports goods. Development of its site took much longer than planned, because its founders 'wanted everything to be perfect'. The launch was late, and meanwhile the company had used up all its capital.

At the time you read this, how are Amazon and Lastminute doing? Are they among the major players in e-commerce? Do people remember boo.com, perhaps as an object lesson in things that can go wrong, and as a victim of one of the first shakeouts in the industry?

Some of the key issues for e-commerce are:

• Physical delivery of goods. Parcel-delivery companies (old-economy organisations par excellence) have benefited enormously from companies like Amazon, where goods have to be physically delivered to homes. (They are even planning to deliver in the evenings, when people might actually be at home!)

• The future of services. Some think that the real growth In consumer e-commerce is going to be in services like travel and financial products, where the value of each transaction is quite high, and goods do not have to be physically delivered. On some airlines, two-thirds of bookings are being made on the Internet.

• The frustration of using e-commerce sites. A recent report found that, on average, 30 per cent of purchases on the Internet are not completed. It conjured up the spectacle of hordes of virtual shopping carts abandoned in the virtual aisles of these sites - an e-tailer's nightmare! This, of course, has a very negative effect on the company's brand image, and the report even found that some people who had bad experiences on a company's website then avoided its bricks-and-mortar stores. This is one of the problems for traditional retailers who are trying to develop an e-tail operation, part of the more general question of how the two types of operation are going to relate to each other.

• Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. Some say that the biggest impact of the Internet is going to be in business-to-business applications, where suppliers can competitively bid for orders. Competing companies, for example in the car industry, have set up networks where they can get suppliers to do this. Orders are placed and processed, and payment made, over the Internet, hopefully with massive cost reductions through the elimination of processing on paper.

We live in exciting times. Things will develop in ways that are difficult to anticipate. E-commerce will mature, settling into more established patterns. What these patterns will be like, it's too early to say. Fortunes will be made by guessing future trends. Luck will no doubt play a big role.

PS: How to arrange a meeting see Unit 1 of this methodical manual.