Outsourcing modelling to CSE vendors

In order to properly outsource a modelling job to a vendor , I believe the greatest obstacle is setting down the requirements of the industrial model in a technical specification or document which is understandable by both parties.Ideally it should be:

1. A proper synopsis of the project
   
2. A general overview of the natural/industrial behavior which is to be modeled
3. Numerical details/dimensions of the system to be modeled
   
4. Environmental conditions in which the system is expected to operate (e.g: heat transfers)
5. Include online data-streams which can be easily accessed by modelers at any time to gauge

• Better understand which physical phenomena are involved in the system
  
• Develop Mathematical formulae of the physical phenomena
  
• Test accuracy of their model once developed
  
• Ensure accuracy is within specifications set by client

It would be best if the entire outsourcing of CSE services could be conducted entirely online, thus the requirement of a Web Application to handle such requests and ensure both parties on the same wavelength is needed.I suggest such an application be:

1. hosted on a LAMP server
2. built on the CakePHP framework www.cakephp.org

The application should have the following features:

• Allow clients to add new model projects
  
• Accept Flickr/externally hosted images/content posted by client
• Accept CSV-formatted Datasets which the model should be tested-against
• Allow CSE service provider ability to bid for project
  
• prioritize each request based on project length

I'll probably add more features to this list in my next post.

Outsourcing CSE to vendors

IMHO, I beleive the role of CSE in the commerical field would be as a vendor of ancillary services i.e outsourced computation.An Industry which basically takes the Math out of engineers and puts it in the hands of people trained to think only in terms of numerical computation and accuracy.This would free engineers from such tedious stuff and allow them to move onto more Value-Added Services like Design.These days the computational-task is still pretty much lumped to the engineer which is ,in IMHO, a rather poor use of human resources.To date in Singapore only a very few such computational vendors exist (most of them being A-star labs) , much of the CSE is still in the hands of company departments.

Introduction

I setup this blog primarily to channel & log my thoughts on the subject of Computational Technology which arises from Computational Science & Engineering.I graduated from the rather niche cohort of NUS's CSE centre last July and I'm now working in the Web Industry.

My reasons for not pursuing the CSE trade being:

1. My MOE bond which means I gotta work in Singapore for the next 3 years
2. The Computational industry in Singapore is monopolized by government-run A* star corporate labs which narrows prospects down to the accademic PhD population
3. The private sector doesn't appear to be aware of this technology
   
4. My programming skills were easily transferable to the more mature Web Industry

So I'd like to figure out why no start-ups in Singapore (NUS startups being quite common these days) put Computational Tools ( which are free to use btw) to use in Value-added services for the Petrochemical (or any job which uses numercial calculations for that manner) industry in Singapore.
I can back-up the claim these tools are free-use by the fact that:

• Numerical Methods are part of the academic curriculum (Free to use)
• Algorithms based on numerical methods are freely-available for academic use
  
• Octave (Matlab clone) is Open Source & Free to use!

So I'm on a quest to figure out why this stuff is not used & possibly meet people in the same situation.