1. Introduction.
Northlands rapidly increasing growth in population over the last few years has put huge pressure on the building industry. Many of the building companies and businesses simply cannot find enough staff in order to meet the demand from the ever increasing client base the region is seeing. Due to this, the demand for civil engineers in Northland is very high thus there are a large number of small privately owned companies set up in the area.
Richardson Stevens Consultants Ltd. is a privately owned company which is run by three directors. They specialise in structural engineering and their main cliental are a number of home building franchises. They employ structural engineers who have studied civil engineering at university and also draftsmen.
Working as an engineer for such a company gives the employee a whole understanding of how the company is run and managed, how problems are dealt with and the rewards of finishing major assignments on time and to a professional standard.
2. Company Structure / Products and Services
Richardson Stevens Consultants Ltd. (RSC) was founded in 1997, originally they had one director and employed three structural engineers and a draftsman. It now employs nine engineers, three draftsmen, two secretaries and is run by three directors. The company is based in Whangarei and their work comes from throughout the Northland region.
2.1 Products and Services
The majority of the work that RSC perform is structural engineering, however they also do a small amount of geotechnical engineering. As there is no specialist geotech engineer in the office, they have to hand on a lot of their work to offices such as Tonkin Taylor who do have geotechnical engineers.
The company does a lot of domestic work for home building franchises such as GJ Gardener homes and Golden homes. Typically this would involve a site investigation first to determine the ground conditions and then make calculations based on these conditions as to what foundations are required. The housing companies all have plans pre-drawn and they sell these to the client. However the clients always want to change something around a bit, so before the housing company can go ahead and build, they come to RSC who do structural calculations in order to determine if the change is ok.
RSC also do a lot of work with subdivisions. These involve the civil engineers in the office rather than the structural engineers. Before building consent can be granted to a sub-divider, RSC has to design the roading, sewer, storm-water and the surface drainage.
David Winkler/ASC to provide Mark Parent/CH2M the contact for geotechnical work involved in other builds.
The case situation examines the process of developing a plan that Mitch Brooks, a junior partner and director of Sperry/MacLennan (S/M), to export the company’s services. There is a strong desire to search for new markets because there are some signals that the market for architectural services is slowing. Business was increasing for the company throughout the 1970s and the companies grew to establish branches in Charlottetown and Fredericton. However in the early 1980s, the company faced a slow period that forced them to take risks and challenges, which luckily was rewarded in 1983 and gained national recognition. This helped build a secure reputation with the Canadian sports facility market. The following year, the company focused on promotional efforts that would allow them to get similar work and associating themselves with Creative Aquatics exclusively. In 1984, the company gained strength and stayed busy with new venues and construction until 1987.
S/M is a Canadian architect and planning company with roots that began in the early 1970's and was founded by architect, Drew Sperry. The company grew and eventually added a partner, John MacLennan to the company, thus creating Sperry/MacLennan Architects and Planners. Despite severe competition, the company rapidly expanded and grew its operations and strategically added a couple of branch offices to keep up with the "aggressive growth period" (Aaker, Kumar, & Day, pg. 72). Beginning in the 1980's the company experienced a slow period, however, rebounded by landing a couple of key projects and added to its menu of services. The company also received prestigious awards as well as industry recognition. Although, by the end of the 1980's the firm was secure and able to provide a variety of services, it was contemplating its plan for the future by its newest junior partner, Mitch Brooks. The company successfully...
Elliott construction was organized in 2009. Milburn Scott Elliott is the managing member of Elliott Construction, LLC and has a high school education. The company was hired by the City of Brian to build a lift station and to do sewer line work. Mr. Elliott is a member of the Association of General Contractors for 10 years. Mr. Elliott used to work for Tiller Corporation as a supervisor over utilities. He worked there for about 2 years and that was about 30 years ago.
Six Sigma is a system used both in manufacturing and service organizations to maximize business success by minimizing defects and process variability (Krajewski, 2013). While Six Sigma relies heavily on the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM), it has a different focus. It is driven by a close understanding of customer needs; the disciplined use of facts, data and statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing, improving and reinventing business processes. Six Sigma focuses on reducing variation in processes as well as centering processes on their target measures of performance. Either flaw, too much variation or an off-target process, degrades performance of the process. Six Sigma is a rigorous approach to align processes with their target performance measures with low variability.
The Six Sigma approach was designed by Motorola in 1986. The primary objective of the concept was to develop a tool for tallying the process defects and, as the result, improving business operations. The foundations of the approach are the customer needs, statistical analysis of data and facts, and timely execution. The method promises numerous benefits such as increasing performance and profitability of an organization, improving product or service quality and employee morale, decreasing costs, the growth of market share, the higher level of satisfying customer needs, etc. (Meredith & Shafer, 2013). The primary advantage
As a consultant, there are processes that vary in the number of steps, however for the purposes of this paper the following steps will be addressed; initial contact, decision to work together, preliminary analysis, formal proposal, project charter, in-depth analysis, implementation, delivery, and follow up (Frankl, 2014, p. 3).
The shape of any titration curve of a weak acid can be described by using the Henderson-Hasselbach equation. This equation was useful in estimating the pH of a buffer solution (CH3COOH), and allows for an understanding of the acid-base balance within the blood and tissues of vertebrates. This equation fits the titration curve of all weak acids and showed why the pKa of a weak acid was equal to the pH of the solution at the midpoint of the titration (Nelson & Cox, 2008 pg.60-61). When the titration began, the CH3COOH was partly ionised. This means that it was mostly in the form of CH3COOH. When the NaOH was added, the amount of CH3COOH that was dissociated to form acetate ions and H+ ions increased. These ionised protons (H+) reacted with the added OH from the NaOH and formed H2O, which then neutralised them (Joesten, M. 2007). Where the slope of the graph was shallow, the pH changes very slowly with the addition of NaOH and this was where the CH3COOH displayed its maximum buffering ability. This occurred when the pH was resisting change from the addition of NaOH, and it occurred at this point because the amount of CH3COOH was equal to the amount of acetate ions (CH3COO-) (Thorne, A. 2016). This point is also known as half the equivalence point, and this was where half the NaOH added equalled half of the total
I am currently working as an Assistant Quantity Surveyor with a civil engineering firm based in eastern region of United Kingdom and although I have worked with Walker Construction for a short period, I am already on my way to advance to an intermediate quantity surveyor,...
I have conducted my research through interview with someone familiar with construction and development as how geometry is used in these fields.
There are 25 major specialties in engineering that are recognized by professional societies. In any one of those 25 specialties, the goal of the engineer is the same. The goal is to be able to come up with a cost effective design that aids people in the tasks they face each day. Whether it be the coffee machine in the morning or the roads and highways we travel, or even the cars we travel in, it was all an idea that started with an engineer. Someone engineered each idea to make it the best solution to a problem. Even though engineer’s goals are similar, there are many different things that engineers do within their selected field of engineering. This paper will focus on the architectural field of engineering.
Butler and Zander [M2] formulate a model for multicultural team effectiveness based on Composition, Communication, Conflict, and Creativity. Their model is useful but does not fully take into account past experience and is based on current activities that are used by the team members, rather than past experience from intercultural orientation. Although they do say that the cultural background of team members can positively impact the team 's
The pH of the analyte, in this case a strong acid like HCl, is plotted against the volume of the strong base, NaOH, that is being added. The titration of a strong acid with a strong base produces a titration curve as above.
Titration is a technological process in which a solution, known as a titrant, is slowly and carefully added from a burrette into a fixed volume of another solution (known as the sample). In an acid-base titration an acid neutralizes a base or vice versa. This process is maintained untill the reaction between the titrant and the sample (acid and the base) is judged to be complete. The reaction is judged to be complete when the endpoint is reached. An endpoint in a titration analysis is referred to as the point at which no more titrant is added due to an observable colour change of an indicator. Indicators can be used to find an endpoint because they change colour when the pH of a solution changes and an endpoint in a titration is an empirical approximation of the equivalence point, which is the point of major pH change in the titration sample due to the fact that equal chemical amounts of reactants have been combined at that point. All indicators have a pH range, which is the range of pH values at which the colour of the indicator changes. Thus
In this experiment three different equations were used and they are the Stoichiometry of Titration Reaction, Converting mL to L, and Calculating the Molarity of NaOH and HCl (Lab Guide pg. 142 and 143).