Safety in the Construction Industry
Although the construction industry employs only 5% of the workforce, it comprises 20% of all accidents and 26% of all occupational related fatalities. The costs of acidents is 9 billion...
Negotiations: How do You Measure Success?
Negotiating a 'successful' outcome once a dispute has arisen is often more difficult than negotiating agreement prior to the emergence of conflict. The basic...
Kinematics and Trajectory Planning for Robotic Excavation
One of the high volume and repetitive construction operations at the construction site is the excavation of soil. Automation of the excavation work requires a robotic system that is able...
Scheduling for Effectiveness
Telephone calls, drop-in visitors and the assorted instant crises that arise in the course of a busy workday can leave engineering and construction professionals feeling they have little...
Building Green
Some scientists say polystyrene insulation may be responsible for up to 40% of the ozone depletion caused by CFCs. That's only one reason why construction and design professionals...
Construction Documents Revised
The Engineers Joint Contract Document Committee has produced revised documents, which are available from ASCE. The committee includes ASCE, the National Society of Professional Engineers,...
Mercury Behavior in a Wastewater Sludge Incineration Process
The Western Lake Superior Sanitary District (WLSSD) in Duluth, Minnesota utilizes solid waste as fuel to incinerate wastewater treatment sludge, conserving energy resources while reducing...
Avoiding Defective Specifications
Despite everyone's best efforts, the design intent as portrayed in the contract documents is rarely crystal clear. As a result, the owner and the project team often find themselves...
Jointless Redecking
If you're redecking a bridge, why not eliminate a major cause of its corrosion at the same time? Why not remove the expansion joints? The Department of Public Works in Steuben...
Kuwait: The Incredible Shrinking Rehab
With rehabilitation estimates now just 20% of what they first were, the liberation of Kuwait has not been a cure-all for the construction industry. Firms participating in the emergency...
Pounds, Kilos and Newtons
In the U.S., an aura of mystery, like the glamour afforded the medieval priest by his mastery of Latin, surrounds the Syst�me International. This unreasonable awe, largely generated by...
The Soil-Rock Boundary: What is it and Where is it?
A major issue in many areas of Civil Engineering practice is the boundary between earth materials that are defined as soil and those that are defined as rock. Designers, contractors, and...
Special Bedrock Conditions in Greater Boston
The Cambridge Argillite, a weakly metamorphosed shale, forms the major portion of the Boston Basin, a structural as well as topographic depression. In the greater Boston area, the argillite...
Foundation Studies in a Fault Zone and a Steep Valley Slope
This paper presents two case histories which illustrate unique problems in defining the character of rock for support of structures. The first case study concerns a conventional building...
Soil-Rock Transition Zone: Uncertainties for Design and Construction
This paper addresses the problem of establishing definitions of the soil-rock boundary with regard to different engineering applications in the Piedmont geologic provinces. Three engineering...
Rock in the Limestone Regions of the Southeastern United States
Problems often arise in the shaft drilling industry in the Southeast. The karst areas in this region have certain situations found in few other places. Erratic boulders and limestone pinnacles...
Determination and Presentation of Subsurface Conditions for Design and Construction
A major problem in the design and construction of many engineering projects is the lack of adequate geotechnical information both for design and for determining conditions to be encountered...
Construction under Fire
Construction is not carried out in a laboratory setting under controlled conditions�especially in areas of socio-political conflict, such as El Salvador in the 1980s. Instead, the construction...
Double-Decking the Freeways
Elevated highways cost more than at-grade construction. Nonetheless, the hidden costs of increased traffic congestion and the real cost of urban right-of-way make elevated highways feasible....
The Structural Curtain
Curtain walls are not standard off-the-shelf items. For major projects, they are almost always custom-designed. Typically, curtain walls are on the critical path of project and often account...
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