Rebuilding Mexico City
After the September 19, 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, officials had to cope with a massive volunteer effort to inspect damaged and destroyed structures. Over a thousand engineers, contractors,...
Can Your Design Be Built?
A constructibility review takes place in the concept stage, preferably before the project design is completed. The reviewers usually are contractors or project engineers who have a great...
Spanning Urban Obstacles
Extension of Pittsburgh's Crosstown Expressway is a � mile portion of a massive $500 million urban highway now under construction. The extension is a complex of five roadways...
Construction Company Builds a Computer System
The case history of the computerization of a construction company is presented. The report reviews the stages that the company went through from manual operations for bookkeeping, estimating,...
Rowes Wharf: A Case Study in Substructure Innovation
Rowes Wharf is a project with many unique features. This paper has attempted to briefly review just one of these features - Up/Down construction. The willingness of the development team...
Innovative Solutions to the Challenges of Heavy Civil Projects
Each heavy construction project presents unique conditions and challenges. For large projects, the work scope may justify an extensive engineering analysis and significant investments...
Demands for Innovation in Power Construction
This paper identifies some specific demands for innovation on power projects, reviews the alternatives considered to meet project objectives, and describes the resulting innovations. Examples...
Demands and Means for Construction Innovation
Increasing complexity of the facilities owners need, increasing concern by owners regarding the cost effectiveness of investments in constructed facilities, and growing capability and...
Failure Investigations for Forensic Engineering
Failure investigations related to construction Industry is described in detail in the article. A failure investigation is one of the most demanding of engineering undertakings. It requires...
Arbitration: A Risky Method for Resolving Disputes
Arbitration has been widely praised as a speedy, 'inexpensive' alternative to litigation for resolving a wide range of disputes, including disputes arising from...
An Historical Perspective of Failures of Civil Engineering Works
The blight of failures has smitten civil engineering works since ancient times. An examination of historic cases reveals relationships to contemporary cases that are useful in guiding...
Construction Insurance: An Alternative Unified Risk Insurance
The transfer of risk mechanism (insurance) can be applied to solve problems unique to the construction environment. The proposed program is worthy of support since all segments of the...
Quality Assurance/Quality Control: Alternative Approaches to Reduce Failures
Efforts to achieve quality on construction projects usually center around code-compliant design, thorough specifications, and careful inspection. The alarming increase in both the frequency...
Design and Construction of the Spirit Lake Outlet Tunnel, Mount St. Helens, Washington
In 1982, a governmental task force was formed to evaluate the hazard posed by the blockage of Spirit Lake that resulted from the eruption of Mount St. Helens in May 1980. An analysis was...
Expert Systems in an Engineering-Construction Firm
Although it has been generally accepted that the field of engineering provides a wide variety of potential applications for expert systems, most developments have been academic in nature....
Howsafe: A Microcomputer-Based Expert System to Evaluate the Safety of a Construction Firm
This paper discusses the development of the Howsafe expert system as a case history in knowledge engineering on microcomputers. The focus is on issues of knowledge representation, reasoning...
An Expert System for Construction Schedule Analysis
This paper describes a prototypical expert system for the analysis and evaluation of construction scheduling networks from an owners' perspective. The knowledge base, which...
Application of Expert Systems to Construction Management Decision-Making and Risk Analysis
Application of expert systems in the area of construction management decision-making and risk analysis are explored. Decision-making under uncertainty is one of the attributes of human...
Applications of Automated Interpretation to Sensor Data
This paper focuses on potential applications of the AISD. (A knowledge-based concept for automating the interpretation of sensor data) concept in civil engineering. A number of potential...
Planning and Budgets in the Construction Industry
In the ever changing and volatile construction industry it is becoming more necessary for the General Contractor and major subcontractors to become businessmen as well as engineers. This...
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