Excel Tip (Multiplication)

Quantity surveyors, Accountants and others who are always/often using the MS Excel, sometime they used to feel uncomfortable when accessing Excel. Because of time. There are expert using many formulas in excel, it will save the time & to be accurate.

Here one small tips added, when multiplying the 2 or more cells if we use the normal formula like =ROUND(C6*E6,3)[See the Figure No.1], we wants to paste on every cells, only where required. Unless if we tracked that formula, then it will show 0.000 value, where multiple factors’ cells are blank.

Table No.1

To avoid this, the following formula will useful.=IF(C6="","",C6*E6) [See the Figure No.2],

Table No.2

Try it on your work.

The role of a Quantity Surveyors in Construction Projects

Save these 10 images and scroll one by one, it will be a nice presentation.

Source: A Linkedin User has uploaded.

Building Information Modeling (BIM)

There are many questionnaire surveys are carrying out related to BIM, by the under graduate students who are studying the quantity surveying, building economics, construction management… etc. These questionnaire surveys I used to received from ‘LinkedIn’, but I do not have any idea about BIM. I have got an article about BIM, which is prepared by RICS. The same I shared here and I hope this will be a useful document to all.

Before, there are some sentences about RICS.

Royal Institute of Charted Surveyors (RICS)
RICS is the world's leading qualification when it comes to professional standards in land, property and construction.

In a world where more and more people, governments, banks and commercial organizations demand greater certainty of professional standards and ethics, attaining RICS status is the recognized mark of property professionalism.

Over 100,000 property professionals working in the major established and emerging economies of the world have already recognized the importance of securing RICS status by becoming members.

RICS is an independent professional body originally established in the UK by Royal Charter. Since 1868, RICS has been committed to setting and upholding the highest standards of excellence and integrity - providing impartial, authoritative advice on key issues affecting businesses and society. RICS is a regulator of both its individual members and firms enabling it to maintain the highest standards and providing the basis for unparalleled client confidence in the sector.

Source: RICS Middle East and North Africa (Press Release 2014)

Building Information Modeling (BIM)

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is both a new technology and a new way of working. BIM is a term that has been around for a while in manufacturing and engineering industries, and is now beginning to make an impact in the construction sector. At a strategic level, BIM offers the capacity to address many of the industries failings including waste reduction, value creation and improved productivity.

The process of implementing BIM moves away from using conventional word-processing and CAD into the increased use of common standards and product orientated representations. BIM changes the emphasis by making the model the primary tool for documentation, from which an increasing number of documents, or more accurately “reports”, such as plans, schedules and bills of quantities may be derived.

BIM involves much more than simply implementing new software. It is a different way of thinking. This requires a move away from the traditional workflow, with all parties (including architects, surveyors and contractors) sharing, and effectively working on, a common information pool. This is a substantial shift from the more traditional convention where parties often work on separate information pools using several different (and usually incompatible) software packages. In essence, BIM involves building a digital prototype of the model and simulating it in a digital world.

Essentially, BIM combines technology with new working practices to improve the quality of the delivered product and also improve the reliability, timeliness and consistency of the process. It is equally applicable to asset and facilities management as it is to construction. In its purest form, BIM provides a common single and coordinated source of structured information to support all parties involved in the delivery process, whether that be to design, construct, and/or operate. Because all parties involved with a BIM project have access to the same data, the information loss associated with handing a project over from design team to construction team and to building owner/operator is kept to a minimum.

A BIM model contains representations of the actual parts and pieces being used to construct a building along with geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, quantities and properties of building components (for example manufacturers’ details). BIM can be used to demonstrate the entire building lifecycle from construction through to facility operation.

Often (mistakenly) referred to as 3D, 4D or nD, BIM should not be confused with the number of dimensions used to represent a building. At its simplest level, BIM provides a common environment for all information defining a building, facility or asset, together with its common parts and activities.

This includes building shape, design and construction time, costs, physical performance, logistics and more. More importantly, the information relates to the intended objects (components) and processes, rather than relating to the appearance and presentation of documents and drawings. More traditional 2D or 3D drawings may well be outputs of BIM, however, instead of generating in the conventional way ie. as individual drawings, could all be produced directly from the model as a “view” of the required information. BIM changes the traditional process by making the model the primary tool for the whole project team. This ensures that all the designers, contractors and sub contractors maintain their common basis for design, and that the detailed relationships between systems can be explored and fully detailed. Working with BIM will require new skills and these will have to be learned from practice.

BIM is not a panacea – it remains just as possible to produce a poor model, in terms of its functionality, its constructability or its value, as it is to produce poor drawings, schedules or any other, more traditional, form of information. Also, in the absence of any pro-active collaborative management effort, models may end up being prepared to suit the originator as opposed to being structured and presented with all parties to the design and construction team in mind. Ensuring that there is an agreed structure and exchange protocol in place to suit all parties will improve certainty, confidence and consistency. By moving to a shared information model environment, project failures and cost overruns become less likely. BIM certainly means having a better understanding and control of costs and schedules as well as being able to ensure that the right information is available at the right time to reduce requests for information, manage change and limit (or even eliminate) unforeseen costs, delays and claims.

Clients are often in the best position to lead the introduction of BIM. Understanding the value of building information and its impact on the clients own business is leading many clients to require BIM to specify the standards and methods to be used in its adoption. Clients can also provide clear requirements for facilities management information to be handed over at project completion more easily with BIM. Some international clients are even now going so far as to penalise lack of information (or the lack of its provision at established points in the construction process).

More recent experience indicates a trend in large clients and government agencies across the globe to mandate the use of BIM, not only for delivery of the building, but also as a tool to manage operationally. BIM is equally applicable to support FM and asset management as it is to design and construction. Indeed, the output of the design model may well replace the need for traditional O&M manuals. Being able to interrogate an intelligent model, as opposed to searching through outdated manuals, perhaps linked to interactive guidance on the repair and/or maintenance process has obvious advantages.

However, the largest single barrier to exploiting BIM is the lack of awareness. Clients are frequently unaware that they can have a major influence on the deliverables from a project.

BIM has the potential to impact every aspect of the Surveying Profession. It has applications for those involved with Property, FM, Building Surveying, Civil as well as traditional building construction, and should be seen as an opportunity to deliver new service streams and to extend our professional reach into new areas spanning the complete asset life cycle. BIM is not going to go away, and so we must, therefore, learn to adapt and embrace or risk the threat of losing ground to others.

I will share one more article about BIM (BIM is key to future of QS profession).

The Origin of Bill of Quantities

Bill of Quantities is synonymous with Quantity Surveyors. The profession was said to have emerged in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, although the firm of Henry Cooper and Sons of Reading was established as early as 1785. Prior to the first recorded usage of the term "Quantity Surveyor" in 1859, the terms "measurer", "custom surveyor" or "surveyor" were used.(ASAQS, 2006)

BOQ emerged in the 19^th century after the Industrial revolution in Europe. In those early days the Quantity Surveyors acted for the master tradesmen, measuring the work after completion for use in making payment to workers and frequently submitted as partisan Final Accounts to the building owner to claim for payment. Later on it was the practice of the building owners to call for tenders before any work was undertaken. A procedure was then developed to invite several master builders to submit tenders for the total price of the project rather than a collection of prices from master tradesmen or what is known today as sub-contractors. (ASAQS, 2006).

For the purpose of submitting the bid or tender, each builder then has to come out with accurate estimates of the project cost or tender. It was done by measuring and quantifying the quantities of all materials and labour necessary to complete the work, i.e. preparing a bill BOQ for the project. As each builder had to prepare his own BOQ for each project, they came to realise that they were duplicating a lot of effort by each measuring the same quantities from the architect's drawings. They realised that it is more economical for them as a group to employ one surveyor to measure the work and prepare the BOQ for them.

The builders will then price the BOQ and submit their tenders on the same basis. They would share the cost of the Quantity Surveyor (or the successful builder will pay the surveyor) and include the payment in their bids. On the part of the building owners themselves, since they ended up paying for the Quantity Surveyor's fees, it finally dawned on them that they might as well employ him directly and get some cost advice from him as well. (ASAQS, 2006; Myles, 2006, CIQS 2006).

Apart from some minor changes in term of method of measurement, content and format of presentation, BOQ is still a document detailing description and quantities of all the construction work of a project. It may now may come in elemental, trade, work section or operational form. With the advent of ICT, the process of preparing s has evolved from the tedious manual and time consuming processes to semi-automated or fully automated processes involving the use of computers and sophisticated specialised software. But the whole process is still involving the toiling over many hundred drawings

in doing the time consuming “taking off”, many hours of meetings and discussion with the client and other consultants and drafting, checking, editing and printing the 300 – 500 pages document.

Source: Paper presented at International Conference on Construction Industry 2006

How to Measure Progress against Budget

A "project" by definition will always have a limited timeframe and a fixed budget. The "budget" is the amount of money that the Project Sponsor is willing to spend to achieve the project objectives. So here are some tips and hints on setting your budget and measuring progress against it.

 Don't fix it in concrete

Your first job as a Project Manager is to ask your Sponsor "So how long have I got and what's the budget?” Your next job is often to ask for more time and money to boost your chances in succeeding.

You can do this by writing a Business Case, Feasibility Study and Project Charter to show your Project Sponsor that you will need more money than that identified to date, to meet the project objectives. When you have agreed on an amount that you believe is adequate, ask them to "fix this amount as a budget, but make available another 10-20% as contingency". That way, your budget isn't fixed in concrete.

 Planning ahead

Right at the outset; create a Financial Plan so that you have a detailed view of all of the expenses that are going to arise and when they will be incurred. If you haven't done it already, complete a Project Plan so that you know the cost of every task to be completed.

 In this way, you know for every week in the project the amount of money that will be consumed. Make sure that the amounts in your Financial Plan and Project Plan align with the budget set. That way, you know that you have a good chance of delivering within budget from the outset.

 Setting out

From the minute you’ve set the budget, you need to start recording the actual cost of the project. This includes the actual cost of your time, your staff, contractors, equipment and materials. If you're using internal staff, then assign a standard rate to the hourly cost of these resources and ask them to complete a

Timesheet so you know how many hours they are spending on the project.

 If you don't have a financial system, then use a spreadsheet to record the daily cost of the project. If you want to get specific, then also record the costs against the tasks in your project plan. By accurately recording the project costs throughout the entire project, you will be able to ensure you keep on track.

 Keeping on track

To check whether you're on track, monitor your actual costs vs. your planned costs and identify any deviations. If you're always under your planned weekly cost, then you're likely to deliver your project under budget. It's that simple!

TURBO VENTILATORS

BASIC PRINCIPLE:

 There are the exhaust fans made up of anodized aluminum and working with frictionless ball bearings. It works on the basic principle of thermodynamics & wind velocity. Therefore, it does not require any electric supply connection.

 WORKING:

These fans are only exhaust type fans having uni-directional fins and rotation. Whenever the temp. in the upper region of the roof increase, the thermal currents are developed and get released through these geodesic designed fins of the turbo ventilator the fresh air is added from the side openings of the shed. The basic thrust to rotate is due to thermal current developed because of temp. Difference between inside & outside of the shed. In addition to this revolutions, external wind energy at all the angles (360 degree) helps to speed up the rpm of the fan. Due to frictionless bearing and momentum it doesn’t stop but creates further ejecting effect for the trapped air under roof.

Since it works on thermal & wind energy there is no operating cost the ball bearing are sealed with dust proof Teflon caps to avoid the jamming of the fan. Even in the heavy rain, no drop of water can enter through the fan assembly. Only the base frame of the fan assembly is required to seal with the roof top

These fans will try to maintain the temperature, humidity & environment factors inside the shed with respect to all ambient conditions these are most useful for factory Godowns, Engineering Shops, Welding shops , hatcheries , foundries ,boiler houses D.G set rooms, Textile process units , Garment process house, Poultry etc. Drawbacks: It has to be mounted on the roof top and difficult to fix in slab type of concrete structures. Provision in advance is essential if it is to be installed on the slab type roof top. Side mounting is not possible.

The efficiency is variable and depends on the temp. Deferential as well as wind energy

BUT WE GET THE FACTORY VENTILATION 24 HOURS OF THE DAY 365 DAYS OF THE YEARS AT NO OPERATING COST.

Product features

·  UNIQUE GEODESIC DOME DESIGN

·  STAINLESS STEEL CENTRAL SHAFT

·  ALUMINIUM / ZINCALUM TRI- BAR SUPPORT.

·  100% RUST FREE ALUMINIUM VANES

SAMPLE TECHINICAL DETAILS:

MODEL                                                          TURBO-24”

Throat Size                                                   600 mm (24”)

No. of Vanes                                                34

Steel Bearings                                              2

Steel centre shaft                                       10 mm dia.

Weight approx                                            9.0Kg

Exhaust Capacity approx             

CFH (Cubic Feet per Hour) at average 3mph wind velocity or Temp. Diff. of 5 deg. C     2275 Cu. Mtr. /80,000 CFH

Conversation with CQS (From the Horse’s Mouth)

Adam Walker (AW) of Conduit Recruitment talks to Nick Neeks (ND) of WT Partnership, Sydney about some important issues that face the QS industry today. You can read this transcript.

 AW: Today we are talking to Nick Deeks who is a Director at WT Partnership in Sydney. I’m going to ask Nick some questions on issues that effect QS’s in the industry today. A big question that directors are always talking about is the quality of candidates that come out of universities and courses and their basic abilities as Quantity Surveyors, for example measurement skills. Nick, who is going to do all the measurement when nobody knows how to measure anymore?

ND: Well that’s a very good question. Whether the measurements are still going to be needed, I think is part of the problem, as well with lack of measurement training and education in universities. Also the fact that measurement is done in a different way now. It is being taught in a different way. You’ve got Cost-X, you’ve got on-screen take off systems, architects have got building information management in BMI Systems. So students aren’t taught how you and I were taught when we were in university - how to do it, with a scale rule, with a piece of paper and actually measure. That is one of the issues we find when people come out of university. Universities are applying to us to teach people how to measure and we have to send them away on a separate course !!! They want the employer to be training students in how to measure. The university course doesn’t actually teach the same measurement anymore.

AW: So are you saying the universities are not teaching people how to measure in a way that industry needs it?

ND: The subject matter of the university course doesn’t have the measurement content that it used to have. When I did my degree, there was Measurement 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. There was measurement every semester, every year. Now I think measurement takes up one semester of one year and that’s it. There’s hardly any measurement training any more.

AW: So you need people to be able to measure in a certain way, but the university course is not teaching them how to do that.

ND: No, they are not teaching them how to do it full stop, not even in a certain way, because the course has become amalgamated into a Project Manager, Construction Manager, Development Management course. It all becomes as one. It becomes a construction management degree. So the QS component is only one component of the degree, whereas the degree used to be a degree in Quantity Surveying.

AW: Yes, a big issue indeed. As far as solutions to that, and maybe solutions can come from institutions like the AIQS and the RICS, what do you think are the main goals or should be the main goals and focuses of institutions like the AIQS and the RICS today?

ND: Well the AIQS do run a course once every year- a long weekend or a 4 day course of intensive measurement. I think this year the RICS have joined with the AIQS to produce that course. As far as what the institutions should be doing, they should be promoting Quantity Surveying in the universities and in the schools, which is the subject we have been talking about for years, of trying to get people into the profession and trying to promote the whole profession. It is not as well known here as it is in the UK. When we have sat on the committee before with the RICS, we have talked about them going into schools and talking to students then. Once they’re in the universities it’s generally too late. They’ve already decided what they’re doing. They’re already on a course. So its getting earlier and earlier and the RICS do have those “meet and greet” evenings with students, which maybe they may not be as successful as they used to be. Its difficult trying to get people to come along. Maybe there is a sense of apathy from students that don’t want to attend. Maybe they just don't know in the first place.

AW: On that, would you recommend a career in quantity surveying to your children?

ND: Well having just damned the whole thing, actually I would. I would say it is a good career. I was at the University of NSW several months ago giving a presentation to some first year students on this subject and talking about overall Quantity Surveying and just the interest factor in it . It is a good, solid, well-respected profession and there is always something to learn. It keeps you on your toes and it’s something you’re never going to get totally bored of. You may get bored of the particular subject matter of the industry that you work in - it may be commercial, it may be residential - but that just ebbs and flows depending on the government stimulus, as an example at the moment. Most don’t want to work on residential or schools, but you just have to go where the market is. But it’s a long term profession. You can get a good grounding, there’s a good career path there, and you can travel the world. It’s a qualification that you can take you anywhere in the world.

AW: Is the QS service provided in Australia different to that provided in the UK?

ND: I think it is different but I have been here for 15 years, so I can’t talk about the services provided in the UK at the moment. However I think the role here in Australia is a lot more pre-contract.

 AW: What does that mean?

ND: A lot more cost planning. All of the smarts and intellectual input is provided getting the project up and running and getting the project up to appointment of a contract. The post contract period generally is not quite so important as involved as the pre contract. In the UK its different, I was just chatting with a couple of guys last week and their experience was nearly all post contract. So there are obviously bigger jobs, more involvement on a post contract role, and people would be out on site. These guys have worked 4 or 5 years on terminal 5 and all they have done is contract letting and variations and post contract work - never been anywhere near a cost plan. In Australia its quite different – in the UK they have an in depth post contract role, whereas the post contract involvement here is not so in-depth.

AW:But what would you also say about even before the cost planning starts? I think about when I used to be a QS in the UK and the QS’s used to get involved with the appointment of other consultants etc.

ND: Oh certainly. I think the position of the QS in the overall design team is different here. You used to be the first point of contact for the client. So you were the lead consultant. You would be involved in procurement and appointment of the architect and the engineers and the design team and you were the clients’ representative in a lot of ways. We get that with some of our clients- some of them worldwide clients, some of them from Asia, prefer us to be the main contact point. But generally it’s the Project Manager. It used to be the Architect, probably now more so the Project Manager. The QS just gets pulled in depending on how strong the Project Manager is and what he’s trying to achieve. But more often that not, you’re brought in to try and mop up the cost issues or resolve a problem as apposed to provide the smarts before we get a problem.

AW: When I used to be QS in Australia, a value engineering exercise or a value engineering workshop was often just cost cutting exercise because a project had gone over budget.

ND: Yes, you don’t have them so much now. You have them with RTA projects, government projects will still go through that role, but generally value engineering is a cost cutting exercise. It’s probably a mis-term. They call it value engineering, but where is the engineering? Its just value. Value reduction!




AW: Exactly. But that sort of stuff should be done at the beginning surely when you’ve got a sketch design.

ND: As long as some detailed and rigorous cost planning is done and options are looked at, then you shouldn’t get to the point of needing to do value engineering.

AW: OK. You’re an expert at building services and infrastructure. Just on the building services side, in Australia, when will building services costs be subject to the same cost planning rigor as building structure and fabric costs?

ND: I don’t know that it ever will. I’ve been here for nearly 15 years and in the UK engineering services was a major component of any QS role. QS firms would always offer engineering services and they were a fee earning service. I came here with the objective of trying to raise that profile. It’s a role that engineers undertake. It’s a value role and its one that we do and its not one that many QS firms actually provide. But it becomes more of an add on or an added value. And now it’s nearly 15 years and it hasn’t ever become so rigorous as structures or architectural cost planning. Clients like it, but I’m not sure that engineers are totally accepting of QS taking that component of their service away from them.

AW: But do engineers have detailed estimates or is it mainly just a cost plan rate based on the last similar job they did?

ND: Oh most of the jobs are just cost plan rates. We just did a job and there’s tens of millions of dollars in engineered services in there and the consultant had a rate per square meter for mechanical and that was it. This was on primitive design and we worked our way through the various stages of estimates and there was nothing there. It was just a rate and there was nothing behind it.

AW: So if you have a $50 million job, and $25 million of that are services, and you were talking about doing cost plan analyses of various options, and let’s say you can save 10%, why wouldn’t you do that to the services?

ND: Well you should do that. It’s just that there aren’t that many engineering services QS’s in Australia and its hard to try and promote it as a fee earning service on its own. It becomes an extra service. So you can put a submission in and offer engineering services as an extra. You’re not necessarily getting any more fees from it.

AW: It just seems odd. Why don’t the clients see value in inspecting the engineering services?

ND: I’m sure they do see the value but they don’t want to pay for it. They don’t like to pay for the extra service. So we have engineering services QS’s at WT Partnersip and they are full time employed. We service every office in Australia out of our Sydney office. In our Hong Kong office we have a team of 10 engineering guys up there, but it’s more of a UK model up in Asia.

AW: When you are interviewing a prospective QS for your business, what do you look for?

ND: If it’s a face to face interview, first impressions count for so much. Presentation and communication skills - because the role of the QS is very client facing. We want everyone to be in the initial stages, in the pre-contract stage working with the client. They have to attend more meetings. As well as having a solid ground in quantity surveying and reasonable education, they need to be presentable. They need to be able to write a decent report and put themselves across. So presentation has got to be one of the major factors. A solid education is the second. And experience.


AW: It sounds like you need experience in cost planning though?
ND: Experience in cost planning for us is definitely essential but it doesn’t matter if they haven’t done it necessarily in Australia, because it’s a transportable skill that you can take anywhere. That just becomes understanding rates and pricing, but the principles are to be able to put a cost plan together.

AW: How do you think climate change will affect the QS service that you deliver to your clients in the future?

ND: Well that’s a good question. We’ve just recently had our AGM and I had to put a paper together on carbon and ESD and carbon trading. I don’t doubt that there’s going to be a change in the service that’s provided. The more that the clients become aware of the emission trading scheme or pollution reduction schemes, of monitoring their energy usage and the green house emissions, then there’s a role there for a QS. The RICS has produced the best practice paper on managing carbon management of real estate. It’s not clear where there is a definite role for QS. There is a role for a surveyor somewhere in the whole picture. We are currently exploring those possibilities and looking at where it is but we still need to get the emission trading scheme through Parliament. Its going to be people like big shopping centre owners and they become first order point of obligation, which then they are legally bound to do an emission reduction and someone needs to monitor that. Someone needs to calculate the embodied carbon energy in each building, which we need to offset over a period of 10 or 15 years of operating life, of what that cost is. It comes into the whole ESD, with trigeneration, black water, recycling. They all become issues that we have to become aware of not just the initial cost, but the ongoing cost and maintenance and life cycle.

AW: If part of measuring a building’s carbon footprint has to do with how much energy it took to make the materials etc then surely a QS is going to be the only one who can quantify it?

ND: There are parts of it that QS can do, and parts that QS can’t do. It becomes very technical. I was speaking to a guy in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago about it and they were talking about a project in Auckland and they were going to get the materials from Wellington but it actually ended up on the life cycle as a carbon calculation, cheaper to bring it over from Perth. The capital cost was obviously more, but the ongoing cost of the embodied energy was less because of the way the manufacturing process of the material in Perth produced less carbon than the manufacturing process in Wellington. From Wellington to Auckland is relatively close; from Perth to Auckland is a huge distance. But it picks up all things- its fuel, its transportation.

AW: But surely QS’s are pretty much in the box seat to run that and manage that and be able to work it out and put it on paper and present it.

ND: I think the QS would need to work hand in hand with some other suitably qualified people. There are certain things that QS’s can do and you are putting statements in front of clients about potential costs over an 8-10 year period and you are making a definitive statement. There are liability issues involved. There are certain components of it that a QS can do but to be honest I haven’t really got to the bottom of it. The RICS is looking at it and it’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind but we haven’t pinpointed exactly where it’s at. But there is something there so it’s something we have all got to be aware of. The more you read about it, the more it’s just an issue that everyone’s going to be across.

Why must QS always be spelled out?

(I read this article somewhere; but I don’t have reference for this article)

 Besides the credit crunch, the talk on everyone’s lips is about sustainability and implementing responsible construction practices for the benefit of future generations. But how can this are achieved if there is nobody there to do it?

Over the past few months, I have been working in a team that is continually expanding and has gone from strength to strength in its range of services – and workload.

I have noticed a similar trend in other industries, such as finance and the media, but not as much as in the building sector, where skilled cost managers are increasingly hard to find.

It seems to me that there has been an incredible demand for construction personnel, while the response in terms of growing and training the workforce has been slow.

So how do we go about attracting individuals to our industry? It could be viewed as a company’s responsibility to target other industries in the hope of attracting professionals that can be trained and moulded into construction professionals. But how do we make the industry attractive to these potential recruits – and to new graduates?

While the industry does have many attractions, these are just not being conveyed to the right individuals or being publicised strongly enough in general. Why is it that when somebody asks you what you do for a living, you have to explain yourself in detail, explicating cost management from first principles? You might as well have replied that you are an ocularist! Quantity surveying is not a commonly recognised profession.

I believe that the reason individuals are not being attracted to our industry is that the general public are not generally aware of what we do or how we do it.

Explanation of a Quantity Surveyor

I always enjoyed this explanation of a Quantity Surveyor amongst other definitions...

Sub-Contractor: A gambler who never gets to shuffle, cut or deal

Tender Submission: A poker game in which the losing hand wins

Tender Sum: A wild guess carried out to two decimal places

Successful Tender: A contractor who is wondering what he left out

Architect's Estimate: A cost of construction in heaven

Management Contract: The technique of losing your shirt under perfect control

Completion Date: The point at which liquidated damages begin.

Liquidated Damages: A penalty for failing to achieve the impossible







Quantity Surveyors: People who go in after the war is lost and bayonet the wounded.









Lawyers: People who go in after the Quantity surveyors and strip the bodies.


Thankyou 'David Ferdinando'

Waterstop

Pond Construction Guide
Waterstops are used to waterproof construction joints in concrete. They are generally PVC or vinyl, ribbed because concrete does not bond to plastic. Waterstops are embedded in concrete joints to create a fluid-tight diaphragm. The rest of the gap can be filled with acrylic mastic.

Structural concrete is waterproof. It does not require surface treatment or a liner, but the concrete must be well made and care must be taken to waterproof construction joints and movement joints. Construction joints, between separately cast slabs, should be strengthened by the formation of a key (see diagram) and by carrying the reinforcing bars across the joint. The key is made by laying a wood bar in the wet concrete, beveled to facilitate removal. A waterstop is required to prevent leakage through the potential crack and to protect the steel reinforcing bar from water which would cause rusting.

The structure of a small pool may be able to resist the pressure from the expansion of water when it heats up or freezes. Larger pools, even if reinforced, require waterproofed movement joints.

All but the simplest concrete structures should be detailed by qualified engineers.

Cornice

Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.

The function of the projecting cornice is to throw rainwater free of the building’s walls. In residential building practice, this function is handled by projecting gable ends, roof eaves, and gutters. The elimination of the cornice has been important enough in modernist architecture that elaborate internal drainage systems are provided.

A cornice is horizontal molded projection that completes a building or wall; or the upper slanting part of an entablature located above the frieze. The term cornice comes from Italian cornice, meaning “ledge.”

Classical architecture
The cornice molding is the set of projecting moldings that crown an entablature along the top edge of a temple or building. The cornice lies above the frieze, which rests on the architrave, all supported by columns.

The sloping cornice, “raking cornice” or “rake board,” is also carried across the top of the triangular pediment, at the gable end of a building. (refer to image), found on the front of such buildings as the Parthenon, the Acropolis, or Schinkel’s Schauspielhaus. The sloping cornice hangs over the end of the structure supporting the roof. In classical and neoclassical architecture, the sloping cornice uses the same molding profile as the cornice below.

Each of the classic orders has certain characteristic profiles to its cornice:
• The cornice of the Doric order
• The cornice of the Ionic order
• The cornice of the Corinthian order

Doric order in the Parthenon

The geison in classical Greek architecture

Geison is a specialist's architectural term[dubious – discuss], denoting the part of the entablature that projects outward from the top of the frieze in the Doric order and from the top of the frieze course (or sometimes architrave) of the Ionic and Corinthan orders: thus it is simply an equivalent of cornice. In classical Greek architecture the geison forms the outer edge of the roof on the sides of a structure with a sloped roof.

The upper edge of the exterior often had a drip edge formed as a hawksbeak molding to shed water; there were also typically elaborate moldings or other decorative elements, sometimes painted. Above the geison ran the sima. The underside of the geison may be referred to as a soffit. The form of a geison (particularly the Hawksbeak molding of the outer edge) is often used as one element of the argument for the chronology of its building.


Horizontal geison
The horizontal geison runs around the full perimeter of a Greek temple, projecting from the top of the entablature to protect it from the elements and as a decorative feature.[2] Horizontal geisa may be found in other ancient structures that are built according to one of the architectural orders. The horizontal sima (with its antefixes and water-spouts) ran above the horizontal geison along the sides of a building, acting as a rain gutter and final decoration.

Doric order
In the Doric order, the sloped underside of the horizontal geison is decorated with a series of protruding, rectangular mutules aligned with the triglyphs and metopes of the Doric frieze below. Each mutule typically had three rows of six guttae (decorative conical projections) protruding from its underside.

The gaps between the mutules are termed viae (roads). The effect of this decoration was to thematically link the entire Doric entablature (architrave, frieze, and geisa) with a repeating pattern of vertically and horizontally aligned architectural elements. Use of the hawksbill molding at the top of the projecting segment is common, as is the undercutting of the lower edge to aid in dispersing rainwater. To separate the geison from the frieze visually, there is typically a bed molding aligned with the face of the triglyphs

Ionic and Corinthian orders
Horizontal geisa of these orders relied on moldings rather than the mutules of the Doric order for their decoration.

Raking geison
A raking geison ran along the top edge of a pediment, on a temple or other structure such as the aedicula of a scaenae frons (theater stage building). This element was typically less decorative than the horizontal geison, and often of a differing profile from the horizontal geison of the same structure. The difference is particularly marked in the Doric order, where the raking geison lacks the distinctive mutules. The raking sima ran over the raking geison as a decorative finish and, essentially, a rain gutter.