Mechanical Engineer's Love

Stunning Railway Stations of World

Antwerpen-Centraal
Architects: Louis DelaCenserie, Clement van Bogaert
The station’s main building, one of the world’s most impressive rail “cathedrals”, was built after the completion of the vault and the platforms.
From 1998 to 2007, the station was converted from a terminus into a through station.

ChhatrapatiShivaji Terminus

Architect: Frederik William Stevens

The station’s entrance gate displays sculptures of a lion and a tiger, symbolizing Britain and India respectively.

The building, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was completed in 1888 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

Gare de Liège-Guillemins
Architect: Santiago Calatrava S.A.
Thanks to this high-speed station, Liège is now only 39 minutes from Brussels, approx. 1 hour from Cologne, around 2 hours from Paris and Frankfurt, and approx. 3 hours from London.
The station is one of the busiest in Belgium as it is used by around 15,000 people every day

Gare de Strasbourg
Architect: Johann Eduard Jacobsthal, Jean Duthilleul
The huge glass roof covering the façade of the historical building was added in 2007 as part of the station’s refurbishment.
The Gare de Strasbourg is the second-largest train station in France

Gare do Oriente
Architect: Santiago Calatrava S.A.
The building was constructed in 1998 as a transportation hub for the Lisbon World Exhibition.
With approx. 75 million passengers per year, it is one of Portugal’s busiest stations.

Grand Central Terminal
Architect: Warren & Wetmore
Grand Central is a "terminal", not a station, because trains terminate there, mainly on stub-end tracks.
In 1968, the Penn Central Corporation proposed an office tower to be built over the building. There was little hope that the building could be saved until Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis stood in front of the building and urged the preservation of the historic site

HundertwasserBahnhof
Architect: Hubert Stier, FriedensreichHundertwasser
The original station building from 1887 was refurbished for the World Exposition from 1998 to 2000 by FriedensreichHundertwasser.
The station was one of Hundertwasser’s last projects as he died in 2000.

King’s Cross Railway Station
Architects: Lewis Cubitt, William Cubitt, John McAslan + Partners
King’s Cross Railway Station was built as the London hub of the Great Northern Railway and is the terminus of the East Coast main line.
The building has an important function in Joanne K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels: Platform 9 ¾, the starting point of the “Hogwarts Express”, is located in the station and can be accessed through a secret entrance in the brick-wall barrier between platforms 9 and 10.

 Rotterdam Centraal Station
Architects: Sybold of Ravesteyn, BenthemCrouwel, Meyer en Van SchootenArchitecten, West 8 Landscape Architects BV
The building was officially reopened on 13 March, 2014 by King Willem-Alexander.
The station sees about 110,000 passengers per day, and offers 750 car parking places as well as 5,200 bicycle parking spaces.

 Southern Cross Railway Station
Architects: Grimshaw Architects, Daryl Jackson Pty Ltd
The original building was constructed in 1859 and formerly known as Spencer Street Station. A vast redevelopment of the station was completed in 2006, adding a dune-like roof that covers the station’s whole city block.
It is Melbourne's third-busiest railway station with approx. 16.8mn passengers per year.

WTC Transportation Hub
Architect: Santiago Calatrava S.A.
The railway station, which is currently under construction in New York, is due for completion in 2015.
The Hub's roof looks like wings made of glass and steel. They will allow natural light to enter the building.

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.

Green Routine

The construction industry is often criticised for neglecting environmental issues in favour of profit.

While the industry as a whole is actively pursuing the building of green building projects, the flip side is that not all companies who are accredited to Green Building Council membership nor all LEED-accredited professionals follow or encourage others to follow eco-friendly practices in their day-to-day tasks.

If we do not collectively change our thinking and how we operate, critics of the sector’s overall environmental performance may be proved right.

With World Expo 2020 and the FIFA 2022 World Cup on the horizon, and as the GCC construction industry prepares for another construction extravaganza, there could not be a better time for all stakeholders to start seriously practicing sustainability in everything that they do.

One such issue is heavy usage of paper in the construction industry.

It’s a fact that tonnes of paper and several thousands of printer cartridges  are being used by all stakeholders for communicating by means of circulating  multiple hard copies of drawings, reports, submittals, schedules, manuals,  purchase orders, invoices, delivery notes, timesheets, letters and faxes, without realising the adverse effect we leave on the environment.

Due to this uncontrolled use of paper, paper mills produce tonnes of extra supplies. However, such paper production and usage takes a toll on the beautiful planet we live in.

Paper is the third-largest industrial polluter of air, water and land, releasing well over 100m kg of toxic pollutants each year.

The worldwide pulp and paper industry is the fifth-largest consumer of electrical energy.

The paper industry also consumes more water in production per ton of product than any other industry. In addition, the carbon dioxide emitted during paper production is a greenhouse gas responsible for acid rain.

And wastewater from paper mills contains solids that affect ecological characteristics and results in the death of several living organisms in water.

Discarded paper is another significant issue. Even in recycling processes, sludge produced during de-inking is a major source of pollution.

We in the construction industry have a collective responsibility and should set an example for other industries to follow. This includes reducing or eliminating paper usage by going digital by means of electronic transmittal, communication, storage and data management.

Such an approach gives better control over projects and identifies potential issues early as electronic documents allow a company to capture cost and information on a real-time basis.

Also, it is a more secure way of doing business against loss of information and other fire-associated risks. Staffing and overheads also reduce considerably and the speed and efficiency of communications, document filing and retrieval all increase.

By digitising paper-based documents, the industry will gain from a multitude of benefits that not only help to create a better planet to live in but also increase our efficiency and create a healthier bottom line for business.

Reference:

http://www.constructionweekonline.com/

by CW Guest Columnist on Jan 5, 2014

Transparent Concrete

Made of fine concrete embedded with 4% by weight of optical glass fibers

New Architecture in Concrete... ... from translucent blocks and photo-engraved building fronts to revolutionary materials that promise to change the rules of construction as we know them today. We all know that concrete can be concocted to look like many things, but who would have thought that the rock-solid substance could be a substitute for a window? As it turns out, a handful of academic and commercial researchers are not just dreaming of this, they are busy making it happen. 

Safety-Management

"The quality of being safe; freedom from danger or injury" # Safety

The dictionary definition is not applicable and should not be used in the context of safety management. The word "safety" should be defined with such a meaning that reflects the reality. There are a number of such definitions by various academics and authorities. Some of these definitions are quoted on below:

U.S. National Safety Council

"Safety" is the control of hazards to attain an acceptable level of risk.

Gloss and Wardle in Introduction to Safety Engineering

"Safety" is the measure of the relative freedom from risks of dangers. Safety is the degree of freedom from risks and hazards in any environment.

Willie Hammer in Occupational Safety Management and Engineering

Safety is a matter of relative protection from exposure to hazards; the antonym to danger.

Lowrance in Of Acceptable Risk: Science and the Determination of Safety --

Safety is a judgment of the acceptability of risk...... A thing is safe if its risks are judged to be acceptable.

Everybody is responsible for their safety. It is not depends on a person or a team.

Construction Company Organization (LLC)

How a construction company organizes for its work depends on number and size of projects, project complexity, and geographical distribution of the work.

 Limited Liability Company

A form of organization known as the limited liability Company (L.L.C.), permitted in most states, and combines many of the attributes and advantages of the corporation and of the partnership. For example, the owners of an L.L.C., who are known as ‘‘members’’ after executing the required legal articles of organization, enter into an operating agreement in which one of their number is designated as the manager of the company.

The company does not pay taxes on its profits, but rather the individual members have the prorate share of their percentage of ownership of the company added to their income for taxation purposes. On the other hand, there is no individual liability of any of the members for losses or debts of the company as there would be if the ownership were in the form of a partnership. Additional members may be added to or dropped from the company by a vote or written consent of 100% of all of the members.

No member, other than the manager, has any power or authority to bind the company, unless such a person has been specifically authorized in writing by the manager to act on behalf of the company. A manager may be removed in the event of his or her neither willful or intentional violation nor rack less disregard of the manager’s duties to the company. The manager’s replacement will be selected by the members who originally selected the manager. Such replacement will be decided by a majority vote of the members.

Reference
BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION HANDBOOK

Robert F. Borg

Chairman, Kreisler Borg Florman General Construction Company

Scarsdale, New York

5 tips for managing scope changes

When you start a project, you think you know exactly what you need to deliver, but then along comes a change. It can be hard to say no to a senior manager, and often the changes suggested are great improvements that you should really incorporate into the project.

So how do you manage the impact on the project scope, the team, the budget and the schedule? That's a lot of things to consider for one change! Here are 5 tips for successfully managing changes to scope on your project.

Tip 1: Record all the changes
First, regardless of where the change comes from, it should be recorded somewhere. Use software (or else use excel) to make this job easier as it helps you prepare a consolidated list of all submitted changes and what happens to them afterwards.

Tip 2: Assess changes
Assess all the changes that have been submitted. Some will be great ideas and some won't be! Work out what impact they will have on the project and the benefits, and then you can put forward your considered recommendation to the project sponsor about whether to incorporate them into the project or not. The sponsor will make the final decision, but will be looking to you for that recommendation to approve or reject the change.

Tip 3: Prioritize changes
Assuming the change is approved, you will have to work out what sort of priority it needs. Is it something that you should drop everything for and work on now? Or can it wait a bit longer? Your team can help with this, and you'll also get a view from your project sponsor. Prioritizing is really useful if you have a number of changes as it will help you plan the work in the right order.

Tip 4: Review your plan accordingly
It is rare that you can incorporate a change without changing anything else on the project. Changes will have an impact on the project budget, schedule, resource plan and even the risks and issues log. Go through your entire project and work out what needs to be updated as a result.

Remember to share all the changes with your project team so they are also aware of anything different that they have to do now.

Tip 5: Don't agree to everything!
Don't say yes to anyone who suggests a change until it has been properly analyzed! Otherwise you could promise to deliver something that turns out to be really difficult or not something the sponsor will agree to. And you don't have to agree with your sponsor either. While they have the final say, if you don't agree with a change you can record this in the issues log but you will have to incorporate the change into the project.