Construction Commonalities

After visiting the construction sites of the new basketball facility and the new resident hall dorm this past Tuesday and having to find site similarities and differences I feel like there could be a universal truth to all types of construction sites.

First of all it should be known that both of these projects were in nearly the same stages of completion, meaning both jobs were using the same type of machinery and working on the same types of tasks.

All construction projects have universal similarities in that they all need certain equipment and types of trades workers. They all need a level of management both present and not present at the job site. However, the reason all job sites do not appear to be identical to those of similar projects lies behind the differences of how such universal tasks are carried out.
For example, Whiting Turner and their crew kept their job site in a much more organized appearance, while the dorm site seemed to be very clustered and chaotic which is big factor of slow production and job site accidents. Whiting Turner also had an on site project manager and from what I could tell there was not one present at the dorm site which could cause some organization issues.

Industry Day

this is the simulator set up by American Infrastructure. I felt like it was a really accurate depiction of what it would be like to operate an excavator. The only other time I've operated a piece of construction equipment was about 10 years ago, I got to drive a bull dozer because some construction worker was actually cool with it.

Here's a picture of Spectra IS's tent set up with the crane they brought as a demo for students to get in and operate. I wasn't able to talk to the representatives from Spectra but I talked to Dannette Beane for a while. It was about 3:30 and her and some others were packing up tables and displays. I watched as some students operated the crane, trying to pick up and move a concrete block. I wanted to try it out, but there were some other students in line waiting to operate it, but there wasn't a line for the excavation simulator that was set up by American Infrastructure. I walked over to the trailer and introduced myself to the AI representative, Alex, I think. We talked briefly about his company and how my dad was involved in civil construction and learned that the company's offices are based out of Chantilly, Va. I was just being nice because infrastructure construction doesn't really interest me.
Finally I climbed into the trailer and sat down in the seat. I chose a basic excavation demo to try and get a feel for the controls. After stuggling for a couple minutes figuring out what pedals and joystick did what, Alex suggested I try a sample scenario where I had to load excavated dirt into the back of a dump truck. I was working the excavator for some time, but after a while it became repetative and hot, and there were two other guys in line who seemed pretty eager to give it a shot so I let them. I thanked Alex for letting me play with the simulator and he gave me a brochure that I looked at when I got home but figured I would probably never show too much interest in the company because I guess it's not really a field that I would want to pursue.

Sketches Assignment

Here's the layout of my room in my apartment along with the cross sections of the exterior wall at the lone window of my room, and the interior wall section taken from my door frame.

This is one of the drip pans on the ceiling of BF Hall's 3rd floor. The drip pan and the rest of the structure were hung under the interection of the hot/cold water pipes, and the large air vent. The structure itself looked to be simple, a shallow box made out of sheet metal suspended by cables at the corners to collect any condensation from falling to the floor.

This is the cross section of the wall in the yard outside of BF hall. The materials used include CMU blocks, styrofoam insulation, plastic weatherstripping/insulator, and of course the aesthetically pleasing hokie/lime stone.

Here are three seperate drawings of the stairwell. One is a plan drawing taken from the upper landing shown complete with handrail. the detail drawing is basically the cross section view with some rough dimensions added to it. The concrete you see as the material for the actual step is actually just concrete poured in place into a a steel structure with a pan design for the concrete to rest.

These workers are continuing to put up a sheet metal-like exterior wall around the back and sides of the building. The two men on the lift looked like they were using a special nail gun to brace the wall to the frame.

This is a picture of the steel interior framing that looked to be almost complete. There were a few workings putting some finishing touches on the frame, but most of the work was focused on the exterior