Civil Engineer Expert

One of the major problems facing any business enterprise is that of obtaining finance. This is a problem not merely of quantity but also of type. The situation is further compounded by legislation. a the dynamism of the economy, but fundamentally by the requirement to minimize costs.
The construction industry comprises a wide variety of firms from the single person enterprise to the large multinational public company. The sources of capital available to any firm are quite numerous but public companies have the great variety of sources available for their use and the single person enterprise, the least variety.

Types of Construction Loans

Construction loans can be classified into short term and long term borrowings.

Long term Finance

It is that capital required for five to ten years, either to start a business or to carry out expansion programs. Broadly the capital is used to purchase buildings, plant and equipment. The risks to the lender are high because of the time scale involved, consequently only established firms are generally considered by the lending institutions.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the alternatives to the conventional construction contract which has many disavantages is the Target Cost Contract.

1. The Target Cost Contract Alternative

Introduction
Two major weaknesses of simple cost-reimbursable contracts are the lack of knowledge of financial commitment by the Employer and lack of incentive for the Contractor to control costs. Both may make it difficult for publicly accountable Employers to demonstrate that they are able to control their financial commitment. In addition, in sate organizations, there is an attitude that cost-reimbursable contracts are a last resort.
However, cost-reimbursable contracts, particularly when incentives are incorporated, have many advantages for both Employer and Contractor. These include flexibility to change, fairer apportionment of risk, potential saving in the time and cost of tendering, men-book accounting, and a reduction in the resources of all parties expanded on claims. One of the greatest benefits is the opportunity for the Employer to establish a common objective for both parties to a contract, with the resulting identity of interest and elimination of the adversarial stance between them. It is with these parameters in mind that the Target Cost/Fee type of contract has been developed with the added advantage that design and construction can coincide leading to early completion reducing the inflation effect on Capital cost and to sate extent interest charges on borrowings. A further advantage in the case of a hydro plant or other revenue earning utilities is the benefit of receiving early income from sales.

Read the rest of this entry »

 Bidder Responsibility Determination is also known as: bidder evaluation criteria, contractor responsibility determination, vendor responsibility determination, bidder evaluation worksheet.

Because bid evaluation and comparison are limited to price and other price-related factors only, the decision cycle of Bidder Responsibility Determination is shorter than other competitive procurement methods that have to deal with more complex, non-price-related evaluation factors.

Evaluation of bids is two-fold. After the bid has been determined responsive, the bidder must be deemed responsible, as detailed below.
Bidder Responsibility Determination
To be determined responsible, a bidder must be successfully evaluated against the 7 following criteria:

Read the rest of this entry »

 Project management software is a computer program that serves to streamline the process of running a project from conception to completion, taking out many of the detailed steps that are usually required. Project management…….

Project management software is a computer program that serves to streamline the process of running a project from conception to completion, taking out many of the detailed steps that are usually required. Project management, as the name suggests, is meant to deal with the proper management services and scrutiny of various projects, starting from web projects to construction projects. Nonetheless, project management is a particular discipline of defining and achieving targets. At the same time, its primary purpose is to optimize the varied utilizations of resource based facilities including the resources such as energy, space, time, people, technology and many others.

Read the rest of this entry »

Horizontal deflections in the planes of bents and shear walls can be computed on the assumption that they act as cantilevers. Deflections of braced bents can be calculated by the dummy-unit-load method or a matrix method. Deflections of rigid frames can be computed by adding the drifts of the stories, as determined by moment distribution or a matrix method.

For a shear wall (Fig) the deflection in its plane induced by a load in its plane is the sum of the flexural

Figure showing Building frame resists lateral forces with (a) wind bents or (g) shear walls or a combination of the two. Bents may be braced in any of several ways, including (b) X bracing, (c) K bracing, (d) inverted V bracing, (e) knee bracing, and (f) rigid connections.

Read the rest of this entry »