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The chart is named after Henry Laurence Gantt, who refined the concept of using a bar chart to control steps relevant to the process of shipbuilding.

The Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that is helpful in laying out the tasks associated with a given project. When executed properly, the Gantt chart helps to ensure that the project schedule is maintained at a reasonable pace, and that the individual tasks that make up the work breakdown schedule logically progress in a manner that moves the project closer to completion. A Gantt chart can be used for just about any type of project, from laying out a marketing strategy or planning a building project.
The chart is named after Henry Laurence Gantt, who refined the concept of using a bar chart to control steps relevant to the process of shipbuilding. During the 20th century, the essentials of his process chart were applied to projects that had nothing to do with the building of ships. Today, the Gantt chart is used to establish a precedence network that determines the priority level of each task associated with the project. At the same time, the chart also evaluates the dependency relationships of each of the tasks. Together, these two aspects of the Gantt chart make it possible arrange and project the completion time of various tasks in a manner that shows a logical progression toward the successful completion of the project.

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In large organizations, departments dedicated to quality assurance and to safety might assign specific individuals to assume responsibility for these functions on particular projects.

A variety of different organizations are possible for quality and safety control during construction. One common model is to have a group responsible for quality assurance and another group primarily responsible for safety within an organization.

In large organizations, departments dedicated to quality assurance and to safety might assign specific individuals to assume responsibility for these functions on particular projects. For smaller projects, the project manager or an assistant might assume these and other responsibilities. In either case, insuring safe and quality construction is a concern of the project manager in overall charge of the project in addition to the concerns of personnel, cost, time and other management issues.
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The Foundations for Risk Management presented herein will be the basis for the tools and other content that the Risk Management Program committee will deliver at the upcoming convocation.

These Foundations were developed by engineers in private practice to help engineering firms focus their practice on avoiding and minimizing risk.
The first five Foundations deal with the process of the engineering business and the last five deal with project management.

1. Culture

Create a culture of managing risk and preventing claims
Creating a culture of risk management and claims prevention entails instilling in your company an overriding vision that stresses quality control and managing risk as a vital part of your business practice.
This vision must become a core value of the firm and come from the top down. Stress the importance of risk management as often as possible among the staff, as well as the consequences of ignoring it. Creating this culture requires both strategic and operational planning. It should involve all levels of the staff and even involve clients. Quality must take precedence over profits. When quality is established, profits tend to follow.

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From the standpoint of construction contractors or the construction divisions of large firms, the planning process for construction projects consists of three stages that take place between the moment in which a planner starts the plan for the construction of a facility to the moment in which the evaluation of the final output of the construction process is finished.

The development of a construction plan is very much analogous to the development of a good facility design. The planner must weigh the costs and reliability of different options while at the same time insuring technical feasibility. Construction planning is more difficult in some ways since the building process is dynamic as the site and the physical facility change over time as construction proceeds. On the other hand, construction operations tend to be fairly standard from one project to another, whereas structural or foundation details might differ considerably from one facility to another.

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The allowable withdrawal load per inch (25.4 mm) of penetration of a common nail or spike driven into side grain (perpendicular to fibers) of seasoned wood, or unseasoned wood that remains wet, is

p=1,380G5/2D

where

= p allowable load per inch (mm) of penetration into member receiving point, lb (N)

D= diameter of nail or spike, in (mm)

G= specific gravity of wood, oven dry

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 The countdown to the Eurocodes changeover has begun. So we ask – how prepared are you?
Are you are a structural engineer and unaware of what Eurocodes are by now? If so, it is unlikely that you will have been working at the hard end of design. The clock is ticking and there is now only a year left until compulsory implementation of Eurocodes on public projects. If designers fail to get up to speed soon, they could well end up left on the shelf when it comes to winning work.

Eurocodes are causing the biggest shake-up in engineering since the UK went metric. They are a set of new building codes that will replace British Standards by March 2010. These codes are supported by national annexes which give country specific values and published documents (PDs) that contain guidance included in BritishStandards but not in Eurocodes. The full set of Eurocodes is now published, as are the majority of annexes.
“For engineers working on public projects, it seems there will be little choice but to use the Eurocode on projects procured after March 2010 under the requirements of the [European Union] Public Procurement Directive,” says Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) director of bridge and structural engineering Steve Denton. “There has been a huge effort to finalise the UK National Annexes and provide other supporting information such as PDs and companion BSI British Standards Published Documents.

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