Summary

“Construction Engineering Today,” by Robert McTavish and Robert Stallard, overall is a modern outline on the methods and focal points for construction engineers to successfully complete a project in today’s world. The skills required to do so are revealed in the piece and include understanding new standards and requirements, the dynamics of today’s technology, and creating and communicating work plans effectively. These are the main components of being a successful construction engineer, in addition to running a successful build of a project.

 The authors begin by introducing the primary focuses of the construction engineer in the past and how they have expanded to solve more present day problems. The focus of the construction engineer of the past was solely time, money, and safety of the construction project. The main question a past construction engineer would answer would be, “Under our budget, what quality of project and with what materials, and how fast can we finish it while maintaining a safe workplace?” Today, they’ve come to also include emphases on the environment and community that will be affected during the project. These include traffic phasing, noise monitoring, and attending community meetings, along with following new environmental standards and requirements.  All of the changing environmental and social requirements must be added to a construction engineer’s concerns to help solve present day problems other than just completing a build.

Technology also has brought immense change to the construction world. With the existence of the internet, more information is readily available for use by everyone, which changes the way we find a solution. McTavish and Stallard state, “the issue is no longer obtaining information, it is deciding what information is relevant to generating a solution” (2). Advancement in technology has also created more efficient and cost effective design solutions for projects. Which in turn, allows for less required safety measures needed to be taken when implementing a solution. Construction Engineers need to be able use and understand this technology and the “assumptions” made within many programs. These assumptions are underlying calculations made by the programs themselves that others may not be aware of. The engineer must make a priority of communicating these assumptions to others working on the project. With technology changing daily, construction engineers must find and understand solutions to specific problems and successfully communicate them to his team.

            Work plans are another resourceful tool used in the construction engineering business. It is the job of the construction engineer and others around them to create such a thing. Work plans are documents that address the complexities of issues or operations of a project, and often change as they move forward in completing the build. Each work plan includes each of the following; a step by step sequence of operations, the details of the operation, or any information needed to complete a specific step, a jobsite safety template, a quality control checklist that includes inspections and testing, a work assignment list, and the budget and schedule, or cost and timing of completing the task in other words. Successful construction engineers must be able to complete a process to create an adequate work plan on many parts of the entire building project.

            The process used to create one of many work plans is very tedious and ongoing process. Firstly, the construction engineer must begin by defining the problem. They then determine the scope, constraints, and requirements of the individual work plans on site. The scope is the start and end points of the task, while the constraints and requirements are obtained from project specifications, plans, permits, physical conditions, and the budget and schedule. Following this, the engineer then needs to develop a solution. They do this by revisiting the method in the budget and plan, and if it meets the standards of constraints and requirements, it can be used as a basis in finding another similar method for a solution. After, the construction engineer has to seek input from field personnel and other team members, such as the designers and estimators, to find the proper solution. The last step in creating an effective work plan is to finalize it. The plan must be presented to contractors, clients, and consultants for review and revision. Once it is revised, it can go into effect, and is communicated throughout the project on a daily basis via coordination meetings, where it is used to assign the day’s activities and individual roles and tasks, or updated and revised again.

            In today’s modern world of construction, it is essential that a construction engineer graduate with the tools they need to adequately perform and plan building projects along with understanding the many smaller, important tasks that fall in their responsibilities. These responsibilities include understanding technological development, new site standards and requirements, creating and implementing work plans, and most importantly communicating the meaning and importance of work plans effectively to others on the project. The authors of “Construction Engineering Today” successfully highlight and explain these topics and skills in this literary work.


 McTavish, R. and Stallard, R. (2011). “Construction Engineering Today” J. Constr. Eng. Manage. 137, SPECIAL ISSUE: Construction Engineering: Opportunity and Vision for Education, Practice, and Research, 724-729.

Memo

Dear Employees of Heimann Building Corporation:

I am happy to announce we have landed a partnership with Alisha’s Construction Equipment, who will be renting us all of the tools and many of the construction vehicles used on our jobsites. This will help us complete our projects more quickly and efficiently with less hassling for bids on rentals with other companies for specific pieces of equipment. Our company will be doing a lot of business for the next few years, and this partnership is essential to the future development and success of this company.  When contacting Alisha’s Construction Equipment, we all need to remember to treat her as a partner. Alisha runs a very successful business, and we are lucky to be able to contract all of our equipment out from her at such low prices. Her company also leads the nation in the development of new and innovative construction safety equipment, which will help us solve some of our previous problems due to poor quality equipment in the past.  We will be meeting with them weekly over price changes of equipment rental and any newly developed equipment that they have to offer us on our projects. Alisha’s company is very busy with contracts from many companies, so we need to be prepared as a team to present on our needs in these meetings, and when writing to her we need to be brief and concise. Her company doesn’t have time to read through detailed and thorough writing. If we can communicate to her efficiently and quickly on what we need for our job sites, I strongly believe she can get the proper equipment to us quickly as well. 

 P.S. Please remember to put cover sheets on your TPS reports before shipping them out.

Blake Heimann

Chief Executive Officer

Heimann Building Corporation

How would you find out how writing works in your field? Why? How?..

To properly learn how to communicate through writing in my field of study, I would say the best way would be to actually get an internship and get some experience in the field. Being a sort of hands on kind of learner, I always thought the best way to learn something is to actually do it yourself. In an internship of co-op, you are essentially learning every aspect of the job you are seeking, but being assisted and instructed along the way. The employer doesn't expect you to know how to do your job (or how writing is done in your job) quite yet, and they are willing to prepare you to do it on your own in the near future. The best way to get an internship, is to network. Network with your teachers and the head of your department, attend the career fair and network with businesses, and this will help you get an internship.

Rosenberg Thought piece

            While reading the essay, I found it very ironic that I was reading a scholarly source on how to read scholarly sources. To be honest, I found myself dozing off midway through like the author described early in the paper.  I had to glue my eyes open to continue on, because like her, I have a hard time staying interested in these types of texts. Once Rosenberg got into the actual “meat” of her work, I realized I better start paying attention and following some of her rules on, not only reading, but understanding scholarly writing. From then on, all I could do was relate what I was reading in her article to me focusing and using most of those tactics on the article itself. For example, upon reaching the conclusion of “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources”, in the back of my mind, I was thinking I’d skip because there’s typically nothing new in the conclusion of a paper. But then I thought back to what I had already read in the previous section. I had to shake my finger and tell myself, “No, no, no. The author might reveal a new way to look at her main argument, which can help me further understand it. So no skipping!”

            So that’s exactly what I did, I didn’t skip the conclusion. I read the article through, from front to back (even though Rosenberg advised against that and breaking it up into parts). Another method I picked up on while reading the article was how, as readers, we are supposed to wonder what kind of audience the article was intended for, and why the professor wanted you to read it. Obviously in this case, the audience was for the sleep-deprived college student, swamped with uninteresting reading assignments, who always ended up falling asleep mid-read. Which is who I, also, find myself guilty to be. Along with that, I discovered why our teacher had assigned us to read this particular article—to prepare us for when we read the scholarly writings in our own field, in which we will be writing a summary for one of our major assignments. This way, we are prepared to see (and ignore) a lot of jargon that means nothing to us right now, to know a lot of useful information will be found in the abstract (where it is okay to look up the words because it might help you later), and to not skip the conclusion, like I probably would’ve done if not for what I had read in the section right before her own.