Civil Engineering Technician Careers In The Construction Industry

Posted in Blog on June 5th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off

Author: Kris Koonar

Civil engineering technicians are the ones who solve technical problems in the areas of construction, maintenance and inspection, as well as research and development. Civil engineering technicians work closely with civil engineers, and help them in planning and building various structures like highways, buildings, bridges, water treatment plants, dams and irrigation facilities, urban infrastructure development, as well as research related to these fields.

A civil engineering technician can work in one of the following fields in civil engineering-

. Construction- This includes residential, and commercial buildings, malls, stadiums and various other places of entertainment, factories etc.

. Transportation- Including roads, railways, bridges and flyovers, tunnels, underground transit network, airports, docks etc.

. Power- Including power stations, dams, and other facilities, pipelines, oil rigs etc.

. Hydraulics- Infrastructure for transporting various fluids like water, oil, and gas etc.

. Maritime- All maritime facilities like docks, ports, and harbours, ship building yards, dry docks etc.

. Public Health- Water treatment and supply network, sewage collection, treatment and safe disposal, etc.

. Irrigation- Building and maintaining infrastructure for irrigation facilities to farmlands so as to ensure that sufficient water is available all year round for crucial agricultural production.

. Environmental- Specializing in estimating, and finding ways of reducing the environmental impact due to human activities, and especially civil engineering projects.

A civil engineering technician may work in any one, or more of the above fields, as sometimes, and the roles may overlap, as is evident. In any field, a civil engineering technician helps the civil engineers with their scientific skills, and number crunching abilities to ensure smooth functioning.

Planning- This includes both, the engineering planning as to what all will be required for a particular project, in terms of labor, material, skills etc. It also includes project planning in terms of target dates, and deliveries required for each stage of construction, and the method of construction.

Surveying- Before starting on any project, various kinds of engineering, geological, as well as techno-feasible surveys need to be carried out. A civil engineering technician will help with these, as well help in analysing and interpreting the data collected. Various important decisions are taken at this stage based on the survey data, and any wrong analysis or interpretation can pose serious concerns at the later stage, or even after the project is completed, which will prove to be very costly to rectify.

Estimates- Before starting on a project, various estimates are calculated, as to the resources that will be required at a particular stage. This includes labor, machinery, skilled craftsmen, various tools and equipment, and money to get all these. A technician also helps to procure these resources in the best possible manner, which meets the project requirement on time and is also cost-effective.

Designing- A civil engineering technician helps the civil engineering designer as well as the architect based on the data received during the survey stage. Designs may be prepared by hand, or with the help of the various CAD and other software on the computer.

Source: Articlesbase.com

Top 10 Engineering Feats

Posted in Blog on May 18th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off

Author: J Samuel

Everyday the boundaries of engineering are challenged with new amazing projects being undertaken and completed to fulfil the needs of modern day life. This article celebrates some famous engineering feats that have helped shape society today and other feats that are simply marvellous in the audacity of the challenges they resolve.

1) Moon Landing – Moon landings can be classified as manned or unmanned landings, but when you mention the ‘moon landing’ then most people think of the first manned landing on the moon when the Apollo 11 mission placed two astronauts (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin) onto the surface, leaving us with the immortal phrase: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind…’ The pursuit of placing a person on the surface of the moon began in earnest in the 1960s and was completed within a decade on July 20th 1969. This event marked a definitive point in the 20th Century and at the time helped cement the United States above Russia as the ‘greatest superpower’ whilst firing the imagination of generations of children.

2) Panama Canal - Opened in 1914 this man-made canal joins the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The Panama Canal was a colossal engineer project which resulted in an enormous impact on shipping between the two oceans by reducing the journey time immensely. For example a journey from New York and San Francisco via Cape Horn is around 14,000 miles whilst the same journey but instead utilising the Panama Canal is less than half the journey at 6000 miles. Average journey time through the canal is between 8-10 hours and the largest ship that can travel through the canal is classed as a Panamax. This size of the ships that can travel the canal are restricted by the maximum size the locks. The max length of a ship allowed to travel along the canal is 294.1 meters with a Draft of 12.0 metres.

3) Burj Dubai – is a skyscraper which holds the record for the world tallest building. The Burj Dubai towers above the surrounding landscape at a huge 818meters tall and has been built as a centerpiece of an urban development that will include homes, hotels and parkland. The previous record holder for the world tallest structure was the KVLY-TV mast located in North Dakota, United States, however the Burj Dubai breaks this record by a long way. The more you read about the Burj Dubai the more amazing the whole structure seems, with many of the building’s sub-systems being record breakers themselves, such as the observatory lifts breaking the record for the longest travel distance between lowest and highest stop. These elevators also travel at 40mph or 18 meters per second which sounds like a fast ride! At the time of writing there are no structures under construction that can challenge the Burj Dubai for the world tallest building, but there are some buildings that have been proposed and have potential funding, such as the Mile High Tower, but those projects still have a long way to go before they are even started.

4) Millau Viaduct – The Millau Viaduct may not be the longest bridge in the world but it is current the tallest vehicular bridge standing at a whopping 353 meters which is taller than the epitome of French symbols- the Eiffel Tower. The bridge was opened in December 2004 and crosses the Valley of the River Tarn close to Millau in the South of France. The bridge was designed by structural engineer Michel Virlogeux and architect Norman Foster and possesses both an engineering wow factor and an audacious design. The architect Normal Foster was quoted as saying that the bridge looked ‘impossibly delicate’ and was a ‘dialogue between nature and the man made.’, after looking at this elegant structure it is hard to disagree.

5) Supertankers – Behemoths of the ocean, the supertanker is the largest class of ocean going oil-tanker. The largest ever tankers were the Knock Nevis (in length at 458.4m long) and the Batillus Class Supertankers, which amongst them hold the records for the highest gross tonnage of 275,276 tons. All four Batillus supertankers have now been scrapped, whilst the Knock Nevis has now been classified as a floating storage and offloading unit therefore these great ships that were built throughout the 1970’s have not been surpassed in size since. To make a comparison in size the Knock Nevis is slightly longer than the height of the Empire State Building in New York (443m high)

6) Channel Tunnel (Le tunnel sous la Manche) The Channel Tunnel is the longest tunnel with an undersea section in the world. The length of the Channel Tunnel is 50.5 kilometres in links Folkestone, England to Coquelles, France. The tunnel itself was bored through a chalk marl stratum which was deemed a good material for tunnelling as it is both strong and easy to excavate. The actual tunnel consists of three separate tunnels connected together by cross-passage links. The two main tunnels which or rail tunnels are 7.6 metre in diameter, whilst the service tunnel is 4.8 metre in diameter. Construction of the tunnel began in 1988 and opened in 1994 and has been rated as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

7) Three Gorges Dam – Another huge feat of engineering the Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric river dam that spans the Yangtze River in China and is the largest hydroelectric power station in the world with a power output of up to 22,500 MW. It is hard to envision the scale of the dam at 2309 metres wide and 101 metres tall. As with most projects there is an environmental impact and this ensures that the project is controversial as it has a negative impact on the wildlife, landscape and local culture, however from an engineering point of view it is hard not to be impressed by what was achieved by the project.

8 ) Concorde – Between 1976 and 2003 the only way to fly transatlantic between London and New York (if you were lucky enough to be able to afford it) was by flying in Concorde- the world’s most successful supersonic passenger airline. Concorde was able to cruise at an average speed of Mach 2.02 (1,330 mph) and had a maximum cruise altitude of 60,000 feet making the flight time from London to New York only 3.5 hours long. The designers of Concorde had to pioneer and over come many engineering and technological challenges to make the airplane able to travel at such speeds and altitude. The aircraft enjoyed many successful years but was finally retired in 2003. A number of things coincided with the demise of Concorde, in part a change in the economic climate made the cost to fly transatlantic at supersonic speeds less viable, a crash of one of the Concorde fleet temporarily grounded the airplane and the design was showing signs of age approaching thirty years in commission. Due to the lack of competition Concorde didn’t benefit from many upgrades over the years so the technology ended up being slightly dated. However, as dated as the engineering may have become over its lifecycle the fact remains that the concept of a supersonic commercial airline and the design that resulted from that concept hasn’t been surpassed and one could say that technology and engineering has receded with Concorde’s demise as no viable replacement has been put in place. Today high-class commercial passengers are restricted to the same lower speeds achievable by traditional aircraft. The days of supersonic passenger aircraft zooming across the Atlantic have therefore been grounded for the foreseeable future.

9) Langeled Pipeline – On the surface a long pipe may appear boring, but under the surface (no pun intended) the Langeled Pipeline which helps make million of Britons make their tea in the morning is quite the engineering feat. The Langeled Pipeline was built to bring natural gas from Norway to the UK the Langeled Pipeline in the longest underwater pipeline in the world stretching 1,200km from Nyhamna in Norway to Easington, England. Gas from the Langeled equates to 20% of Britain’s gas supply making it an integral part of the Britain’s energy infrastructure and the pipeline can carry 70 million cubic meters of gas per day. The project was finished in two stages with the second half of the project opening in October 2006.

10) TauTona Mine - The TauTona is a gold mine in South Africa which is now the deepest mine in the world at 3.9km deep and can be described by three ways, deep, potentially dangerous and lucrative. The TauTona mine had been challenging for the record of the deepest mine for a while but when the mine’s owners AngloGold Ashanti decided to expand the mine then it took the record from the East Rand Mine which was 3,585m deep. The mine was originally sunk in 1957 with operations starting in 1962, however since the original construction two additional shafts have been created. The mine has around 800km of tunnels and Working in the TauTona mine can be dangerous with miners occasionally loosing their life. Workers in the mine have to travel for up to an hour to reach the rock face, which can reach temperatures of 60°C

It is hard not to be impressed by the scale of all these engineering jobs and the vision engineers had when conceiving the ‘almost impossible. Boundaries are constantly being pushed and the ‘largest’, ‘longest’ or ‘fastest’ are constantly challenged and superseded by new engineering and technology.

Source: Articlesbase.com

A Career In Civil Engineering

Posted in Blog on May 18th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off

Author: Tony Jacowski

What Is Civil Engineering All About?

Civil engineering deals with a variety of construction and maintenance tasks, like building and maintaining roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, airports, dams, water works, sewage systems and ports. A civil engineer not only requires a high standard of engineering knowledge, but also supervisory and administrative skills. The work involves planning, constructing and maintaining.

The planning and designing part demands site investigation, resource feasibility study and on-the-spot decision making. An engineer has to be quick to make a decision because emergencies do come up and need to be dealt with then and there. Other important duties of an engineer involve taking care of work within the local government guidelines and getting permission for plans, creating a cost estimate and construction schedules and post-completion maintenance of the project.

There are many specialized branches of civil engineering such as dealing with structures, water resources, environment, construction, transportation and geo-technical engineering. For most projects, civil engineers work in teams or sometimes even in coordination with other engineers.

Civil engineering is ideal for those who love to create and the job is monetarily rewarding and involves a lot of responsibility. An engineer is directly responsible for public safety and welfare. Safety should be the first priority of any engineer. If they are involved in constructing residences, they have to follow the safety precautions involved too. In the case of a highway, they are expected to follow traffic safety rules.

Engineers have to look out for potential hazards, including environmental impacts and estimated life expectancy of the project. Natural disasters make it important for engineers to be extra cautious about environmental pressures.

Building Your Career In Civil Engineering:

To begin a career in civil engineering, you need to complete a formal school education, including core courses in English, Algebra, Geometry, Advanced Math, Physics and a foundation in History and Social Studies. In college, a student needs to earn a Bachelor's degree. Pursuing a Master's degree is necessary. According to a recent survey, more than 35% students who have acquired a Bachelor's degree go on to enroll for a Master's, even as they continue to work. Many students prefer to work and earn at the same time because that can earn them a tuition reimbursement.

Acquiring a Master's degree or a PhD helps a student to specialize in the field. The road to complete a civil engineering course is endless and that is why many professionals choose to keep on learning the latest trends in the construction business via special programs developed by universities and professional societies like the American Society of Civil Engineers. The annual earning of a civil engineer is anywhere between $43,000 to $90,000, depending on specialization and experience.

Source: Articlesbase.com

Summer Camp

Posted in Blog on March 27th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off
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Held at the Jamestown 4-H Center, this Camp is an optional part of the reward for students placing the Middle School Competition. Students placing in the top 3 in each district have first option to attend, with any unreserved slots available to all other entrants.

Camp program includes “hands-on” activities, educational sessions or lectures, and hard hat tours of a major construction project.

There is space for 27 students at this Camp. Should students placing in the Middle School Competition not elect to attend, a waiting list is being maintained for other interested 7th & 8th grade Virginia students.

ACEC/VA • 5206 Markel Road, Suite 300 • Richmond, VA 23230
Voice: 804/673-1229• Fax: 804/673-0876

School Competition

Posted in Blog on March 27th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off
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Announcing: The winners

District 1
1.  Hanna Cervarich - Manchester Middle School, Richmond
2.  Marissa Hennelly - Manchester Middle School, Richmond (tied for 2nd place)
2.  Kristina Kelly – Manchester Middle School, Richmond (tied for 2nd place)
3.  Cassie Turnage - Stonewall Jackson Middle School, Mechanicsville

District 2
1.  Shenel Lambiro – Kemps Landing Magnet School, Virginia Beach
2.  Rosalind Perry - Churchland Middle School, Portsmouth
3.  Meagan Arnold – Princess Anne Middle School, Virginia Beach

District 3
1.  Jessie Walthall - Ni River Middle School, Fredericksburg
2.  Amber Phelps - Peasley Middle School, Gloucester
3.  Emma Rigau - Peasley Middle School, Gloucester

District 4
1.  Michelle Tran - Williamsburg Middle School, Arlington

District 5
1.  Nick Baum - Linkhorne Middle School, Lynchburg
2.  Anna Newton - Linkhorne Middle School, Lynchburg
3.  Jasmine Jones - Linkhorne Middle School, Lynchburg

District 6
1.  Elizabeth Hall - Gretna Middle School, Gretna
2.  Nicholas Dillon - Northside Middle School, Roanoke

District 7
1.  Megan Hilliard - Virginia Middle School, Bristol
2.  Sally Starr - Virginia Middle School, Bristol
3.  Zachary Harless - Virginia Middle School, Bristol

Congratulations to all the winners!!

AWARDS

  • Top Finalists1 $100
  • Teachers of Finalists2 $100
  • Grand Winner $500
  • Teacher of Grand Winner $250
    1. The top three finalists in each educational cluster are also eligible to attend Engineering Summer Camp July 13-15, 2007, at the Jamestown 4-H Center in Williamsburg, VA.
    2. Grant, to be used for classroom and educational supplies at the Teacher’s discretion.

QUESTIONS?

Please call ACEC Virginia at (804) 673-0868, or e-mail info@acecva.org.

Contact Engineering 2007

Posted in Blog on March 25th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off

General Information

Nancy Israel
Executive Director
ACEC Virginia
5206 Markel Road, Suite 300
Richmond, VA 23230
(804) 673-0868

Sponsorship Information

Cindy Allen
DJG, Inc.
449 McLaws Circle
Williamsburg, VA 23185
(757) 253-0673

Ad Hoc COMMITTEES

Bill Johnson, P.E.
Jesson Zafar
McKinney & Company

Jason Rice, P.E.
Civil / Structural Engineer

Mike Matthews, P.E
Brenda Kliesen, P.E.
Hankins & Anderson

Jim Long, P.E.
Collins Engineers

Sam Kirby, P.E.
Froehling & Robertson, Inc.

Kevin Kokal, P.E.
Alliance Engineering

VSPE
Jim Kelly, P.E.
Northrop Grumman

ASCE
Debra Brand, P.E.
Jefferson Lab

University Education
Dr. Robert J. Mattauch, Dean and Commonwealth Professor
Virginia Commonwealth University

Elementary Education
Robin Newton
Math and Science Center

Military Engineers
 Capt. Aaron Wilt, SAME
Major Wade Rawlins, SAME
ACC/A7
Langley Air Force Base

Engineering Map

Posted in Blog on March 25th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off
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WELCOME to the ACECV Engineering 2007 Driving Map site!

As home to the 1st permanent English settlement in the United States, Virginia has become a gateway for our nation’s development and boasts numerous engineering marvels across the Commonwealth.

Here you will find a State Map that includes these innovations, where you can find them, and what they’re about.

Going for a Sunday drive? No problem, just print your map and take it with you—it’s as simple as that. Don’t forget your camera!

Scholarships

Posted in Blog on March 25th, 2009 by admin | Comments Off
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These one-time scholarships were offered to rising Virginia High School Seniors during 2007 only, especially to celebrate this Commemoration year.

Originally, competition organizers planned to award just five scholarships. However, with a tie for the fifth place score, it was decided to award a total of six $1,000 scholarships as we were so pleased with the response and participation. Please click on the student's name to read their winning essay.

Announcing: the winners

1. Erik Kuster – Liberty High School, Bedford
2. Katie Ridgeway – Osbourn High School, Manassas
3. Kathryn Kosloski – Lafayette High School, Williamsburg
4. Kyle Moore – Midlothian High School, Midlothian
5. Ian McClenny – Thomas Dale High School, Chester (tied for 5th place)
5. Matthew Enniss – Adventure of Learning Academy, Martinsburg (tied for 5th place)

Congratulations to all the winners!!

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