Shimizu Corp reveals its plan to set up the first ever eco-friendly underwater city in Japan

Shimizu Corp, a Japan basedconstruction companies that is well known for its awe-inspiring schemes, has revealed its plan to set up an eco-friendly underwater city to accommodate 5000 people. The project is known as Ocean Spiral.

The proposed underwater city will maintain its energy derived from an “earth factory” on the ocean floor. In order to build up the project, Shimizu Corp will use the ocean thermal energy conversion technology where the factory will utilize micro-organisms for transmitting carbon dioxide into methane and at the same time power generators placed along the ocean spiral will apply divergences in seawater temperatures to produce supplementary energy. Desalinated water generated through hydraulic pressure will be pumped into the residential pod.

The proposed project will be segregated into three sections which involve a floating sphere containing a diameter of 500 metres, situated just underneath the surface of the sea. All the sections will include business and residential zones and hotels. The 500-meter-wide sphere will be linked with an extended 15km helix shaped spiral path that winds its way to the ocean floor 3-4km underneath the surface.

The completion time of the project would be 5 years and the total cost is expected to be 3tn yen (£16bn). The required technology to create the project in reality will be arranged within 15 years.

Shimizu is seeking the helps from the experts associated with Tokyo University, government ministries and energy firms to create the blueprint of the project. The firm expects to get financial support from private industry and the government.

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.quantity-takeoff.com

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Do you need robust a construction management software? – Some points to be considered

In order to manage your construction business efficiently you have to opt for proper construction managementsoftware. The construction management software is useful to cope up with the complications & volume of aconstruction project. Some factors like up-gradation in construction & engineering techniques, innovative & sophisticated workers, rising costs of labor & materials, extensive flow of information/documents/drawings/multidimensional models, widespread applications of BIM that produce more RFIs and collaborations amid project stakeholders, are liable for increasing complexities in a construction project.

The risk factors are also increased & become uncontrollable with the requirement of a procedure where the project information can be distributed in a restricted environment.

So, it becomes difficult to manage any construction project manually with the existing workforce. Here comes the importance of automated construction management software.

So, there should be a strong high-tech management system to deal with the unrestricted expansion of project data, workflows and diversified procedures as mismanagement and inaccuracies can lead to ruin the success of the project as well as delivery schedules, budgets and profit margins.

The following are some key factors which will help you to assess whether you require an efficient constructionmanagement software:

• Your process taking prolonged time where RFIs undertake a number of weeks/months to attain proper closure

• Belated or no conflict resolution processes at all most important to lingering design reviews.

• The project team has been handling unfinished, erroneous, out-of-date documents.

• The activities of your project team involve some improper activities like missed emails/deadlines, delayed responses.

• The activities of your project team are inadequate or contain no visibility.

• The deadline of the project workflow is not fulfilled and the client is making complaint about it.

• Augmented field inspections which result in executing vast paper works to solve out indistinguishable issues.

• Following operation and maintenance (O&M) manuals at regular basis by yourself & your project team.

• The project information remains insufficient and unclear when you require it.

• Targets that you missed big time in project schedule; but you are unaware about them.

• Supplementary project costs that surpass your budgets, but you are uninformed of the reasons.

• Once the project is finished; your built assets put up with big time quality and operational issues.

• Unprofessional attitude in delivering the project in proper time.

If you face the above problems while executing a construction project, you must require a suitable construction management software to automate information and process control for all your future projects to stay ahead in competition.

Image courtesy: maestro.ca

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.quantity-takeoff.com

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Construction Master Pro: Software for Construction Calculation

Calculator is an essential product to measure the estimate. Construction Master Pro 4.0.2 is an essential calculator which is must for the engineers. It generally uses in tallbuilding constructions. The calculation generally originated as per the length of the buildings.

This software generally exchanges the units sharply, and do not fear to fall. The construction cost estimator, may calculate the roof area, stair and all the units by the metric system Vrydv.

Construction Master Pro is a time saver. It is also very cheap. It will save your money.

• It calculates the area, roof, floor, wall, premises and many more.
• Exchange of unit to another unit.
• All units to the metric system.
• Binding Calculation.
• This is actually compressed archive file (Win Zip for PC and Win Zip for Mac)

Necessary Information:-

• File size: 3.19 MB
• Uploaded: 2014-12-01 23:48:51

Download From Here: Theses type of cost estimating software can produce construction or alternate cost that bring out all the aspects. The designer can calculate features, quality, size, shape, heating, cooling and geographical area.

How the calculator Look - It has a small screen with 42 small switches, presenting with pitch, rise, run, diag and hip/v and many more.

Download Construction Master Pro: www.mediafire.com

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.quantity-takeoff.com

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Cost of brick fence, how should we estimate?

The brick barrier or fence approach in a variety of styles to meet the outdoor design. This is tall, solid brick fences necessary for more bricks than lower, half-fences that use wrought iron railings and balusters at the top or fences that have brick pillars spanned by white picket fencing. To estimate the cost of a brick fence, you must first decide on the type of fence you want so you can accurately determine how many bricks you need.

The Nest (www.thenest.com) online community has published this article of journalist and writer, Shala Munroe, Demand Media. We are bringing you the excerpt.

Step 1: You have to sketch a diagram of the fence. Then solid brick fences need wide, square pillars every 6 feet to add stability to the fence. Determine the height of the fence and the length between pillars.

Draw in the number of pillars you need to finish the fence.

Step 2: To multiply the height by the length of each panel between the pillars. This gives you the square footage of each panel. Multiply the height, width and length of the pillars to find their square footage.

Step 3: Add the square footage of the panels and pillars together. This is the total square footage of your fence.

Step 4: Multiply the total square footage by five, because most brick styles average five bricks per square foot. Plan to buy 5 percent more brick than your calculation to allow for errors or broken bricks while you're building your fence.

Step 5: Count how many bags of mortar you need to build your fence. Most mortar bags have an estimated square footage printed on the bag. For example, if your bag of mortar covers 25 square feet and you have 200 square feet of fence, you need eight bags of mortar to complete the fence.

Step 6: Call or visit a home improvement store or masonry provider to price the brick and mortar based on the number of bricks and bags of mortar you need. Ask for a discount if you're buying the bricks and mortar in bulk quantities; some dealers give per-piece discounts if you buy large quantities at a time. Also check prices on the number of pillars you will need.

Ref: Shala Munroe, Demand Media's article on the nest

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.quantity-takeoff.com

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How to get rid of construction project drawbacks - Some useful measures

In order to run your construction business smoothly, you have to submit more tenders to get more projects. In this regard, you have to ensure that your bid submission process is perfect and bid is priced precisely as well as you have submitted the lowest bid. So all the project team members should have clear and concise ideas on all the costs associated with a construction project.

The following are some useful steps to get rid of the construction project estimation drawbacks:-

Unpredictability: In a larger construction project, it is often required to employ more than one estimator. If several estimators are appointed, the things can be messed up with improper activities. So, there should be concise and reliable guidelines for taking up identical estimation for the same service or product. The estimators should supply a high degree of detail to cope up with the stringent deadline. They should utilize simplified recording system to verify what each can offer and tally with the contract requirements. They should also offer clear definition to avoid costly errors & discrepancies. The reliability and consistency of all the informations collected should also be checked carefully.

Management: Use some sophisticated tools to maintain level of detail and complexity while making estimation of a construction project. Now-a-days template based spreadsheet for estimating becomes very popular for executing many tasks as well as automating the estimating process to analyze diversified scenarios. But spreadsheet based estimating may not be always perfect as maneuvering a figure in one column to get a individual cost item down will bring about results to a different place in the document and in the mean time all the calculations are completed, the end result will be multiplied to a great extent.

Low Bidding: In initial phase, if costs are calculated precisely at regular interval, the possibilities for errors may still occur any time. In your company one team out of the total teams can complete a job somewhere else and evaluate that the new contract would be suitable in a perfect way. Here the tendencies may arise to keep the rate of bidding lower to obtain the work & keep the staff engaged in figuring out how to get a profit from the work and it can always be performed afterward.

Besides, in order to keep the profit margin on top of the project costs, estimate should be clear and perfect. But sometime, we fail to notice the simple calculations. Mistakes may happen if you can’t find out what costs the figures denote. In most cased, mistakes take place while documents are transferred among different departments. If the total costs are calculated in a wrong way, the profit margin can be ruinous. The proper software should be used to keep away from making the bidding too low.

Software issues: Software is very important in keeping the process times less as well as automatically pointing out holes in estimate documents. If you utilize imperfectly-built software, it can produce to errors which can’t be identified throughout the estimating process. The errors can occur in software construction, programme performance, hardware inaptness and an failure to integrate data sourced from other software.

In order to improve the efficiency of the software, you have to check how the software interrelates with the “fleshware” that is the humans tasked with operating it. So you have to select easy to use systems and complete training and support for staff should be provided to improve buy-in and considerably make a better final cost estimates.

Lack of transparency: It is not sufficient to win the bid by providing all-inclusive assessment of costs. All the stuffs associated with a company should easily understand the detailed cost estimates. If detailed information is supplied in one inflexible format like on a single spreadsheet, then additional effort should be given to make out the figures easily as per requirements.

The cost estimate should provide a brief synopsis and a thorough breakdown for those at the top of the company structure. But it should also contain understandable and related information to lower level staff as well as project managers and members of the commercial team.

Ref: www.constructionglobal.com

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.quantity-takeoff.com

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Get a wide list of BOQ and price list with PriMus

PriMus is actually the one-step software solution for your price lists and rate analysis. This is the first such professional free UPP softwarefor Architectural, Engineering and Building Industries. This is completely free, only € 50 Print bonus.

Why should we go for PriMus? The best 15 reasons:

• It has huge users, just over 100'000 worldwide.
• It has larger specific BoQ functionalities than Excel.
• It has Integrated Price Lists, BoQs and Rate Analysis.
• All documents are automatically synchronized here at every change.
• This automatically acquires measurements from drawings.
• It modifies printed documents, import, and export in standard formats.
• It learns quickly with the FREE Video Tutorials.
• Users can download the FULL version FREE of cost.
• It Uses, updates, training and technical supports all completely FREE.
• It Uses for FREE on as many computers as you like.
• It collaborates with anyone using the same software FREE.
• It is new versions of the software with features directly suggested by our customers.
• The users can pay only if you print or export your documents.
• It extremely convenient: only 10 Euro cents for each A4 page format.
• It pays and receives your invoice online.

Programme Interface: PriMus has a functional and easy to use interface. It has free use in iPad too.

Download Information: 

Operating System: Windows

Language: English (UK)

Size: 68 Mbyte

Download time (estimated): 4 minutes

Filename: PriMus_v500c_EN.exe

Download Link: www.accasoftware.com

Now you can better watch the video to get a Bird’s Eye View:

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.quantity-takeoff.com

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Construction Scheduling Techniques

Construction cost estimator should create project scheduling to assign dates to project activities and to match the resources of materials, equipment and labour for organized project procedure. Proper scheduling eliminates problems that can arise due to production limitation. This also helps in procuring necessary materials timely and thus providing assistance in completing the project within the stipulated time frame.

Scheduling technique include acquiring detailed construction schedules from contractors to monitor work progress. This helps in comparing the actual work performance with the schedule and prevents delays. Scheduling can also analyze the actual reason for construction delays, if any, after the completion of the project, like alterations as per owner request, worker strike, unavailability of material or any other unforeseen reason.

Scheduling technique brings uniformity in the work process and introduces consistency in the workflow. Documentation is extremely significant to keep a track on the labour hour and to research and develop alternative methods for construction to optimize cost.

The number of labour employed and the duration of their work plays an important part in construction cost scheduling. Proper scheduling of labour hour ensures organized and efficient work from the labour end and reduces the risk of delaying the project. Alternative methods may include replacement materials, employing different construction methodology etc. Scheduling technique also offers precise comparison of expenses for the proposed alternate project completion methods. Hence scheduling technique guarantees:

• Proper use of resources like material, equipment, labour etc.
• Ensures timely completion of project
• Prevents delays and extra expenses
• Helps in cost optimization
• If delay occurs, analyzes the actual reason of delay
• Monitors the modifications and changes introduced by the owner

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.quantity-takeoff.com

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