Use Of Timber In Projects Construction Essay

Use Of Timber In Projects Construction Essay The informal interviews revealed some additional factors, not discussed in the literature review, which may have helped to shape the position of timber within the marketplace in the UK. These factors were included in the formal questionnaire and are discussed below. Time to complete timber construction projects Discussion with timber engineers revealed that the time taken to build on site with timber is longer than typical steel structures. Though we would not wish to suggest that careful engineering of steel structures is any less important, it must be accepted that the steel construction in the UK has a very well established track record for single storey non domestic use. Steel sheds for commercial and industrial use are ubiquitous the length and breadth of the UK and, by association, the engineering and site skills which produced them must be very well established in the UK construction industry. How long history of steel construction manifests itself in a construction project can be quite subtle. The bolt length in steel is 30mm but timber can be 300mm so tolerance to fit them on site is far narrower with timber. Timber engineer, Peter Steer remarked that to get the bolt into its fixing can be highly problematic and can cause delay for inexperienced fabricators. Such delay simply wouldnt happen for steel fabrication as the skill involved in fitting a 30m bolt is commonplace compared to a 300mm bolt. There are very many more steel fabricators with the skills to deliver the former but far fewer timber site specialists who can comfortably deliver the latter. So the tendency is for delay on site. It is difficult to compare timber projects with an exact match for a steel frame project but timber structural engineer Frank Werling said that engineered timber structures can require 3 weeks to engineer versus 1 week for steel. Price differential between steel and engineered timber sections Nick Milestone, MD of B K Timber Structures said that the rising price of steel during the period 2000-2008 saw the price of engineered timber draw closer to comparable steel sections. This gave greater price competitiveness to timber suppliers and the use of timber gradually became more widespread in the UK. The word gradually must be emphasised there because long span timber structures were still quite rare until very recently when supermarkets and their architects led the way in demanding timber for these low rise, long span timber structures. Even though steel prices were climbing rapidly there was such a weight of expertise, of established supply chains and comfort of architects and clients in steel structures that steel retained its hegemony in the market. However since 2008 steel has crashed from circa 1400euro to 1000euro a tonne. This has coincided with a drop in the value of the pound relative to the euro. (European Central Bank statistics www.ecb.europa.eu/stats) The result is that, although the disparity between steel and Glulam sections had narrowed to approximately 10% in 2008, it is now over 40%. However demand at BK timber structures hasnt fallen while the price differential has widened during the past 2 years. This may be because there are other drivers such as the high aesthetic of Glulam beams and the sustainability of using timber structures that are keeping timber buoyant in the marketplace. Supply of engineered timber for large framed structures Tim Reynolds of BRE explained that UK timber eg Sitka spruce has a strength grade of C16. That grown in the drier EU countries is C24 or better. Glulam requires at least C24 timber. Therefore, here in the UK we must accept a situation where our own forests cannot produce timber of adequate strength grades. Either the timber is imported from other countries for UK factories to produce the Glulam, or Glulam sections are bought ready made from factories overseas. If the former situation were to take place then a company would need to find enormous start-up costs to procure the right machinery and train the workforce necessary to begin producing large Glulam sections. This would need to take place against a growing but still relatively minor market share for engineered timber frame construction in the UK. Furthermore, this hypothetical new UK Glulam factory would still be competing against established European competitors who have developed their expertise and can use locally sourced timber. In fact, often the large forestry and sawmilling companies in EU nations have sufficient scale and turnover to be able to afford the capital investment necessary to develop their own Glulam manufactories. This could not realistically take place in the UK where, not only do our forests produce insuffici ently strong softwood for Glulam manufacture, but the forestry industry is diffuse. Small UK forestry firms with modest turnover are content to sell their lumber for fence posts and other lower grade uses. They would be unlikely to find the capital necessary to establish their own Glulam manufactories. Where timber buildings, such as grid-shell structures, can be built with lower strength UK grown timber there has traditionally been a problem with the supply from the UK forestry industry, according to Peter Wilson of the centre for Timber Engineering at Napier University. The Scottish enterprise centre identified this as a key barrier to development of UK forestry into higher value added markets. It came to the conclusion that the barrier to using UK grown timber was a lack of qualified engineers who understood the potential of the material. For this reason the centre for timber engineering was set up. Peter Wilson says there has been a significant improvement in the skill base in the UK but there is still no culture of building with timber in the UK. Also, here the forestry sector is fragmented and, apart from isolated examples such as the magnificent Savills Grid-shell building, earns its living at the bottom of the value chain with fence posts and pallet manufacture. Due to this fragmented and low earning forestry sector there is little capital to invest in plant and sawmill machinery. By contrast, Scandinavian, Austrian and German forestry companies are large economic concerns with the capital to set up Glulam manufactories where start-up costs can be 20 million euro or more, almost as a secondary concern. No UK timber company or forestry company would be able to set up such a facility. This is likely to remain a structural reason why high strength structural engineered timber must be imported into the UK. This may have implications for surety of supply and cost differentials due to exchange rates. UK traditional procurement methods According to survey respondents the UK has, to some extent, lagged behind mainland Europe in the adoption of Project Management procurement methods, or Novated design and build, where a site structural engineer can be part of the design team at an early stage. There are fewer architects experienced and skilled enough in designing the connection details of large span timber structures in the UK due to the relative scarcity of such projects. By contrast architects who can design and work with steel connections in relative comfort are far more common and all stages of the design process for steel structures are so well established in the UK that the plans are efficiently realised on site by the steel fabricators. The relative lack of recent project experience from UK architects with timber means that the involvement of a site structural engineer is of great importance. The connection details can be complex and often need to be prefabricated to specific design tolerances before they can be assembled on site. A traditional procurement process would tend to leave these connection details until later in the process when there is a pressing and critical need for erection of the structure on site. As the site engineers in this traditional process will be unlikely to have been involved in the design team then there will be inevitable delay as they attempt to interpret the plans of the design engineer. At this point, the costs incurred by the site fabricators are higher as they are devoting more resources into carrying out plans that they have not been involved in. This lack of communication or cohesion in the design of the engineering element of the building can have cost implications and act as a d isincentive to design timber structures. If we look at the example of the Savill building at Windsor great park Green Oak Carpentrys Site Manager, Steve Corbett, said there were genuinely no real problems with the construction, which he attributed to the architect commissioning Buro Happold and Green Oak Carpentry early in the design phase so that engineering issues were addressed as part of the design from the start. Mark Feely, a chartered architectural technologist, who worked on a recent RICS award submitted design for an ASDA timber store in Oldham told me that his client pushed for a sustainable green store and Finn Forest UK Ltd were employed before the architect. It was a design and build contract so it was unusual to go straight for a technical supplier without competitive tender. Mark explained that sometimes this unusual sequence of procurement happens when a contractor is persuasive with a client and can demonstrate a technical mastery of a structure that suits their needs. This possibly lends weight to an argument that both clients and architects lack the experience of working with these timber structures and are looking for technical leadership from contractors who, as we have discussed, are few in UK construction. This ASDA store was also deemed to be time critical as there was a clear marketing strategy to keep pace with Tesco who had recently procured a timber framed store buildin g. Fire risk, perception of risk and insurance implications Suppliers of timber structural products said that they faced a perception from clients that their building insurance would be higher due to a perceived high risk of fire. Discussions with fire engineers at insurance companies have suggested that there is no price difference fixed for timber structures and it depends on the overall building design and detailing. Skills and training in design and assembly of timber structures There are fewer carpentries in the UK than in other EU countries where there is a tradition and a demand for timber building in non domestic settings. For timber contractors such as BK structures, the demand for their services can outstrip their capacity and as there are few competing companies the order books become full and projects may struggle to find contractors without booking well in advance of the project. This would also suggest that the price of carpentry is kept buoyant by a relative lack of competition. At the Napier school for Timber engineering there has been a recent surge in applicants for courses in timber engineering to Eurocode 5 on 31st March 2010. The courses were oversubscribed and, while this represents a positive demand from qualified timber engineers for developing their skills, there will be an inevitable lag effect. Engineers will need to familiarise themselves with EC5 and to become proficient with putting the new code into practise. Dr Julie Bregulla of the BRE told me that this is quite a significant barrier for the UK timber industry and stems from the almost cottage-industry nature of the sector. In other countries the timber sector has more resources to employ people to lobby and negotiate to have the code structured in a way that suits their industry. Analysis of structured questionnaire The table on (page) shows the full data set from the respondents to the questionnaire. The statements listed were put forward to a range of leading figures from all parts of the supply chain in timber construction. Suppliers, clients, timber engineers, architects and academic research professionals were asked to rank these statements from 0 to 10 with 0 at the end of the continuum where there was profound disagreement and 10 at the end where there was strongest agreement. This data is expressed in the chart below, where the bars represent the highest, lowest and mean ranking for each question.

Deloneys view of age Essay

The word ‘age’ is also paired with the adjective ‘crabbed’, however the word ’youth’ is not attached to any word and seems almost completely separate. Youth seems quite isolated from the word ‘age’ and could represent how nowadays parents and children are quite segregated from each other. As well as the word being isolated, it seems to be independent, as it is not relying on an adjective to describe itself. Following onto the point of where I had written that parents and children are isolated from one another, this is clearly demonstrated to us in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, throughout the play, as well as in ‘crabbed age and youth’, when it is written that they ‘cannot live together’. The isolation between a parent and child, can be expressed due to the fact that these two humans are both from different generations, and have been brought up to have different opinions, or in some cases, completely contrasting opinions and as a consequence have little or nothing in common. For example in ‘Follower’ we are not informed of any similarities between the father and son, however the fact that the verb stumble appears twice and that both the father and the son have experienced it, suggests that this is the only thing of which they have in common. Another example is in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ where we see at the beginning of the play Capulet displaying a willingness to become a better parent as he attempts to understand Juliet’s thoughts and emotions by saying to Paris that Juliet is too â€Å"ripe to be a bride†. This portrays to us a parent who is willing to change their own opinion in a matter. in the Elizabethan era it was considered normal for a 14 year old to be married and expecting children, which is made clear to us when Paris says to Capulet ‘younger than she (Juliet) are happy mothers made’, to which Capulet answers by saying that young mothers are ‘too soon marr’d’. By defending his and his daughter’s actions, shows him to be a protective father. There is no doubt that along the path of parenthood there will be clashes between a parent and child, of which the child or parent feels that they ‘cannot live together’, due to different factors, the most prominent of which is a severe clash of opinions. We know not to take the line ‘cannot live together’ literally, because Deloney is talking about the two opinions of the youth and the old and how they are so severely differentiated, almost contradictory. I translate this stanza to mean that the two opinions are so contradictory that neither can win the argument. I can refer this to the poem ‘Catrin’, in which Gillian Clarke talks about a ‘red rope of love’ which represents the bond that a parent and child have. To demonstrate how contradictory these 2 opinions are, Deloney offers us a variety of antithesis, such as â€Å"Youth like summer†¦ Age like winter†, â€Å"Youth is hot†¦ Age is†¦ Cold†. The roles in this parent child relationship are clear to us; Capulet even tells us that he thinks of Juliet as a ‘whining mammet’. A mammet is a puppet, and so obviously a puppet needs a puppeteer, and due to how Capulet acts in this scene, it is evident that he is the puppeteer. This hierarchy of a parent and child is also shown in ‘Follower’, when Heaney describes his father to be a ‘full sail strung’ and that ‘horses strained at his clicking tongue’. By saying that even ‘horses strained at his clicking tongue’ shows how much power and authority his father had; he had to do such little, to get the horses to do a lot of work. The fact that an animal listens to him, demonstrates just how powerful he is. Deloney also thinks that age and youth are completely opposite by saying ‘age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave’. By using two completely opposite seasons of the year, Deloney is also pointing out that parents and children are also completely opposite. For example it is hot in summer and cold in winter, it cannot be hot in winter and cold in summer, however when we get too hot, we wish for it to be cooler and when we are cold, we wish for it to be hot. Similarly, when we are old we desire to be young, and when we are young we wish to be older or you could say when children are in need of parents, they may not be here, but that when they are here, you do not need them vice versa. If we were to interpret this to fit the role of a parent child relationship then we would say that when as children we become older and our parents eventually die, suddenly we seem to miss them immensely. So by using antithesis, the poet is basically telling us that once a parent or child is deceased, we learn how much we appreciated them. I feel it is a shame that we only realise things like this once it has been taken from us. This is shown in Romeo and Juliet when Capulet discovers that his daughter has apparently died from depression, he feels overwhelmed and his true feelings for Juliet are revealed as he says ‘with my child are my joys buried’, however when she was alive (in act 3 scene 5), he did not seem to care if she were to ‘die in the streets’.

Regulating the Captive Hunting Industry Essay - 2366 Words

As the scimitar-horned oryx gracefully moved through the rugged landscape, nothing seemed right. Looking around, a high fence surrounded the facility, creating an inescapable doom for the animal that had been bred and nurtured by humans. The hunter took careful aim and fired his weapon, instantly killing this African antelope that is prized for its curved horns. This hunter had a clear advantage over the antelope; he didn’t need to know much about his prey or his surrounding environment. This scenario occurs in operations across North America, primarily in Texas, called captive hunting ranches. Texas ranch operators import, breed, and allow hunting of prized and endangered animals on their private lands for the purpose of earning†¦show more content†¦There are over a thousand captive hunting ranches located throughout North America and nearly half of them are found within the state of Texas. Due to struggling financial straits, Texas cattle ranchers were provide d incentive to import endangered game with the passage of the End angered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Some of these ranches import animals on the brink of global extinction to Texas in order to raise, care, and repopulate these species. In some cases, these animals on the verge of extinction can be returned to their native lands. But most ranchers are not too concerned with saving endangered species for the sake of the animals; they are interested in this business because it is very profitable (Can hunting Endangered Animals save the Species?). Proponents of these ranches, and the ranchers themselves, see there is an economic good derived from allowing captive animal hunts. For many cultures, hunting has been an honored tradition and was a necessary means for food and supplies. In modern times, most people no longer have to kill animals for subsistence; instead, it is more of a recreation (Institutionalizing harm). 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Song of Solomon Analysis - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 2 Words: 653 Downloads: 7 Date added: 2019/08/08 Category Religion Essay Level High school Tags: Song of Solomon Essay Did you like this example? When it comes to the indication of coming of age, the state of adulthood does not always associate together. The meaning behind this does not always correspond with the explanation of being an adult and proves to us that there is a more noble way to grow as a person. People going through experiences and being influence are aspects of life to develop more. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Song of Solomon Analysis" essay for you Create order Things that on the surface may not seem to have lasting effects are usually the most impressionable of situations. Though personality traits derived from cultural experiences are often seen early on in life, they can continue to develop and evolve even into adulthood. And it is in adulthood where realizations are made subsequently due to these very situations. It is also apparent that age does not always commensurate with maturity, for with maturity comes understanding. Influences also play a major role in a persons character development. Influences also can affect attitude, complexion, motivation and fundamental perspectives and reactions. This judgement was thoroughly embodied in the novel Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. This novel delved extensively into the coming of age of main character Macon Milkman Dead. Milkmans nickname was acquired from an awkward and random situation. As being breastfed by his mother Ruth, way past the age of normalcy, the townspeople used the pet name to describe the situation as they saw fit. The over extension of the breastfeeding lends itself to the queer idea of an incest consanguinity. It was as if Milkmans mother was using her son to try and fill some sort of void that had been left within her. This situation also atones the literal realization of one being attached to a secure mothering source past the requisite for such.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Milkman Dead, son of Macon dead II, was raised in a financially comfortable home unlike most African Americans of that time. Macon, although considered the provider of the family seemed to rule with an iron fist. Macon kept each member of this family awkward with fear (Morrison). The hatred he had for his wife was eminent and the phlegmatic nature he had towards his daughters seemed to mangle their grace and self-esteem.   Ruth began her days stunned into stillness by her husbands contempt and ended then wholly animated by it (Morrison). Early in the novel, one can clearly see where the idea of misogyny is introduced. In addition to Macons apathetic feeling to the women of his household, these feeling are outstretched with even more fervor to his sister Pilate. You cant get much worse than that for a name. and a baby girl at that (Morrison). When milkman wet his sister with his own urine, it appears to be a clear manifestation of the misogynistic qualit ies of his father. It gives merit and substance to the biblical suggestion of the sins of the father being passed on to the son. With Macon being the sole source of income to the Dead family, he represents a symbol of equality amongst the races. It is evident however that he feels his money absolves him from other black responsibility. Macon seemed to have an eerily stark feeling of racial hate, but within his own race. It was as if money or the color green, rather, created a gray area for him; choosing to consciously neglect the racial barrier that was incontestable. Macon took his role of power and exerted in on any bystander who was around to witness and ensured his son was taught the same ideals as well. Own things Macon said, and let the things you own, own other things Im going to teach you how (Morrison). This scene foreshadows the path that milkman will follow; a path that he will follow his fathers footsteps right into isolation. Impaired by his fathers influence, was the only one he knew at his age and with no other point of reference, it was all he knew.