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Attainable and Sustainable Home Building Solutions
Get PDFSustainability has fortunately been a recent concern in the construction industry as climate change continues to impose potentially insurmountable threats to the global environment. Although many new methods have been adopted in efforts to lessen the adverse environmental effects of construction-related activities, as a society, we still have much room for growth as the built environment accounts for almost 50% of global emissions. Many changes and standards must be adopted to make these solutions efficiently beneficial. To set industry standards, we must start with the most basic form of construction- residential building. This report covers two attainable framing solutions for environmentally conscious home building: hempcrete blocks, and a reusable, maneuverable framing system called XFrameTM. This paper weighs their advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost, materials, practicality, and sustainability. Utilizing research and interviews with professionals in both of these methods, this paper covers the rationale behind choosing sustainable methods. This project also explores new knowledge that may invalidate the costly stigmas surrounding sustainable construction. Research was also conducted about how as an industry we can collectively lower the prices of green materials if the demand rises through the usage of methods like these
Understanding the Legal Impacts of Integrated Project Delivery and Building Information Modeling
Get PDFThis research paper aims to understand the legal ramifications of using integrated project delivery (IPD) and Building information Modeling (BIM) regarding shared risk and reward between parties and impacts of contract law. Using IPD and BIM allows for projects to be more collaborative and work through issues quickly. However, shared design can lead to legal issues that may cause problems if not resolved or accounted for at the beginning of the project. This paper serves as research to further understand the legal consequences of integrating IPD and BIM into construction projects in the United States. There are some differences to construction contracts when utilizing these two tools when compared to a traditional design bid build delivery method. The use of IPD as a delivery method is becoming more common with complex projects and often these projects benefit greatly from the use of BIM tools. This paper explores some of the discrepancies in contract law and the impact of using shared risk and reward and integrated form of agreement (IFOA) contracts
City Farm SLO Educational Pizza Oven
Get PDFCity Farm SLO is a nonprofit that educates the public about growing food, and they donate the produce to food banks and communities in need. Their mission is to promote healthy living through sustainable agriculture and farm-based education. This senior project is to build them an educational pizza oven for them to use in their classes. With it they will give lessons where they cook pizzas using ingredients that they grow on site. To do this, the builder had to make it lightweight and able to move around the property to different meeting places and outdoor classrooms. It is also a woodfired oven with areas to store wood, cooking tools and provide a butcher block workstation to make the pizzas on. Funding came solely from donors that the author reached out to because City Farm SLO didn’t have money budgeted to front the project. This project was a solo project, meaning that one person designed it, procured materials, planned, and constructed it on their own. The Areas of this project that proved to be most difficult were the acquisition of funds, and the construction of the oven dome, being that it was a new building method for hi
Ranking and Analyzing Soft Skills of Cal Poly CM Students During Their Internships and Importance of Possessing Them in the CM Industry
Get PDFPossession of a strong set of soft skills is essential to leading a successful career in the construction industry. Soft skills allow one to become an indispensable, well-respected, and effective member of one’s team. Should one need to facilitate processes, solve problems, positively influence others and even just complete day to day tasks, a well-versed construction industry professional can rely on soft skills to manage any situations that cross their path. This study determines the perception and value of certain soft skills of student interns along with construction industry professionals alike. Along the dimensions of the study, the soft skills of main focus include communication, problemsolving, time management, leadership, and interpersonal/ social skills. A survey was administered to Cal Poly CM students using a mixed method research approach of questions to investigate and compare soft skills that CM student interns currently possess and soft skills the industry professionals require and need to strengthen. The soft skills currently possessed, and the soft skills desired as professionals were analyzed and compared using descriptive statistics which allowed for significant findings and patterns. The study concludes that certain soft skills carry much more value and are far more desirable than others as interns and professionals in the construction industry
French Drain Project at Woods Humane Society
Get PDFThe Woods Humane Society is a prominent animal care facility that aims to rehabilitate, rescue, and assist in the adoption of dogs and cats in the greater San Luis Obispo area. The property contains multiple dog playpen areas which consist of a concrete slab surrounded by a chain link fence, designed for the animals to have an open space to run around throughout the day. Employees are required to hose down the slab hourly to maintain a clean environment for the animals. When employees hose down the playpen areas, a considerable amount of water runs off the slab and into the soil on the outside of the playpen, resulting in the overgrowing of weeds and shrubbery, diminishing aesthetics, and producing potential hazards towards the dogs. To mediate this issue, the installation of a French drain was proposed. The 173 ft drain, 6” deep x 18” wide broken down into three sections, would border all dog playpen areas preventing further water runoff and weed growth. The French drain consisting of significant excavation, pressure treated lumber, gopher wire, weed barrier, and 2-3” Noiyo cobble stone was the work completed for this project
Lichens Of Ultramafic Rocks: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Understanding The Ecology Of An Understudied Organism In A Well-Studied System
Get PDFLichens are among the most prominent and successful life forms of metal-rich habitats, including ultramafic rocks and soils; however, research on lichens of ultramafic habitats is limited, especially on the North American continent. A review of the published literature on lichens of ultramafic substrates in North America yielded a total of 437 lichen species reported from ultramafic rocks and soils. Lichen assemblages of ultramafic substrates vary in composition and are dominated by acidophytic (low pH preferring) taxa with a minor, but consistent, basiphytic (high pH preferring) component. Species lists from ultramafic habitats in different geographic regions varied widely, suggesting that factors unrelated to substrate, such as climate, have a large effect on lichen assemblage composition. However, several studies showed clear differentiation between lichen composition on nearby or adjacent ultramafic and nonultramafic habitats, suggesting that ultramafic substrates harbor regionally unique lichen assemblages. In a regional community ecology study, we sampled lichen biotas of eight ultramafic and eight sandstone outcrops along a 70 km maritime influence gradient in order to test three hypotheses: 1) a substrate effect hypothesis that saxicolous lichen communities of ultramafic and sandstone outcrops are compositionally distinct; 2) a maritime gradient hypothesis that coastal and inland communities are compositionally distinct; and 3) a maritime moderation hypothesis that coastal ultramafic and sandstone communities are more similar than those of inland ultramafic and sandstone. Relationships between lichen communities and abiotic variables were analyzed using perMANOVA. Ultramafic communities showed significant differentiation from sandstone communities in the study area. A total of 134 taxa were recorded - 81 taxa from ultramafic outcrops and 100 taxa from sandstone, with 47 taxa found on both rock types. Ultramafic outcrops were characterized by greater similarity between samples, lower lichen cover, larger differences in cover between north and south aspects, and higher abundance and diversity of cyanolichen taxa relative to sandstone. Coastal, intermediate, and inland communities were compositionally distinct from one another, and sandstone and ultramafic assemblages were significantly differentiated in all coastal distance groups. This study is one of few to quantitatively examine lichen communities of two rock types, and is unique in that it does so at a regional scale. These results add to our understanding of the interactive roles of substrate and maritime influence in lichen community assembly