Last week was the last week of our CSL Project. We went to NSEMO office to share all our work with them in the form of a short presentation. We were scheduled at 1:00, and we got there sooner to set everything up properly. Ms. Mason and three of her colleagues came to hear what we had to say about their website. We started by general comments on the look of NSEMO website and continued our presentation with more suggestions on specific pages of the website. As our client had asked us to focus on “Preparedness”, “Hazards”, “About us”, and “Workshops”, we stayed focused on those pages. We talked about possible improvements in terms of look and content of them and also the photos that were well suited in those pages and yet reasonably priced. All of us took part in different parts of the presentation.

After we were done, they started to provide us with some feedbacks. They seemed to be really impressed by what we did, but they also pointed out some areas of improvement in our work. Ms. Mason also asked about our feeling about this project and how much we learned about project management. Overall, we seemed to have met our client expectations.

 

Last week on our meeting, we discussed individual progress on our tasks. Everyone was done with their parts, and we decided to send NSEMO a memo to update them on our progress. In order to prepare the final report, we thought that it would be the best if each of us works on their own parts, and one of us compiles the formal report. We also discussed the date of our presentation, and Mauro contacted NSMEO to confirm the date. We are going to present our client on February 28th.

What we have to do this week is to work on final report and final presentation. We have set Tuesday February 21st as the deadline to finish our parts.

Here is the memo we sent to our client:

 

DATE:                        February 9, 2012

TO:                        North Shore Emergency Management Office

FROM:            Mauro Moya, Tahmineh Teymourian, Kris Hellens, Josh Weidner, Sadaf Farzaneh-Far

SUBJECT:            NSEMO Website Upgrade Project Update

 

As of Monday, February 6^th, we completed the initial phase of the Emergency Management Website Upgrade project, passing our first major milestone on track to a successful completion. This memo is to provide you with a brief update and let you know how things are progressing.

We have delegated specific tasks to members of the team, and everyone has been focusing on their new-found areas of expertise, working to address the content in regards to the scope of the project. A key focus has been how to integrate the North Shore communities into the project, and we feel we have thought of some interesting recommendations for possible ways to achieve this.

As well as a plan for community involvement, we have prepared some useful observations and ideas for the content of the key focus sections. We feel that our relative lack of emergency preparedness knowledge coming in to the project has helped us in providing a point of view that will be shared by the general public. In this regard we have found only some minor issues which we feel could be addressed.

Overall our team feels that the direction of the upgraded NSEMO website is very well on track to be comparable to similar organizations’ websites, such as FEMA and getprepared.gc.ca. The next phase of our project is already underway; we have begun drafting a report on our findings and recommendations, and preparing a presentation to accompany it.

We have really enjoyed working on this project, as it offers us a unique opportunity to exercise the project management skills we have learned in a very interesting way. As always, please do not hesitate to contact us or check out our project blog at https://blogs.ubc.ca/civil202p9/.

After we received NSEMO feedback on Scope Statement, we prepared the timeline for our project.

*Click on the photo to see it on original size.

After the meeting our team had with NSEMO on January 20, we found out that our client has already started to improve their website. They provide us with its address, and they explained what areas we should focus on. At first, we thought that we have to check everywhere on their website for possible improvements; however, they asked us to focus on “Hazards”, “Preparedness” and “About Us”. They also want people to follow them on social networks; therefore, we try to come up with ideas in this matter. We discussed task assignment, and everyone took responsibility to do some research on contents of those three target areas. The deadline to finish the research is Monday, February 06. We also decided to prepare scope statement to make sure we are clear on deliverables of this project. We emailed it to Dorit and received some feedbacks.

At the moment, we are working on the project taking our client’s requirements into consideration.

We thought that it may be a good idea to have scope statement uploaded here on the blog:

 

Emergency Management Website Upgrade

Project Overview

This project is being undertaken to make improvements to the new website for the North Shore Emergency Management Office. With the new website currently under development it has been deemed an excellent opportunity to gain input into updating content. Through a partnership with the Civil Engineering Department at The University of British Columbia the project will completed by a team of undergraduate students as part of the CIVIL 202 course.

The project commenced on Monday, January 16 2012 with the group being assigned the project, and will be completed at a date to be determined in late February of the same year. This project is being undertaken with the goal of providing a valuable learning experience for group members while producing valuable results for the clients. All work will be performed responsibly and with integrity to the best of our abilities.

Project Purpose

The North Shore Emergency Management Office (NSEMO) serves the District of West Vancouver, the District of North Vancouver, and the City of North Vancouver and their citizens in emergency and disaster preparation, response, and recovery. To better serve this mission NSEMO has initiated a redevelopment of their website. The purpose of this project is to aid in the website redevelopment through recommendations and advise based on research and experience.

Project Scope

This project will involve:

• A review of the existing website and a comparison to the newly developed site.
  • A focus will be on content being concise, current, compelling.
  • Key sections of the site are Hazards, Preparedness, and About Us; these sections will be a focus of the project.
  • User appeal will be considered in the review.
  • An investigation into comparable organization’s websites for pertinent content missing from NSEMO’s website.
  • A search for relevant imagery to be used in areas of the new website.
    • This imagery should be purchasable and wholly usable by NSEMO.
    • An offering of general advice on the trends of website integration with social media.
    • Feedback from the team members on the process and involvement with NSEMO.

 

Project Milestones

1. Research phase completes.
2. Interim report detailing initial findings presented.
3. Presentation of findings and recommendations through:
   1. A formal report.
   2. A presentation of about 30 minutes.

 

Project Deliverables

1. A formal report detailing our results and recommendations pertaining to the scope of the project.
2. A client presentation of the information contained in the report.

Next Step

The next step of the project has been initiated and involves the research and analysis of the current NSEMO website, the under development website, and any comparable organisation’s websites. The different areas of the website have been delegated to different members and each will be responsible for covering their sections in relation to the scope.

 

NSMEO’s  Homepage, Old Look:

 

 

NSMEO’s Homepage, Upgraded Look:

 

Monday Jan 16^th

• Members introduced to other members they had not met. Discussed exchanging phone numbers. Phone numbers can be found on the group Google Docs page
• Initial Project Discussion:
  • Finding other websites
  • Colour scheme
  • Better layout of information
  • Not all displayed on the front page
  • Need a more immediate delivery of the information required during an emergency.
  • Appropriateness of images

 

• Also we talked about the next meeting. And we Met with our mentor, Narges, and discussed our initial plans and feelings as mentioned above.

 

Friday Jan 20^th 

• We went to the North shore emergency office and got information.

 

Monday Jan 23^rd

• We talked about the information we got on Friday Jan 20^th,
• Decided to make scope statement prepared by Wednesday so we could go from there.
• Also, all of us got the responsibility for specific part of the website to search and get the information.
• In two weeks we shall have our final research pieces due as well
• Talked about that draft website NSEMO is currently working on. Talked about they’re desire for use to go through the website and check for complete truth in information. NSEMO wanted the team to make a timeline with deadlines for different parts of the project and as well come up with ideas for videos

Started making a timeline with deadlines including all Fridays blog posts.

 

Talked Scope:

 

• First thing we needed to do was improve the look and feel of the new site.
• Needed to look at content, so what is missing, what is needed, update on info. Compare to other websites. Make sure all content is concise

Improve the social networking of the site so twitter followers, facebook likes.

 

 

Monday Jan 30^th

 

We discussed about our parts and the blog.

 

We are a team of five civil engineering students in CIVL 202 class who works on NSEMO website. Our client, North Shore Emergency Management Office, is currently re-developing their website to provide a more efficient tool for educating the community on emergency preparedness. Our task is to review NSMEO website and prepare a report on any data missing in their website in comparison with other emergency management websites. We are also asked to search for photos that can be good presentation of their mission. Overall, our team will provide recommendations on content, photos and layout of the website in order to make available information more user friendly.

Our first meeting was on Monday, January 16, 2012. Here is the more detailed introduction on team members:

 

• Josh Weidner

Hello there!

My name is Josh Weidner. I’m a second year civil student here at UBC and I look forward to working with North Shore Emergency Management Office to improve their website which is clearly critical to disaster preparedness and response in North and West Vancouver.

If for any reason you need to contact me feel free by email or phone at

joshweidner@ymail.com

778 230 6787

 

 

 

• Tahmineh Teymourian

Hello,

My name is Tahmineh Teymourian, and I am a second year civil engineering student at UBC. Working on an Emergency Planning or Disaster Relief Engineering project was what I was looking for, and I look forward to working on NSEMO website.

 

You can contact me by email at: t.teymourian@gmail.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Mauro Moya

Hello hello

I am Mauro Moya. Currently a UBC Civil Engineering Student, I wish to gain valuable experience and insight in website design by working with NSEMO.

Feel free to call or email me  regarding any questions relating to the NSEMO website at:

mauro.a.moy@gmail.com

778 317 8844

 

 

 

 

• Kristopher Hellens

Hey!

My name is Kristopher Hellens and I am a second year Civil Engineering student at The University of British Columbia. The thing that interests me most about civil engineering is the human impact of the projects I will be working on. Working with the North Shore Emergency Organization I am excited to be able to put the skills I am learning to use on a real world project that will be able to help thousands of people. From this project I hope to gain an improved understanding of the interaction of engineering within a community and look forward to our shared progress over the coming months!

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Sadaf Farzanehfar

Hello

My name is Sadaf Farzanehfar and like all of you, I am in my second year of Civil Engineering at the University of British Columbia. I chose Disaster Relief and Emergency Planning because I want to help the community, and create a safer place for Canadians to live. I believe that the design of the North Shore

Emergency Organization Website is a chance for us to make a difference, and I am happy to be apart of this team.

Please feel free to contact me with the information below

604-726-9179

sadaf.frz@hotmail.com