Since the last update, we have worked on a poster, project documentations and the final report.  On March 25^th, we presented the completed poster (as shown below) and introduced our project to fellow classmates and visitors.  The report along with a presentation were delivered to our client on April 4^th, which marked the completion of our CBEL project.

Below is a list of our achievements:

1. Developed a community point of distribution system at Cates Park, including 2D and 3D model; below is a snapshot of the 3D model 
2. Site evaluation of Cates Park as a muster zone
3. Took photographs of the important locations at Cates Park, e.g. Dock (shown below), parking lots etc.
4. Plan for transportation of emergency personnel
5. Designed a classified ID card for emergency personnel

The aforementioned will contribute to the North Shore community in many ways. In the event of an emergency or disaster, the community will benefit from our transportation plan for emergency personals, which includes paramedics and firefighters. According to our client, 65% of the respondents do not live in the community they serve; the plan will allow quick and efficient transport of staff to the location where they are needed. Furthermore, the community point of distribution at Cates Park is the first of its kind in Lower Mainland (as told by our client), and such system will allow life sustaining supplies to be distributed timely to surrounding communities. In the event of an earthquake, the two bridges connecting the Burrad Inlet may be damaged and isolating the entire North Shore from northbound car access. In this scenario, Cates Park’s ability to handle air and water transports can ensure the residents are not cut off from food and other supplies.  Although our system is designed specifically for Cates Park, we imagine similar model can be developed for other locations as well, and it will serve as a reference for future emergency distribution planning.

From our CBEL experience, we learnt many things about project context, planning, and implementation.  Not only did we learnt to communicate with our client and decide on the scope and goal of our project, we also acquire the skills to identify negotiable and non-negotiable constraints. In addition, we strengthened our time management and project planning skills by establishing a timeline and reporting on implementation process.

Overall, our CBEL project has been successful and we believe we made significant contributions to the North Shore communities. During the process, we acquired skills related to project planning and implementation that are very beneficial for our professional development.

After the site visit, we obtained more detailed information about Cates Park, which helped us to establish a feasible emergency supply distribution plan at this muster zone. Through the several meetings and discussions that we had up until now, we have successfully come up with a distribution plan at Cates Park and we have built a SketchUp model for it. This model shows visually how we divided the site into different areas for various functions. As expected, we have already started work on the poster for the project. The poster will contain the project’s description and goals as well as a site map with explanations for the different focuses of the site. The purpose of this poster is be a visualization of the project and to aid us in presentations. For the presentation, the poster will give people a general idea of our plan through the use of photos of the park and snapshots of our SketchUp model. We anticipate that we will finish both the report and project documentation by next Thursday, March 28th. As for some of the project outcomes, a feasible emergency supply distribution plan designed for Cates Park and a detailed report will be completed for this project.

The figure above shows the key facilities at Cates Park.

Second Meeting: NSEMO

During a meeting at the North Shore office on February 22nd, Mike suggested that we focus on one muster zone and one community distribution zone. One potential site that could be crucial in bringing our emergency personnel from communities outside of North Vancouver is Cates Park. We left this meeting with a better defined scope of the project to use Cates Park as a muster zone and to use Parkgate Mall as a distribution zone to the immediate community. Mike then set the next meeting the week after to go on-site to Cates park and Parkgate mall as a group with various experts.

In our next meeting as a group, we figured out a timeline to follow with dates and deadlines set for various components of the project. All the components that are expected to be completed by us are in the following image.

Project Timeline

There will be a poster presentation done in class followed by a report and a PowerPoint presentation to be done in the North Shore Emergency Management Office.

Third Meeting: Cates Park

On February 27nd, Ibtida and Herman met up with Mike and various experts and park superintendents to review Cates Park as a viable muster zone. However upon detailed analysis on the location and what this park has to offer, Mike advised that the park could act as a muster zone and a distribution zone. This would eliminate the need for Parkgate Mall to act as a separate distribution zone, thus saving time and the coordination of the routes and trucks to move supplies. Therefore we have revised our scope to focus on Cates park alone to act as a muster zone for North Vancouver and as a distribution zone for the immediate 4km area.

Cates Park, North Vancouver, BC

While on-site, we reviewed helipad zones in two areas: the field beside the playground and the small strip of land at the southern corner of the park. The obvious benefits of the park are the numerous parking lots that can be used for various purposes. Limitations such as having only one entrance and having trails that are far from the road could make planning difficult. After concluding this on-site analysis and surveying, we will begin to take what we’ve learned through documents and come up with a plan to combine the muster and the supply distribution zones.

After having met Mr. Mike Andrews on Wednesday and getting a very detailed overview, we are now mostly briefed on the current situation regarding our project and the entire spectrum of what we could contribute to. In this post, we will outline some basic information that we have learned and what we wish to do with the project.

With a population center as urban as the North Shore communities (North Vancouver and West Vancouver), there is a need for a constant stream of supplies which facilitate the day to day activities of the city. In the event of a disaster, that stream of supplies is cut off. Many important items that people depend on will run critically low in a short frame of time. With our current project, our ultimate goal is to contribute to a system that will enable us to prepare for and mitigate disaster scenarios. Within that broad spectrum, there are many subcategories that we could focus on as well, such as planning the following:

• efficient and safe ways to bring help to those who need it
• different methods supplies could be transported to the affected areas
• the gathering and bringing emergency response personnel to affected locations.
• the reduction of panic and subsequent chaos that may befall the public
• locations where emergency personnel and supplies can be brought in through different modes of transport

From the meeting, we have gained an understanding of what the NSEMO desires. Due to the amount of information and the complete overview of the project given to us, we are required to cut the entire scope down to focus and fit our time frame and availability. The next objective on our agenda is to decide on what our plans are regarding the extent we wish to contribute to the project.

Due to the mismatching of schedules, our information session with the North Shore Emergency Management Office will not occur until Wednesday, February 6th. Without obtaining more information, we are not able to relay the details of our project. Instead, this blog post will contain what we are planning to do and the division of different responsibilities.

Our current focus is on setting up the resources, file distribution system that we will use, communication fronts, and the scheduling of team meetings. With the information that was already provided to us, a rough schedule could be constructed. From the information, we can see that this project will be broken into four distinct components: researching, developing a plan for the emergency supply chain (which can be further broken down once we have more details), creating a report to showcase our plan, and creating a presentation. 

With those 4 general steps in mind, it is easy to see that a majority of the focus will be on the research and planning phases. Given that this project will end during late March, we will have approximately eight weeks to complete everything. With those eight weeks, five will most likely go into research and planning, two into writing the report, and one week in composing the presentation.

Our group has decided to meet once a week to keep each other updated. Currently, Herman is tasked with keeping up the technical back-end (technical drawings, file systems, and information distribution), Coco, Carrie, and Ibtida are focusing on research, and Weike (pronounced “wake”) will be mainly handling communications.

Hello everyone! Our CBEL project is the North Shore Emergency Management Organization Supply Chain -Management/Relief-Supply Distribution project. Our main role will be to support the development of a post-disasaster programme for post-disaster transportation and distribution of supplies. The North shore Emergengy Managemnet Organization (NSEMO) is a tri-municipality oraganization in MetroVancouver operating for City of North Vancouver, District of North Vancouver, and District of West Vancouver. The client for this particular project is Emergency Management BC (EMBC), the coordinating agency of the BC provincial government’s emergency management. Our duties will include research of existing programmes in other regions, assessment of potential resources, planning, presenting, and creating a report. In our group, we have five 2nd year Civil Engineering students – Ibtida Tasnim, Herman Wong, Weike Qu , Coco He, and Carrie Geng. We hope to learn about project management and dealing with clients from the organization by helping them with this project. We also hope to learn the procedures involved in emergency management. We will be in contact with our mentor throughout the project and we will also meet with our client in NSEMO at different phases of the project  We have prepared an agenda and a list of questions to present to the client at the orientation. Below is a map showing the location of North and West Vancouver in relation to the City of Vancouver.