Our group has continued finishing individual sections of the report. We had a group meeting to discuss the progress of our sections as well as coming up with the schedule using a bar/gantt chart. We planned to finish individual sections by Monday. Also compile our sections into the final report.
During the last week, our group divided into three subgroups to work on sketch up, cost estimation, and work plan/scheduling. We had a meeting with our professor to make a clarification on cost estimation, and she gave us a “RSMeans cost data” that we used to come up with a final cost. however, as our client mentioned earlier some of the building products and labour was donated to them. so we tried our best to eliminate the cost of donated goods. At this stage of our project we are trying to come up with the format of the final report.
Our team has taken the remarks that our client made on our last two design options and have come up with a semi-finalized design. Our team has ensured storage areas for both units, stacked bathrooms and appliances for design efficiency and attempted to make the overall design more ergonomic. Our client was satisfied about the final design. We would like to move onto the advanced design, construction schedule and cost estimation portion of the project.
This is our final design:
During past two weeks we sent our clients two designs as planned and received feedback from them. The feedback included a preferred design as well as recommendations for improvement. These recommendations include stacking plumbing for the kitchen, laundry, hot water tanks, and electrical panels, as well as moving washroom door locations so they do not open into kitchen and living room areas. Our next step is to sketch the new modified design and split up task such as 3D model sketch up and estimating costs. We will be meeting on Monday to finalize our design.
This past week we have been working on our Terms of Reference document. This document has helped us to outline the scope of our project. Given the allocation of marks for this course and course objectives, we have determined what we would like to focus on for this project. We have also been developing sketches for possible house designs this week. We are planning to submit two design sketches to Habitat for Humanity and allow them to choose which design they would like us to pursue. We realized that there are many options for design to take once we met as a group and started to layout a house with the specifications provided from Habitiat. The drawings from previous Habitat projects provided to us helped us to refine our design. Determining the general layout of our projects was a fun task to undertake. Once we have been given a path forward from Habitat, we will be able to start our SketchUP model and begin the preliminary estimating and scheduling. We plan to meet again soon after the reading break.
On February 4th we met our client and she made her objectives clear for this project. Also, she gave us a brief introduction to their company by showing us around their office and restore. After obtaining all the necessary information about our responsibilities, we came up with a schedule with deadlines. We also assigned some tasks among the team.
On February 8th, we met our instructor to ensure we were on the right path. Moreover, we received some advice on what not to do on this project – information that we will pass on to the client. At this stage of the project we have been able to draw two simple design options on paper which will lead us to draw more detailed 3D sketches. Although we would love to work more on this project, our time is limited and unfortunately we cannot go into as many details as we would like.
Over the last two weeks we’ve been corresponding with Mr. Moir from Habitat For Humanity and we set up a meeting on Monday Feb 4th at 2. Also the other group will be joining us in the meeting. Mr. Moir informed us that the CEO will be joining us as well. During this meeting we hope to understand more about our client’s expectations for this project. We look forward to meeting them.
We are a team of five Civil Engineering Students in CIVL 400 who are excited to work with Habitat for Humanity Greater Vancouver and Tsawwassen First Nation. Our Clients are interested in providing affordable housing for First Nation members. In this Project our task is to design a sustainable project plan that is feasible.
On January 14th we arranged a meeting with the APSC CBEL Officer, Ara Beittoei to get our clients contact information and some additional information about the community Partners. After meeting with Ara, we created some initial deadlines and assigned tasks to different people in our group; Client liaison, web blogger, and class liaison roles were delegated.
At this moment, we are trying to arrange a meeting with our clients to get more detailed information about their expectations and our responsibilities. Here is the introduction on team members: