Overall Finalization

Contribution to the Community:

We see our project positively influencing the lives of residence in North Vancouver. This influence will come after the execution of the project in June 2014. As the safely steps in place for an emergency will be tested any issues that arise will be looked into. After the project completion citizens should feel safer knowing that the efficiency of communication has been increased amongst safety personnel.

What was Learnt Along the Way Regarding Project Context, Planning and Implementation:

As mentioned previously about the implementation of the project, planning clearly demonstrated its effectiveness during the execution of our project. Although there our client did not set deadlines for our project, setting a reasonable schedule for ourselves motivated our teams into completing our tasks. Thus, after knowing that the rest of the group has finished their part, there was no reason to delay individual work even if there was no real deadline. In other words, the better the planning, and the better the outcome of the project will be.

Project Completion

How the Project Unfolded During Implementation:

At first, the whole project seemed very daunting and confusing after we listened to our client’s request. There was a period where our group does not know how to start and had time conflicts to meet the other group. Our first major step towards the project was majority of the two groups got together and step up a schedule and brainstorm ideas together. That meeting impacted all of us tremendously and drove the teams into the right direction; those who understood the project explained to those who were unclear until everyone knew what to do. A while after, we held our second major meeting, this time we assigned work to different members who excel at certain tasks. As we the project progressed, it became much easier overtime and does not seem that difficult anymore.

What has Gone Well and What Needed Extra Work:

In our project, we produced injects for the North Shore Emergency Management Office which were composed of visual injects made from Photoshop and verbal injects which were written descriptions. We were required to work together with another CBEL group on the same task in which we successfully collaborated with them by delegating tasks equally to each group to ensure that both groups worked as one cohesive group, and no task was repeated by the groups. As a result, our successful collaboration with the other group allowed us to work efficiently and produce good quality injects to be sent to the client. Our group also worked well together as we divided tasks equally to ensure that every member has a fair contribution to the project, and we frequently met as a group to make critical decisions regarding the project. One aspect our group could have improved on is the attendance of meetings, full attendance in group meetings were rare, and would often require those who were present in the meeting to reiterate what occurred at the meeting to the absent member

Project Outcomes:

In the project, we were asked by the client to create approximately 30 to 50 visual and written injects. We managed to create a total of 50 injects for the client, which were divided into visual injects created using Photoshop, and written descriptive injects. The majority of injects were visual because we decided as a group it was more suited for the client’s purposes of using them. As we were required to collaborate with another CBEL group on this task, our group was responsible for creating 25 injects respectively, in which we successfully produced 17 visual injects, and 8 written injects. Our visual injects used software such as Photoshop to reproduce images on how important structures and buildings in North Vancouver could look after being affected or damaged by an earthquake or natural hazard. Our written injects use descriptive first-person language to describe a scenario of the aftermath of a natural hazard of a key structure or location in North Vancouver.

Final Photo of the Project Being Submitted to the Client

Project Implementation

In conjunction with the other team also working on the same project all deliverables to the client have been finalized. Each student has been assigned very specific tasks to complete in order for the project to be completed smoothly. In total there are 50 injects between both teams. The actual work being completed is confidential and photos may not be shared on this blog. Approximately 30 injects were required which leaves plenty of wiggle room for the client to be completely satisfied. Email communication has been very effective and overall the project is going very smoothly.

To complete each of the tasks Photoshop is required and students working on the visual injects have access to the program. This means that there will not be a cost associated with the project or any additional resources required.

Photoshop Edit Before Inject Completion

It is expected that the project be complete before the poster session which means that approximately 2 injects need to be completed per student per week. As the client does not need the project complete until the beginning of June all-important deadlines will be met.

The written injects are individual tasks that have been decided upon as a group and should be very clear to the student completing the inject. The Photoshop injects are being completed by multiple students who have met up and shared their own tips with each other in order for efficient and effective completion of the task.

There are no safely issues associated with the project. All risks associated with the project are copyright problems in which our client is looking into, this is why the injects cannot be shared and are confidential.

Client satisfaction is the largest indicator of success. Overall group satisfaction and completion of all tasks on time are also indicators of success. In June our project will be implemented, the feedback received from the implementation is also an indicator of success.

Response Blog

This blog is to respond to comments the team has gotten on previous posts!

Question: In your hopes to make a positive difference to the residents of North Vancouver, how would you see this project impacting their lives?

Answer: We see our project positively influencing the lives of residence in North Vancouver because the safely steps in place for an emergency will be tested and any issues that arrive will be dealt with. After the project completion citizens should feel safer knowing that the efficiency of communication has been increased amongst safety personnel.

Question: Are you on target with your plan? Have you found that your estimates are reasonably accurate?

Answer: So far our team is very pleased with our progress and it is looking like all deadlines will be met. This is due to our diligent planning and prompt meetings and goals. The workload has been reasonable and manageable, our team has also evenly split the workload and we have all set target goals and deadlines. Everything so far has gone in accordance to our original timeline.

Question: I hope you get the chance to sit back from this work now and then to observe how the relationship between you and your client is developing, how the relationships between team members are developing, and whether the process of project implementation that you are following is working well, or whether you will change the process next time you work on a project.

Answer: Our team is fortunate to have a very cooperative client and mentor whom have both been very quick to respond to any questions. There have not been any communication problems thus far in the project. Our team meets weekly to make sure everyone is on the same page and work is continuously moving forward. Our client gets updates and so far is pleased with our progress. Project management has gone smoothly and there have not been any conflicts. The overall process of team management would not be changed should a similar project occur in the future.

Brainstorming Ideas and Project Timeline

Present your brainstorming ideas for the project and the techniques you are using to choose one idea over another. Present the overview time-line and milestones leading to project completion.

The purpose of this project is to conduct a 2 hour exercise that relays “windshield” damage assessment information in an earthquake and other situational awareness from field units to dispatches and emergency operations centres. NSEMO’s role is to raise awareness of roles, responsibilities and best practices with the staff that obtain, relay and prioritize damage assessment information. They also want to evaluate the effectiveness of communications platforms from the field to the appropriate level of emergency operations centre.

Our role is to create injects that describe or show what the field personnel see, describe the conversations that they have, and relate information from made up phone or radio calls. The field teams are not supposed to receive instructions on what to do with the information we give them. Injects can be written, doctored pictures or videos and they need to target critical infrastructure such as hospital, transportation systems, manufacturing plants and so on. Critical infrastructure is defined as the processes, systems, facilities, technologies, networks, assets and services essential to the health, safety, security or economic well-being of Canadians and the effective functioning of government.

Injects should display damage that is to be expected in a V-VI level earthquake in the Richter scale, so it should not be too catastrophic. Also, our team will avoid injuries and deaths as well as personal impacts. Major secondary incidents, such as landslides and tsunamis, will not be included in injects in order to stay within the scope of the project.

With that in mind, our team started brainstorming ideas for the project. Our goal is to come up with around 50 injects, which will be split between two teams. At first the ideas started rolling. We considered types of earthquake damage, such as:

Cracks in roads and buildings
Collapsed powerlines
Plumes of smoke from manufacturing plants
Small landslides and road lls
Cracking pipelines
Ground fissures
Power loss
Terminal access cut off at the ferry
Car accidents …

We then thought of places where the damage would occur, and came up with places such as:

Bridges (Seymour and Lions Gate)
Refineries
Community centres
Hospitals
Gas Stations
Emergency Response Routes
Ferry terminals
Marinas …

Our team wants a large variety of injects, so it was important for us to think of different ways an earthquake can cause damage. We also plan on using different types of damage that occur in the same place. For example, we can block the ferry terminal and cause minor damage to the marina.

The general timeline of our projects is supposed to follow along these lines:

With these guidelines in mind, our team is prepared for the tasks at hand.

Project Overview and Goals

Describe the organization, its background, its purpose, its vision statement and goals.

The North Shore Emergency Management Office (NSEMO) is an organization since 1978 in the public sector aimed at preserving and maintaining the safety of human lives. Their mission statement is:

“To serve and support the North Shore municipalities and citizens in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from emergencies and disaster.”

The organization’s core values are: Integrity, Innovation, Responsibility and Respect.

The “Emergency Operations Centre” is designed for emergency response and preparation which is readily available for use for North Shore municipalities. One of NSEMO’s main goals are to exercise and provide training for municipal staff, first responders and volunteers to enhance their ability to respond appropriately to activities in the North Shore. Another goal is to raise the awareness and readiness of the North Shore community for disastrous events and to communicate the roles of different people in the community during an event.

The organization provides emergency plans and a means for communicating to different municipalities on their roles and how to respond to a disaster such as the fire department by utilizing a multi-jurisdictional “command system” strategy room, where representatives from each jurisdiction and municipal gather to be informed of their roles and responsibilities, make critical decisions and relay information during a disastrous event. NSEMO also predicts potential damage due to a disaster, such as the amount of fatalities, and locations that will become most affected by such a disaster, and how that affects the situation such as the consequences of a certain structure being damaged or rendered unusable by a hazardous event.

Describe the project scope, as well as its goals and the negotiable and non-negotiable constraints.

For the CBEL project our group is required to prepare for the “windshield” damage assessment event organized by NSEMO. Our project will produce various injects that describe the damages on a number of critical infrastructures in the North Shore areas. The descriptions we produce will be in different forms including writing, images, videos that accurately display damage equivalent to a V-VI level earthquake without any major incidents. The project deliverables must be realistic, descriptive and accurate in the level of damage. The project will not produce any injects with catastrophic damages including injuries or deaths of people.

The constraints of the project are the following:

The geographical locations of the infrastructures of interest. The buildings to be assessed are spread through a very large area relatively far from UBC. This would increase the time consumed for someone to travel to and in between the infrastructures.

Technical difficulties in properly displaying the damages. High level of Photoshop and video making skills are required to display realistic incidents.

Time constraint of the project. To produce highly realistic and descriptive injects of the damaged buildings, extensive amount of time will be required on each one. We are planning to produce 50 injects which is not possible for all to be realistic picture or videos.

All of the above constraints are non-negotiable. They could be solved by:

Researching the area to plan an efficient route and use web-based images for some of the locations instead of physically going there.

Provide written descriptions when the damage of a building cannot be fully displayed only by editing the picture.

Produce about 50% of the injects in edited picture/videos and the rest in other time-efficient forms.

Our client has been very flexible and open to any ideas; therefore we do not have an non-negotiable constraints yet.

Describe the strategies you may use to achieve the project goals.

NSEMO’s project goals:

Training for municipal staff, first responders, and volunteers to enhance their ability to support the emergency response activities on the North Shore.

Exercises to test the effectiveness of this training.

Development of relevant emergency plans to help prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies and disasters.

An operationally ready Emergency Operations Centre for use by individual or multiple North Shore municipalities as required.

An informed North Shore community, knowledgeable of their personal emergency management responsibilities.

Successful engagement of stakeholders to enhance the North Shore emergency management capabilities.

The duty of student volunteers is to simulate an aftermath of an earthquake event for municipal staff, first responders, and volunteers. The students will provide injects consisting of photos, videos, and verbal description of damaged critical infrastructures for the participants to assess. From this simulated disaster training, valuable information can be obtained such as the participants’ responses and its effectiveness. This way, NSEMO can develop emergency plans to help prepare for, respond to, and recover from earthquake, which will hopefully be shared to Emergency Operations Centre. Thus this exercise is an effective way to engage the stakeholders as well as informing the North Shore community. In result, all of NSEMO’s goals are met through this project.

Introductions to the Project, Organization, Community, and Team Members

In the Community Based Experiential Learning Project (CBEL) we plan a real project for a real client. Our team works alongside an organization to implement a project that we have planned. The course is designed to enhance our project management skills by being involved in the project planning, design, and implementation. Our team is excited about giving back to our community and applying our creativity to the project.

Our team will be working with NSEMO (North Shore Emergency Management Office), they were founded in 1978 and are responsible “for effective co-operative emergency management (nsemo.org)” among many municipalities. NSEMO is able to provide services by “coordinating effective and efficient preparedness, planning, response, and recovery activities, and by bringing together resources (nsemo.org).” NSEMO has worked with multiple CBEL teams before and we are all very excited to be working with an experienced organization.

To deal with a disaster, communities must learn from similar disasters. “Operation Windshield” is developed to analyze the seriousness of the damage and prioritize when dealing with limited resources and time. NSEMO (North Shore Emergency Management Office) will simulate a disaster in June 2014 in order to raise awareness by conducting a windshield survey. Our team will be part of this project, by:

Developing a list of infrastructures in the area of simulated damage and obtain photographs of the site (render the damage if possible)
Reporting the observation in a narrative and elaborate on CBEL documents
Developing a project plan, final report, and presentation to findings, products and recommendations

Our hopes for this project are to make a positive difference in the communities of North and West Vancouver.

This is our team:

Hi I’m Jessica Francis and I’m from Chilliwack BC. I have been interested in civil engineering since I started watching HGTV and Bryan Baeumler. I am interested in the structural or project management side of civil engineering. I’m excited to work on the CBEL project because I love to give back to the community. My favourite amphibian is the green tree frog.

Hi I’m Ahmad Kallas and I’m a Canadian originally from Palestine. I like Civil Engineering because it gives me the opportunity to contribute into building whatever design I come up with, assuming I pursue my goal of becoming an architect. I’m thrilled to work on the CBEL project because it allows me to improve my communicational skills with both team members and senior associates. My favourite ice cream flavour is bubble gum (with extra gum pieces on top), you just can’t go wrong with that.

Hi I’m Barry Qiu and I’m from Canada, immigrated from China. I like civil engineering because I like engineering in general since 6 and civil engineering seems suitable in BC due to large supply of lumber and space. I’m eager to work on the CBEL project because it gives me the opportunity to be creative and practical. My favourite hobby is to build mechanical gadgets because I have never received toys from my parents when I was little, so I made many toys myself instead.

Hi I’m Johnson and I’m from China. I like civil engineering because it’s interesting. I’m excited to work on the CBEL project because it allows me to help the community and work with awesome people. My favourite food is Ramen.

Hi I’m Nathan Chan and I’m from Hong Kong. I like Civil Engineering because of the opportunity to design and create infrastructure. I’m looking forward to working on the CBEL project because it allows me to solve a real problem with a group of like-minded classmates. My favourite activity is to travel and adventure.

Hello everyone! My name is Lorena and I’m originally from Albania. Ever since I was young I’ve had a fascination with the built environment so choosing civil engineering made perfect sense to me. In the future I hope to pursue a career in structural engineering and build beautiful infrastructure. I’m really looking forward to the CBEL project because of the opportunity to work with a client and my teammates to solve a real world problem. I know this will be a great learning experience! I will be your best friend if you give me cheesecake.