Article Summary, Draft #1

-
The webpage "Hotel New World Collapse" Kayat (2012) reported that, in 1986, the hotel collapse caused a catastrophe in Little India. 50 people were trapped in tons of concrete, only 17 people were rescued and 33 were killed. According to the author, he stated that, there were a few speculations made by the engineers during the investigations of the collapsed building. The speculations were a possible terrorist attack, reoccurrence of gas leakage, strength of the material used, and the composition of the soil. However, these assumptions were eliminated as the engineers evaluated all of these areas and were able to prove otherwise. The author mentioned that the collapse was due to 'under-designed columns and foundations' as the engineers excluded the building's weight which was part of the dead load calculation. The author concluded that overloads, lack of proper maintenance and engineering contributed to the collapse.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Formal Introduction

-
Dear Professor Blackstone I would like to take this opportunity to formally introduce myself. My name is Jean D’Cruz and I graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) last year with a diploma in electronic and computer engineering. Through internship and the curriculum at NP, I have gained a deeper understanding on electronics and computer engineering. However, ever since I was in secondary school, I have always enjoyed the design and technology classes.  The amount of thought in designing and creating a product of my own in secondary school was something I enjoyed doing . Through the years, I have often found myself admiring at the infrastructures of our society. Furthermore, I have also pondered on how certain structures are built, the design process and considerations engineers had considered in building a structure.   Hence, I decided to take up the degree in civil engineering offered by SIT.  In terms of communication, I have found it relatively hard to spea...
Read more

Interpersonal conflict

-
Sometimes in a stressful environment, we may feel frustrated, and without realizing, channel all of this frustration to the people around us, which may then lead to a conflict. Last year, during the long break before starting university, I worked part-time at Singapore Zoo as a   photographer. As part of the job scope, we had to also do sales and we had to reach a target amount by the end of the day. Usually there are three staffs stationed at the sales kiosk, however on my second day of work, due to the lack of manpower, there were only two of us.  Before the hectic period of the day, my colleague taught me briefly on how to place an order on the system so that the photo can be printed immediately and thereafter attend to more customers. Due to the brief instructions on how to use the system, I could not comprehend most of what was taught to me. Immediately after this, there was a huge group of tourist who came to view their photos and when I had to placed an o...
Read more

Critical Reflection

-
As I look back at the goals that I set for myself during the start of the module, I have certainly improved my skills in having an effective communication whether it is during a group discussion or in front of an audience. One of my goals was to come out of my comfort zone while speaking in front of an audience and the other was to improve my writing skills through the constant blogging assignments given. With the frequent group based discussions and mini presentations we had in class, it did help build up my confidence and it did direct me on how I could project the tone of my voice clearly. Other than speaking effectively, writing effectively through blogging was certainly a great platform for us to share our personal experiences and being able to review one another’s work. It did improve my sentence structures with the various viewpoints provided from fellow classmates. As communication is a skill that can always be further improved, I will continue to blog on possibly any unf...
Read more