Abstract
Construction operations on-site are recognized as major sources of several environmental impacts. Thus, serious actions have to be considered in both planning and execution phases, in order to control such anticipated impacts during the work period. ISO 14001 standard, among others, gives a distinctive guidance to organizations, to create and implement Environment Management System (EMS) within internal processes. Such application of EMS on construction operations, can form a significant improvement to environmental performance, and it can pay back on economic level on mid and long terms.
* This paper was made by myself in 2014, under supervision of Prof. Dr. Moheeb El-Said as part of my Master degree courses.
** Below the links to final paper and presentation.
Scott Belsky –founder of Behance- is sharing in this book his insight about transforming ideas into reality. Based on the famous quote of Thomas Edison
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
The book offers a simple strategy as a base for this transformation, based on three base pillars named by the author; (1) Organization & Execution. (2) Communal Forces. (3) Leadership.
The book describes in details the fine composition of each of the three pillars, supported with numerous amount of real life examples, most of them coming from the author broad experience with creative people from different industries. Although there will be definitely many thicker books, each dedicated entirely to one of those topics, the combination and amount of details mentioned in this one is fairly balanced and to the point without prolongation. It is assembling the scope of the problem and solution in practical strategy, that would turn into a lifestyle, shall anyone decides to adhere to it.
The organization & execution part of the book is occupying more than 40% of the 233 pages. Scott Belsky has definitely offered a generous explanation and examples in here, introducing his favorite technique “The Action Method”, a methodology of organizing the work & life in form of projects with an emphasize on taking continuous actions. The author explains himself totally in one sentence, “Work and Life with a Bias Toward Action”.
The Action Method calls for a daily follow up for different projects, with documentation of the important updates into three categories; action steps, references & backburners. The idea is to keep an inclination to take immediate actions toward targets continuously, while keeping references organized to important related information, without losing the small shiny tiny ideas and information which could be the base for further strategic development with some further research and study.
I consider the second part of the book; “The forces of community” the best of the three parts in the book. It is simple but detailed, covering a very important topic, which forms a real obstacle in front of many creative people in real life. The ability to union with the communal forces looks easy nowadays, however there are many people struggling their way out there on the topic. The book is explanatory on the topic, offering more examples and clear related details.
A distinguish between different people characters with focus on tendency to take actions versus generating ideas is presented in a straight forward approach. Three main types of characters are clarified; the Dreamer, the Doer and the Incrementalist. The author explains the need of different characters to unite in one organization, in order to complement each other skills and habits, striving for effective & efficient performance. The great thing here is once again the generous share of real life stories as examples for the advices given.
The third and final part of the book, was the least attractive for me, although it could be of a great importance for others naturally. The reason to move through it fast without tendency to read word by word, is my background on the topic, as I had already went through same topic in further dedicated details. However, I loved the way the author ended his book with the high valued chapter “self leadership”. And I quote out of the chapter; “The most challenging one to manage is you.”
Generally, the book is a great receipt for getting up from the dreams’ couch and give a life to the fading ideas in your head. I loved it, totally worth the time to read it and the money to buy it. Best characteristic of the book is definitely the great inspiring stories, which the author chose to share with us out of his experience. Very good book, and to the point!
Scott Belsky gave a TED talk on the same topic, which is available online on YouTube
Scott Belsky TED Talk
To know more about the author, you can refer to his bio page on TED (Click Here), or visit his famous creative company website (www.behance.net).
I like Sean Scott post on the topic Agile Risk Register, that is a good job on developing a comprehensive Risk Register -developed by Sean Scott, that is practical to use as well.
I would definitely come back, and post on my own version of Risk Register, as the core tool of Risk Management efforts.
Lately, I have been so interested in reading history, not only history of my mother country Egypt, but the history of the humanity. For I am not a specialist or even semi; my choices for my reading list and documentaries to review were based on my personal enthusiasm and passion, with no specific scientific reasons or a scholar guide. From old stories of Babylon to Spanish invasion in Latin America, my passion to collect pieces of the humanity history into my limit knowledge did not stop. Reading these and studying the history of our ancestors would definitely have various reasons and could result into many important lessons; among these, I would like more to jump to two major notices I have seen so clearly during this historical journey in general, and those I wanted to share.
1- The Uncertainty principle is a very important scientific theory was first introduced by the great physicist Heisenberg in 1927; Heisenberg stated that the more precisely the position of a quantum particle is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in that instant. In other words, the more closer we get to a particle to measure, the less accurate we would be able to do. Of course, I never thought this could apply to history, until I found out that we need to step a bit far from an event to be able to see it clearly. This is so obvious to unpredictable limit. You can find for every historical event or story, many different sides, each has its proves and each is built on some theories. But the most shocking is that each claims to be the fact and the truth. So, if we are trying to study the history of a specific event, we could get so easily in illusions and mix it with facts. Usually, history is written from the point of view of the writer and so common we see the writer mix his/her point of view with what was really proved. Politics and religions were always on top of reasons, for which history had been written in a way to express points of view differ from the absolute truth. Of course, now we have much more creditable sources and history writers have developed an accurate scientific guidance to follow, still you would pass through many books, which step aside from fairness and add the writer touch to the story.
Actually, It was clear to me (as per my very limited knowledge and readings), that as far we step from an event, the easier we could see the truth underneath, the better we could judge it. In an age of internet, where we could collect fairly high numbers of stories, pictures and videos related to any event on earth, it could be seen that our judgment and awareness of the truth, should be reached instantaneously. However, I claim that regardless of these almost unlimited resources, few of it could be counted as public opinion makers. Few of it impress us and push our minds to the limit of believe. Actually, if someone or a specific authority control these few valuable resources, again it could wash up the rest, impress us and submit a specific point of view as the truth. And actually this happens on daily base. Again, I see that we still in need to step a bit far from an event to be able to see the reality beyond.
2- Improvement and development have tremendously changed everything on earth related to human environment. We can not compare our daily life circumstances to these of daily life of someone lived a thousand years ago, not even a hundred years ago. Development and improvement have touched everything, except us. By saying so, I am not discussing the fair narrow layer of civilization we mask our civilized skin with, but indeed I am talking about the far beyond. We still hold the same hatred feelings for our opponents of different point of view to ours, we still hold most of the same values chains, regardless of how much corrupted these could be, we still hold the same basic parts of mentality to judge the different and the unknown as bad and worthless. To be more clearer, we still have the same reasons to do the same thing our ancestors did in front of comparable circumstances, regardless of how foolish this could be at many times, and this applies to many of us and in many ways.
I think that the most undeveloped part of human civilization is the human himself.
Gladly, I had decided last week to chear myself up with a tablet, one of those available in the market. I have postponed this for months, as I was so convinced that the few were available, since iPad1 shew up were not practical enough to buy. And that the new comers would be much better and may be cheaper even.
After intensive reading about the whole available products, I decided to choose the new HTC flyer. That was based on my existing good experience with HTC and the reviews, I had seen, told clearly, it is one of the best available in the market today.
The flyer is 7″ device, which is super for daily usage, it is handy and easy to carry and work on it. When I considered Apple iPad2 in comparison, I find the 10″ very big. That I would prefer then to use a laptop instead. This comes second to the fact, I am not Apple fan and had no experience with it.
The operating system Android Gingerbread 3.3 comes installed on the flyer. This is the biggest awkwardness, as this is a smartphone OS and was not designed to take advantage of being operated over a tablet. Still, HTC announced officially, that an update to Honeycomb will be available for all released flyers, that encouraged me so. At the moment I have a full joy using the flyer with gingerbread OS, I could spot few points, where the OS is not taking thee full gear of the hardware capacity.
The Flyer design is really nice and appeals very well. Supplied with two cameras, the rear one is 5 megapixel, while the front one is 1.5 MP.
With the Market application available, I had been able to install many useful free software, which turns the HTC device into a very productive tool, that could be of a great help on daily base.
The magic pen comes enclosed with the Flyer, it is one of the best selling point for this product. Actually, the pen is very nice tool, which could be used for annotation and adding remarks. However, it is not very useful, if you consider it as handwriting pen.
The lack to Arabic language support is the biggest annoying issue here, although some maneuvering solutions are available, HTC has to come out with a final solution integrated ASAP. This is an old complain from many HTC users.
Another bad surprise, I faced is the lack of ability of the Flyer to transfer my contacts from my HTC TouchPro2. This was annoying, I had to tweak it through my exchange account. To be honest, I have to mention that the Flyer supports automatic transfer of contacts and user data from so many other smart phones, HTC and other brands as well.
Battery is very good, I charge the device daily by the night, this keeps it available a full day with intensive usage.
So, to pack it up; display, battery, software & great performance are the biggest advantages with the flyer. OS issue & lack to Arabic support are the biggest disadvantages.
I had added this post from the Flyer, that was really easy and fun to do 🙂
Have you ever thought about the meaning of the triangle, drawn on a water bottle or a yogurt cup? Actually, this is called the Plastic Coding System. And it has a very important meaning, as it guides you to how safe it is to use this plastic type for once or more.
Basically the triangles would have a number from 1 to 7. Those numbered 3,6 or 7 are the worst; don’t ever use it, as it is known as cancer related materials. Those numbered 2,4 or 5 are the most healthy ones. And those numbered with 1, are good for one time use; don’t refill.
The “greatest European mathematician of the middle ages”, his full name was Leonardo of Pisa, or Leonardo Pisano in Italian since he was born in Pisa,Italy ; the city with the famous Leaning Tower, about 1175 AD. Leonardo of Pisa is now known as Fibonacci [pronounced fib-on-arch-ee] short for filius Bonacci ( Son of Bonacci; in one explanation).
He was one of the first people to introduce the Hindu-Arabic number system into Europe – the positional system we use today – based on ten digits with its decimal point and a symbol for zero:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
His book on how to do arithmetic in the decimal system, called Liber abbaci (meaning Book of the Abacus or Book of Calculating) completed in 1202 persuaded many European mathematicians of his day to use this “new” system.
In Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci book, chapter 12, he introduces the following problem (here in Sigler’s translation – see below):
How Many Pairs of Rabbits Are Created by One Pair in One Year A certain man had one pair of rabbits together in a certain enclosed place, and one wishes to know how many are created from the pair in one year when it is the nature of them in a single month to bear another pair, and in the second month those born to bear also.
That was the start point of coming out with the famous serious
1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,…… etc
Before Fibonacci wrote his work, the sequence F(n) had already been discussed by Indian scholars, who had long been interested in rhythmic patterns that are formed from one-beat and two-beat notes. The number of such rhythms having n beats altogether is F(n+1); therefore both Gospala (before 1135) and Hemachandra (c. 1150) mentioned the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, … explicitly.
What amazed me all the time, is how often we can notice the Febonacci series expressed by the nature, you don’t know what do I mean?? Watch the video, one of my all times favorite; produced by www.ETEREAESTUDIOS.com …….. It is wonderful !
Moemen Ahmed 