Author: Mezie Ethelbert

Reading Time: 7 minutes Estimation is one aspect of cost engineering that often precedes bidding. Other components of cost engineering include cost control, value engineering, planning scheduling, construction management, investment appraisal, risk analysis, conceptual studies, and profitability analysis of engineering projects and processes. Cost engineering is the duty of a cost engineer who is trained by education and professional experience to apply the principles of engineering cost management. Estimation of engineering works is usually done according to the principles of the Bill of Engineering Measurement and Evaluation (BEME) in order to get the estimated cost (the probable cost of construction). This basically applies to…

Reading Time: 5 minutes Column base plate are flat plates of steel used in composite construction to connect steel column (stanchion) to a reinforced concrete foundation. Steel stanchions usually consist of sharp edges. Thus, if they are connected directly to the reinforced concrete foundation, they can cause sinking effect on the concrete which can lead it to crack or crack. The provision of high strength base plate is to ensure that the load from column is dispersed over a wide area of the base plate before being uniformly distributed over the reinforced concrete foundation (See Figure 1). Prior to the design of base plate,…

Reading Time: 2 minutes In the construction of bridges and flyovers, retaining walls often come into the picture because of the need to raise a mass of soil to a higher level to permit movement of vehicles underneath. This mass of soil must be supported by a retaining wall. The design of retaining walls considers the backfill soil as retained earth in dry state during design as this gives more economical design. However, in the event of rain or rise of water table, the backfill soil becomes flooded and this causes the unit weight of the submerged soil to rise thereby creating more pressure…

Reading Time: 9 minutes Free standing stair case (Figure 1) is among the special types of staircase whose design and construction are usually very challenging. The mechanism by which this stair case carry loads have been a subject of many research. It is one type of stair that is aesthetically appealing when done properly. In BS 8110 for instance, an approximate method based on strain energy principles were developed to determine some critical moments used in the design. Generally, the analysis process to obtain the moments is very rigorous and more suited to finite difference method and finite element method available in some top…

Reading Time: 7 minutes Introduction Erosion and the gully type is the greatest geohazard in Nigeria affecting all the states in the Southeast and some states in the other regions of Nigeria. In Southeast particularly the state of Anambra is the most hit having more than 1000 active gullies with notorious gully erosion site as the Nanka gully erosion site and the Ekwulobia gully erosion site. Many human and economic losses have been recorded due to this menace. This prompted the Federal government of Nigeria to partner with World Bank to create the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP), which has been actively…

Reading Time: 3 minutes Reinforced concrete design (RCD) in Nigeria have been based on the British Standard (BS 8110). Recently, precisely in 2010, BS 8110 was due to be replaced by a unified code known as Eurocode 2 (EC 2) for the design of reinforced concrete structures among European Union (EU) members. The development of Eurocode began in 1975 and the code is claimed to be the most technically advanced structural codes in the world. One of the key purposes of the code is to facilitate professional services and materials exchange among EU members. Besides these, the code have many other advantages above BS…

Reading Time: 2 minutes Almost all types of pavement require to be paved with varying thicknesses of asphalt depending on the expected traffic volume. Stone base consist of mixture of quarry dust and aggregates. This material is mostly used as base course for pavements with expected high volume of traffic. For low trafficked pavements low cost laterite with CBR value greater than 80% can be used for the same purpose. Asphalt and Stone base are very costly materials and their cost contribute most to the materials cost of constructing flexible pavement. The materials are usually spread using asphalt pavers. Owing to the high cost…

Reading Time: 2 minutes Four (4) key factors are usually considered in the design of rigid pavement. These include: 1. Amount, type and weight of present and anticipated traffic The volume and character of the present and anticipated traffic would determine the number and width of the traffic lane. The weight and frequency of wheel loads would guide the slab structural design. 2. Supporting power and character of the subgrade In the design, the supporting power of subgrade is evaluated based on the modulus of subgrade reaction, k which is usually gotten from plate load/bearing tests. The k-value represents the load (kN) per square…