admin
This user hasn't shared any biographical information
Posts by admin
Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
Oct 8th
Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is an amazing experience and definitely to be recommended. Kilimanjaro is one of the fabled 7 summits – the seven highest mountains in the seven continents on earth. Out of the 7 Kilimanjaro is one of the most accessible to individuals and it is possible to reach the summit without any specialist mountain climbing experience, or technical equipment. There are 6 official routes on Kilimanjaro that you can choose to follow; the length of trek is usually between 5-8 days, although the longer the trek the better you will acclimatise.
Steel Frame Buildings
Oct 8th
A Steel frame for a building generally refers to the building technique with a frame of vertical steel H-columns and horizontal I-beams, which is constructed in a rectangular grid, to support floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. Using this technique it is possible made buildings a big as a skyscraper.
The rolled steel joists or RSJ’s as there are sometimes referred to look like the letter H if you look at a cross section of the steel. The two flanges of the vertical steel column are thicker and wider than the flanges of a horizontal beam, to enable the RSJ to withstand the compressive stresses that the structure will put on it. Steel beams and columns are connected using threaded bolts and nuts.
The steel frame needs to be protected from fire as steel softens at high temperatures and this could cause the building to collapse. Steel columns can be protected by encasing it in some form of fire resistant material such as masonry, concrete, plasterboard, or paint.
The exterior shell or skin of a building can be attached to the steel frame using a variety of construction techniques and a variety of architectural styles. Bricks, stone, precast concrete, architectural glass, sheet metal, fibre cement boards, box profile sheeting, or paint can been used to cover the frame to protect the steel from the elements.
2010 Commonwealth Games
Sep 28th
The future of the 2010 Commonwealth Games which are being held in Delhi are still in doubt, despite being only days away from the opening ceremony.
Several teams from participating nations are complaining about the condition of the accommodation in the athletes’ village with some team members refusing to attend due to the poor conditions and potential security fears.
The construction for the games has been plagued with problems and the preparations have also been affected by failures in the construction of venues and structures. Last week a bridge at the Jawaharlal Nehru complex, which is the centrepiece for the Games collapsed, resulting in more than 20 people being injured. A section of the ceiling in the weightlifting arena also fell down later in the week.
Despite repeated requests from the CGF’s coordination commission earlier in the year to step up the construction, it was clear that there was still a huge amount of work to be done to complete the construction projects. The CGF’s coordination commission stated in its press release following a visit in May, that a main concern and the major issue was the readiness of the buildings especially in the Games village.
Members of the England camp will spend their first night in the Games village tonight. A group of approximately 20 support staff will stay in the accommodation to ensure conditions are suitable for athletes. All of the England team are scheduled to be in the accommodation by next Tuesday.
Do I need a social media marketing strategy for my company?
Sep 27th
Every company that has a website should be looking to maximize its online presence by using Search Engine Optimisation techniques. The first stages of this would be onsite SEO, which would include keyword and Meta data research and selection, alt tags for images and good page text content. Once the onsite work is complete the next stage would be to start link building from various websites, directories and blogs.
Initially, links can be relatively easy to source, however free sites for links will soon dry up when you have gone through all the local and industry specific directories and you have requested links from clients and friends. You may find that to get good quality, high page ranking text links to your site, you will have to employ a SEO or link building company. This will enable you to obtain a wide variety of web links to your website which would be difficult for you to source on your own.
Another way that you can help build links from a variety of sources would be to implement your own Media Marketing Strategy. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Linkedin can all help with your brand marketing and can also provide a useful resource for you to post links to your website. This could be something as simple as getting all your employees to ensure that their Linkedin public profile has the company website on it. At the other end of the spectrum you may wish to embark on a full blown social marketing campaign involving regular blog posts, image posting on flickr, daily tweets and facebook groups.
Why do I need SEO?
Sep 22nd
If your company has any kind of online presence and wishes to generate more revenue then you should employ some kind of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy. By applying some basic techniques and following a list of steps you can greatly improve the chance of your website getting ranked highly for search engine results.
The first place to start is by finding a company that specialises in SEO, be careful when selecting a company to manage your online marketing and beware of companies that promise page 1 rankings in a matter of weeks and huge monthly fees for thousands of external links.
What you are looking for is somewhere in the middle. SEO is a combination of specialist knowledge about how search engines work, market research about which keywords you should be optimising your site for and hard work! To optimise your site sell and to get lasting susses will take time and commitment on both sides, however once your site is ranked on the first page of a search engine the results will speak for themselves.
On average you should expect to commit for an initial 12 month period with an online marketing company, during this time there would be a combination on improving and optimising your website for specific words and phrases relevant to your products or services, and offsite optimisation including; directory links, images, videos, social networking and specific text links from relevant websites.
The cost for these services will vary, from as little as £100 per month for a few external links to £1000 per month for professional keyword copy writing for your website, article writing, blog postings, social networking and high page value external links. Your budget will obviously be determined by your financial position, however somewhere in the middle of this range, around £500-£600 would be a realistic price to pay for a good service and will show good results in the first year.
Retaining Wall
Sep 22nd
There are many applications and uses for retaining walls, and a variety of materials and structures that can be used to construct a retaining wall it all depends on the purpose of the structure and the loads that will be placed on it.
A concrete retaining wall could be as straight forward as using wooden railway sleepers to create raised flower beds in a garden, which will retaining a small earth load. At the other end of the scale you could have a precast concrete crib wall retaining an earth bank on a motorway cutting, either way the most important thing is selecting the correct product for the application for which it will be used.
The most common material for constructing a retaining wall is concrete, this can either be constructed onsite or ‘insitu’ using shuttering and is reinforced using steel bars and mesh, or it can be precast in a specialist precast concrete factory. The finished sections would then be delivered to site where they would be fixed to create a retaining wall.
New Bridge for the 2012 Olympics
Sep 21st
As the preparations continue for the London 2012 Olympics which are being hosted in London, a new concrete bridge has just been completed in Stratford, East London.
The purpose of constructing this reinforced concrete bridge is to provide access for cars, pedestrians and cyclists to the Olympic Park. The Bridge measures 42 metres in length and 18 metres wide spanning the railway lines.
This new bridge is a replacement for the old Angel Lane Bridge, which was constructed during the Victorian era. The Angel Lane Bridge had weight restrictions in place restricting the traffic access. It also and had no cycle lane or a footpath; the bridge now has a cycle lane and two pedestrian footpaths.
In addition to providing a boost to local transport links, the construction of the new reinforced concrete bridge means that remedial work can now be carried out on the Stratford regional train station for the 2012 Olympic games. The scope of the consruction work will include; the extension of platform 10a to ensure it can cope with greater passenger numbers that will be travelling from central London from Stratford station.
Internet Marketing
Sep 20th
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from a search engine query, such as; Google, Bing, Yahoo via natural search results. On the whole, the higher a website appears in a search results, the more people will see the website and the more visitors it will receive. SEO involves optimising a website to ensure that it appears in different kinds of search results, including; search engine, image search, local search, and industry-specific search engines.
An Internet marketing strategy will include some degree of Search Engine Optimisation. SEO analyses how search engines work and what words people search for. The process of optimising a website for specific words or phrases involves a combination of onsite work including analysing keywords, tags, titles, headings and keyword rich content. Off-site work can also benefit the websites visibility and assist with the optimisation; this can include social media profile, link building and bloging.
Structural Engineering
Sep 20th
Structural engineering is part of the engineering sector that deals with the analysis and design of structures and the way they support, or resist loads placed on them. Structural engineering would be considered a specialist subject within the discipline of civil engineering and can also be studied on its own. A structural engineer would be involved in the initial design of a building and large structures. Structural engineers can also be responsible for designing machinery, medical equipment, bridges, vehicles and any other object where the structural integrity of and item can affect the overall function or safety of it. A structural engineer should ensure that their designs satisfy the design criteria, especially relating to safety; serviceability or performance. Buildings are designed and constructed to resist elements including; substantial loads, changing climate conditions and natural disasters such as earth quakes.
Precast Concrete
Sep 17th
Precast concrete has been around since the Roman times. The Roman builders where the first people to start using concrete and they began pouring the concrete into moulds to form precast sections of their aqueducts, tunnels and concrete culverts. The Precast concrete industry has now become an integral part of the construction and engineering industries providing a variety of architectural and structural products for various applications and constructing different types of structures.