Civil Engineering Projects

 

 

Project and Resource Management Track

 

Two things in common with many of them are management of resources and management of projects. The projects for this course focus on the mathematics of those areas.

 

By management of resources, we mean getting the most out of raw materials, labor, space, money or people. This might occur in the course of building a bridge, keeping the utilities in a city running properly, or meeting Federal guidelines for water quality.

 

Project One – Linear Programming    due Monday Nov 17

 

In calculus I and IV you encountered “max/min” problems.  The idea of these was to find the greatest or least value of a function and the conditions that would cause this to occur.  This first project is conceptually quite similar.  You will again have a function you are trying to maximize. You will also have a set of conditions that this must be done under, called constraints. In the world of civil engineering, this might correspond to having so much water, sand, cement and mixing volume and deciding what the optimal quantities of each might be while mixing cement.

 

For this project, please use the textbook and work out the following

·     read sections 11.1 and 11.2 in Kolman Linear Algebra with Applications

     (on reserve in the library or borrow a copy from many students who own it)

·       page 503 – problems 1-23

·       page 520 – problems 5-11, 15.  You can do these both

          • by hand
          • using Maple – refer to the maximize function in the simplex library

 

Project Two – Project Management

 

Sloppy management of a large project can result in considerable added expense, time, and even lawsuits. A companies reputation may be damaged and customers lost.

In the 1950s, both the defense and chemical engineering industries successfully applied mathematics to project management, seeking to identify the key or limiting components and to optimize the time taken for completion. The foundation of this was recognition of something called the critical path of a project. The algorithms involved are called PERT and CPM, the latter short for Critical Path Method. The goal of this project is to study CPM from a mathematical point of view.

 

In practice, construction companies use software to perform the many computations required by CPM. You will need to find out what software the Civil Engineering Department at WPI currently uses so you may compare the answers you generate by hand.

 

Project Management is also the name of the course CE 3020 in the Civil Engineering Department.

 

Please see me for handouts for this project. Due to the heavily graphical nature of projects, the material is not on line.  The material has been changed to that from Chapter 11 of Quantitative Models for Business Decisions .

 

Read the chapter material (pp. 436-462)

 

On pages 463-465 please work out problems 1 through 5.  You many find it helpful to put the data into an Excel spreadsheet and have

            it compute TE, TL  and TS  and ET by putting the formulas for these into a cell and copying them.

 

Finding the critical path is an optimization problem which may be solved with linear programming methods (see Project #1).  Please do problems

            13 and 15 on page 468.  Once you have formulated them, you may use Maple to solve them (as opposed to doing it by hand – your choice)

 

 

Next, within the Civil Engineering department, find out what there is for Project Management software.  Use it to solve problems 1 and 2 using the software.  Compare your results and comment.

 

Finally, find 3 sites on the Internet which discuss PERT/CPM and its use in Civil Engineering and summarize what you found

 

What you hand in should include the following:

 

·        cover page – title, group #, members etc

·        Introduction

·        Summary of what Pert and CPM are

·        Work and Solutions to Problems (see above)

·        Conclusion – summary of what you learned

·        References (books, people, web, …)

 

 

 

 Project #3

 

The purpose of this project is to review and summarize your work done from the first two projects.  What you turn in should be a mix of writing and mathematics, with more of the former.

 

Part One

 

Summarize what Linear Programming is.  Include two potential applications of it within the realm of Civil Engineering, not including PERT/CPM.

 

Part Two

 

Summarize PERT/CPM.  Be sure to include a conceptual description of what a critical path is.

 

Part Three

 

The "Big Dig" in Boston was recently completed.  Please summarize the project and it's successful and controversial aspects.  Finally mention anything you learned about it which, in your opinion, provides valuable knowledge for future civil engineers.

 

Part Four

 

Summarize what things you have learned as individuals and as a group about project work during this course, especially as it might be applicable to future work in IQPs and MQPs.  Areas to include are

 

      • time management (meetings, schedules)
      • communication skills
      • importance of writing
      • using technology
      • dividing and coordinating work
      • producing a finished product