Are We Courage Enough to Apply..?

Cars are the Nightmares' of City Planners and Managers

Zvi Leve

Very inspiring presentations of a variety of different 'road diets'. These techniques could literally transform our 'traffic arteries'!

«There is a known-solution to inequitable, ineffective, and unsafe streets: redesigning those streets with changes that prioritize moving people over cars. What follows are five site studies that demonstrate what is possible when community-driven planning is catalyzed by technology.»

Transportation Alternatives 

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This week, we are released Shovel-Ready #NYC25x25 Streets, a new report showcasing five re-imagined New York City streets that prioritize people over cars. This project shows what more equitable, healthy and safe streets look like in each borough. This project shows that Streets for People can be a reality.

These five locations were selected based on traffic crash, bus speed, air pollution, tree cover, and asthma data. Each new design presents solutions for our streets that address these overlapping problems. The solutions were devised with input from residents and the expertise of planners, and are built upon the collaborative mapping technology of Remix, a tool from Via. This first-of-its-kind collaboration showcases the power of community input in creating streets for people and a new way to accelerate the work of reclaiming space from cars.

Seventy-five percent of New York City’s streetspace is dedicated to the movement and storage of vehicles. It is time to imagine a better use of our streets that puts people, not cars, first.

See the streets at https://buff.ly/31M17wG.

Certification

 

• Do hear about (xxxxxx) Certification?
• Yes, it is easy to get
• I visited their website, and got confused with lots of materials and contents
• You can go to the certification domain, and explore the process
• I tried, but could not understand what to do
• It is easy, to get the study materials
• How?
• Just register and download the PDF
• I will MEMORIZE it all; in no time
• Be aware; it is two levels; general and advanced
• Means two exams?
• Yes; however, you can get certified in two months
• Please; help me to get into the process
• Sure…

That is how certifications are downgraded for just memorization and job-hunting tool

DOC, IOD, TOC, TOD, etc..

 

During the last few years, urban labs were very active across the globe, in search for the optimum solution for the urban sprawl and changes.. The demographic growth is imbalanced across most cities, while the grassroots of food supply are in jeopardy in few parts due to rural urban migrations. Yes, the monetary cycles and the unmerciful practice of investment had fed the media with manipulated messages on definition of urbanity and the citizenship as well..

Historically; Urbanity had been driven by (DOC)s; which are Defense Oriented Communities; where as security and solidarity were formalized in walled towns and provided or surrounding a Fort or a Citadel.. Not only to fortify against invaders, but also increase the social coherence among citizens.. It had been the key element to form government and administration that we know today..

Introducing the Infrastructure Oriented Development (IOD) was an urban and civil breakthrough; whereas Infrastructure became the label of decent living. It is confident to state that sprawl of urban settlements were driven by Infrastructure; which became the key goal and measure for the City Managers. This is where most of the city budgets are spend; allowing for cities to compete on excellence of living and styles.

Ironically, both regulated and slams neighborhoods share few of the key utilities, which make slums and non-regulated settlements a continuous urban pain. Utilities' providers gain a lot from connections and serving the inhabitants; regardless of their tenure status..

 

Vehicle Oriented Developments (VOD) are the curse of 20th century; that already stigmatizing our urban world; which also had disconnected and disfigured the cities. This phenomenon has lots of economic, political and administrative aspects, with mighty lobbies that superseded urbanists' rejection; if any.. Private Vehicles are synonymous to wealth and wellbeing that hard to change at the near future..

City Managers had used pedestrian bridges and underpasses to ease the connectivity across the hazardous roads, yet not welcomed by inhabitants. So far, no alternate or innovative ideas is seriously considered, while fatality rates are increased due to car accidents..

When Melbourne-2018 had brought to practice the 800 meters, or the famous 20 minutes City formula, it was labeled to "Live Locally"; where all citizen are given the ability to meet most of their daily needs within a 20-minute walk from home, with safe cycling and local transport options.

Certainly, work places are hardly to be included within that radius, but encouraging the younger generations for more start-ups and remote jobs. Such a vision will reduce the city transportation demand, and allow for self-sustained communities to grow..

The 20-minutes neighborhoods are the spearheads for transformation of the city; to restructure their communities into (TOC); Transit Oriented Communities. These TOC will reduce the inter-city transit demand; allowing for better environment and social coherence in a fast moving or transit world..

Project Control

Basically addressing the construction management and implementation of principles and techniques of project management. The context is most probably inapplicable to other fields to apply project management, such as financial operations, software development or healthcare services.

Among the main three pillars of project management; Time Control and Management is the most critical; whereas all others are collaborated in some way or another. Within Schedule; scope is developed, verified and changes, bringing time variations to the time baseline. Similarly, Cost are also embedded; as any unplanned variations of cost of materials or labor shall be create problematic situations for all parties; which in many cases would lead to slow progress or freeze.

Many project management software and applications compete to create comprehensive and easy-to-do Controls. The dominate culture would advise to collaborate the control techniques on the key three domains. It is an opportunity; yet a trap. This is one of the main reasons why software doesn’t have the driving force it should have on projects success. On the contrary; it might be a key cause for the project failure. The created confusion to balance deliberations against baselines and risks is overwhelming and destressing.

The Schedule Control should include the following processing:

• Commencement is a rational discretion of the Contractor
• Baseline breakdown into administered deliverables
• Tracking the auditable (signed off) deliverables
• Report on compliance to baselines
• Compliance means closing out

The most efforts are on tracking the deliverables; which consumed more time as per the amounts of design flaws, comments, redo, changes and drafting errors. Experience tells that these efforts will dramatically increase by nature of contract between EPC and D&B. The number of peer reviewing layers will duplicate the work, such as in D&B contracts whereas the following layers will be there to audit and certify the design documents:

• Urban Authority’s Engineer
• Urban Utilities’ Engineers
• Developer or Employer’s Engineer
• Contractor’s Engineer
• Supplier or Subcontractor’s Engineer

Usually, the Controls will be administered by the Design Managers as per the planned dates for submittals. It is standard that design stages shall be: Concept, Schematic, Detailed and IFC (Issued for Construction). Imagining communications and exchanged documents will be surprising; with the new communication digital media and applications. In a personal experience; a compound of 300 townhouse documents will generate during the design development more than 4000 documents throughout the design stages; with approximately 50,000 drawing sheets and document pages. Check Aconex.

Project Managers will create various templates and forms to records and track the deliverables throughout the project cycle. The templates will reflect the professional culture for data capturing and reporting. Not necessarily to interpret the data into graphics, unless found hard to comprehend by the audiences. However, Every PM will administer the template as per discretion, as how it will properly convey the data to the Employer. The key glimpse is about how comprehensive such template will unconditionally include and answer all questions and queries.

https://www.oracle.com/ae/industries/construction-engineering/aconex-project-controls/?bcid=5799409842001

 

An Offer for PMP certification 2021..!

 

Delhi

Delhi, India, contains approximately 16 million residents. The neighborhoods of Santosh Park and Uttam Nagar, both pictured here, are home to some of the city’s poorest people and contain its most built-up and densely populated land. Numerous studies have shown a correlation between the wealth of a residential area and its total number of trees and the amount of green space. This Overview is a particularly striking example of that trend.

https://bit.ly/3vGjFJQ

Street Furniture

 

Somewhere; within our disturbed world; between ambitions and cultural taboos.. Street Furniture are considered "Facilitation of Prostitutions".. This freak notion comes from some disqualified City Managers; who happened to control the soul of the City and its Residents.. You may examine lots of silly ideas and implementations as such..; which in total hinder our urbanism..

Unfortunately, those ill-fated Managers forget that Street Furniture is a Right-to-City..!!

The socially unbeatable and oldest profession of the history; can not  be eradicate or diminish; yet it grows by many innovative ways with sprawl of cities and urbanism.. Many sturdies had worked on this issues, with no successful roadmap to get rid off.. 

Many City Managers had come to a conclusion to live with.. Just provide controls and permits to allow minimal disturbances to the conservative public.. and avoid or minimize the negative impacts on public entertainment, health and reputation.. However; the privacy of prostitution business drives the sex workers to use side and back streets rather than the main motorways..

The neueve concept of "Complete Street"; which had got support from Mobility, Greenish and Covid, had introduced interesting ideas of street furniture.. The brilliance of those ideas had saved the City Managers the cost of fights for the adequacy of street wellbeing.. Street Furniture are mostly commercialized by adjacent business owners; who would simply eradicate the prostitution from those streets by F&B prices and charges; in exchange of wider number of  "innocent" customers..

The Tracker..

 

Tracking activities, issues and actions is the core performance of project management. It is simply targeted to be on top of the project; knowing what happened and what is required; with full comprehension of impacts on baselines.

Project Managers would create or share various formats of the tracking templates, using paper of computer aided software to achieve this targets. There is no fixed or magic formula to be used; but the physical and the simple means for data entry and retrieving. 

The Tracker should follow the principles of document control; which are: 

    (A) Definitions, 

    (B) Domains, 

    (C) Activities and 

    (D) Risk Exposure. 

Understanding the magnitude of data entry and processing would justify assigning an executive for this processing. Both Quality and Project Management are all about processing data; while interpreting the reliable data is the success or failure stories.

Presentation of the data interpretation is the careful stakeholders management. Having a (1) Reliable Data, an (2) Intelligent Analysis and a (3) Communication Plan will not label the project successful without a (4) Stakeholders Protocol; and shall be a waste of time. Against every action; someone should be defined to approve or reject.

The followings are the simple structure of the tracker; or the tracking sheet. You may include unlimited data types and resources:

A: Identifications

1. Project ID
2. Date
3. Parties

B: Domains

1. Task ID (Packages, Workflow, NOC, etc.)
2. Planned Submission
3. Actual Submission
4. Planned Approval
5. Actual Approval
6. Approval Expiry

C: Activities

1. Ownership
2. Status on Date
3. Pending Actions
4. Planned Action
5. Expected Date
6. Forecasted Approval/Close

D: Risk Exposure

1. Impact
2. Mitigations
3. Authorization to Mitigate
4. Date of Mitigation Approval

Managers; particularly the tech-savvy, will compete in ways of interpreting the data, by static or dynamic graphics and models. This is not meant to disillusion the audiences, but to add sense of comprehension to it. It is an advanced applications of the well used Scheduling Graphics; such as Bar Charts..

Data Visualization become the new fashion; with growing Big Data and AI applications..

Leadership and Development

 Change requires not much effort.. but much attention and focus.. Applying effective leadership with organizational psychology is not difficult.. but most of our political and business leaders focus on their own-selves..

They speak much yet cordially care a little; despite how their audiences become charged and energetic..

الشعراء يتبعهم الغاوون

Therefore, we can't truly and effectively move ahead..!!

Contractual Liabilities

It is all who will pay for the damage??

Life Example
In one of the luxurious office buildings, a few years ago, a marble slab, a meter by two, fell from a height of 30 meters. Unfortunately, a CEO of an international bank was passing under it, yet; fortunately it fell after passing by only ten meters .. He was not injured, and exceeded the request compensation for endangering his life.. who is responsible..?

• Was the Design and Supervision Consultant; who designed the building and installation details 15 years ago??
• Or the Construction Contractor; who delivered the building 12 years ago??
• Or the Facilities Management Contractor; who has been managing the building facilities for 3 years??
• Or the Landlord; who himself takes over the management of the building??

مقارنة المسؤولیات التعاقدية بين كل من الإستشاري والمالك والمقاول
(تحرير: أحمد سالم بشير)

بادئ ذي بدء ، لابد من التنويه إلى أن كافة التعاقدات والعقود تخضع عُرفاً لما يتفق عليه الأطراف المتعاقدون ، ما لم يخالف الأنظمة والقوانين المحلية المعمول بها.

غالب المسؤوليات التعاقدية يتم التعامل معها من خلال وثائق التأمين التي تغطي كافة الاحتمالات وتعوّض المتضررين بالقيمة المالية التي يتم الاتفاق عليها .. وهي حتماً ترتبط بالصياغة القانونية للوثائق..