Social movement news Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Social movement news - Essay Example From this above mentioned information, it might be clearly revealed that, in this age post racial period, the issue of ethnic discrimination is a major topic of concern as compared to others. Since, slave era or colonial era, the Asian Americans or the African citizens had to bear huge range of discriminations in all aspects such as educational facilities, voting rights, land acquisition, job employment, and many others. However, due to which, a hug range of Native Americans or Africans had to remain uneducated or jobless, as compared to white Americans. As a result, the level of poverty and unemployment raised that hindered their livelihood and living standard to a significant extent. Apart from this, due to the prevalence of racial discrimination, the African citizens feared to send their kids in schools and colleges to attain educational facilities and so their level of illiteracy increased to a considerable extent mainly among the black citizens of the nation of America as compar ed to others. Other than this, numerous African citizens emigrated from neighbouring countries is also barred to attain respectable positions (Parker & Goering). As a result of which, in spite of high experience and knowledge, the African Americans failed to improve their career objective or goals due to racial discriminations in this age of information technology or globalization. Furthermore, due to which, the level of wages of the African Americans are also quite low as compared to Original (Americans American Civil Liberties Union).

Assessment of English Language Learners Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Assessment of English Language Learners - Essay Example 11). Analysis of our data, for example, showed that elementary children were instructed during the week for an average of twenty-two and a half hours. Student involved classroom assessment is an alternative tool of assessment based on: "student involvement in the assessment process, student-involved record keeping, and student-involved communication" (Stiggins and Chappuis 2005, p. 12). Student-involved classroom assessment ensures that student's achievements are objectively assessed and analyzed by a teacher. Students can be guided toward a real, active respect for an interest in education, extending from secondary education through college and beyond. Apart from narrow educational norms and emphases, other personal characteristics are important for the growth of such a positive outlook. These include a real feeling of self-discipline, understanding of and respect for art and other intellectual achievements of human society, an interest in physical and mental health, and in sound relationships with others, and a sensible perspective on the value and use of leisure. Student-involved record keeping allows students to monitor their achievements and improve them immediately. This assessment tool motivates students to pay more attention to their educational achievements. "As they chart progress, they gain a sense of control over their own learning." (Stiggins and Chappuis 2005, p. 13). It yields an immense variety of designs, characterized not only by self-adaptiveness and a very sparing use of natural resources in their realization but also by two other most significant factors of flexibility: the acceptance of imperfections and the mass production of individuality. Both of these characteristics need to be viewed not as an involution but as an evolution, indeed a revolution, in ability to design flexibly. Student-involved communication is effective tools of assessment because it allows parents to monitor achievements of their children and communicate with teachers and other parents. This techniques motivates students to have "a positive story" and to be responsible for their achievements. If effective and stern judgments cannot always be made, then let us at least use the accreditation process to improve things where possible--this seems to be the conclusion that many have drawn. But this conclusion does not fulfill the objective of accreditation, and, of equal importance, it does not have accreditation doing what the public thinks it should be doing. If the process is to survive, therefore, and if the rapid advance of government in the process of educational evaluation is to be halted, steps must be taken to restore accreditation to the role it is assumed to have--that of evaluating educational institutions, honestly, rigorously, and openly, so that when a person obtains a degree fro m an accredited institution, reality will match expectation (Kyriacon, 2000). The other alternative assessment tools are concentrated on reductions in score gaps and low achievements. Classroom Assessment to Reduce Achievement Gaps helps educators to concentrate on problems appeared during education programs: " (a) focus on clear purposes, (b) provide accurate reflections of achievement, (c) provide students with continuous access to descriptive feedback on improvement in their work (versus infrequent

Frederick Jackson Turner writes Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Frederick Jackson Turner writes - Essay Example The immigration of people of various ethnic backgrounds mostly Europeans into the region led to their transformation. They cultivated adopted and spread their culture and notions in west America. Thus, through these processes, they become Americanized. According to Jackson Turner, the long established American character originated from the forests and gained momentum every time it reached a frontier thus the frontier thesis. The American character entails democracy, equality, optimism, individualism, violence, and self-reliance (Turner 1). I agree with Turner that America owes its identity from the west. First, the Middle States, as well as the South, possessed democratic ideas and this formed the center of Ohio politics in her early history. This is proved since most of its members elected in the Ohio legislature in 1820 comprised a large number of the natives. For example, New England contributed nine Senators as well as six Representatives who mainly came from Connecticut. Moreove r, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania elected seventeen Senators as well as twenty-one Representatives majority who came from Pennsylvania (Turner 1). Further, the South elected twenty-seven Representatives and nine Senators most of whom came from Virginia. Among the Representatives, five of them were natives of Ireland. In total, the emigrants from the Middle Region and the Democratic South outnumbered the Federalist who originated from New England. Since America is the heart of democracy and Ohio was the first state to elect emigrants as representatives, then it shows that the idea of democracy in America arose from Ohio, which is in the frontier. Secondly, once the immigrants settled in the West, they cooperated among themselves in clearing land, building houses and barns, and establishing communities (Froner 337). These ideals of individualism spread from the west into other areas in America. Thus, the communities promoted selflessness within their communities which later

Purpose statment Personal Statement Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Purpose statment - Personal Statement Example My experiences with my family members had a profound impact upon my thinking. One day my cousin and I were walking on the road. Suddenly, a car approached from behind, and my deaf cousin failed to hear it. I had to push him to the side, in order to save his life. This experience had a profound effect upon me. As such, right from a very young age, I have been exposed to individuals with defective senses. Thus, I had been associated with the hearing impaired, as well as people who experienced great difficulty in speaking normally. Among my family members, there were several people with major hearing defects. Being so proximate, these defects in hearing had a major impact upon my tender psyche. It is necessary to understand that there are several people, of varying age, who are afflicted by defective senses. As a consequence, there are individuals who are blind, deaf, dumb or with other physical shortcomings. As such, in several of these instances, adequate training can be provided to help these impaired persons to develop the skills to manage their day-to-day affairs. Upon encountering a physically impaired person, people tend to behave in a sympathetic manner towards them. This is not what that person desires. Providing such persons with the skills to address their daily problems and to get on with their life is truly beneficial for such people. Thus, I have developed a keen interest in speech-language pathology. It is my honest and humble aim to master this field of knowledge, in order to provide assistance to the individuals with these afflictions. I am keenly interested in helping individuals with defective hearing, residing in the villages of my great nation. This task has proved to be daunting, primarily due to the absence of a master program in speech language pathology. Such academic and professional competence is indispensable for providing outstanding relief to the people with defective hearing. I have been extremely active in

Frederick Jackson Turner writes Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Frederick Jackson Turner writes - Essay Example The immigration of people of various ethnic backgrounds mostly Europeans into the region led to their transformation. They cultivated adopted and spread their culture and notions in west America. Thus, through these processes, they become Americanized. According to Jackson Turner, the long established American character originated from the forests and gained momentum every time it reached a frontier thus the frontier thesis. The American character entails democracy, equality, optimism, individualism, violence, and self-reliance (Turner 1). I agree with Turner that America owes its identity from the west. First, the Middle States, as well as the South, possessed democratic ideas and this formed the center of Ohio politics in her early history. This is proved since most of its members elected in the Ohio legislature in 1820 comprised a large number of the natives. For example, New England contributed nine Senators as well as six Representatives who mainly came from Connecticut. Moreove r, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania elected seventeen Senators as well as twenty-one Representatives majority who came from Pennsylvania (Turner 1). Further, the South elected twenty-seven Representatives and nine Senators most of whom came from Virginia. Among the Representatives, five of them were natives of Ireland. In total, the emigrants from the Middle Region and the Democratic South outnumbered the Federalist who originated from New England. Since America is the heart of democracy and Ohio was the first state to elect emigrants as representatives, then it shows that the idea of democracy in America arose from Ohio, which is in the frontier. Secondly, once the immigrants settled in the West, they cooperated among themselves in clearing land, building houses and barns, and establishing communities (Froner 337). These ideals of individualism spread from the west into other areas in America. Thus, the communities promoted selflessness within their communities which later

The magic of the Arabian Nights Essay Example for Free

The magic of the Arabian Nights Essay The original, authentic, real Ur-text of the Arabian Nights (aka Alf Layla wa-Layla, or the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights, or just the Nights) is a mythical beast. There are far more than a thousand and one nights, for the thirty-four-and-a-half stories in the fourteenth or fifteenth century â€Å"core† body of the Nights were soon supplemented by other tales in Arabic and Persian, from the culture of medieval Baghdad and Cairo, and then in Hindi and Urdu and Turkish, tales carried by pilgrims and crusaders, merchants and raiders, back and forth by land and sea. And then came the narratives added by European translators, as well as the adaptations (in paintings and films) and retellings by modern novelists and poets. There is no agreed-upon table of contents. As Marina Warner points out, at the start of this enchanting book, â€Å"the stories themselves are shape-shifters†, and the Arabian Nights, like â€Å"one of the genies who stream out of a jar in a pillar of smoke†, took on new forms under new masters. The corpus lacks not only parents but a birthplace; Persia, Iraq, India, Syria and Egypt all claim to have spawned it. So the Thousand and One Arabian Nights are not only not a thousand and one but not (just) Arabian. The chronological and cultural strata of the Nights are like the layers of a nested Russian doll: you pull off the twentieth century (Salman Rushdie in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Walt Disney, Errol Flynn) and then the nineteenth and eighteenth century (Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Jean Antoine Galland, Richard Francis Burton, Edward W. Lane); and finally you get to the Arabic sources, and you think you’ve hit pay dirt. But then you sense, behind the Arabic, Homer and the Mahabharata, and the Bible, and you see that there is no there there. It’s not an artichoke – peel away the leaves of the later, accreted, interpolated layers until you find the original centre – but an onion: peel away the leaves and at the centre you find – nothing. Or, perhaps, everything; lacking a birthplace, the Nights also lack a grave: â€Å"The book cannot ever be read to its conclusion†, says Warner: â€Å"it is still being written†. Scholars who could not cure themselves of the nineteenth-century obsession  of searching for the source (of the Nights, of the Nile, of the human race . . .) were soon disappointed to discover that many of the most popular tales – including â€Å"Sinbad†, â€Å"Aladdin and his lamp†, and â€Å"Ali Baba and the forty thieves† – were arrivistes, with no legitimate Arab parents. Jorge Luis Borges, in his essay on â€Å"The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights†, credits Hanna Diab, the Christian Arab colleague of Galland, with the invention of several of these â€Å"orphan tales†. Aditya Behl (in Love’s Subtle Magic, 2012) traces Sinbad back to Sanskrit tales of Sanudasa the merchant. Like the beast fables and mirrors for princes that travelled from India to Europe, so too these sailors’ yarns about the marvels of the Indies circulated in the Islamic and pre-Islamic world of the Indian Ocean. (There is also a thirteenth-century Hebrew text of the Sinbad story). But for many people, the Arabian Nights without â€Å"Sinbad† or â€Å"Aladdin† is like Hamlet without Hamlet, and purists who produced â€Å"authentic† editions without these tales met with such backlash from the reading public that they quickly published supplementary volumes including the beloved bastards. Warner’s subtle unravelling of the rich history of this tradition, from the earliest Arabic traces to present-day interpretations, demonstrates that each of the many versions has a claim to its own authenticity. Yet, within the Arabic tradition, the tales of the Nights were discounted as popular trash, pulp fiction; despite numerous allusions to the Prophet, and quotations and echoes of the Qur’an, they were â€Å"too much fun, often transgressive or amoral fun, to be orthodox or respectable . . .†. Galland cleaned out the homosexual episodes, but Burton (whom Warner calls â€Å"the Frank Harris of the desert and the bazaar†) footnoted them and generally made the tales more salacious, stealing most of them from Richard Payne and adding many of his own, thumbing his nose at the prevailing prudery of Victorian Britain, â€Å"with glee and a fair deal of invention, projection, and transference†. One reviewer epitomized the European translators as â€Å"Galland for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study, and Burton for the sewers.† Stranger Magic: Charmed states and the â€Å"Arabian Nights† explodes two myths about the Nights: that only the Arabic stories are the â€Å"real ones† and that  you need to know Arabic to understand the Arabian Nights. The two ideas are mutually reinforcing: if there were a single ancient Arabic text, one might well want to read it in the original language; but since there is no such text, the stories in all languages and translations are fair game for all of us to respond to (a creative process in which, as Borges put it, â€Å"the translator is being translated†). The full spectrum of stories certainly yields spectacular insights in the hands of Warner, Professor of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, who knows more than anyone alive about the uses of myth and folklore in literature, fine arts, and film. She has written eye-opening books about fairy tales about women (From the Beast to the Blonde: On fairy tales and their tellers, 1996) and men (No Go the Bogeyman: On scaring, lulling, and making mock, 2000) and spirits (Phantasmagoria, 2006) and much else. She is fluent in a number of European and classical languages. But she does not know Arabic. Though she grew up in Cairo and spoke Arabic as a child, â€Å"unfortunately nobody encouraged me to keep it up, and besides, I never could read it†. I must confess that, as a card-carrying Sanskrit snob myself, I first regarded Warner’s lack of Arabic as a potential barrier to her understanding of the stories; after all, as she herself remarks, of William Beckford (1760–1844), â€Å"Beckford paid attention to these inconsistencies and weaknesses in the fabric of the narrative, possibly because he was working from an Arabic manuscript, and the discipline of translation sharpens one’s wits†. Of course, Warner makes good use of the work of scholars of Arabic, pointing out, for instance, contrasts between the Arabic texts in which a huge female jinn (or genie) takes a trophy ring from 570 men, and the translations, in which she gets only ninety-eight. Moreover, the linguistic subtleties that can be achieved only by â€Å"working from an Arabic manuscript† are not essential to the hunt for the larger game that Warner is after, which is a literary archaeology and analysis of what the Nights have meant to people in diverse cultures and epochs, not merely as amusing Oriental artefacts but as profound sources of human understanding. And even linguistic purists will pardon Warner, as W. H. Auden once pardoned  Paul Claudel, for writing well. A fine novelist, Warner works her legerdemain, hiding behind the velvet curtain at the end of the book the endnotes that betray the extraordinary erudition under the elegant prose. She appreciates good writing and laces her book with bons mots from other writers as well as with her own memorable lines, such as â€Å"Homo narrans observes no ethnic divisions, and has more than one god before him† and â€Å"At a level beneath the surface of the narratives, a meaning gathers definition, the watermark in their fabric†. Good writing, good storytelling, is the heroine of this book, embodied in the heroine of the frame story within which all the other stories are gathered: Shahrazad (Scheherazade). The cuckolded and embittered Sultan Shahriyar every night marries a virgin whom he beheads in the morning; Shahrazad volunteers, but after they have slept together she tells him a story that is still unfinished at dawn; the Sultan postpones her execution to the next day, and the next, on and on; in the course of the stories, she cures the Sultan of his misogyny. This is a story about storytelling, feminist protest, dreams, sex and violence. For Warner, it is the springboard for a meditation, threaded throughout the book, on writing as an amulet, a talisman; for writing as magic; and for the story within a story. Putting your own frame around your story makes you the author instead of just a character in someone else’s story – though of course you may be that too, whether you know it or not. The frame mechanism also underlies the themes of the dreamer dreamt, dreams within dreams, and shared dreams, which abound in the Nights, where â€Å"the storytelling scene itself in the Sultan’s bedroom wraps the stories in the night†. Moreover, as Warner points out, â€Å"the anti-realism of the stories matches dream experiences: suddenness and vividness, fragmentation, episodic and often entangling structures, displacements in time and space, the instability of bodies, and a recurrence of certain motifs, are all features of dreams†. Some dreamers move about on flying beds, apropos of which Warner notes that the English words sofa (from suffiah in Arabic), divan (from diwan in Persian), and ottoman (Turkish) are all words for a day bed; the oriental sofa became â€Å"the epitome of oriental hedonism, . . . a low-lying  couch for reclining and abandoning oneself, alone or with others – to love-making, autoeroticism, smoking, gossiping, daydreaming, to storytelling, reading and studying, and to quietness and reflection†. It is the place where daydreaming readers lie fantasizing about the stories they’ve read. The dream stories, too, fly all over. The tale of â€Å"A Fortune Regained† is about a man who learns, from another man’s dream, where his own fortune is hidden. Borges retold it as â€Å"The Story of Two Dreamers† and attributes it to the Arab historian al-Ishaqi, but it also entered Jewish Hassidic tradition (as the tale of Rabbi Eisik from Cracow) and was retold by Martin Buber. Sanskritists can trace some of the dream tales in the Nights back to the Sanskrit text of the Yogavasistha, which was composed alongside the Ocean of Stories, the Indian version of the Arabian Nights (frames within frames, and all), in Kashmir in the eleventh or twelfth century. But Warner’s goal is different; she traces the dream stories forward to our present world, where the idea that the individual mind creates its own reality, which other consciousnesses may enter and control, â€Å"has become a central modern myth, paranoid, solipsistic, and deeply deterministic. It has gained purchase because it matches the way many experience their lives†. Warner chooses just fifteen stories to retell briefly, from both the oldest and later layers (though she does not include â€Å"Sinbad† or â€Å"Aladdin and his lamp†: there is an Aladdin, but instead of a lamp he has a flying bed). Each story inspires an essay on several themes central to that story: jinns, carpets, witches, magicians, dervishes, dream knowledge, Orientalism, King Solomon, talismans, Voltaire and his crowd, Goethe, flying, toys, money, shadows, films, machines, couches, and much, much more. The essays form a coherent chain. This is not, however, a book to read straight through but one to wander in, forward and back, night after night. Most of the stories involve magic. Warner’s argument about the importance of magical thinking in modernity is not particularly surprising, but she documents it in highly original ways. Her analysis of the exoticization of magic through the use of Oriental material, since the eighteenth century,  enhances her discussion of the way that early films of stories from the Nights superimpose Arabic magic on the magic of filmmaking, so that the magic flying horse becomes an objective correlative of the projector, with the peg between the ears of the magic steed, and the brake on the tail, echoing the mechanism that controls the passage of the film through the projector. There is also the magic of speech acts, not just, â€Å"With this ring I thee wed† but â€Å"Hoc est corpus meum†, which inspired the phrase â€Å"hocus pocus† in mockery of the â€Å"trick of transubstantiation†. Warner discusses the magic of things (such as rings and carpets) as fetishes, and cites Lorraine Daston’s insight (in Things That Talk, 2004) into idols (from the Greek eidolon), illusions that are misleading and fraudulent. Daston contrasts idols with evidence, but notes that the two often blend together; forensic exhibits may be fabricated or, on the other hand, become powerful fetishes and take on the idol’s ability to haunt. Warner compares these â€Å"objects with uncanny life† to Winnicott’s transitional objects and to the quasi-magical functioning of her BlackBerry, Satnav, and iPod. And then there is the magic of Freud. Warner suggests that when Freud called his couch an ottoman and covered it with a Persian carpet, he may have been, â€Å"consciously or unconsciously†, creating an Oriental setting for the first psychoanalytical talking cures, â€Å"a form of storytelling, with the roles reversed (it is the narrator who needs to be healed, not the listener-Sultan)†. Freud, who kept a statue of the Hindu god Vishnu on his desk, was very much an Orientalist. Orientalism looms large in Stranger Magic. â€Å"The Orient in the Arabian Nights has its own Orient†, says Warner, also quoting Amit Chaudhuri: â€Å"The Orient, in modernity, is not only a European invention but also an Oriental one†. Fairy tales had always had what Warner calls â€Å"a structural impulse† to imagine that dangerous magic came from far away, but the â€Å"gradual orientalisation of magicians† exacerbated the tendency to have the dirty work done by strangers, â€Å"so that the home team keeps its hands clean and its smile all innocence†. Warner writes in the shadow of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), but she is also sympathetic to Said’s later, more balanced, more generous self (in Culture and Imperialism, 1993), and she  acknowledges some of the positive uses of Orientalism. Through the dynamics of â€Å"reverse colonization†, eighteenth-century Europeans used images of Orientalist despotism and sexual and religious depravity to parody their own culture; Voltaire’s satirical Oriental contes were â€Å"an obvious instance of the West putting on Eastern dress in order to examine itself more clearly†. Western feminists could write of â€Å"emancipation in the Oriental mode†, calling up the image of Eastern men, castigated for tyranny and sexual abuses; while the effeminate East reflected Western women’s condition back to them. Performances of plays about Aladdin, in Britain, were used to address, covertly, arguments about the slave trade in America. The film The Thief of Bagdad (1924, directed by Raoul Walsh, and starring Douglas Fairbanks) is, as Warner points out, â€Å"flagrantly Orientalist†. It ends with the Thief â€Å"acclaimed by the adoring grateful multitude as he enters the city at the head of an army bent on rescuing Baghdad from the tyrant emperor†. For us, the city is no longer Hollywood’s â€Å"Bagdad†, but CNN’s Baghdad. As I read Stranger Magic, the city of Bagdad/Baghdad shimmered before my eyes in a double image: the magical place of flying carpets and the scene of a devastating war. I was stunned by the relevance of phrases from the old stories, such as, â€Å"He falls into such a rage he declares war on Iraq: he will lay the country to waste†. Eventually we learn that Baghdad and Iraq had those double meanings for Warner as well. How could they not? As she viewed the film, The Thief of Bagdad, during the war in Iraq in 2003, it became â€Å"an unconscious parable of Western expansionism at the level of nations†. She began the research for this book during the first Gulf War, and wrote it â€Å"during the many, appalling and unresolved conflicts in the regions where the Nights originated. I wanted to present another side of the culture cast as the enemy and an alternative history to vengeance and war†. Not that the Nights themselves come off scot-free; the â€Å"later layers† of narratives include a lot of violence against Christians and conversion to Islam, while the European translations are often anti-Semitic. But in earlier layers there is more interfaith marriage and the observance of Islamic precepts of  tolerance. Warner hopes that her reading of the Nights might offer â€Å"a path towards cha nging preconceptions about Arabs, Islam, and the history and civilization of the Middle and Near East†. The impulse to write a book reminding readers of the beauty and wisdom of that civilization makes Warner an Orientalist in the pre-Saidian, positive sense of the word, which once meant â€Å"people who love the Orient† – never mind how or why they loved it. Many of the early European historians of religions, in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were trying, within their Orientalist limits, to make the civilization of the Orient comprehensible, and hence acceptable, to people in the West who would otherwise regard all Orientals as ignorant savages. The founding mantra of the science of comparative religion was the hope that if you know peoples’ stories you are less likely to slaughter them, the lesson that Shahrazad taught to the Sultan. This is the comparatist’s version, avant la lettre, of Emmanuel Levinas’s famous dictum that the face of the other says, â€Å"Don’t kill me†. The guiding impulse of Stranger Magic tur ns out to be that noble, if perhaps naive, Orientalists’ goal. But Warner has another personal investment in this book. She asks, at the start, â€Å"How do we live with the intrinsic, problematic irrationality of our consciousness? How do we make a helpful distinction between religious adherence and an acknowledgement that myth and magic have their own logic and potential, independent of belief in higher powers?† Noting that eighteenth-century writers used the Orient as a place where â€Å"their own reasoning imagination could take wing†, and granting that â€Å"reasoned imagination† (Borges’s phrase) is an oxymoron, she nevertheless hopes that the dream-like stories of the Nights might be the â€Å"fable of modernity† that she has longed for, â€Å"a fable that would meet anthropological needs†. Warner confesses that her particular attraction to â€Å"the implausible, impossible, and fantastic stories† puzzles her, for, she remarks, â€Å"I was once a fervent Catholic and know what it is like to yield fully to verbal transformative magic, miracles, and other demands on faith beyond reason, and I struggled free (lost my faith) a long time ago. So why do I still like to think and read about jinn and animal metamorphoses, conjured palaces and vanishing  treasures, deadly automata and flying sofas, ghastly torments and ineluctable destinies?† Ah, Marina, walk over to that ottoman that Freud covered with the carpet, lie down, and reread that paragraph; it is not your question, but your answer. And, abracadabra, it is our answer too.

Engineering Practice Review Report

Engineering Practice Review Report Introduction I worked for Christie Civil during both of my Internships and received a wide variety of experience during both of these six-month blocks. I worked on several different sites, which included the upgrade of an RTA owned road to the renovation and construction of parts of the Holsworthy Army Barracks. I found out about Christie Civil through the university-run website I2MS. I applied for the advertised position, as well as many others as soon as they became available online. Although I didnt receive a reply as soon as I would have liked. About 2 and a half months after I applied for the job, I received a phone call and an invitation to have an interview with the companies Sydney manager, Martin Carey. I felt the interview went very well and I was initially happy with my first impressions of the place and the people. One week later I was one of the two successful applicants and began work on the 1st of August 2007. In the semester before my second internship, I contacted Christie Civil in the hope of obtaining some information about a site I had previously worked on, for a university assignment. It was then when the Project Manager I was talking to, inquired about where I was working for my second internship and invited me to come back and work for them. Since I enjoyed working there, and I felt that I previously hadnt learnt as much as I could have, I decided to return to the company. About the company Christie Civil is a medium sized construction company that specializes in civil contracting within the Sydney region. For over 40 years, Christie Civil has worked as a Quality Endorsed company whose typical scope of works includes: Foundations (piles, footings, underground structures, shoring and underpinning) Bulk and detailed Earthworks Subdivisions (Site clearance, roads and drainage, services) Concrete Structures (Bridges, water and wastewater treatment tanks, detention tanks) Integrated Services (mechanical/ electrical/ hydraulics/ utilities) Retaining Walls Car parks and Pavements Environmental Remediation Christie Civil employs over 35 people including many Civil engineers, Project Managers and Foreman. On a typical site, Christie Civil provides the On Site Over Heads (OSOH) and usually subcontracts skilled labour (such as carpenters, plumbers and electricians) to professional companies with a good reputation and a proven record. The company also often works in conjunction with a labour hire company called Christies People, as both companies were founded by the same person. First Internship 2007/2008 During my first internship, I worked with Christie Civil for over 6 months between August 2007 and February 2008. Throughout this time, my role varied significantly as the Christie Civil management team placed me in several different positions so that I might gain experience within different aspects of the company (see Figure 1a). The major roles I had are explored below: Figure 1a) Site Engineer As a site engineer I was given the responsibility of preparing and maintaining all of the Quality Assurance (QA) documentation regarding the construction sites to which I was assigned. The QA documents basically provide a system in which to monitor the progress and quality of the construction processes ensuring that it is done in a safe manor, to an acceptable standard. Regularly I was required to: Conduct site inductions, which were aimed at highlighting the important safety rules and regulations for anyone new to the site. Prepare and maintain Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS) which describes the appropriate precautions that must be taken in order expose potential hazards and minimize their risks. Give toolbox talks to the subcontractors and laborers. These talks outline current safety issues and highlight the appropriate action that is to be taken in order to maintain a safe workplace. Conduct Safety and Environmental Checklists. These checklists highlight any potential hazards that may have come about during construction. E.g. Excavations greater than 1.5m that require fencing. Prepare, maintain and sign off on Inspection and Test Plans. Record and monitor the location of newly placed concrete batches. Correspond with the Client Aid the project manager Aid the laborers I was assigned to two main sites during my first internship, the first of these being the construction of a sewerage overflow tank just off Gunnamatta Bay in Cronulla, NSW. This site basically involved the removal of an existing retaining wall, the excavation of the pit for the tank, the construction of the 5m x 3m tank and the restoration of the wall and the surrounding plants. It was only a fairly small, two month job with a budget of about $300,000. The second site I was assigned to on my first internship was a huge multi-million dollar construction and renovation project of the Holsworthy Army Barracks. On this site, several companies were subcontracted to John Holland to complete specific aspects of the job. Christie Civil had the role of excavating the trenches, laying the storm water pipes and the construction of the roads throughout the site. Systems Engineer As a Systems Engineer I was based in the head office, but was regularly required to visit the different sites and conduct Project Review Meetings (PRMs) with the Foreman or Project Managers. The data from these PRMs were collected and collated to form a set of OHS statistics which aim to compare the number of hours worked, with the number of Work Related Incidents (WRIs) and loss time injuries sustained. This allowed the company to gain an overall picture of performance with a focus on Occupational Health and Safety. Also it is a necessary procedure to prove the companies safety records and to build the companies reputation as a safe working company. This is done for the sake of tendering and as documentation in case an authority audits the company. Estimator As an estimator I assisted the estimating division in calculating the price of the different jobs for which we were tendering. This involved communicating with the Senior Estimator and referring to several engineering drawings in order to calculate the cost of the processes involved with the different jobs. For example from the engineering drawings we could calculate the approximate volume of material to be excavated. We could then approximate the time this would take for a certain excavator to complete, and then we would get several quotes from our subcontractors in order to compile a competitive tender for the prospective client. Other In conjunction with the major positions explored above I also had many other less specific roles within the company. Regularly I was required to drop off tenders, buy tools, conduct dilapidation reports, collect information regarding potential work sites, print and interpret engineering drawings and follow instructions as needed. Second Internship 2009/2010 After my first Internship I felt that I had not learnt as much as I could have at Christie Civil, hence I took up an offer to return to the company for my second internship. During this time, I worked for Christies for over 7 months between July 2009 and February 2010. As a result of my previous experience, I spent less time learning the ins and outs of my role within the company, but rather, was put out on one of the companys major job sites straight away. Throughout the course of my second internship I worked on two major sites, the first site involved the upgrade of Hillsborough Rd, a fairly major RTA road located in the heart of Warners Bay near Newcastle. As a site engineer on this particular job I was required to do much of the same work I had done during my first internship, although having a period of about one and a half years away from the company I was fortunate to have another site engineer with me for the first few weeks to remind me of my role. This particular site was unlike any other job I had worked on prior, because the construction client was the RTA. This meant that I was required to read through and understand many RTA specifications to do with the correct process for the construction of an RTA road, and submit all the testing and evidence that was need to prove to the RTA that the construction complied with the specifications. Specifically, this involved submitting Hold Point Release Forms (See Appendix A), to the RTA at particular stages of the construction process, and waiting for them to approve the quality of particular aspects of the current construction, before we could continue. Learning Outcomes The learning outcomes addressed below were chosen because they are not directly looked at elsewhere in the report. Eg. I didnt include the learning outcome about ethics, because it is directly addresses in the Ethics section. to review past experience, so as to plan and prepare for future workplace participation at a graduate and professional level. After reviewing both of my internships, and my university experience as a whole, I think that in the immediate future after graduation, I would like to get a job as a design engineer to experience a different side of my profession. An older civil engineer said to me when I first began my degree was that in his experience, the best design engineers are the ones who had worked in construction beforehand, because they know the practical workings of the job and can apply their experience while designing. So I deliberately went about looking for a job a site engineer for my first and second internships. At university I have enjoyed and found satisfying, the design subjects such as concrete design and steel and timber design, and could honestly see myself pursuing that sort of thing as a career. I would also like to achieve Chartered Professional Engineering Status to further open up opportunities for my career throughout my life. to refine and develop your approach to securing employment for professional engineering practice Since both of my internships were in construction, I hope to eventually get into engineering design, where I can incorporate the practical experience gained from working on site with the designs I am required to complete. As a result I have been looking out for, and focusing my attention to companies which are actively involved in both the design and construction aspects of engineering. I could use my construction experience to get into the company, and then hopefully move on to more of a design role within the company. to extend your knowledge of workplace cultures and organizational behavior Working in the construction industry, gave me the opportunity to learn about and be amongst two very different workplace cultures. The difference between the cultures on site and in the office is extravagant. Workplace culture in the office was professional which meant we were required to wear pants and a collared shirt. The atmosphere in the office was serious compared to the site as most of the people I worked with in the office were skilled engineers and project managers. In the same way, this was confirmed by the fact that everyone worked in their own office, quietly without fuss. On site however, there was many practical jokes and a lot of swearing. Work was done to keep on schedule, but there wasnt a major push for completion. Most days were relatively stress-free and for the most part everyone got along. There was no set time for lunch breaks, and sometimes the opportunity to work through lunch and finish early. to develop a critical basis for understanding principles of management, and of planning and design Throughout my work experience I have had much more to do with planning and construction rather than design. I have worked closely alongside a few different construction managers. I have seen and helped with much of the work they do and seen what is required of them to get the job done. Similarly I have been assigned to construction projects from their beginning, and have been involved in the initial planning of a job. My work experience also has been complimented with subjects I have studied at university, such as Construction and Engineering Project Management, whereas subjects like Concrete Design and Steel and Timber Design, have introduced me to the foundational concepts behind design, which I hope will someday come into use in the near future during my career. to develop and demonstrate effective communication skills appropriate to professional engineering Communication was one of the essential skills I needed in order to complete my job properly. As explored above, working in the different workplace cultures of site and the office, required me to be able to communicate effectively, with different types of people. Typically, when in the office I would be talking to engineers and Project Managers. As a result, the conversations were generally more technically based often referring to specific design specifications and engineering drawings. On site however, conversations, if about work, were regarding the practical aspects of the construction such as getting the grader to trim the road base down 20mm. to relate the theoretical knowledge gained in your experience to your studies, so as to be able to apply it in your capstone project During my internships, I found that a lot of the material and engineering knowledge I had gained at university was reinforced through my practical experience. Subjects such as Surveying, Construction and Engineering Project Management provided invaluable preparation for what I was to learn while working on construction sites throughout Sydney. Working on site, however, helped me to see the bigger picture of civil engineering and how each stage of the engineering process †¦ from initial conception, to design and finally construction of a project, is just as important as each other. Other subjects such as Steel and Timber Design and Concrete Design also introduced me to the other side of engineering, which I am yet to experience in a workplace environment. All of this experience will prove to be a great resource to draw from when completing my Capstone. to identify opportunities to extend your engineering knowledge Since I have had all of my experience within the construction aspect of Civil Engineering, I would like to initially pursue a career within a design consulting company so I can broaden my experience. I have enjoyed completing subjects such as steel and timber design, and concrete design and would love the challenge of applying the skills I have learnt in those subjects, as well as getting a more detailed understanding of engineering design within the real world. Also I love the idea of residential design, and hopefully one day with enough experience, I might be able to design my own house. to develop strategies for collaborative and life-long learning I have found that one of the most simple and beneficial practices to undertake for lifelong learning are to asking questions. The field of Civil Engineering is so broad, that it is rare to find an engineer that can be an expert at it all. Hence, during my internships, I needed to ask questions, not only to understand what I needed to do as a site engineer, but also to understand the reasons for doing such things like environmental inspection reports, or for using material such as heavily bound road base, as opposed to crushed sandstone, during the construction of roads. to develop strategies to secure mentoring and to promote team work While working for Christie Civil, I was basically assigned to assisting one particular project manager on all of his sites. The Project Manager became sort of a mentor to me, as he would be the first person I would contact if I had any questions or issues. In the same way, I have an uncle and a few friends whom are experienced Civil Engineers, and I have often asked for their advice while unsure about particular assignments while at university. During my career, if the company I work for doesnt assign me to a mentor specifically, I would go about seeking someone within the company who would be happy to sit down with me to answer any questions I might have, also I hopefully would still be able to talk to my uncle and civil engineering friends if they work within the same sector of civil engineering. to reflect on, and constructively review, your colleagues practice to help them in their academic, professional and personal development The main place I have been in a position to constructively review colleagues work is at university. As an intern I certainly wasnt in a position to constructively review my Project Managers work, however, I was required to train up another intern, and in doing so I needed to teach him how, and to review the work he had done. In particular, there was one occasion where he completed a Project Review Meeting but it was not done in enough detail, so I had to review it with him, and highlight the main areas of concern before filing the report. At university however I have worked on plenty of group assignments, where I have been required to constructively review members of my groups work. Recently, I found a mistake in one of the other group members work for a computer modeling and design assignment. I went over and gently pointed out the mistake, but it still took further explanation to convince her that she was wrong. Career Episode Reports Career Episode Title: Road Extension, Templar Rd Erskine Park Dates of Career Episode: 01.11.09 to 01.12.09 Length of Career Episode: 30 days Competency Element Claimed This project involved the extension of Templar Rd, Erskine Park further into an industrial area, to accommodate for the increase in traffic to the area as a result of new major industrial developments in the area. My role as a site engineer was basically to act as a bridge between the office and this site, maintain and upkeep of the QA Documentation, collaborate with the foreman and laborers and liaise with the project manager. While I was working here, I was regularly required to manage my own time and processes. I often would move between the office and the site to attend meetings, run errands and deliver items of significance such as inspection reports. To make the most out of each day, I would plan my time and route accordingly to avoid peak hour traffic and determine the most efficient way to complete my tasks. Often during the day, I would be required to cope with change, both in my own daily schedule or in the final design of the project. Sometimes I would be on site and I would get a call from the company manager asking if I could run an errand for him. On one particular occasion, I was asked to drive back to the company office to pick up some important tender documents and drop them off at the Sydney Water head office. I was required to re-adjust my schedule for that day, and prioritize my tasks and complete them accordingly. Similarly, throughout the project there were several design changes. Initially as part of the project we were required to build a large turning bay towards the end of the road, which was designed so large trucks would have easy access in and out of the surrounding industrial warehouses. Just as we were preparing to begin the excavation for this part of the road, the client changed the design and totally removed the turning bay. I was required to adapt and change a lot of the QA documentation such as Inspection Test Plans (ITPs) and the Lot Plans, in order to accommodate for the design change. On site, I was required to complete surveying and leveling tasks in a timely manner. Due to the nature of the site, the client, Penrith City Council, would send out a senior engineer to inspect the levels of each layer of the road to ensure that we were building the road to the design levels. I was responsible for ensuring these levels were correct before the senior engineer arrived to inspect. I did this by calculating the design levels from the engineering drawings and then using a laser level to check the actual road level. If the actual level did not match the design level I would ask the grader operator to adjust the actual levels appropriately, all before the arrival of the Penrith City Councils Senior Engineer. C3.1: Manages Self C3.1a C3.1e C3.1c Signature of Candidate: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Candidates Verifier/s Name: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Verifier Engineering Qualifications: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. I verify that the above narrative is a true account of the candidates own work Verifier Signature: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Career Episode Title: Hillsborough Rd Upgrade, Warners Bay (part 1) Dates of Career Episode: 05.07.09 to 20.08.09 Length of Career Episode: 45 days Competency Element Claimed This project involved the upgrade of Hillsborough Rd, Warners Bay to coincide and accommodate for the construction of a new shopping complex which serviced the Warners Bay and greater Newcastle area. As a site engineer on this site I was required to travel up to Newcastle and spend several days a week supervising, and maintaining all the QA Documentation, whilst collaborating with the client to ensure that the road was constructed according to the design. My role in particular required a lot of communication. I was constantly asking questions, writing emails, sending reports and confirming meetings with my Project Manager, the client and the site foreman. This in itself required me to change the way I communicate, depending on whom I was talking to. For example, there is a very different workplace culture on site with the foreman and laborers on site, compared to the office with the Project Managers and Engineers. I would have to change my approach to communication and language I would use, depending on the context. When talking to my project manager, or the client, I generally would talk with technical terminology, talking about specific aspects of testing such as the RTA approved NAASRA Road Roughness Test or I would make reference to specific reports such as ITPs (Inspection Test Plan) or Hold Points which were required by the client at the end of the job. On one particular occasion, I was required to prepare all the site documentation for an external audit conducted by a company called SAI Global. It took about a week to get everything in order, and I was quite nervous because the auditor was basically going to be rating the organization and completeness of the site documentation and hence, my performance as a site engineer. At the end of the audit, the SAI Global representative highlighted only 2 minor areas which could be improved. My Project Manager turned around and shook my hand and said good job and that he was not really concerned about the minor issues. This event helped me to develop and maintain the trust of and confidence of my project manager and the other staff involved, that I was capable of performing to the required standard. As an Intern working on this site, I came across many new and different materials and processes used to build this road, compared to what I had encountered before. As an RTA road, the material was generally to be of higher quality, with better materials used and significantly more rigorous testing done during construction. As a result I consistently needed to seek answers from internal (my project manager), and the external (the client representative) sources. I asked questions about the benefits of using particular materials (such as Heavily Bound Base, a road base with fly ash and other cement-like properties.) C3.2: Works Effectively with People Signature of Candidate: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Candidates Verifier/s Name: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Verifier Engineering Qualifications: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. I verify that the above narrative is a true account of the candidates own work Verifier Signature: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Career Episode Title: Hillsborough Rd Upgrade, Warners Bay (part 2) Dates of Career Episode: 21.08.09 to 15.10.09 Length of Career Episode: 60 days Competency Element Claimed This project involved the upgrade of Hillsborough Rd, Warners Bay to coincide and accommodate for the construction of a new shopping complex which serviced the Warners Bay and greater Newcastle area. For the second half of this project I continued working as a site engineer, however as the job neared its conclusion, I was required to focus more on finalizing the official documentation to be submitted to and signed off by the RTA representative. In order to understand what exactly was required by the RTA, I need to read through, understand and constantly refer to the RTA Road Construction specifications. Whenever I found the specifications to be ambiguous, I contacted the RTA Rep for clarification as to what he actually required, hence I identified the clients needs. These specifications required me to regularly complete and submit Hold Point and Witness Point Forms to the RTA Representative at critical stages of the construction process. On one occasion the hold points were sent back before being signed off because they did not contain enough detail. For example, A hold point form was required to be submitted before the construction of each new layer of the road. On this particular instant I submitted the hold point form outlining that the previously completed layer (e.g. the crushed sandstone) had passed all the geotechnical tests and asking for permission to continue with the next layer. The RTA rep then sent the hold poi nt from back and outlined that I needed to be more specific about the chainages where the crushed sandstone had been tested and passed. One of the major set of documents I was required to submit to the RTA was the ITPs or Inspection Test Plans. These were Christie Civil Documents that detailed the methods of construction and testing of each construction process throughout the entire job, e.g., Heavily bound base, Storm water, Asphalt etc. It also required the site engineer and client to sign off after each process had been completed. For example, the ITP for the Heavily Bound Base stated the specific type of material to be used, the level of compaction which was to be achieved and the methods of testing among other things. As the job went on, it was my role to sign off on each of the ITP processes once they had been completed. I then regularly submitted these reports to the client to document the companys progress, before finally submitting the entire completed set of ITPs, along with all of the Hold points and Witness Points, and other required documents, as one complete record of the job. C3.5: Maintains customer focus and relationships with clients Signature of Candidate: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Candidates Verifier/s Name: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Verifier Engineering Qualifications: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. I verify that the above narrative is a true account of the candidates own work Verifier Signature: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Social Responsibility Social Responsibility has become one of, if not the forefront issue in engineering in the last twenty years. A civil engineer is responsible and accountable to rest of society for designing, engineering and constructing in a way which will not harm or have dire consequences for the surrounding environment and its occupants. During my internships I found that the two major ways in which Christie Civil work towards a sustainable future is firstly through the prevention of pollution, and secondly through recycling. On almost every site I went on, there were different measures taken to prevent the pollution of the surrounding areas. While I worked in Cronulla, we temporarily installed a silt boom in the section of the lake nearest to the site. This was to prevent dust and silt and any other form of pollution from the site, from leaking into the natural environment. Similarly, on the Holsworthy site, we temporarily installed small silt filters above all the stormwater drains in the area for the same reason. The use of a water cart to keep the ground moist was a common tool to prevent the spread of dust, whereas every truck (including its wheels) needed to be relatively clean before leaving site, so that any mud or other material on the truck would not get accidentally dropped in public. In the same way, on the Warners Bay and Erskine Park sites I worked on silt fences were installed around all the storm water drains in the area, so as to prevent dirt and dust and other materials from entering the drain and being spread into the environment. On these sites in particular, Christie Civil hired a bobcat with a sweeper extension to continually sweep the existing road of any debris and excess material carried off by delivery vehicles, to prevent the material being spread into the natural environment. During my experience, I found that engineers also generally prefer to recycle materials, not only for sustainable reasons, but because it saves money. For example, on the Holsworthy site we were required to construct roads. This involved the detailed excavation, laying and compaction of road base and then finally the laying and compaction of asphalt. In this instance, on another one of the companys sites, they were getting rid of tonnes of sandstone. Fortunately for us, the sandstone complied with the Australian Standards for a road base. Consequently, the project manager at Holsworthy recycled the sandstone from another site, by re-using it as road base. Ethical Practice Ethics is basically the moral code or set of standards to which someone has been shaped as a result of their culture, religion or society. As a result, ethics is a totally subjective concept, in that something that I might consider wrong or inappropriate might be ok for someone else. Nevertheless the seriousness of ethics cannot be underestimated. I believe that ethics is an especially important topic for the civil engineer, as what they do has a direct impact on society as a whole. Thus, the consequences of bad decisions could possibly have huge ramifications. For me personally, my ethical framework has been predominantly shaped by my Christian faith. One of the major ethical issue I faced while on my internship, involved the project manager and project foreman asking everyone to sign a Safe Work Method Statement which they had changed but dated it as if it was months earlier. The incident arose after an excavator nearly hit some overhead power lines. Upon realizing that this issue had not been highlighted in the Safe Work Method Statement (which should be signed upon induction), the project manager edited the document, including the new issue and re-printed it. He then asked all the laborers and other people involved to sign the SWMS as if it were months earlier, when they signed the original document. In my integrity, I couldnt sign the document and lie about the date on which it had been signed. Fortunately since the document outlined the process for bulk and detailed excavation, it wasnt too important that I didnt sign it, as I had little to do with the physical work in this area. On a similar occasion, while I was working on the Hillsborough Rd, Warners Bay site, one of the young laborers was caught by the police, driving a work truck without a licence on a small public ro