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Case study:
Multi-disciplinary Civil Engineering design (quarry)

Details of the case study

Learning outcomes:

At the end of the project you are expected to have:

• functioned as a coherent team member and not in isolation. You will have contributed to a project with many aspects outside your own area of speciality;
• managed your time efficiently and have completed the project brief to a high standard;
• a visual appreciation of how the quarry site will look at all stages of the extraction;
• demonstrated an appreciation of load paths and load capabilities and to have selected an appropriate and economic solution to the problem;
• demonstrated an awareness of how the quarry scheme might impact upon the local environment and how this impact can be minimised;
• demonstrated an appreciation of the health and safety risks associated with quarrying and to have built in to your design measures to minimise risks.

Team working:
You are expected to work together as a coordinated and coherent team. You will arrange your own Team Leader, who will help to bring the different project efforts together, in addition to providing his/her own input.

All work will be checked and countersigned by another member of your team. Responsibility and credit for a piece of work will be taken by both the principal designer and the checker.

Oral presentations will be the responsibility of the whole team, with each team member making a presentation of the design part they are responsible for.

It is your responsibility to ensure that your part of the design is coherent with the rest of the design team. In particular, pay attention that design decisions made are taken on board by the entire team, e.g. everyone is working to the same road layout, foundation locations align with the columns above and so on.

Where you are working with a student from another discipline, you must ensure that you communicate your area of speciality in a clear and effective manner. Do not assume they have the same background knowledge that you have. Make sure that any areas of difficulty are discussed clearly in layman's terms. Conversely, if there is specialist information being communicated to you that is unclear, do not hesitate to say that you don't understand.

Project management:
Attention must be given to ensuring that the whole design project is effectively managed to fit within the available timescale.

You must plan your time to allow for delays such as waiting for information to be delivered from outside the university.

Try and take a holistic view of your design. Do not focus excessively on one aspect and then run out of time to complete other items. Draw up a plan of the time available and the tasks to be fitted into it. You will then be aware at an early stage if one item is over-running and cutting in to the time allocated for another item.

Do not underestimate the time needed for producing detailed drawings and for compiling the entire team report into one coherent document. Allow sufficient time for computer printing and for queue demands from other students.

You must work with your team members to ensure that information is delivered when it is needed.

Study the project brief carefully and ensure that all the required tasks have been undertaken.

Visualisation of map data in 2D and 3D:
Geographical and geological map data have been provided both in digital (Digimap) and scanned hard-copy format. You are expected to be able to extract the data you need from these maps in order to plan the proposed quarry.

You are expected to evaluate the amount of limestone that can safely and economically be extracted from the quarry.

You are expected to devise a scheme for extracting the rock and transporting it to the on-site crushers and graders.

You must devise a scheme for storing graded stone on the quarry site and for transporting it off site, considering sea, rail and road haulage.

You should consider the use of a graphic visualisation package (Surfer) for gaining a 2D and 3D appreciation of the shape of the quarry site as:
a) a virgin site;
b) during extraction;
c) after the site is exhausted.

Structural appreciation of problems:
The project you are undertaking is an outline scheme, not a full and detailed design. Nevertheless, you must ensure that any design you propose can be made to work.

You are expected to devise schemes where critical points and sections have been checked. Basic design calculations must be performed, e.g. critical beam and column sections must be analysed under the worst possible loading to ensure that reinforcement percentages do not exceed the maximum permissible.

Each primary structural item, e.g. conveyor-belt system, aggregate silos, loading pier should be considered for an ultimate load design. Make sure you have considered all probable overload situations.

Environmental impact appreciation:
Any major industrial development like a quarry will inevitably have a significant impact upon the local environment. The design team is expected to have considered the major impact factors and to have built into the design means of alleviating negative impact. You are expected to have addressed all of the specific environmental items detailed below.

Health & Safety aspects:
Health and safety in industry is not an afterthought. It must be built in at the design stage and considered at all subsequent stages of operation.

Quarries are potentially very dangerous places of work. During the site visits, look out for potential health and safety hazards and see how they have been dealt with. There will be a great many of such items. Each team member should bring back a list of at least 10 items you have noticed.

During your outline design you are expected to consider safety issues in commissioning, operation and restoration of the quarry.

Specific issues with this year's project include:

• Safety issues in commissioning, operation and restoration
• Excavation phasing, production and expected lifetime
• Visual appearance, both during the quarry operation and after full extraction of the available resources
• Discharges to air: noise, vibration and dust
• Water management
• Waste management and pollution
• Transport, on-site/off-site
• Employee awareness and community relations
• Other physical & socio-economic impact
• Alternative impact of haulage by rail or road

Students will be required to consider the structural aspects of:

• Extraction
• On-site transport
• Crushing
• Grading of aggregate
• Storage of graded aggregate
• Loading and operation of bulk carrier vessels
• Loading pier and associated mechanical plant
• Land management, Restoration, Ecology and Archaeology

Source of OS data used: Digimap, OS maps (digitally modified to simplify student exercise), RGS maps

Other data sources used: Field photographs, RMC (Aggregates) UK Ltd. drawing

Software: 'Surfer', Golden Software, Inc. was made available to the students for 3D representation of contour data extracted from Digimap.

Viewers/plug-ins required: Adobe Acrobat. Available from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html [opens in a new window].

Other materials: "The coast of N. Wales & NW England - An Environmental appraisal", BHP Petroleum Ltd, Admiralty charts

Support: PC, web accessibility

Quality assurance: An in-house QA system is in place which is externally audited.

Last updated: June 24, 2003