Antarctic hero shots

So, hero shots are those pictures of yourself in fabulous locations, doing great deeds, and are inevitably posed pictures. So here I am in Antarctica, being a hero...

In McMurdo, on a previous ANITA balloon campaign, with the ANITA solar array.

At the South Pole, in drill camp with a number of large wrenches (none of which I used for anything other than photo props). Good clue as to the posed nature of the picture is the fact that my clothes are clean and there are no icicles hanging from my face.

With the Pisten Bully (name comes from the German term "piste" as in "off-piste skiing" and not piston from the engine) in front of the IceCube Lab.

At the Geographic South Pole, a location which is resurveyed each year as the ice moves over the bedrock (far) below. (Thanks to Peter Gorham for the photos.)

Arms around the Earth. At the Ceremonial South Pole, where the flags and barbershop pole reside. South Pole Elevated Station is in the background.

Ooops!

I didn't take the picture. This is at McMurdo. I think the fire extinguisher didn't quite work...

Some oddities at the South Pole

Sousaphone in the hallway.

The lobster isn't native to the Pole region. The bread might be.

Perry looks quite dapper in his tux, but there are no penguins at the South Pole.

A marathon at the South Pole? Yep.

LC-130 ski-equipped Hercules

Takeoff!

Not sure if it's a pretty aircraft...but it is loud.

That's the view out the window, though you can go closer and get some good shots. Posted some earlier.

The passenger area on a flight from MCM to NPX, looking forward. The green hanging curtain is the bathroom.

Pax deplaning at Pole.

Basler

One of my favorite Antarctic planes is the Basler. This is an old DC-3 (or military version, C-47) of World War 2 vintage that has been stretched (especially in the cargo door area) and re-engined with turboprops (okay, and they do a lot more as well to the plane). Basler Conversions is in Oshkosh, WI and I'd like to go and visit sometime. Webpage for Basler.

Yes, manufactured originally in 1942. Still flying today in the world's harshest environments. Part of the key to their longevity is the lack of pressurization. Pressurizing the passenger/cargo area produces stresses on the airframe.

Big doors to load lots of equipment.

Kenn Borek Air is a northern Canadian operation that moves to Antarctica when the ice roads up north start carrying the heavy cargo. Note the skis.

Fuel depot.

Still more Oden pictures

Linda, the 1st (2nd?) officer, who graciously gave us the tour. On the bridge, near the captain's chair.

A sample of the hull material. Thick. Heavy.

Looking out the back of the bridge area onto the helicopter pad.

Yep, there's a theater. Comfy seats too.

They had hats, t-shirts, fleeces, Swedish candy and chips, and postcards.

You wanted penguin pictures...

Discussions have mostly been on Facebook

For example, on the McMurdo runways: Link

If you're looking at this on Blogger or Blogspot, do feel free to friend me on Facebook. If I don't know you, put in a "antarctica blog" mention in the message. Thanks!

Risk Management in Low-Income Housing Project Development in Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) is the one of the cities having highest population in Vietnam. Currently, migrants account for 21 percent of total population, and the average migration rate increases from 0.02% (1979-1989) to 0.84 (1989-1999) and reaches 2.33% (1999-2004) (Thanh, 2006). Most of people migrate to HCMC in order to get better employment opportunity, education condition, medical care, and so on (Thanh, 2006).

In order to increase housing supply for the poor, government has implemented different policies in various periods. However, housing supply for the poor is still low compared to demand. This market segment is still risky for developer (MOC, 2009).

Mr. Le Quoc Tuan made a case study which main objective was to propose the possible solution to manage the risks in low-income housing (LIH) project development. In order to achieve his main objective, the following objectives were needed to accomplish: (1) investigate the risk factors in each project phase during the implementation low-income housing project development, and (2) propose the recommendation to manage the risk factors in low-income housing project development.

Conclusion

In order to satisfy the first objective, the researcher reviewed book, journal, previous thesis, guideline, newspaper and so on to identify risk factors and then arranged them in four phases of project which are planning, financing, construction, and selling. After that, these risk factors were verified by 5 experts including deputy directors, government officials, and academician. Finally, the verified risk factors were analyzed through case study. The second objective, which was recommendation to manage risks, was made based on analysis case study and study literature.

It was found out that there are eight key risks for developer when investing in low-income housing project which are (1) complicated legislation procedure to get approval (2) low-profit margin controlled by government (3) unrealistic government support policy (4) risk in land acquisition from landowner (5) lack of fund to developers (6) inappropriate building standard (7) revenue risk due to ineffective demand (8) delay in selling housing unit.

Recommendation

The recommendations were made based on the risk analyses, suggestions from interviewees, and from literature review. The recommendations are presented as in the table below.

His thesis abstract is copied and posted

Abstract

Demand on low-cost housing for the poor in urban area of Vietnam is very high due to its high population, and high urbanization rate. Even though Government implemented many policies since 2009 in order to attract developers, the supply in low-income housing is still low compared to its demand. So far only 31 out of 263 registered low-income housing projects have been implementing. According to Ministry of Construction (2009), this market segment is still risky for developers. However, there are few researches on risk management specific in low-income housing projects. The purpose of this study is to propose recommendation to manage risks in low-income housing project development in Ho Chi Minh City.

This study used case study to conduct its two objectives. The first objective is to investigate risk factors in each phase of low-cost housing development. Researcher reviewed book, journal, previous thesis, guideline, newspaper and so on to identify 48 risk factors and then arranged them in four phases of project which are planning, financing, construction, and selling. After that, these risk factors were verified by 5 experts including deputy directors, government officials, and academician. Finally, the twelve verified risk factors will be analyzed through case study in Ho Chi Minh City. The second objective is to make recommendation to manage risks. The recommendation was made based on analysis of case study and study of literature.

The study found that developers are facing 8 risk factors and 12 risk sub-factors which are (1) complicated legislation procedure to get approval (2) low-profit margin controlled by government (3) unrealistic government support policy (4) risk in acquisition of land from landowner (5) lack of fund to developers (6) inappropriate building standard (7) revenue risk due to ineffective demand (8) delay in selling housing unit. Some recommendations to manage the risk are: (1) establish one independent government agency responsible for legislation issues, land acquisition, select the target low-income people, and guarantee for the output (3) government channels the fund borrowed from international agency such as World Bank, Asian Development Bank to developers with favorable interest rate or government guarantee for developers to borrow fund from bank (4) lower building standard.

More on the Oden

Top view of the lifeboat.

Looking out over the bow deck. The containers on board have the science experiments that were conducted during the cruise inside of them. Breaking ice, the Oden can spray water from the bow to "lubricate" the ice breaking process.

The broken-up ice where the ship entered port.

HUGE, wide bridge with a conference table in the background. Excellent all-around views.

The interior of the ship was quite nice, lots of woodwork. This is a shot in the door of the library.

The icebreaker Oden

The US Antarctic Program contracts with the Swedish Polar Programs to have an icebreaker clear the McMurdo Sound and bring the tanker and cargo ship into port. (The dock is a floating mass of layers of ice and dirt, the near one is the current floating dock and the farther one is a ten year old dock.) The Swedish icebreaker Oden has been doing this duty for a number of years. Previously I had seen it out in the Sound, but this year (thanks to Mark Krasberg!) we got a tour of the ship.

It's a big, blocky ship, about 350 feet long and probably a good 120 feet or so wide. Quite pretty in a serious way. It's also beautifully kept up with nary a spot of rust, even after a hundred day cruise down from Scandinavia to the Southern Ocean.

Lifeboat and wing of bridge.

Our informal tour group on the gun turret mounting. The Oden was originally built for the Swedish military.

More Oden info can be found at Wikipedia and some pictures from a 2007 cruise on Wired.

Risk Management in the Design of Large - Scale Construction Projects: Case Studies of an Urban Area and a High-rise Building Project

Problems in the design of large-scale construction projects may come from many stakeholders: Owner, Designer, Project Management Consultant and external environment.

There are many kinds of problem arising from the Owner such as (i) sometimes they can’t finalize what they really expect in their project. The requirements are very vague and just base on their feeling; (ii) the structure is not well-organized. Everybody can give out opinions but no one makes decision; (iii) when employing the consultants, owners don’t have the right model of project team structure. The consultants are not put in the right position with proper scope of works and obligation.

The problems of Project Management Consultant are that sometimes they can’t fulfill their duty in assisting Client to conclude their requirements reasonably and to arrange the project team structure in a right way or can’t define the procedure of working and making decisions. Also, they can’t well manage the project team to shorten the time, eliminate the error, and reduce the cost. The project working environment is not efficient and effective because people in the team are not aware of the other member’s duties or how to contact them. In other words, many Project Managers in Viet Nam nowadays are just the Post Men.

As to Designer, most of their problems come from the unclear design contract without necessary conditions binding relevant parties to their commitment. This weak point becomes more serious especially to the large projects owned by many organizations and involve in many parties with different cultures, different customs and constructive understanding.

Last but not least, problems may emerge from the external environment, such as laws, regulations or market. These factors form an uncertain circumstance which needs to be well identified, and planned the measures to deal with.

Mr. Do Tran My Thuy made a case study which objectives were to: (1) identify the key risks affecting time, cost or quality during design process; (2) find out how to mitigate these risks through contract conditions, communication or some other management tools. Also, to define the role, responsibility of three parties: Owner, Project Management Consultant and Designer in mitigating these risks; and (3) identify the activities and required documents in each step of Design process.

Conclusion

In the design of large-scale projects which involved many investors and many professors in different fields, there are usually 12 risks relating to 3 groups of stakeholders such as Owners, Project team and external environment. Two among these risks are from the external environments which are “unpredictable response from Authorities” and “changes by unforeseeable causes”. These are difficult to be prevented, so the mitigation is just the negotiation between Owner and Designer on how to share the consequences if the risks happen. Ten reminders can be prevented or mitigated through a proper working process and three kinds of document.
A proper working process is the one which creates the reliable bases for the Owner to make proper decisions.

Three kinds of document are Design service contract, Design Brief and Project Management Plan. The purpose of these documents is to set out a clear, impartial working environment for all parties in the project. Depending on the specific situation of the project, each document can be amended a little bit, but there are some critical issues in these documents which are necessary to be considered and discussed carefully by the Owner, Designer and Project Management Consultant. The role and responsibility of these three parties during the design process are also found. Details of the finding are summarized in figure 4-1. Apart from these preparations, another tool to mitigate the risk is Communication. Communication should also be planned through three aspects: communication method, communication form and critical points to communicate.


Recommendation

The Project Manager should consider the steps shown in the table to prepare for large-scale construction projects.


His thesis abstract is copied and posted.

Abstract

Managing risks in construction project has been recognized as one of the key factors in the process leading to the success in term of time, cost and quality of a project. However, until now most researches in risk management have focused on the construction phase, rather than design phase. This paper aims to identify the risks in the design of large-scale construction projects and find out how to mitigate these risks. Through the two case studies in two different types of projects (one Urban Area project and one Building project), twelve risks are identified and risk mitigation are proposed. It is concluded that to mitigate these risks, the Project Manager should pay attention in several issues. Firstly, the Pre-design phase at the beginning of each project can not be omitted. This important phase results in a Design Brief and Project Management Plan which together with the Design Service contract made stronger commitments of parties. Secondly, FIDIC- white book which is usually used as the standard form in Architectural Design practice in Viet Nam nowadays needs to be added or amended some conditions. Lastly, communication also needs to be planned and implemented in a right way.

IceCube flags

The IceCube project installed a very nice set of flags over the IceCube strings to help folks visualize the experiment in celebration of the completion of construction. Orange flags for regular IceCube strings of detectors, and red ones for the denser "deep core" strings. Here you seen one string in the foreground (with some small flags on bamboo poles which are used widely in Antarctica to flag almost anything, black flags mean "stay out" and the others are interchangeable (at least at Pole, McMurdo has some rules for their use)) and two heading away in line into the background.

IceCube hole marker, with the IceCube laboratory in the background. Note the outhouse to the left of the picture. I'll leave that to your imagination as to proper function in the cold. (There's no running water in the IceCube Lab (ICL).)

The South Pole Traverse

While I was Pole, just before Christmas, the South Pole Traverse came in from McMurdo. They had left 38 days earlier (though they had returned to MCM with some mechanical issues and been snowed in for a time too, so it didn't take quite that long to drive to Pole) and driven along a packed snow "highway" to the Pole. The idea is to reduce the number of airplane flights of cargo (especially fuel) down to the Pole with cheaper transport methods.

The Traverse consists of a bunch of Cat and Case tractors pulling sleds made just from sheets of plastic on which the fuel bladders and other cargo sit. Must be a slow way up to the plateau! The return trip to McMurdo is quicker.

There was a good article in the Guardian, a few years back now, with the warnings about the Pole getting to be easier, and with fears of mass tourism. More and more tourists each year, but none coming by the route of the Traverse.

NPX?

The airport code for the skiway at the South Pole is NPX which seems somewhat odd for the South Pole Station. (All airfields have such codes, many of them are obvious, SFO for San FranciscO, but some less so, ORD for Chicago O'Hare? Well, it was originally Orchard Field which was renamed for the WW2 fighter ace O'Hare, so it kept its old shorthand form.) Well, originally the South Pole Station was run by the Navy, and they named their airfields (well, the airfield shorthands) to all start with N for Navy. So, that's the Navy Pole Station (X). There's no airfield at the North Pole, so all is right in the world, right?

The sweet, but very delayed, ride off of the ice

There's our C-17, newly arrived from CHC, on the "tarmac" at Pegasus Airfield in McMurdo. Well, 14 miles out of McMurdo proper. They had delayed the flight multiple days due to bad weather in McTown. That weather included a day when it was 40 degrees F warmer than in Minneapolis... Finally, when the DVs (distinguished visitors, from the National Research Council) were due to leave, the weather got cloudier and colder, but the flight did come in.

Passengers waiting outside at the "terminal" and our bags on the pallet on the right.

DV bags down in front. They'll be hand loaded so that the DVs don't have as much time standing around waiting for bags in CHC.