Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Caed Hasslein Student Competition, Greta R. Stout

Construction Management

This paper outlines the development of the first CAED Hasslein Student Competition at Cal Poly, SLO. The College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Cal Poly, SLO has not yet been successful in creating a platform to engage students of all five majors to collaborate in an educational atmosphere. This project aims to challenge students to work in teams made up of all five disciplines in a Request for Proposal-style competition. This paper focuses on how the idea of this competition came to be and the steps that were taken to successfully write the competition problem statement. These steps included …

Estimating And Project Management For The Construction Of A Visitor Deck At City Farm Slo, Eric Cederstrom

Construction Management

This paper will outline the process of estimating and the project management of a visitor deck that was built at City Farm of San Luis Obispo, a local non-profit. The deck was built for the purpose of providing an area for visitors to observe the agricultural land where City Farm educates the community on ecology, nutrition, and sustainable farming. The construction of the deck was completed by three fourth-year Construction Management majors: Eric Cederstrom, Lane Lagomarsino, and Brett Jones. Each project team member was responsible for their own aspect of the project planning and all members collaborated throughout the entire …

Design, Schedule, And Cost Estimate For New Cal Poly Football Office Building, Kyle Mccallum Reid

Construction Management

Around the nation, college football programs are building new football facilities to help their current players, coaches, and staff members succeed. These facilities can be additions to current buildings or completely new structures that have multiple functions. A common facility that is built is the football office building. New football office buildings are beneficial for programs because it gives players, coaches, and staff members a central location where coaches can hold meetings and players can interact with each other and support staff. These structures help bring everything that goes on in a football program come together. Because of the importance …

The Efficacy Of Orange Lane Delineations In Highway Work Zones, Neetu Kaur Sidhu

Construction Management

With over 100,000 crashes in the work zone per year, it is essential that we as builders discover and implement innovative solutions to maximize field crew and public safety in high traffic areas. A recent trend in the Heavy Civil Construction industry has been the implementation of temporary fluorescent orange striping in active highway work zones. When traditional white or yellow lane markings are removed, a faint residue is left behind and as construction crews repeatedly shift lanes, multiple overlapping removal scars begin to create confusion for drivers that leads to an increased risk of crashes. To eliminate this confusion …

Determining Student Interest For A Virtual Reality Safety Training Course, Courtney Martin

Construction Management

The purpose of Cal Poly’s Construction Management Department is to provide students with the best education they can get so they can be prepared for the challenges they may encounter in their professional careers. This research paper analyzes students' prior knowledge of virtual reality (VR) and determines the interest in creating a Construction Management (CM) technical elective covering VR and safety training which can help educate and train students about safety, hazardous jobsite situations, and accident prevention measures. This paper also examines the advantages of a VR construction training course taught on campus compared to online training without VR. VR …

An Analysis Of Construction Estimating Software, Guilianna M. Lozano

Construction Management

There are various components that go into building a construction project. And regardless of the size of the project, construction projects have become increasingly expensive with cost escalations on the rise. The cost element of each construction project is critical to the success of the overall project. In today’s current industry, numerous resources are available that strive to assist the built environment with managing construction costs. Currently, construction firms are maintaining a competitive edge by using the technology that has been made available. The basis of this research, conducted using a quantitative survey, was to provide data that indicated which …

Gauging Student Interest In A Leed Ga Exam Preparation Technical Elective Course, Hailey Lancaster

Construction Management

Being a LEED Green Associate (LEED GA) demonstrates a fundamental understanding of sustainable building principles and practices. Since green building is at the forefront of construction, there is no better way for Construction Management students to enter the industry prepared in this area than by taking the LEED General Associate exam. This paper is a case study that obtains students’ perspectives on implementing a new Construction Management technical elective course that will prepare students to successfully take and pass the LEED GA exam. A survey was conducted to gauge student familiarity with sustainability, as well as their interest in earning …

Self-Performing Developers And General Contractors Working Together, Christian A. Blevins

Construction Management

One of the major goals for a general contractor during construction is to make a profit and for the owner, get the project built for the lowest amount possible. Just as general contractors have been opening self-performing divisions within their own company, owners are capable of self-performing certain aspects of a construction job as well. Owners have shown the capability to operate the project management aspect of construction in order to keep control of factors that are important to the owner and then form a joint venture or subcontract the entire construction management aspect of the project. The project management …

Construction Of Concrete Modular Foundations - Procurement And Quality Control, Jackson M. Runyan

Construction Management

This project details the material procurement and quality control processes throughout the construction of two concrete modular foundations. The project focused on constructing the blocks as they were designed to ensure they meet strength parameters to be used in the High Bay Lab at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) for various testing performed as part of the curriculum for the Architectural Engineering (ARCE) and Construction Management (CM) departments. The complex designs, encompassing one-hundred coupler attachments and a dense rebar cage, required extensive attention and hours of labor and quality control review. This paper will cover …

Landscape Storage Shed For Transitions-Mental Health Association, Jennifer Casey Knickerbocker

Construction Management

The purpose of this paper is to outline the process of planning, designing, and constructing a storage shed for the non-profit organization, Transitions-Mental Health Association (T-MHA). This project was developed through a Cal Poly Construction Management course, CM 420, Service and Experiential Learning. The goal of this class is to gain experience through physical construction by building a service project for an organization or person who needs it. For this project, T-MHA asked that a storage chest be built for their landscaper who maintains the on-site garden. Due to multiple change orders by the owner, what was originally going to …

San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden Children's Learning Center Deck - The Preconstruction, Dakota Reynolds

Construction Management

This project team consisted of three construction management majors and one architectural engineering student. The goal of this project was to build a deck at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden, but due to setbacks in design, permitting, and communication with the owner, the group was unable to achieve this goal. The goal then shifted, and this group focused on delivering a preconstruction package that would be given to new students to build the deck. In addition, the architectural engineer will still be a part of this new group to make sure the project runs smoothly. This pre-construction package includes …

Firstfruits Farm Tractor Shed, Gerardo Martinez, Kiana Dehpanah

Construction Management

Preconstruction lays the foundation for the overall outcome of a construction project. This project phase includes a detailed schedule, outlines the scope of work, and provides an overall estimate for the project. Devoting a sufficient amount of time and effort into the preconstruction phase is crucial. Preconstruction is an important component of what makes the entirety of a construction project successful. Preconstruction work also includes finding funders to cover the costs of material. Preconstruction and the construction for a tractor shed were completed for FirstFruits Farm in San Luis Obispo. The construction portion of this project relied on the successful …

Refining The Construction Communication Cal Poly Technical Elective Course, Anna Dissman

Construction Management

Communication is one of the most necessary parts in what makes a project successful in the construction industry. Normally, successful communication skills are developed through experience over time in this industry. When looking into the Construction Management (CM) program at California Polytechnic State University of San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), a lack of direct focus on multiple key communication skills is present. Furthermore, a new CM communication technical elective should be taught to focus and reinforce the communication skills needed for careers of future students post graduation. By crafting and distributing a well-thought out survey, new knowledge from the perspectives …

Cvaf: Service Dog Kennel Construction, Spencer G. Allen

Construction Management

The California Veterans Assistance Foundation Service Dog Kennel Construction gave back to our country’s veterans by constructing new kennels for their service dogs. The previous kennel on the veteran residential site needed an upgrade due to the increased number of service dogs at the shelter. A team of two Cal Poly Construction Management students consisting of Spencer Allen and Luke Terrio worked to design, estimate, coordinate, and construct a new kennel structure for the site. The roles were divided on the project between the preconstruction and construction phases. During preconstruction Spencer’s role was to schedule the job and create the …

Girls Build Summer Academy Leadership Summit, Itzell Ruiz

Construction Management

This paper highlights the activities and presentations that will take place during the women in construction leadership summit prior to the Girls Build Summer Academy for high school girls. The leadership summit is a two-day event that will consist of presentations on important leadership and construction topics. The presentations will cover topics such as confidence, safety, leadership assessment activity, tool shop training, emerging trends, career paths, jobsite visit, and a women’s panel. This leadership summit will be implemented in the summer of 2023 and will take place at Cal Poly’s campus in the Construction Innovations Center. The scope of this …

Expanding On Leadership And Professional Skills For A Girls Build Summer Academy, Claire M. Gress

Construction Management

The construction industry has historically been male-dominated. Despite efforts by organizations and companies to encourage women to join the industry, there has been little progress in encouraging more women to enter the industry and getting them to stay. The construction management program at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is developing and hosting a Girls Build Summer Academy to familiarize and encourage high school girls to explore construction as a career path. One segment of this boot camp includes leadership modules that will give the girls confidence and the skills they need to be successful leaders in construction. …

Design And Preconstruction Services For The Construction Of A Visitor Deck At City Farm Slo, Lane Lagomarsino

Construction Management

This paper will outline the process of designing and planning the construction of a visitor deck at City Farm of San Luis Obispo, which is a local non-profit. The deck was built for the purpose of providing an area for visitors to observe the agricultural land where City Farm educates the community on ecology, nutrition, and sustainable farming. The construction of the deck was completed by three fourth-year Construction Management majors: Lane Lagomarsino, Eric Cederstrom, and Brett Jones. Each project team member was responsible for their own aspect of the project planning and all members collaborated throughout the entire building …

Single-Pass Inline Pipeline 3d Reconstruction Using Depth Camera Array, Zhexiong Shang, Zhigang Shen

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Faculty Publications

A novel inline inspection (ILI) approach using depth cameras array (DCA) is introduced to create high-fidelity, dense 3D pipeline models. A new camera calibration method is introduced to register the color and the depth information of the cameras into a unified pipe model. By incorporating the calibration outcomes into a robust camera motion estimation approach, dense and complete 3D pipe surface reconstruction is achieved by using only the inline image data collected by a self-powered ILI rover in a single pass through a straight pipeline. The outcomes of the laboratory experiments demonstrate one-millimeter geometrical accuracy and 0.1-pixel photometric accuracy. …

Shallow-Water Wind Turbine Foundation, Andrew Walker, Nico Nani, James Cusanelli, Zachary Dunkelberger

Mechanical Engineering

Over the 2021-2022 academic year, we, the Shallow Water Wind Turbine Foundation senior project team, designed, manufactured, and tested a fixed bottom, sand mounted turbine foundation for the Cal Poly Wind Power Club’s Collegiate Wind Competition turbine. The foundation was restricted to certain material, installation, and geometric constraints outlined in this report, and needed to support the turbine under operating conditions including 22 m/s wind speeds. The design was analyzed using primarily a bearing capacity geotechnical analysis to determine final geometry and weight. The foundation was then manufactured using welded, custom carbon steel parts.

The foundation was inspected for geometric …

Effects Of Experimental Scale On The Adsorption Of Two Pharmaceutical Drugs Detected In Municipal Wastewater Effluent, Michael Moore

Master's Theses

Pharmaceutical drugs are being produced and consumed in increasing quantities every year and are poorly treated by conventional wastewater treatment processes, leading to increasing detection of such compounds in surface water, groundwater, and municipal drinking water. Soil aquifer treatment (SAT) is a promising method for treating these emerging compounds through combined adsorption and degradation of target compounds in soil. This thesis examines the consistency of results from typical studies like adsorption isotherms and soil columns utilized in analysis of SAT performance, across varying experimental scales. The adsorption behavior of two pharmaceuticals was investigated as a function of experimental scale and …

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of Mechanical Hinges With Snap-Fit Locking Mechanisms In Rigid Origami Structures, Colby James Scanlon

Master's Theses

The ancient art of ‘origami’ has recently become the source of inspiration for engineers to create structures that can unfold from a compact state to a fully deployed one. For instance, researchers have currently adopted origami designs in various engineering disciplines, including aerospace engineering, robotics, biomedical engineering, and architecture. In particular, architects have been interested in designing origami-inspired rigid walled structures that can be deployed as disaster-relief shelters. This type of design has three main advantages: transportability, constructability, and rigidity. Although there has been increased interests in deployable structures, limited research has been conducted on evaluating their structural performance, specifically …

Using Metal-Organic Frameworks (Mof) To Reduce The Carbon Footprint Of Concrete, Mona Ibrahim El-Hallak

Theses

The production of concrete by the construction industry has a massive impact on the environment. The process of manufacturing its main component, cement, releases a considerable amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. This thesis is concerned with the production of sustainable and eco-friendly concrete that integrates metal-organic frameworks (MOF) to capture and offset the CO₂ emissions emitted during the production of cement. The main objective is to synthesize a MOF capable of capturing CO₂ in concrete through accelerated carbonation curing and to assess its impact on concrete performance. Different parameters were examined, including the MOF content, initial curing duration, …

Extended Weight Systems Pavement Analysis, Gayle Marks, Jon Wilcoxson, Bryan Gibson

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Kentucky established its Extended Weight Coal or Coal By-products Haul Road System (EWCHRS) in 1986. This road network includes segments of the Coal Haul Highway System on which more than 50,000 tons coal or coal byproducts were transported by motor vehicles during the previous calendar year. In the past few years, the state has introduced extended weight (EW) systems focused on petroleum products and metal commodities. Trucks can operate above posted weight limits on these networks by paying annual fees that range from $160 to $2,000. While EW networks benefit motor carriers by improving efficiency, vehicles that exceed weight limits …

Monitoring Of Renewable Energy Systems By Iot-Aided Scada System, Ohirul Qays, Musse M. Ahmed, M. A. Parvez Mahmud, Ahmed Abu-Siada, S. M. Muyeen, Liton Hossain, Farhana Yasmin, Momtazur Rahman

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

With the rapid increase of renewable energy generation worldwide, real-time information has become essential to manage such assets, especially for systems installed offshore and in remote areas. To date, there is no cost-effective condition monitoring technique that can assess the state of renewable energy sources in real-time and provide suitable asset management decisions to optimize the utilization of such valuable assets and avoid any full or partial blackout due to unexpected faults. Based on the Internet of Things scheme, this paper represents a new application for the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to monitor a hybrid system comprising …

Effect Of Biochar On Desiccation Of Marine Soils Under Constant And Cyclic Temperatures, Thellen Kumar Puspanathan, Vihan Shenal Jayawardane, Suvash Chandra Paul, Kong Sih Ying, Sanjay Kumar Shukla, Vivi Anggraini

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Biochar has recently been gaining increasing attention as a stable and sustainable soil amendment material. However, the effect of biochar amendment on the desiccation behaviour of coastal soils has not yet been examined. Consequently, the present study primarily investigated the effect of exposing biochar-amended marine soil (BAS) to constant and cyclic temperatures on its swell–shrink, evaporation and desiccation cracking characteristics. Biochar contents of 1%, 2%, 4% and particle size ranges of PS-1 (600 μm < D ≤ 2000 μm), PS-2 (300 μm < D ≤ 600 μm), PS-3 (D ≤ 75 μm) (D: biochar particle diameter) were employed. It was revealed that the absolute volumetric shrinkage of both unamended and biochar-amended specimens increased as the number of thermal cycles increased. Under continuous heat exposure, 4% (PS-3) BAS in compacted state achieved the maximum reduction in volumetric shrinkage which was 42%. Moreover, under continuous heat exposure, 2% (PS-1) BAS in slurry state achieved the highest reduction in desiccation cracking, which was 73%. The present study highlights the importance of identifying the most effective combination of biochar content and particle size required to achieve a desired outcome, in order to gain the maximum benefit of biochar as an amendment material at the lowest possible cost.

Assessing Public Health Benefits Of Replacing Freight Trucks With Cargo Cycles In Last Leg Delivery Trips In Urban Centers, Jennifer C. Hartle, Ossama (Sam) A. Elrahman, Cara Wang, Daniel A. Rodriguez, Yue Ding, Matt Mcgahan

Mineta Transportation Institute

Increased urbanization, population growth, and demand for time-sensitive deliveries means increased freight movement in cities, which contributes to emissions, noise, and safety concerns. One innovative mode gaining widespread attention for urban deliveries is cargo cycles—bicycles adapted for freight delivery. Despite the recognized potential and possible success of transporting at least 25% of freight via cycle, research remains limited. This research investigates the potential of cargo cycle delivery for last mile freight in Oakland, California, with a focus on the West Oakland neighborhood. The data collection included interviews, focus groups, vehicle field observation and counts, and traffic simulation modeling. The traffic …

Influence Of Level 1 And Level 2 Automated Vehicles On Fatal Crashes And Fatal Crash Occurrence, Hardik Gajera, Srinivas S. Pulugurtha, Sonu Mathew

Mineta Transportation Institute

Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are expected to improve safety by gradually reducing human decisions while driving. However, there are still questions on their effectiveness as we transition from almost 0% CAVs to 100% CAVs with different levels of vehicle autonomy. This research focuses on synthesizing literature and identifying risk factors influencing fatal crashes involving level 1 and level 2 CAVs in the United States. Fatal crashes involving level 0 vehicles—ones that are not connected and automated—were compared to minimize unobserved heterogeneity and randomness associated with the influencing risk factors. The research team used the fatal crash data for the …

Evaluation Of Polymer Binder Technisoil G5® In Concrete Mixture, Shadi Saadeh, Pritam Katawal

Mineta Transportation Institute

Plastic is everywhere, and with its increasing use in so many everyday materials, the production and demand of plastic has skyrocketed. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the accumulation of a mammoth amount of plastic waste and adverse effects on the environment. To optimize the huge amount of materials required by the pavement industry each year and reuse recycled plastics, the use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) has been common practice. This research studied the use of a binder completely made from recycled waste plastic named Technisoil G5® and compared it with performance grade PG 70-22 mix containing virgin aggregates and …

Covid-19 Public Transportation Air Circulation And Virus Mitigation Study, Aly Tawfik, Deify Law, Juris Grasis, Joseph Oldham, Moe Salem

Mineta Transportation Institute

COVID-19 may have forever changed our world. Given the limited space and air circulation, potential infections on public transportation could be concerningly high. Accordingly, this study has two objectives: (1) to understand air circulation patterns inside the cabins of buses; and (2) to test the impact of different technologies in mitigating viruses from the air and on surfaces inside bus cabins. For the first objective, different devices, metrics and experiments (including colored smoke; videotaping; anemometers; pressure differentials; particle counts; and 3D numerical simulation models) were utilized and implemented to understand and quantify air circulation inside different buses, with different characteristics, …

Impact Of Dedicated Bus Lanes On Intersection Operations And Travel Time Model Development, Stephen Arhin, Babin Manandhar, Kevin Obike, Melissa Anderson

Mineta Transportation Institute

Over the years, public transit agencies have been trying to improve their operations by continuously evaluating best practices to better serve patrons. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) oversees the transit bus operations in the Washington Metropolitan Area (District of Columbia, some parts of Maryland and Virginia). One practice attempted by WMATA to improve bus travel time and transit reliability has been the implementation of designated bus lanes (DBLs). The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) implemented a bus priority program on selected corridors in the District of Columbia leading to the installation of red-painted DBLs on corridors of H Street, …