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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Construction & heavy industry
Value is added to projects through the relationships surrounding
the client; the focus of this book is therefore the client as
project, rather than the building on the ground. It shows how to
create and maintain effective relationships between the client and
the project team, as well as intra-coalition relationships
Over the past century, Alcoa has developed from a small entrepreneurial venture to a giant corporation; from a one-dimensional, owner-managed firm to a complex managerial bureaucracy; from a domestic company to a multinational enterprise. In the process, Alcoa survived a difficult transition from its long-held position as a monopolist (of aluminum production) to its current status as a firm operating in highly competitive international markets. This book presents Alcoa's history, from its beginnings as a speculative venture seeking to exploit an untested technology, through its rise to become the most successful monopoly in American history. By World War II, no other American corporation had developed its industry's markets more dramatically and then dominated them more completely. The book analyzes the undoing of Alcoa's monopoly by war and antitrust, as well as how Alcoa adapted to evolving forms of competition.
Stacks of stone preside over many bucolic and wooded landscapes in the mid-Atlantic states. Initially constructed more than two hundred years ago, they housed blast furnaces that converted rock and wood into the iron that enabled the United States to secure its national independence. By the eve of the Revolutionary War, furnaces and forges in the American colonies turned out one-seventh of the world's iron.Forging America illuminates the fate of labor in an era when industry, manhood, and independence began to take on new and highly charged meanings. John Bezis-Selfa argues that the iron industry, with its early concentrations of capital and labor, reveals the close links between industrial and political revolution. Through means ranging from religious exhortation to force, ironmasters encouraged or compelled workers free, indentured, and enslaved to adopt new work styles and standards of personal industry. Eighteenth-century revolutionary rhetoric hastened the demise of indentured servitude, however, and national independence reinforced the legal status of slavery and increasingly defined manual labor as "dependent" and racially coded. Bezis-Selfa highlights the importance of slave labor to early American industrial development. Research in documents from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries led Bezis-Selfa to accounts of the labor of African-Americans, indentured servants, new immigrants, and others. Their stories inform his highly readable narrative of more than two hundred years of American history."
Since Corby became the site of a new iron, steel & tube works in 1933, the village of 1,500 has grown into a new torn of 60,000. Many of the families that arrived came from north of the border and Corby became known as 'Little Scotland'. Almost 30 million tons of steel were produced in the forty-six-year life of what was once the largest plant of its type in Europe. The cost of producing steel from low-grade local ore spelled the end of the works once British Steel Corporation had built large plants with deepwater docking facilities, using high-grade imported ore. Once the shutdown was complete, work soon began on demolishing the plant and changing the face of the town that was, until 1980, totally reliant on one industry. The regeneration of the area, with the help of many millions of pounds from the Government, has been Corby pull itself back from becoming a possible ghost town. This book is a collection of images from inside The Works, showing scenes that could not be generally seen by the public. It provides an inside look into the works and is a record of an industry that is no more in the Northamptonshire countryside.
The invasion of AD 43 began the Romans'' settlement of Britain. The Romans brought with them a level of expertise that raised iron production in Britain from small localised sites to an enormous industry. Rome thrived on war and iron was vital to the Roman military establishment as well as to the civil population. In their pioneering work, David Sim and Isabel Ridge combine current ideas of iron making in Roman times with experimental archaeology. This book stretched far beyond dry theory and metallurgy alone; it covers all stages of this essential process from prospecting to distribution and describes the whole cycle of iron production. Clear photographs and line drawings illustrate the text well enough to allow keen readers to reproduce the artefacts for themselves. Fascinating to the general reader and all those with an interest in Roman history, this book in invaluable to students of archaeology and professional archaeologists alike. Dr David Sim is an archaeologist who ha combined studies of the technology of the Roman empire with his skills as a blacksmith. Dr Isabel Ridge is a mechanical engineer with a special interest in ancient technology.
This book examines the industrial ecology of 200 years of ironmaking with renewable resources in the Salisbury district of northwestern Connecticut.
Best remembered today for his fierce opposition to labor, especially during the Homestead Strike of 1892, Henry Clay Frick was also one of the most powerful and innovative industrialists of the nineteenth century. Kenneth Warren is the first historian to be given unrestricted access to the extensive Frick archives in Pittsburgh. Drawing on Frick's personal and business papers, as well as the records of the H. C. Frick Coal & Coke Company, the Carnegie Steel Company, and the U.S. Steel Corporation, Warren provides a wealth of new insights into Frick's relationship with such contemporaries as Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Charles Schwab, and Elbert Gary. He describes and analyzes the key decisions that formed labor and industrial policy in the iron and steel industry during a period of growth that remains unparalleled in American business history. Not only an industrial biography of a driving force in American industry and the organization of American business, Triumphant Capitalism makes a major contribution to our understanding of the history of the basic industries, the shaping of society, locality, and region - and thereby of laying the foundations for the value systems and landscapes of present-day America.
The activist reign of the Emperor Wu-di (140-87 BC) saw major changes in the government of the Chinese state, its relations with foreign powers, and its economy, including the role of the government in the economy. In 117 BC, several state monopolies were established, and thus began an immense upheaval in the Chinese economy which has remained a matter of controversy through the centuries. This text brings both literary and archaeological evidence to bear in an investigation of the history of the Han state iron monopoly, with special consideration of the reasons for its establishment and for the intense opposition which it provoked.
A lively, personalized account incorporating objective analysis and solid information accumulated over 42 years, this book presents a graphic picture of the construction industry from an insider's point of view. The volume focuses on the culture of construction workers, the management style of contractors, and the structural and organizational nature of the industry. It considers such unique features of construction as its craft-oriented technology, decentralized decision-making by workers on the job site, and non-bureaucratic methods of field supervision. Using the research of others, government publications, and his own intimate experience in the industry, the author provides an insightful view of a unique industry in modern America. The book opens with an overview of the industry, illustrating how construction is organized, the craft breakdown, and the cultural values of the crafts. It then considers such topics as workers' job satisfaction, craft organization of the work, and the dangerous nature of construction. Separate chapters are devoted to women construction workers, a recent phenomenon in the industry, and to minorities and the role of affirmative action. In conclusion, the book argues that construction is significant both as a major industry and as a model for organizing work to produce worker satisfaction.
If one party to a construction contract does work that turns out to be defective, the other party is allowed by law to a set offa or deduct a sum required to make good that defect. This happens frequently in construction contracts and regularly involves large sums of money, disputes, and litigation. It is a complex area of the law with a number of cases, as well as the contractual provisions themselves, which prescribe a partya s right of set--off. This book clearly describes the law and examines the provisions of the main building and civil engineering contracts.
"For my very first day in union construction I was sent to a bank in downtown Boston where a journeyman needed a hand pulling wire. Arriving early with my new tools and pouch, I knocked on the glass door in the high-rise lobby and explained to the guard that I was a new apprentice working for the electrical contractor. He refused to let me in. So I sat down on the tile floor, my backpack and toolpouch beside me, and waited for the man whose name I had written down alongside the address and directions on a piece of paper: Dan. The guard explained to Dan later that he'd figured I was a terrorist planning to bomb the bank. In 1978, that seemed more likely than that I might actually be an apprentice electrician."Susan Eisenberg began her apprenticeship with Local 103 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in 1978, the year President Jimmy Carter set goals and timetables for the hiring of women on federally assisted construction projects and for the inclusion of women in apprenticeship programs. Eisenberg expected not only a challenging job and the camaraderie of a labor union but also the chance to be part of a historic transformation, social and economic, that would make the construction trades accessible to women.That transformation did not happen. In this book, full of the raw drama and humor found on a construction site, Eisenberg gracefully weaves the voices of thirty women who worked as carpenters, electricians, ironworkers, painters, and plumbers to examine why their numbers remained small. Speaking as if to a friend, women recall their decisions to enter the trades, their first days on the job, and their strategies to gain training and acceptance. They assess, with thought, passion, and twenty years' perspective, the affirmative action efforts. Eisenberg ends with a discussion of the practices and policies that would be required to uproot gender barriers where they are deeply embedded in the organization and culture of the workplace.
The Firth Brown company was formed in 1930 after the amalgamation of Thomas Firth & Sons and John Brown & Co. Known throughout the world, their products were exported to all five continents. Both companies were at the forefront of technological development and they combined to form one of Sheffield's largest employers.
This second edition of Building Procurement has been revised to take into account recent developments in procurement, such as the Private Finance initiative, as well as some of the recommendations in the Latham Report and its working groups. The author sets out the basics of the building process, the principal players, along with general conventions and background information on building contracts and conditions of appointment for consultants. Fourteen case studies, based on real projects principally from the author's experience, are included to illustrate the progressive nature of procurement in practice. Examples of good and bad procurement decisions are given in the studies, with a postscript and comment on the reasons for success or failure.
The American construction industry, reponsible for nearly 4% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, directly employs over five million people and provides millions of additional support jobs in related fields. This book provides an introductory overview of the economic aspects of the industry, including the historical development of building activity from earliest times to modern day market-based construction, including the work of individual artisans to complex construction unions. The book explores current trends in labor force participation; the measurement of industry performance; the determinants of investment; government involvement; competition; wage determination; training; and worker safety.
Drawing upon case studies of firms in the steel industry, authors show that companies competing internationally can pool their strengths to offset their individual weaknesses, enabling them to build economically successful entities more easily than if each company tried to go it alone in competition with rivals. In doing so they show how the world steel industry emerged into a group of international joint ventures and how in each of these transnational marriages the whole became greater than the sum of its parts. Among the authors' main points are: cultural conflicts are minimized by economic success but magnified by failure; expertise and commitment can overcome national differences, and even failing international joint ventures can be rehabilitated. Important reading for professionals in all areas of international business and for their colleagues in the academic community. Included in each case study is a history of the firms and the emerging joint venture. Authors described the condition of facilities, the rehabilitation and construction of new facilities, the financial relationships between firms and the sources of funding, and their corporate structures. Cultural differences between firms and their impact on the success of the relationship are examined closely, with particular emphasis on personnel selection, training supervision, labor relations, retention and promotion policies and policies on tenure and layoff. Authors look at labor productivity and the use of participative management and other team approaches, relating them to such measurable variables as product quality, corporate profitability, and indeed the ultimate survival of each newly created firm. From there the authors show how the experiences of the steel industry and the lessons learned from its transnational alliances can be applied to other industries and to their own joint ventures.
The knowledge and use of metals has played an important role in the evolution of many African cultures. This bibliography brings together, in one volume, publications on the origins, spread, mining, smelting, smithing, use, functions, aesthetics, significance, and impact of various metals and their alloys on African cultures. Covering African metallurgy from the African Iron Age to the present, this guide is a useful reference tool for archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, history, art, and religion. Arranged geographically by country, the volume is fully annotated and includes both printed and electronic sources.
This is a detailed account of the British and German steel industries' performances during three decades that were marked by radical changes in technology, in sources of raw materials and in product markets. Relying on governmental and corporate archives as well as on the contemporary trade literature, Professor Wengenroth has drawn a meticulous picture of how managements in the two countries met strategic problems raised by these changes. The author does not however, merely trace technological developments; rather he uses them as a backdrop for a contribution to the long-running debate on Britain's relative industrial decline in the late nineteenth century. Was this the result of massive entrepreneurial failure or was it merely the by-product of evolutionary changes that bestowed automatic competitive advantage on latecomers such as the Germans? The author argues a detailed case for the latter scenario and, in doing so, makes a major contribution to the debate on the 'Great Depression'.
Named one of the fifty best books of 1992 by Publishers Weekly More than a century has passed since the infamous lockout at the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel Company. The dramatic and violent events of July 6, 1892, are among the mst familiar in the history of American labor. And yet, few historians have adequately addressed the issues and the culture that shaped that day. For many Americans, Homestead remains simply the story of a bloody clash between management and labor. In The Battle for Homestead, Paul Krause calls upon the methods and insights of labor history, intellectual history, anthropology, and the history of technology to situate the events of the lockout and their significance in the broad context of America's Guilded Age. Utilizing extensive archival material, much of it heretofore unknown, he reconstructs the social, intellectual, and political climate of the burgeoning post-Civil War steel industry. The Battle for Homestead brings to life many of the individuals -both in and outside Homestead- who played a role in the events leading to July 1892. From the inventor of the modern Bessemer steel mill to the most obscure immigrant workers, from Christopher L. Magee, the "boss" of Pittsburgh machine politics, to Thomas A. Armstrong, the tireless editor of the National Labor Tribune, from the "Laird of Skibo" himself (Andrew Carnegie) to the labor leader and mayor of Homestead, "Old Beeswax" (Thomas W. Taylor), Krause shows how all these lives became intertwined, often in surprising and unpredictable ways, as the drama of the lockout unfolded. As the nineteenth century was drawing to a close, the Homestead Lockout dramatized the all-important question: Can the land of industry and technological innovation continue to be "the land of the free"? Can material progress, with its inevitable social and economic inequities, be made compatible with the American commitment to democracy for all? Twentieth-century history has demonstrated all too clearly the intesity of this dilemma. In addressing some of the thorniest issues of the last century, The Battle for Homestead demonstrates the enduring legacy and relevance of Homestead over a century later.
"For years I have been convinced that there is not an honest bone
in your body. Now I know that you are a god-damned thief," Henry
Clay Frick reportedly told Andrew Carnegie at their last meeting in
1900, just before J. P. Morgan bought the Carnegie Steel Company
and founded United States Steel.
Business genius and hedonist, Charles Schwab entered the steel industry as an unskilled laborer and within twenty years advanced to the presidency of Carnegie Steel. He later became the first president of U.S. Steel and then founder of Bethlehem Steel. His was one of the most spectacular and curious success stories in an era of great industrial giants. How did Schwab progress from day laborer to titan of industry? Why did Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan select him to manage their multmillion-dollar enterprises? And how did he forfeit their confidence and lose the preseidency of U.S. Steel? Drawing upon previously undiscovered sources, Robert Hessen answers these questions in the first biography of Schwab.
When Charles Martin Hall patented the process for refining the metal in 1886, it was far from self-evident that the new technology would be a business success. Problems involving the technology had to be solved. Capital and a labour force were needed. The most pressing entrepreneurial dilemma was the need to develop markets for what was then a novelty product. George David Smith examines how Alcoa met these problems, with special attention to innovation, from Alcoa's beginnings through its development into one of the most successful monopolies in American history. By World War II, no other American corporation had developed its industry's markets more dramatically and then dominated them more completely. The book then analyzes the undoing of Alcoa's monopoly by war and antitrust, and examines how the firm adapted to evolving forms of oliogopolistic and global competition.
The fourth edition of Wilmot Smith on Construction Contracts continues to take a clear and practical approach to the law and practice relating to construction contracts in the UK. It provides comprehensive coverage of the substantive law and modern dispute resolution procedures in the field of construction and gives clear guidance when seeking difficult answers. Paul Darling Q.C. has joined Richard Wilmot-Smith Q.C. as co-editor. Together they have updated, refined and extended the work's coverage. The author team includes new and high-profile practitioners in the field of international arbitration (including Peter Rees Q.C. and David Bateson) and ADR (with Edwin Glasgow Q.C. joining Marion Smith Q.C. in re-casting the chapter on mediation). David Sawtell has considerably re-cast the chapter on adjudication. The law on extra contractual claims (unjust enrichment) has been substantively revised and updated by a leading expert on unjust enrichment. The work provides key practical tips including: where and when you issue proceedings; what the judges will expect and their preferences; and how trials can be made shorter. A separate section analyses enforcement of adjudicators' awards, covering recent case law on this area. This is carefully examined and digested in detail to ensure the reader has an understanding of the pitfalls of enforcement. Richard Wilmot-Smith QC and Paul Darling QC ensure that the work continues to provide an essential source of reference on this area of the law. Their practical approach and reliance on clear exposition is prevalent throughout this book, and it is allied with deep scholarship to secure its position as a definitive work on construction law.
The fully revised and updated third edition of this textbook provides a comprehensive guide to the property development process, taking readers from initial project evaluation to planning, funding, construction and disposal. The last ten years have seen regional planning apparatus swept away and replaced by new neighbourhood plans and more prominence is now given to financial viability in planning policy and decision making. The uncertainty of the financial crisis and the associated housing crash have given way to a new wave of commercial and housing development, and in this period of growth it is more important than ever to be aware of the risks and opportunities inherent in the property market. This book is an ideal companion for students on courses in estate management, land economics, property development, real estate, surveying, construction, planning and related subjects. The book will also have value for practitioners in any of these fields who as part of their CPD obligations may be looking to refresh and update their knowledge. |
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