NURSYAFIQAH BINTI RUSLI

Our group is doing two Case Study that happened in Malaysia and foreign country. Case in Malaysia happened in Penang Island which is the collapse of the Second Penang Bridge ramp while the case that happened in foreign country is the collapse of the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Walkways in United States of America.

Penang Second Bridge is one of the biggest project in Malaysia. The incident was happening while the project is under construction. On the 6th June 2013, 30-meter length of a section connector of the bridge at Batu Maung Interchange had collapsed at around 6.50 pm. The incident caused the dead of one civilian and injured to others four which is two civilian and two workers which is from Indonesia and Myanmar. The possible causes that lead to the incident is being investigated from several aspects. The main causes that lead to the incident are the workers were not registered with the board, the failure of the formwork support, the weak risk management, and the poor drainage system.

Development of the Hyatt Regency Kansas City was initiated in 1976 by Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation. 2. Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation hired Gillum-Colaco, Inc. of Texas as the consulting structural engineers. Gillum-Colaco worked together with Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation and project architects to develop the plans and create structural drawings and specifications. However, Gillum-Colaco did not perform the structural engineering but subcontracted this work to its subsidiary, JackD, Gillum and Associates, Ltd. General contractor for the project is Eldridge Construction Company, then hired Havens Steel Company as the subcontractor for fabrication and erection of the atrium steel. There are two possible reasons for the collapse of the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Walkways which are heavy load that cannot be supported by beam for the walkways of both fourth and second floor and negligence of person in charge who gives approval for the design of the walkways.

Lessons that can be learned from the case study of Penang Second Bridge Ramp Collapsed Under Construction is stability of footing foundation that support formwork are really important to make a structure stable. The collapse of the ramp is caused by the failure of the formwork support. Meanwhile, stability of beam is really important for the design of the walkways in the case study of The Collapse of Hyatt Regency Kasas City Walkways. Overload because the beam cannot support the walkways and then collapse. Next, civil engineer construction should have ethical considerations when deals with the designing, planning, construction and management of infrastructures and also in term of safety aspect.

Title : Development of Long Range Communication for Seismic Vibration Monitoring

Supervisor : Dr. Nurul mu’azzah binti abdul latiff

Seismic waves are always related to the occurrence of earthquake. The energy that stored is the Earth’s crust and had sudden released can generate seismic waves. Buildings, bridges and roads will be collapsed due to strong shaking at the surface of Earth that is caused by seismic waves. Besides that, moving heavy vehicle or machinery and drilling activities can also lead to the generation of seismic waves. The seismic vibration monitoring is very essential to play role as a contributor of methodologies for dealing with disasters or environmental catastrophes. Next, analysing the estimations to detect conceivably unsafe vibrations for structures, roads, dams and others is also one of the purposes of seismic vibration monitoring.

In current practice, researchers have to go to remote places to collect seismic data manually via sensor node. Only after a certain period of time, the researchers will collect the data from the sensor node to be transferred to the external memory devices such as laptop. Local storage such as microSD memory card is still one of the options for the conventional seismic vibration monitoring to store the information of seismic. Nevertheless, there is a finite capacity of data that can be saved in a memory card. Hence, researchers have to erase the collected data once the memory of sensor node is full in order to acquire new data. Therefore, this mechanism can be improved by using cloud storage to keep the data where these data can then be accessed by the researchers at any time. In the middle of a technological golden age, cloud storage plays a dominant role to save a substantial amount of data. This can be done via a long range communication between the sensor node and the receiver.

The project focuses on developing a long range communication for seismic vibration monitoring based on Long Range (LoRa) technology and implementing and verifying the workability of the monitoring system in term of packet delivery ratio and end to end delay. The project including an electronic design and programming. It can detect and sense vibration by using ADXL335 3-Axis Accelerometer and use Long Range (LoRa) Technology which is RN2903 LoRa Shield 915 MHz for long distances wireless transmission of the seismic vibration data between sensor node and base node. Cloud storage will be using for storage of the data. The online access monitoring for seismic vibration data this project is used Ubidots. This FYP implement Arduino UNO as microcontroller and for programming part.

Date: 16/4/2019

Time: 2.30pm - 5.00pm

Venue: P19 DK6

Talk: Engineering Employment Challengers

An industrial seminar was held at DK6, P19, School of Electrical Engineering on 16^th April 2019 from 2.30 pm until 5pm. This seminar was delivered by Ir. Juraimi Masood from Competent Engineer – 132 kV, PTP Gelang Patah.  First, he shared about his education from school until university. The journey of his education at university started at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Jalan Gurney in 1982 and then he took Telecom Training in 1983. After that, he further study at University of Hartford in 1984. He started his career as Management Trainee Shiprepair Estimator at MSE Pasir Gudang from 1986 until 1991. Then, he continue his career in a heavy engineering field at Sime Sembawang that involved design, project plan, project cost, construction, quality and safety from 1992 until 1996. During 1996 until 1997, his career journey continued as resident engineer at Commission the Air Cond Plant, KTA Tenaga (KLCC). During that year, he faced so many challenges as engineer which he has to deal with clients, colleague and contractors. He continued his sharing sessions about development of Tanjung Pelepas and then he talked about his work experience at  Berth Construction and Container Yard Construction. 

                Furthermore, he shared his experience as electrical engineer at 132kV main intake station. He said that as engineer, at first we should know and really understand about basic electric and electronic design for example 132Kv single line diagram and 132 bus section control. He also talked about an important of safety at construction sites. As engineer, he said that we just cannot know about engineering design only but we have to know about finance, human resources and others. After that, he continued his sharing about challenges when fresh graduates start work as engineer. Engineer always think and have positive view of their managers and believe that their managers can offer experience 59%, wisdom 41% and a willingness to mentor 33%. In reality, he said that not all managers are like that because each people have so many different personality and attitude. Then, managers in general have different view of their employees have unrealistic compensation expectations 51%, a poor work ethic 47% and are easily distracted 48%.

                Meanwhile, he shared about employer’s expectations. First, engineer should have in depth technical competence in a specific engineering discipline. Second, engineers have to acquire ability to function effectively in a group as leader or manager as well as an effective team member. Third, engineer should have ability to acquire and apply knowledge of engineering fundamentals. Fourth, engineer should have ability to communication effectively to colleagues and community at large. Fifth, engineer must have ability to undertake problem identification, formulation and solution and having social awareness on sustainable development. Engineer also should have ability to utilise a systems approach to design and evaluate operational performance and lastly have ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyse and interpret data. At the end of his sharing, he talked about an important of engineering ethics and shared some quotes.