Planning

Planning is an important part of everyday life as well as in the professional world. Things such as planning your day to allow time to get to the shops or pick up the kids and any other tasks require you to plan your time, although for regular life it is commonly done in your head, however a common example of everyday life planning in a written form is the shopping list.

In uni life, student diaries allow students to plan ahead and mark when assignments are due or when an exam takes place and thus how to allocate enough time to prepare for it.

In our collaborative effort, planning becomes an essential part of working in a team as we need to plan when we will have certain tasks completed, time and places to meet as well as the allocation of our tasks discussed earlier which is a form of planning our work.

In the professional world, in my personal experience, each week a list of all current jobs is prepared and ranked in order of preference and due date. I am then required to follow this plan to complete the work. Without this planning, dates would be missed, jobs overlooked and in general a far more disorganised practice would be run.

So what does it mean exactly to plan? Simply to organize what you need to do ahead of time and allocate the time in between to achieve your desired outcomes.

Some examples of well known planning:

· The season draw of the football codes, released before the season starts plans every match, venue, date and time with which a game will be played.

· WW2 D-Day invasion – this major military offensive was planned as the allies big attack against the enemy and is one of the larger logistical planning tasks undertaken.

· The tube railway system in London – a plan copied by many as its well organised structure is the yard stick for railway planning.

So essentially good planning allows the smooth running (or at least attempted smooth running) of a task and gives a structured organisation for all to adhere to.

References:
http://articles.bplans.com/index.php/business-articles/writing-a-business-plan/What-Makes-a-Good-Plan?/
viewedMon May 26, 2008

Remuneration

Remuneration is typically in the form of money paid for work completed. It is how the world works, I do some work for you and you pay me for it.

'Some examples of remuneration are:

• salaries and wages
• gratuities paid through an employer
• bonuses, commission and other similar payments
• vacation pay, taxable allowances and benefits
• directors' fees
• payments for casual labour
• amounts paid by an employer to 'top up' benefits, and
• advances of salaries and wages.'

However it is not always as simple as that and there are many variations along the way that can effect whether or not you are paid and how much you are paid.

Firstly, there should be an agreement or contract between the two parties for exactly what needs to be done and how much it is worth. You should then document what has been completed and alert the client of any variations that happen along the way that may alter the original arrangement.

These could be, in the architectural world for example, drastic changes imposed by council or the client that require the amending of plans and as such extra work which can lead to a variation in payment. If these things are not discussed and left until the end, disputes can and do arise.

Remuneration though is not always in the form of money, it may be a contra deal or in the context of university work a grade or result that allows you to proceed to the next level of study.

In our collaboration work where the remuneration is not payment but grading, it is important that all members feel there input is rewarded accordingly and is not dragged down by others.
The allocation of work done earlier in the semester would qualify as a variation as mentioned earlier, as certain unknown elements now require more work than thought and as such we all need to chip in to other areas to complete the task to ultimately get our remuneration.


References:
http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/english/taxes/eht/faq_remuneration.html viewed tue may 20th 2008

Context

Context

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”

The above quote relates well to our project as each part of what we do has a relationship to other (sometimes larger) parts of our building and environment.

For example our building (as discussed in hierarchy) begins on the lower floor for ordinary people, but that is to house more prestigious upper levels which then leads the focus toward the central dome. This in turn is set in our nations capital. So our building is designed to meet the context of our highest federal court.

This context is important as it effects the design of the building, as many lower courts built all around the nation are not as symbolic in the nature of there designs and are more designed to fit the context of there own local environments.

The actual materials used to contruct the building however do not appear to be specific for the context of the surrounding site or the building itself as Harry Seidler has used almost identical designs in buildings including the MLC building in Martin Place, Sydney which shares no contextual meaning with the high court of Australia in Canberra but remarkable resemblance in materials.

THE MLC BUILDING SYDNEY

The proposed High Court Of Australia Canberra

Many buildings, in particular energy efficient buildings, are designed with the environmental context in mind and materials chosen represent that. For example many buildings in Tropical Darwin are built on stilts to create airflow underneath with louvers to increase cross ventilation and also provide some shade to be outdoors to combat the tropical environment.

This is in keeping with the context of the building environment and would be out of place in Siberia……

So building context is usually related to the surrounding area and the use of the building, however it is not always totally encompassed and general non specific parts of the design can be used without affecting the overall context of the design.

References:
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/context/ viewed may 13 2008
http://www.futuredarwin.nt.gov.au/recreation/building.html viewed may 13 2008
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=108161 viewed may 13 2008

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is an order which is used to progress a certain element through logical steps i.e. in a typical computer you have a file which is stored in a folder which is then stored on a drive.
This means you can find your information simply by following the hierarchy of: C:\simon\hierarchy.exe

Governments have a hierarchy from the prime minister downwards and probably the most common and well known hierarchy is in the military where a rank is assigned to each soldier and they must follow orders accordingly.

Hierarchy is also present in our collaborative group with myself being labelled the team leader. However, whilst this may be relevant to solving disputes amongst members, what I have learnt is that the real team leader is the person who continually ensures that the project is heading towards the desired outcome. In this regard, whilst I have done my best, our group tutor Matt has really been the group leader.

Hierarchy in relation to our building:

The building hierarchy consists of a square superstructure turned diagonally on a podium to orientate its forecourt symbolically towards parliament. The superstructure consists of vertical service cores carrying long span roof trusses in a crossover pattern which supports a glazed dome at the centre.
The glass dome provides light to the central open space while the enclosing walls are formed by long span beams with glazing in between attaching to the leg of the square cross. 3 of the enclosed 4 quarters of the cross are occupied by the circular court chambers while the remaining quarter forms the entrance.

The building structure reflects a social hierarchy in that the base contains the administrative offices and services while the upper levels accommodate barrister’s and judges chambers. It could also be claimed that the glass dome then extends the hierarchy to the heavens in a subtle reminder that there is only one other power higher than the courts. Very medieval in concept and reminiscent of the great cathedrals of Europe.

REFERENCES:
'Architecture for the new world. The work of Harry Seidler'
By Peter Blake
Horwitz Australia Ltd., Sydney
Wittenborn and Co.,New York
Karl Kraemer Verlag, Stuttgart

Intent

Intent to me means what I intend to achieve and how I intend to achieve it.
My intents for this collaboration project are:
* To learn how to work in a team environment to achieve an outcome.
* Improve my skills in new areas of computing (UT3, wikis etc)
* To improve my presentation skills.
* Finally to improve my skills in researching and presenting a building with no detailed and specific information.
* And of course to pass my subject.......

With all of the above combined I intent to be a more employable person with a wider range of skill sets and collaborative skills than other potential applicants.

ACHIEVING MY GOALS:

Working in a team environment
'Projects often require that people work together to accomplish a common goal; therefore, teamwork is an important factor in most organizations. Effective collaborative skills are necessary to work well in a team environment. Many businesses attempt to enhance their employees' collaborative efforts through workshops and cross-training to help people effectively work together and accomplish shared goals.' (1)

With the above quote in mind, this subject has become a 'workshop' and 'cross training' which will help us learn to work together to achieve our desired outcome. How I intent to improve and learn in this area is simply by participating with my team and completing my set tasks which will in turn teach me some of the pitfalls of collaborative work and also show my strengths and weaknesses in the area.

Improving my skills in computing
My intentions are to conquer new technologies such as UT3, wiki's and other collaborative tools, along with new software encounted in video editing and presentations.
I will achieve this by completing tutorials given to us along with my own research from several internet sites. With this as my base knowledge I will then start the tried and true method of trial and error within these programs!

My Presentation skills
Through the multiple presentations required I will learn as each one happens (and from observing others) the best way to keep my audience interested and awake.....
From our initial presentation I thought we did well in regards to keeping people entertained as there have been others which have been....well simply boring. I have learnt that to get your message across (no matter how good your subject knowledge is) you must keep people interested and doing so with light humour seems to be a good way to inform.

Research
Last semester I completed a subject which required the study of built buildings with heritage value, whilst in this subject we are required to research a building that was not built and as such requires guess work and comparisons of similar buildings for information. I will become skilled at this type of research through the development of our model.

This is my intent and how I plan to follow through with my intentions to get my result.

REFERENCES:
'teamwork' viewed 26th April 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork

Knowledge

Thinking of knowledge in a collaborative effort makes the following come to mind:
1 - What knowledge of the project as a whole do we possess.
2 - What individual knowledge of specific instances of the project do we each possess.
3 - What knowledge needs to be learnt in order to complete the required tasks.
4 - And finally the knowledge of the actual building we have chosen to do.

The project as a whole, I believe we came into the project with a fair bit to be learnt. But it soon became clear what would be needed to achieve the end result (our building in UT3) , but not yet the specifics of how we would achieve it. We have broken it down to choosing a building, choosing how we would create the building and then finally how we would incorporate it all into the UT3 engine.

Our individual knowledge of certain aspects of this process were also discussed and became apparent early on (V for example has excellent knowledge of 3ds max whilst Marko has exceptional knowledge of Revit). None of us had knowledge of UT3 and is something we will all gain and learn from each other throughout our collaborative effort to produce the final product.

So what we need to all learn is obviously UT3 but also increase our knowledge of existing systems to aid in the development of our building with our team members. An important aspect of the pitfalls of teamwork is also valuable knowledge to acquire. Timelines to achieve goals are critical to ensuring we are all progressing at the necessary speed to meet our final deadline.

And lastly our knowledge of the High Court of Australia by Harry Seidler and how it fits together with the surrounding landscape will vastly improve in order to complete our final task. How the building is constructed and the different materials used will all be necessary to complete the model, and studying his existing buildings help us gain an insight into what he may have intended for parts of the building with which there is no certain information.

RECORDS

Keeping records is a crucial (although a little boring) element in collaborative work. It provides documented proof of what people are committed to, what people have said and is essential in resolving disputes when they arise….and when money is involved, disputes always happen!

A first hand real world example of keeping records (in the form of minutes in this case) for dispute resolution, was a council meeting for a medium density job I worked on a few years back, where council agreed to the colour schedule in a meeting (which ended up being built) but conflicted with a note on the drawings (a leftover that was not changed). When council insisted the roof be changed to match the drawing, a review of the minutes revealed they had actually agreed to the change and it was ruled the roof could stay as it was built.

In our collaborative work, documenting what has been agreed on is going to ensure we all pull our own weight and achieve the goals we have agreed on. The email below, which we all have, clearly shows us agreeing on the division of work amongst our team.

Architect Peter Aeberli says ‘what if the project is not running smoothly, or relationships break down and the architect, realising it has long since expended the contract fee and there is still work to do, makes a claim for additional fees, which the client rejects?’

‘This means the architect must provide evidence that the work for which it is claiming additional fees is extra to that for which the contract fee is payable. These records must be sufficient to refute any suggestion that the work
is not extra at all, but was part of the originally envisaged scope of work’

So well kept records are essential for maintaining a collaborative effort and are absolute in solving disputes where members of the project cannot agree on who is responsible for certain work.

References:

Good housekeeping Better records are the key to claims for additional fees

http://www.aeberli.co.uk/articles/PRACTICE.pdf - viewed on friday april 11 2008