On Tuesday April 22nd, our lab activity was to go observe two constructiong projects on campus, the new dorm near Litton Reeves and the new basketball facility. I partnered up with Krysta and we went to observe. We found several similarities and several differences. We were looking at specifics and then we realized that all the commonalities and all the differences could be placed into pretty broad catagories that probably could be carried on for multiple construction sites.

We could find numerous similarities in things like the states of completion, the materials used, the site layouts, general housekeeping, and site security. We noticed that both projects were finalizing, nearing completion. Also, both were using the same building materials, hokie stone and precast concrete, and they both used precast window framing.For site security purposes, both sites were fenced in with fences with green netting. Similarities in site layouts could be seen also, both had worktrailers and storage tanks on site, along with sample mock walls in place for easy visualizion.


Along with the similarities we also found some differences in the same generalized catagories. While both sites utilized the same materials, the dorm is primarily hokiestone while the basketball facility is maily precast concrete. Also, while both sites had small groups of laborers working on several different taks, a lot larger workforce was visible on the dorm project. You saw mainly laborers at the dorm and hardly any higher ups. On the other hand, at the basketball facility you saw more higher ups and not as many laborers. This could have been because the basketball facility was closer to completion and doing more interior work so the supervisors were possibly checking the exterior and completing their punch list. Machinery could be seen on both sites, but the dorm had a lot more and larger equipment. Again, this is probably because the basketball facility is closer to finishing and done with all the heavy equipment. For general housekeeping you could see some differences in the jobsites. While both sites were extremely muddy the basketball facility seemed to be better organized and layed out. However, this is probably due to the fact that the basketball facility has a lot more space to utilize than the dorm does. Therefore the dorm's jobsite looks a little messy and unorganized when this might not be the case.