1. Temperature. The heating and cooling systems in your home use the most electricity. You want to be comfortable, but be conscientious, too. During the summer months, try to keep the temperature in your house as warm as you can and still be comfortable. During the winter months, do the opposite. Stay warm, but try not to crank up the heat to incredibly high temperatures.

2. Light bulbs. Change out your traditional bulbs with fluorescent or energy-saver bulbs. Fluorescent bulbs use significantly less energy to operate, and energy-saver and LED bulbs use much, much less.

3. Old appliances. Either replace them, or change your thinking about them. Instead of using that ancient fridge, get a new, energy-saving fridge. If you keep that old fridge, scoot it away from the wall—this will save energy. Also, keep the coils clean.

4. Cooking. Always choose the littlest appliance that you can when you are cooking. For example, if you are tempted to use the oven, consider whether or not the microwave or toaster would do instead. The oven uses a giant amount of energy. When you do use the oven, cook up enough to result in leftover food.

5. Unplug. While turning of appliances and lights is good, you should also unplug all of your electric appliances when you are finished with them. These appliances still suck up energy through their cords when those cords are plugged into a socket. Don’t waste energy this way; go ahead and unplug them!

Tons of money can be saved by simply following these relatively easy, nearly common-sense tips. Start making little changes, and see big changes in your electric bill!

Most look to the construction manager to supply this safety:  it is the manager’s responsibility, practically, ethically, and legally, to keep his workers safe.  And while this is true to some extent – a good construction manager certainly goes beyond the legal OSHA requirements, great responsibility also lies within the hands of the architects and engineers in the earliest phases of the building project.  These individuals must plan a practical, safe environment for the construction workers.

Aside from the moral and ethical reasons, the economics alone are enough reason for a manager to be focused on safety.  Injury-related costs can be extraordinarily high.  And while the costs of materials and buildings are more easily assessed, the costs where human injury is concerned are more nebulous.  On the one hand, a life cannot be measured monetarily; on the other hand, some compensation, usually monetary, must be awarded in cases of injury or death.  Insurers know this, and will evaluate the company’s safety and injury history in order to determine the company’s premium.

Cost Considerations during Accidents:

*hours of work given up due to injury

*repairs on equipment or project due to accident

*rescheduling due to delay

*higher insurance premium

Safety should be a prime concern for construction managers—the costs, in every sense, are too huge.  Managers should seriously consider hiring someone as a full-time safety manager.  The manager would be responsible for creating the company’s safety policy and practical procedures, and would train employees about safety.  He would also assist on-site with safety issues, evaluating and reporting on all safety issues and accidents.  He would inspect current sites, and provide relevant research and assistance.

The long-term loans usually occur when a company is in its beginning, formative stages.  Often the money from the loan will help buy structures or transportation or the basic gear required for the startup.  Because of the riskiness for the lender, the construction firm should have some background, and should be relatively established.

Loans over a briefer period of time are also given for these beginning endeavors, but usually help with more immediate needs of equipment and maintenance.

Bank loans, in general, are difficult to come by.  And construction, in particular, represents an unlikely risk for banks.  Banks often expect the construction company to pay a large part through its inside reserves.

Another alternative is debentures, which are like loans you pay at a particular date, and which have a fixed interest rate.

Alternatively, the finance could come in the form of shares.  The more shares are offered up to buyers, the more money available to the company. The company itself often controls many shares, and all shareholders have some entitlement to the company’s profits.

A few other, less-common tactics a company could consider include the following:

Retained earnings:  Company owners do not keep the profit, but instead put the money back into the company.

Bank Overdrafts:  Similar to a loan, the overdraft is allowed for a particular time or amount, after which the company will repay the bank only for the overdraft period.

Exchange Creditors:  Sometimes, a company can exchange lenders for debtors, and can assist with the company’s present financial situation.

Companies should also consider looking inward for ways to create capital:

Corporation tax:  This is usually paid over one year, and during that time, the company would have the money for immediate projects.

Depreciation:  By assessing the value of assets, a company could garner some significant capital.  If certain materials had not depreciated, the company could have that money at its disposal.

Some typical construction contracts include Target Cost contracts, Item Rate contracts, and Percentage Rate contracts, along with combination contracts, such as Cost and Percentage Rate contracts or Cost and Fixed Fee contracts.  Included here are a few basics of the legal aspects involved in contracts.

To begin with, there are certain requirements that contracts must meet to be valid in the first place:

1.  Capable and sane parties.  This may seem obvious, but it is a major factor.  All of the parties have to be able, by law, to make this kind of agreement and to legally pay.  The contract could become invalid if any of the people involved is found incapable due to age, illness, inebriation, or due to being in another binding agreement that interferes.

2.  Legal material in contract.  A violation here might happen if the terms infringe on local codes or regulations.

3.  Acceptance by both parties.  The unquestionable agreement must be clearly documented for it to be legal.

4.  Unforced agreement.  The contract participants must not be involved by force.

A contract is brought to termination when one of the following happens:

1.  Everyone fulfills his contractual duties.

2.  The contract is breached.*

3.  Everyone agrees to end the contract.

4.  Something happens that makes the contract impossible to fulfill.

5.  The contract is rendered void by legal means.

*A breach in contract occurs when a party breaks the contract without good reason.  When this happens, the breaching party will have to compensate the other party for the failure and resulting losses.

 In the original sense of the term, value engineering represented the systematic method of doing required operations at the least cost.  Value engineering, as an expense justification practice, had no repercussions on the finished product’s overall quality.  Thus, the definition became altered to emphasize this.  Now, value engineering is understood as the systematic method of pinpointing and extricating extraneous expense—that is, expense that does not have any effect on the final product.

There are some similarities between quantity surveying and value engineering.  For example, both quantity surveyors and value engineers create and implement maintenance packages.  They also both predict future spending.  Quantity surveyors and value engineers advise on the limitations of spending and costs, as well as on budgeting and on life cycles.  Both jobs participate in many analyses and estimates of expenses, and they both asses manual work in the realm of expense forecasting.

However, the differences are many, and specific, between quantity surveying and value engineering.  Quantity surveyors do quite a few things that value engineers do not.  For example, surveyors write up contracts and fit complicated plans into feasible packages.  They also work up evaluations for insurance and subcontract forms.  Surveyors do much as the construction process occurs, such as monitoring cost and settling construction disagreements and contracts.

What is a penalty?  A penalty in this case, as in any contractual agreement, is the money that the contract-breaking person(s) will pay.  The word penalty does not refer to the actual losses, per se, but to a sign of the failure itself—a fine, much like a fine for a library book or traffic ticket.

In the United States, there is some question as to the courts’ handling of Liquidated Damages cases; the courts do not always use the Liquidated Damages Clause in the same way.  The difficulty seems to arise because sometimes the actual losses because of the construction delay is sometimes much smaller than the amount stated in the clause; but sometimes, the actual loss is much greater.

In England and Australia, the courts tend to side with the contracts, and to uphold those as self-contained, binding documents.  They, in turn, will uphold the individual contract’s clauses instead of considering the tangible loss.

Here is a list, thanks to Reuters, of some notable cases that have dealt with the issue of liquidation and delay in contract:

The Galoo Case (UK):  While not a construction case, the Galoo case dealt with the binding nature of two opposing parties’ failures to deliver a service and to pay.

The St. Jones College Case (Australia):  This case was a bit tricky, as the contractor had a previous contract which seemed to result in the construction delay.

The Utley James Case (US):  The US courts in this case found the contractor not legally bound, and legally not responsible for the delay.