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The assessment of a dredging projects soil conditions are the most important factor to determine dredgeability, the choice of suitable equipment, production rates and ultimately the associated costs for the works.

A prudent tenderer when analysing the site data needs to be assured that the data has been collected and prepared by a competent soil investigation company in accordance with relevant international standards such as BS, ASTM or others.

Rather than rely on the basic adverse physical conditions clause in the case of significant capital works involving excavation of varying subsoil, weathered or solid rock it is suggested to apply reference conditions in the Contract based on the actual information from the soil survey transposed into production rates which can be easily measured and reviewed, beyond which the Contractor is entitled to claim for additional compensation.
Of the contracts available for use on dredging contracts only the FIDIC 1999 Red Book and the UK’s NEC 3 Engineering and Construction Contract deal with the broad concept of reference conditions.

The concept of how adverse physical conditions are dealt with verges on the holy grail of marine infrastructure projects. On the one side they are part of a Marine Contractors ‘must have’ clauses whilst it is often viewed by Clients as the equivalent of a ‘get out of jail free’ card. The balance of risk has been hotly debated and fought over the years with the results little published or revealed due to disputes being resolved in arbitration or adjudication.

Added to this mix are the notion of unforeseeability and what an experienced contractor can expect its no wonder that the vast majority of marine infrastructure claims revolve around the issue of sub-surface conditions.

Even a full-scale and technically perfect soil investigation can only test a fraction of the volume that is to be dredged by the Contractor. Combined with the fact that natural conditions like rock strength, grain size, permeability, plasticity, presence of rock outcrops or boulders (to name a few) vary enormously, it is no wonder disputes on dredging contracts often focus on soil conditions that are claimed to be different from what “an experienced Contractor could reasonably have foreseen” .

The basic principle of adverse physical conditions this that a contract clause will give the Contractor the “right to claim for additional time and money in case unforeseeable physical conditions which may occur, which were not reasonably foreseeable by an experienced contractor”. This simple principle is present in one way or the other in virtually every dredging contract.

A dual purpose lies hidden behind this contract principle, namely to :

• Compensate the Contractor for encountering conditions more severe than could be derived from investigations available at the time of preparing his offer. Employers must not and should not expect the Contractor to gamble: Taking a risk provision covering for every imaginable situation would make an offer non-competitive, whereas the absence of a risk provision is a denial of the fact that dredging has significant uncertainties by its very nature. Employers tend to be overly biased towards achieving the lowest contract price for their work by passing all conceivable risk to the Contractor whether he is in a position to dealt with it or not.
• Protect the Employer from Contractors who may try to claim additional compensation for interpretation or calculation errors mistakes made by the Contractor and resulting in a loss on the project. A loss in itself is no justification for additional compensation, and furthermore the Employer has very limited possibilities to assess the factual cause of the loss.

In between the relative simplicity of the two extremes lies a gray area, and it is here that disputes are generally fought out. The author supports the view that a sufficiently high threshold for additional compensation should be present, balancing the interest of the Employer (by not having to battle over every minor issue) and of the Contractor (by having capped his risk and defined additional compensation above threshold). It is further suggested that a risk matrix framework could be established to assess the magnitude of the additional compensation before award of the contract.

For more facts on dredging contracts, and maritime contracts, kindly visit Kinlan Consulting, an expert FIDIC Contract Consultant.

A mountain of Christmas gifts and goods make their way out of outlets and into homes each Christmas season. It is a sad fact that, not long after the festivities subside, nearly all of those well-meaning gifts move speedily on to mounds of landfill.

Slowing the migration is as easy as setting your family the Green Christmas Challenge to send as little as possible to landfill this Christmas. Inspired by the target of a approximately empty wheelie bin, you will all make decisions that generate less waste.

Many actions give to celebrating a green Christmas, like opting for locally-grown foods to reduce food miles, switching to LED eco Christmas lights and donating gifts to charities. The massive amount of food, plastic and non-recyclable waste is the chief environmental problem, but it is a simple one for households to tackle.

Sit the team down before Christmas and speak about ways to reuse, reduce and recycle. Here are some ideas to get you started…

Good for the environment plastic-free picnics
Disposable plastic plates and cups are comprised of petrochemicals, so pollution is made in their manufacture and when thrown-away they sit in landfill forever. Opt for reusable plates that you wash up or use palm leaf plates, a stylish plant alternative. They add a chic eco friendly style to your festive table and can be put onto your garden as mulch, rather than in the bin.

Trim a living tree
When Santa arrives in his carbon-neutral sleigh, surprise him with a live Australian Wollemi pine tree. This recently discovered prehistoric tree is now available in nurseries. A potted Wollemi can grow with your family to be trimmed year after year. Or, why not make it a tradition to find a lovely Eucalyptus branch that can be composted when the Christmas festivities are over.

Wrap it again
A fantastic stretch the budget and save piles of waste is to wrap presents in newspaper, magazines and even junk mail. For children use the comics, for car lovers use the motoring pages. wrapping, place gifts inside reusable shopping bags, or sew cloth bags from festive Christmas material that your family can re-tie with ribbon annually. For an additional special Green Christmas touch, Earth Greetings make gorgeous post consumer waste wrapping paper with Australian Christmas designs printed with vegetable inks.

Detour past the bin
, is this Christmas gift likely to wind up in the bin within a couple of weeks? If yes, choose something else. The old saying quality not quantity is a great friend of the planet. Even the cheapest items use the planet’s limited resources, energy and water to manufacture. Rather than buy a risky gift, think about a gift voucher or make a donation to a charity on behalf of the individual. Should you receive an unsuitable gift, pass it straight on to a charity such as the Salvos.

A green Christmas gift for your garden
Food scraps make up a large portion of rubbish and once in landfill they generate methane, a concentrated greenhouse gas. Compost at home instead and turn leftovers into fertiliser for your garden. The Bokashi composting bin is a popular system that sits conveniently in your kitchen.

Packaging-free paradise
Picture a paradise where Christmas morning is free from mounds of discarded plastic packaging. It just takes a little bit more thought and effort. Locally made and hand-made Christmas gifts are less likely to be over-packaged. A trip to the local Farmer’s Markets will also you stock up on fresh festive food with minimal packaging.

As opposed to talking rubbish; this Christmas, your family will soon be asking is this for landfill, recycling or composting? And the joy of accomplishing your challenge will bring good tidings to all.

Biome Eco Stores is a chic retail outlet with a conscience. Firmly committed to eco friendly principles, Biome offers a unique and meaningful green Christmas collection for gifts and decoration.

New Guinea is the world’s second largest island, and is in addition one of the world’s last, vast and remote wildernesses. With a complex political history, this great island is divided. The western half, is now referred to as Papua, a region of Indonesia, while the eastern half, Papua New Guinea or PNG, has been an independent country since 1975.

New Guinea is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, and endures sporadic volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and occasional tsunamis. A mountain range rises across the length of New Guinea and deep rainforest is all enveloping.

The island contains an astonishing wealth of natural features, some protected by National Parks and UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserves, but huge swathes of it are unmapped and virtually unreachable. The primary towns and cities of both countries are, naturally, on the coast, but there is little in the way of roads or infrastructure. Travel is mainly by boat. Rivers criss-cross the whole region or you can travel on foot, or by plane

New Guinea is inhabited by about 1,000 different tribes, speaking a similar number of languages. Tourists are few, mainly visiting the extraordinary Dani culture, in Papua’s beautiful Baliem Valley. Despite being nominally Christians, the Dani live traditionally.

Men wear penis sheaths, women wear short skirts, produced with orchid fibres, worn beneath the backside. This high valley, surrounded by mountain peaks, is a vision of incredibly fertile cultivated fields. The Baliem River provides fish, and pigs are essential, being consumed at every ceremony.

In PNG the major attraction is the tribal hunter-gatherers who live along the banks of the island’s longest river, the Sepik. This culture is intrinsically entwined with crocodiles, and the men’s extensive scarification reflects the animal’s scales.

Living in communal longhouses, Sepik River people are famous for their wood-carvings. Varying in style from village to village, most of these find their way into the great museums of the world.

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After the declaration of war in September 1939 house construction went through a period of decreasing activity. But it did not drop to its minimal level until February 1942 when National Security Regulations posed severe restrictions.

Private building ceased in many areas and was limited in others. However, under the War Housing Program, state and commonwealth authorities did continue with essential housing, such as that needed for munitions workers and their families.

Clear indication of the degree of change is seen in the official statistics. More than 40000 new homes were built throughout Australia in the financial year 1938-39, but in 1942-1943 there were fewer than 4000.’

In the editorial of the Australian Home Beautiful for January 1942, we read of conditions up to that time. Building restrictions, at the moment of writing, limit expenditure on new domestic buildings to £3000 and on renovations to £250; but conditions grow harder week by week. In spite of this, a great deal of new and interesting building is being carried on over a widespread area and this will continue as long as materials are available.

War in Europe and North Africa was distant enough for Australia to seem relatively secure. With the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and their inexorable advance in our direction, any remaining complacency evaporated.

A. V. Jennings, the well-known construction company founded in 1932, continued building houses on its construction within 25 miles (40 km) of the Melbourne GPO as well as restrictions on the transfer of land brought development of the estate to a halt.

As early as May 1941 wartime conditions had begun to cause shortages of building materials and dwindling sales. In that month A.V. Jennings advertised seventeen villa sites and seven business sites, all lots to include, electricity, gas, sewerage, roads, paths and crossings.’

Of the 121 residential blocks, fifty-nine houses had been completed by the beginning of 1942. They were typical of the well-built, double-brick houses constructed by Jennings over the previous decade. Beauview Estate was in a very attractive elevated area with panoramic views and a mere six-and-a-half miles (10.50 km) from the city.

In 1942, with home building now at a standstill, A.V. Jennings averted complete disaster with the sale of all unsold blocks on the estate to the large Melbourne estate agency T.M. Burke. As a company Jennings actually gathered strength through the challenges offered by wartime government construction contracts, so that when it returned to housing on a large scale in the mid-1950s it was able to regain and extend its early reputation in the domestic field.

Brick houses of the type built by A.V Jennings between 1932 and 1942 were basically conservative in their design when compared with the few examples of International Modern built at the same time. Some of the forms or details suggested the continuing popularity of `Spanish Mission’ or `Old English’, but generally, there was a tendency toward a common sense functionalism with easily maintained surfaces, modern kitchens, hot-water services reticulated to five or six points, internal toilets and many other features taken for granted by generations.

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Stick a pin in a globe through the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and it emerges almost exactly through the Cocos in Costa Rica.

Discovered in 1609, these islands were settled and owned by a single family from 1827 until the Australian Government forcibly acquired them in 1978 for a payment of over $6 million.

Lying 2,770 km (1,732 ml) northwest of Perth, the 27 coral islands are formed into two large, heavily vegetated atolls. Not only are they the only atolls that Darwin ever visited, but the coral ecosystem remains intact and you can still see in their pristine condition exactly why they played such an important part in his theory of evolution.

North Keeling, set apart from the other islands, isn’t even inhabited; but you can see extreme rarities like the Cocos buff-banded rail, robber land crabs, and both green and hawksbill turtles among other wonders, under its protection as Pulu Keeling National Park, covering both North Keeling and its surrounding waters.

The 600 or so Cocos (Keeling) islanders live on Home and West Islands, both given over to copra and coconut plantations that only add to their tropical glamour. There is no tourist industry at all. Instead, there are facilities for visitors, sponsored by islanders who take an almost personal interest in everyone who comes.

If you happen to be there, you’re genuinely welcome to participate in the school fete, sports day, or concert night; and you’d be unwise not to join in quiz night at the Cocos Club, or not to watch the annual Ardmona Cup Aussie Rules football match. The tradition of hospitality is both Australian and Malay, representing the origins of the tight-knit community.

The islanders, as much as the islands themselves, have retained a form of unpolluted innocence, and share a mutual respect that visitors immediately respond to. These islands are a dreamscape worthy of Gauguin.

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The Pearl of the Indian Ocean lies only 31 km (19 ml) off India’s south coast. Its modern name is taken from the Sanskrit ancient Indian epics Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and means resplendent land.

Sri Lanka’s chief characteristic is intensity …of colour, of beauty, of religious belief, of sectarian commitment, and of affection it inspires in everyone who goes there. The first to stay became the stuff of legend: the 2,500 year-old Mahawamsa chronicle describes the arrival of the ‘Sinhala’ (lion race), and the island’s history since has been a series of shifting kingdoms, each leaving a treasury of ruins and literature, and a tangle of relationships that are still being decoded in its modern political life.

When you go to Sri Lanka’s cultural triangle of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Dambullal Sigiriya, you see the architectural glories of the past, but they are living history. They are active religious sites, not floodlit movie sets.

The island has the perfect set-up. At any time of year you can lounge on immaculate beaches, and cool off in the hills when you get hot. Colombo, the capital, is a chaotic modem city, and an appropriate synthesis both of Sri Lanka’s indigenous cultures and its Portuguese, Dutch and British influences.

Tropical beaches stretch north to the bustle of Negambo, a characteristic fishing community; and south in a chain of pink and white arcs, past turtle hatcheries (Indurwa), masked carvers (Ambalangoda), and the coral reefs of Hikkaduwa.

Go to Yala West National Park, a teeming rainforest of elephants, leopards, buffaloes, monkeys, crocodiles, deer, sloth bears and a galaxy of birds, on your way to the lush, lakeside hill resort of Kandy.

It’s Sri Lanka’s exotic spiritual centre, and its spectacular parades of frenetic dancers, firewalkers and pounding drummers are, in fact, often a signal to prayer.

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Digital Printing, as its name implies, is the process of producing digital images on physical surfaces (called substrates) using either toner or ink jets. These substrates can include film, common paper, plastic photographic paper, and even cloth.

Digital printing is by far the quickest and most affordable printing technique for a quantity of 500 prints or less. It is often used in preparing cards, multi-page documents, brochures, sell sheets, flyers, video boxes and CD packaging. Digital printing has several advantages over the traditional, and often more expensive, offset printing. Some of these advantages include:

Turnaround: If you need the work done fast, digital usually offers very fast delivery.

Cost-effective: In addition to being user-friendly, digital printing has low setup costs.

Proofing: Digital offers accurate proofs since you see an actual sample of the printed piece.

Customisation: Digital printing offers affordable and easy customisation of marketing materials, direct mail pieces, letters, etc.

For the domestic user: The ink and cartridges used for this kind of printing are widely available.

As you can see from the many advantages discussed above, it is little wonder why this form of printing is fast becoming the most popular method of printing.

To make the most of your digital printing, here are some helpful hints that will make the whole process of error and stress free:

- Wear cotton gloves and keep the printing media away from dust and grime.

- Give enough time for inkjet prints to dry.

- For preserving unused media, store in a plastic cover.

Digital printing has eliminated the long and laborious steps that are involved with traditional printing. It provides a much more affordable printing option for lower quantities. If you are after faster turnaround times with excellent print quality, then you should opt for digital printing.

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Often described in the post WWII years as `the housing shortage’, the nationwide effort to address a very troubling issue has over the years come to be called `the housing boom’. Undoubtedly it was a boom in demand and activity. There was also a marked increase in home ownership, achieved in many cases through dogged individual effort and years of sacrifice.

Changing social attitudes offered new opportunities, but also narrowed the options. Emphasis in state housing social engineering was at first on rental accommodation; later there was a swing toward the sale of budget housing. At a time when various factors had reduced the amount of rental accommodation, governments, banks, finance companies, building societies and housing co-operatives were offering greater opportunities for home ownership. Ironically this was at a time of a rise in building input costs.

High on the list of factors linked to rising construction costs were the introduction in 1948 of the 40-hour week, and marked increases in the cost of construction materials. By 1948 an employer had to pay an unskilled building worker a higher wage than a tradesman had received in early 1946.

To keep both labourer and tradesman rationally employed the builder needed a continuous flow of materials which was a rare occurrence during this period. A shortage of skilled workers also meant lower quality work and further loss of time.

Contract prices were loaded with an increasing profit margin as an insurance against unseen problems. Under commonwealth price control, builders were entitled to a 10 per cent `profit’ on the contract price. Above award payments were not recognised in price control and yet builders often found a need to pay above award wages to ensure building completion.

Unexpected costs could happen when, for example, timber flooring was suddenly unprocurable, and a higher price would then have to be paid for imported Baltic flooring material.

With locally made cement taking forever to turn up, a delivery from across the border was sometimes contracted at nearly three times the price. When compared to 1939 prices timber flooring had, by 1948, increased 100 per cent in price. Cement had risen by almost 20 per cent and terracotta roofing tiles by more than 25 per cent. A gallon of quality paint costing around 30s ($3) in 1939 had risen by 40 per cent by 1948.

When added to rising costs and shortages of materials the government restrictions, limiting the area of a new dwelling to 1200 square feet (111.48 square metres) for a timber house and 1250 square feet (116.12 square metres) for one in brick, completed the recipe for an imposed design modesty.

The economical plan was essential; cost-saving and limitations on area made large single-purpose rooms a luxury. Verandahs and wide open porches disappeared, reducing the shelter at the front of the house to the absolute minimum. Ceiling heights had been gradually reduced from the turn of the century and were now usually nine feet (2745 mm). Until the government construction restrictions were lifted in 1952 the acceptance of no-nonsense functionalism was as much an imposed state as it was a fashionable philosophy. This was the era of the great Australian Dream.

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Tobago is the beautiful, reserved, soul-sister of jump jiving Trinidad, its partner in the Republic. The contrast is awesome. Tobago is small and it has no major industry to impinge on its lush fertility. It has one main town, Scarborough, and dozens of hamlets and villages with names that reflect the Spanish, French, Dutch, and English colonial powers which coveted it for centuries.

Outside the small holdings of its sparse population, it is full of nature reserves harbouring wildlife otherwise found only on the South American mainland of which it was once part. At its highland heart, among the many waterfalls splashing down into idyllic bathing pools among the rocks and ferns, Tobago protects the oldest untouched tropical rainforest in the hemisphere.

The rainy season between June and December (short, sharp bursts, and a brilliant time to take a swim) freshens the landscape, which erupts into a natural carnival of colourful flowers. This is matched underwater, where the myriad flashing shoals play lethal hide-and-seek among the cup coral in the canyons and deep caves where barracuda, dolphin and manta rays cruise.

You can dig for chip-chip (a kind of shell fish), in the warm clear water of Manzanilla Bay, or hunt the big game fish like marlin, wahoo and yellow-fin tuna. You can have double fun in the knowledge that there’s nothing in Tobago, in the water or on land, to kill you. Unlike Australia there are no man-eating sharks, box jelly fish, lethal spiders, or poisonous snakes.

Undeveloped (no house, hotel or resort is allowed to build anything higher than a palm tree grows) and peaceful, Tobago does however know how to party.

Carnival here is homespun, but just as colourful, rum-fuelled and happily energetic as anywhere. What’s more, you can practice every week throughout the year at the open air dance they call Sunday School.

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South of Cuba in the heat of the western Caribbean, the three Cayman Islands are the visible summits of the Cayman Ridge, an underwater mountain range which drops suddenly into the 7,100 m (22,000 ft) Cayman Trench, separating them from Jamaica.

Grand Cayman is by far the largest. The Sister Islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman are mostly a wilderness of fruit trees, orchids and cacti where tranquility and an authentic West Indian culture are the main attractions. Just 145 km (90 ml) to the southwest, Grand Cayman at first resembles nothing so much as a transplanted American urban nightmare.

The capital, George Town, and Seven Mile Beach, its renowned local playground, are full of condos, resorts, satellite dishes and mini-malls. The streets teem with bankers and the faceless suits of the institutions that have made it the world’s fifth largest financial centre.

Five days a week, cruise liners decant up to 22,000 tourists, joining the millions each year whose holidays have given the Cayman Islands the eighth highest GDP per capita in the world.

George Town is so busy, loud, and determinedly up for it, you feel the privateers and pirates of former times have merely put on modern dress in their eagerness to empty your wallet.

In the small towns and villages outside George Town, the atmosphere changes immediately. Grand Cayman’s true self is African-European, deeply Christian, conservative and church-going (there are lots of churches).

The locals are openly friendly and well-mannered, laughing and hospitable. Isolated by the central mangrove wetlands -3,440 hectares (8,500 acres) of lush forests, emerald green parrots and bright orange frogfish, the mainspring of the complex ecology that maintains both the turtle grass and shrimp mounds of North Sound Marine Reserve, Rum Point typifies Grand Cayman at its best.

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