Last Wednesday, December 1st, we were in a meeting with High Rock in the lab once again. We mostly learned about what an RFP meant along with what we had to do in the slides about the presentation of the trail bridges. Apparently an RFP is a Request For Proposals which helps with design, formatting, and production services. Afterwards, for the slides we had to include statements of the team’s strengths and unique abilities. I was in the same group as Mahalia Saint-Eloí and Waylon Gomori, so we wrote that one can do a lot of the documentation of the project, the other does more hands-on work, and the other can also help with analyzing the area of the park. In a second slide, we did a work timeline for the project and because we had just started on it, we only wrote that we began working on the slides.
Mahalia did a slide in which she included images of the bridges for reference along with a slide for materials. I worked on a different slide for the things that we had to keep in consideration, such as the area for the bridge, the length of it, and the materials that it’ll be made of. Additionally, one of the slides we did was for the specific location and existing conditions analysis. For this one we put that the location would be in High Rock and the bridge would probably be in an area in which a trail bridge would be required to be built or has a river along the path. Once done, we presented our slides to Kat and we received feedback on it. A piece of feedback that we got was that we could’ve placed the materials together with the estimated amount of money that we think would be needed for the project.
–Magaly Aspiroz
In comparison to the other sessions, this session was the most progressive in which we started constructing our proposal with our group members.
Before that though, we went over general things our proposal should include with Greenbelt Conservancy advisor, Kat. From a quick presentation and the resources provided to us, we were able to learn how we should structure our presentation. On top of that, we got a general understanding of what a work plan is and why it’s important in not only the proposal but when carrying out the project as well.
My team worked on two different proposals: a trail bridge and a puncheon. The reason for this being that a completely new trail bridge isn’t usually something a park requires as there are often already established trail bridges that just require some maintenance. So, it would be impractical to attempt to get a whole new bridge built or put in place of another. This is why we began a proposal on a puncheon as well, as there are most likely areas on a trail prone to flooding during bad weather, making a puncheon useful in that situation. The puncheon proposal serves as a backup of sorts in case the bridge plan falls through.
-Sheena Luke
This meeting was a presentation day where we had a topic that we had to build/create an idea for High Rock. In this meeting though we used computers so we could create our presentations to improve High Rock Park. Before, Kat had told us to share where we wanted to place our project, but for now we could just focus on what we want to make, We had to develop what exactly we were making and how or what it would help with. Also, we had to take into consideration the cost to see if it was affordable and if it had kinks to the design. Then we were tasked to go in our groups and present/go through our projects.
My group consisted of Sheena Luke, Ethanael Vega,and D’Artagnan Dyasi, and me. What we created was a single unit bridge. We talked first about what materials it was made out of and what types of materials we can go for, such as timber log, nailed glue-laminated timber , prestressed concrete. We took these into consideration and talked about some properties each material could bring. Then we talked about the use of this bridge. It was mainly used to walk over streams, waterways, and muddy areas. We chose to put these as our main focus because we wanted a quick way to just go past the water without having to go around and take a long time, or having to take a leap of faith over the mud/water areas. Then we were talking about if some of our single unit bridge/bridges should have a railing system and if we need to implement them or not.
-Sebastian Psujek
