In April 1991 many of you will have seen moving coverage, in newspapers and on television, of the plight of Kurdish refugees. The destitute images of thousands of men, women and children walking into the snow-covered mountains of the Iraq and Turkey border as they fled the advancing forces of the Iraqi republican Guard touched public opinion. T.S. Robson
I recently arrived here in Mozambique to undertake a 2-year contract on a VS0 (Voluntary Service Overseas)-type basis. The broad philosophy of this work is that skilled foreign staff should be placed in Government structures of developing countries where they can work on a local salary alongside local people. It is hoped that they should not only complete a particular project but also pass on some of their experience to those they are working with. I have a placement with the parastatal construction company, CETA, a general civil engineering contractor in the provincial city of Beira. I have been seconded and sponsored by Gifford & Partners, for whom I worked in the UK for the past 6 years. C.M. Collings
This paper gives the background investigation made into the provision of new access systems for two major steel bridges constructed in the early 1950s. The selection process led to a design, construct and erect contract completed in 1989. The paper highlights the problems of providing such a system at this later stage, rather than as part of the original design and maintenance concepts, and sets out the various methods of access possible before discussing the process used to arrive at a final solution. A. Garside
Sometimes an increase beyond the normal design loadcarrying capacity of a composite floor slab is highly desirable. This paper describes tests that show the existence of such an increase and how it may be predicted. C.K. Jolly and R.M. Lawson
The first rule of successful debt collection must always be that ‘prevention is better than cure’. A few simple, and relatively cheap, measures applied in good time can frequently save much grief later but, even when disaster does strike and a debt appears to be ‘bad’, some welldirected persistence can literally pay dividends. D.J. Cude
After thinking back over this period, I have realised that the revolution in the design of structures has been nearly as great as the revolution in transport that took place in the previous half-century, which started with horses and ended with jet aircraft! E.W.H. Gifford