Graduate / 'theoretical and practical skills' - my SOP for Civil Engineering [5]

Civil Engineering is the foundation on which societies transforms their environment from plain fields to an urban concrete jungle. Thus as society continues to evolve man will continue to build cities and villages for improved productivity, housing and relaxation.

I have chosen to study and work in the area of Civil and Environmental Engineering because of my fascination for building large structures from the very scratch to when it as big as a colossus. My love for this course of study also comes from the fact that I am from a developing country and I know as time continues to move forward there will be an increase in the building of new cities. Structures will be defining edifices that will define a cities personality. I wish to be able to be a part of this very important profession.

The part of a structure that I am intrigued about is the hidden foundation that supports the building.
The reason for my interest in building foundations seems to come from my first work experience where I worked with a construction project involved in the rehabilitation of a seaport. The project involved the construction of shoreline protectors across the entire length of the city shoreline and construction of other facilities. Each shoreline protector was a concrete beams 20 meters in length with a width of 600mm.

I was assigned to work and supervise the contractor casting the concrete beams and ensure the casting in-situ sheet piles were in accordance to contract and design specifications.

These concrete members after casting needed to set for 72hrs to prevent casting defects and to impact additional strength required during lifting and to prevent cracking when they are rammed into the sea bed. After the setting, a crane was assigned by the contractors to lift the sheet piles.

We discovered that there was a problem during the lifting; the sheet piles were breaking during the lifting process. After some arguments we had to do some calculations and analysis using fundamental bending moment and shear stress principles. The problem arose because the foreman was using a lifting system with three hooks but because of the dimensions and weight of the concrete members four hooks allowed us to successfully lift the casting without them cracking. This experience made me appreciate the very important role of theoretical design and calculations.

I was also ensuring quality control of materials supplied by randomly selecting iron reinforcement rods submitted by contractors and subjecting them to tensile strength tests. Also random cube tests to verify compressive strength of concrete mixtures. With the aim of ensuring that the compressive and tensile strengths exceeded the minimum strength required and also that they did not exceed the maximum strength.

My undergraduate dissertation was a research using natural occurring substances that could inhibit the degradation of metals in sea water or water transportation applications such as in pipelines in process industries or for oil transport in the energy industry. My research led to confirmation that some natural occurring plants could produce chemicals that reduce carbon steel degradation. These inhibitors were environmentally friendly and had little or no amount of carcinogens in them. The most effective inhibitors contain chromate which has carcinogens and these could cause potential problems in water distribution. My research was acclaimed by my lecturers to be one of the best of the semester and it was published in a leading scientific research journal.

My Masters degree dissertation was about simulating the pitting behavior of mild and stainless steel when used as reinforcements in chloride contaminated concrete. During this research we used a potentiostat to vary voltages and currents into the steel. Observation was made as to the degree and extent of pitting.

This experience which I enjoyed greatly has increased my interest in doing research work. Research work is interesting because it involves a buildup of experiments and resultant data that leads to a conclusion and also adds to the body of knowledge of a subject or sometimes confirms an existing discovery. I also enjoy the technical communication of research. Most of the research works I have been involved in rely on interpreting and observing data like a detective

The experiences that I accumulated so far has made me realise that there is so much appreciation of having a combination of theoretical and practical skills in 45the work place.

During my study I dealt with different research projects and I have worked in a third party oil and gas materials laboratory doing various research projects.

I would regard my admission to University of Hawaii not only as a great honor but also as a great responsibility and an obligation to work hard