Export data into external source (m3) Essay Example for Free

Export data into external source (m3) Essay Explain the Impact of Organisational Policies on the Troubleshooting and Repair Process (P1) Referring to the policies related to the College’s network. Produce an audio recording for the Network manager to explain the impact of their organisational policies on the troubleshooting and repair process. Introduction In this documents, I am going to be explaining the impact of organisational policies on the troubleshooting and repair process, I am going to be talking about the organisational policies, such as considerations e.g. security, costs, systems downtime, disruption, resource allocation, prioritisation, contractual requirements, trend analysis, escalation procedures, documentation, reporting, contractual legal issues. Organisational Policies An organisational policy is expected to do many things. Primarily it should protect people and information, as well as set the rules for expected behaviour by users, system administrators, management and security personnel. It should also authorise relevant personnel to monitor, probe, investigate, define and authorise the consequences of violations, in addition to defining the company’s baseline stance on security. This can help minimise risk and help track compliance with appropriate regulations. Security This policy is mainly responsible for making sure that all the security detail such as password and user accounts are secure so you have to make sure that you are the only person that uses the account. IT systems Acceptable usage policy requires from users to log off the computer as inappropriate people could get the access to the data that they shouldn’t. The user also shouldn’t install the unauthorized software as this could lead to the issues such as making the equipment unusable by affecting it performance. The users also have to make sure that the equipment is secure during the use of it and after. The users within college are not allowed to connect they own device to the college network if they don’t get authorization from the IT Manager. Costs In term of costs the members of the staff has to make sure that they examine all the purchasing and introduce the environmental criteria to make sure that the equipment meets all the requirements and condition. They are also required to research on the equipment that they are purchasing to make sure that there is no alternatives with are better or cheaper. They also have to encourage the use of recycled paper to make sure that people don’t use it in inappropriate reasons that are not associated with the course as they are spending the college money. If the potential user with in this case is the student brake the equipment the staff have to make sure that it was reported and the person that did it will have to pay back the money for it. Systems Downtime System downtime is usually affected by many issues but they all can be prevented if the right procedures have been taken and the staffs fallow all the legislations. In this case people have to make sure that they have the right equipment for example server. They also should make regular backups so student and teachers work don’t get lost. The regular maintainer should be taken at the end of each week. System downtime could cause a lot of damage as if the system would be down user wouldn’t be able to perform they daily routine. Disruption Disruption is when something unexpected happened and person responsible for that area is not preparing for it. Organization such as College should have plan for everything so in case that something happen they have solution to repair it and prevents it from happening. For example if users lose they work organization should back them up. In order to back the files up they would have to be prepare for this to happen. Resource Allocation All the resources should be right allocated. This mean that there shouldn’t be too much of resources for one place for example you cannot add too much of the paper for the printer as the printer could damage the paper if there are too many resources than it should be the company could lose a lot of money as they might spend money on the unimportant resources. Resources should be well balanced so if the resources are not needed they shouldn’t been used. Prioritisation The company should prioritize some of the aspect when performing repair as they might be more important and they should be repaired first. For example if network is down and at the same time printer is not working. The person that perform repair should concentrate on repairing network instead of printer as without network printer would be useless. Contractual Requirements In a company, the support team staff would be required to work shifts that will provide coverage for the employees when the offices are officially opened, they will also need to provide extra time in the evening and weekends, where they will carry out the essential maintenance which may have to involve some downtime. The hours that an employee will have to work will be set out for them in what is called an employment contract. They will be limited by the EU legislation and some other regulations such as working time regulations, which will provide the basic right and protections such as: A worker can be required to work at most an average of 48 hours a week (though workers can choose to work more if they want to). For night workers there is a limit of an average of 8 hours worked in 24. Night workers are entitled to receive free health assessments. All staff are entitled to 11 hours of rest a day and to one day off each week. When the working day is longer than 6 hours, workers must have an in-work rest break. Workers are entitled to 4 weeks of paid leave per year. These protections may or may not be in place. You should check your contract to find out any special conditions of service before signing. Trend Analysis The records that are kept of incidents and how these are dealt with can provide useful data how successfully the support team are running, so an organisational policy will decide the frequency of analysis and of data and exactly what type of data has to be recorded by the IT supporting team. Trends can then be identified which will then help with the formulation of the plans to provide better and more reliable hardware and software package, it may then also be used to target a form of training for the users who will need them the most. Trend analysis can then also be used to re-allocate budgets and resources to identify the hotspots. Escalation Procedures An escalation process in different support establishments vary depending on the type of service that they have. In a technical support group, this involves setting up thresholds for certain issues to be addressed at certain levels. Typically it is a tiered setup. For example, Tier 1 can handle issues that can be easily resolved by just a phone call and when the Tier1 representative feels that the issue cannot be resolved at his level (if for example the problem cannot be resolved by their team alone and needs to be addressed by other support teams/departments with higher level of authority) it is then escalated or moved to the next higher team. This way the issues are segregated depending on their severity and type of resolution. Documentation The procedures of documentation vary from one sector, or one type, to another. In general, these may involve document drafting, formatting, submitting, reviewing, approving, distributing, reposting and tracking, etc., and are convened by associated SOPs in a regulatory industry. Since a key step in the process management journey is the documentation of current processes and any exceptions to those processes, this article explores how to create a template for your process documentation guide. A template makes the process of documenting your processes repeatable. Repeatable is the word to remember here primary aspects of a process documentation guide should be easily duplicated and reused to create additional guides after the first process has been documented. This repeatability feature makes it less painful to create your documentation as you move through all the processes in an organization. It also provides readers with a common format to follow as they research or review processes within your organization. Reporting Reporting may seem like a simple exercise in transparency but it is more than that. In fact, it gives management an additional opportunity for improvement, through readers’ reactions, criticisms and suggestions. Considering stakeholder views also helps to shape strategy, goals and objectives. All the inputs from direct stakeholders should be carefully reviewed as part of a management learning process to adapt and fine-tune the company’s sustainable development objectives. Contractual Legal Issues Regardless of whether you use an agency or not, you will require some  knowledge of contract law and the ability to negotiate a suitable agreement. IR35 should be at the forefront of your mind throughout this process if you are to keep as much as possible of your pay packet out of the clutches of the taxman. On the most basic level, any agreement reached with a client must make clear that you are a contractor and not an employee. This distinction should be clear in both the contract and your modus operandi. Primarily, your contract should define exactly what you are agreeing to do for the client. In contrast to an employee, whose work may not be defined at all in the contract, you must make sure that the document clearly lays out the service or services that you are to provide. Conclusion So in conclusion, this document has been explaining the impact of organisational policies on the troubleshooting and repair process, I am going to be talking about the organisational policies, such as considerations e.g. security, costs, systems downtime, disruption, resource allocation, prioritisation, contractual requirements, trend analysis, escalation procedures, documentation, reporting, contractual legal issues. Hopefully, this would help an organisation in the process of troubleshooting and repair.

Prepare A Personal Development Plan Nursing Essay

Prepare A Personal Development Plan Nursing Essay This paper seeks to prepare a personal development plan in my objective to become a leader in an organization. I will analyze the requirements of the targeted job in relation to my inventory of skills including my strengths and weaknesses in relation to the requirement of a goal in mind for which I am willing to know my deficiencies in terms of skills. I will therefore have to make an action plan on how to correct my deficiencies and to improve on my weaknesses to take advantage of my strengths in attaining a target job that I want to have and quality of a person that I want to happen as a result. 2. The Goal, Requirements, Deficiencies and the Strategies 2.1 My goal and its requirements The goal of this plan is to be able to attain the position of Pricing analyst which requires the following: having strong analytical skills and ingenuity to provide logical solutions to nonstandard issues, having a strong mathematical aptitude as well as well developed communication skills (written and verbal), being computer literate (including working knowledge of Excel and Word) and possessing the values of resourcefulness, organizational skills and ability to coordinate activities across company function. It further requires having demonstrated ability to work well under pressure to meet critical deadlines, having the ability to adapt to changing priorities and handle multiple tasks and having an exceptional attention to detail and problem solving skills. 2.2 Determined deficiencies and the causes of their perceived causes of having them Using as basis the job requirements and compare the same with my present inventory of skills, I found out that the targeted job requires the need for demonstrated ability to work well under pressure to meet critical deadlines as well as at the ability to adapt to changing priorities and handle multiple tasks. I believe this requires utmost patience on the part of person to be hired for the job. A patient person will not be easily being cowed into giving up for pressure as the person would normally consider pressure as part of the job. A patient person will also find the need to adapt to changing priorities and handling multiple tasks to be part of the challenge. I definitely need to be more patient partly because of my attitude of perfectionism which is rather out of proportions sometimes. Further comparison of my inventory of skills with the requirement of the job revealed that my verbal communication skills are weak as may be proved from past experiences when I have delegated tasks to people that resulted to some misunderstandings. I have diagnosed the in many instances times about the reasons for these misunderstandings and I found them in failure to make my instructions in a way that may be fully and intelligently understood. In wrongly believing that my own understanding results to my teammates understanding, I really have made a short cut of effective communication which is creating inefficiency to my job. I find deficiency also in my organizational skills as evidenced by my having overlooked a lot of times important details in my job because of deficient communication skills, failure to delegate and ineffectiveness if making motivations to my people. 2.3 Strategies to address deficiencies with corresponding time table The way I am going to tackle these leadership deficiencies is to set up a plan where I can draw on personal and others feedback. I have talked to my manager, supervisor, and other coworkers and they have agreed to provide feedback to me on these three subjects. I am going to keep a journal, as well, so that I can track my own thoughts and feelings about how I am handling and improving in these tasks. Also, I plan to do some research on all there subjects so that I may obtain further information on these subjects. The following are the things that I plan to do within my time table. Improving Patience On the basis of the above, I found out that I really lacked patience; I have decided to increase my patience in more systematic manner. My high anxiety level, which causes me to get short with people, could really be bad if I will not improve my patience. I am planning to monitor my progress and evaluate myself weekly on my patience levels. In a year I want to get to a point where I can handle any situation, no matter what that entails. I want to get to the point where I dont let my anxiety interfere with my job duties and interactions with other. Having stated earlier that lack of patience may be caused by my attitude of perfectionism, I feel addressing the latter is crucial to my development as a person for the desired job. Perfectionism makes me feel that I should always be imposing to people the highest requirement for many work activities without may be considering their capacities. My strategies for improvement of correction of said perceived caused of lack of patience are to analyze the importance of having something perfect in relation to realistic goals of every activity. Since every activity may have its deadline, I would devised an improve schedule so that I will not push myself unnecessarily on things. But since I may never know if I am progressing on this activity, I would measure my progress and my criteria for measuring the same would be to have less frustration with progress while ensuring that work is still successfully accomplish. The time table for this is one month intervals Improving communication One of the requirements of the targeted job is having a strong mathematical aptitude as well as well developed communication skills (written and verbal). Finding my skills to be lacking in this respect, I have decided to effectively improve my verbal communications skills continually by relying on feedback from manager and supervisors in my present job as well as peers and family and friends. In my own analysis what is causing my poor communication is the spontaneous and impulsive comments to teammates as I perceived bad comments in return making such irresponsive comments which offend their feelings, hence I would really need to reflect on how my comments would affect others. This is in addition to developing of course and an effective communication plan verbally and in writing. To know whether I would be progressing I would be recording my observance of the absence of negative peer reactions as well as my observation of positive oral feedback from family and friends. I am also giving month intervals ask for feedback from peers and family/friends Improving organization skills Organization will be one of my other big hang-ups and I think this should be evaluated daily by keeping a journal of my tasks as well as a calendar to avoid mistakenly overlooking anything. I believe this will take time to improve, and with the help of my observations, research, and others feedback, I could o be proficient in the skills within the next three years. For the meantime I have short goals as explained below. One way to improve this is to through having the skill to improve delegation. My rather poor delegation is basically rooted in the fear of poor teammate contributions resulting in team failure. I believe this could be corrected by building on trust with my team mates by being first becoming a trust worthy person. Delegation entails trusting people to do it with confidence to their abilities under given circumstances. In the case of team mates, I would have to realize the extent also of my influence so that I would not be ending up delegating everything. In addition I should be developing a system of evaluations of teammates since it is only in giving them the proper feedback that they would have the chance to improve themselves. The time table for this of course, requires that at checkpoints of project, I will have to assess feelings of comfort of myself and my teammates and address any problems immediately as may be necessary. Another way of correcting this perceived weakness is to utilize an equal work policy. Under this arrangement, some my teammates would not necessarily be burdened with having more than expected and this will have a chance of reducing really the fear of poor teammate contributions resulting in team failure. Still another way of accomplishing this strategy is for me to build in checkpoints for making sure that projects are on time. This simply means that making a reliable schedule to monitor and follow through that projects are on in fact accomplished on time. As a way of measuring my progress in this strategy, I would have to be chance to measure my progress, with myself personally performing less work that would result to utilizing more time to proper and maximum functioning of my teammates. This development should also be seen in my new developed ability to trust teammates that would lead more to better relationships with them by having a confidence in the result of their work. Another way to improve organizational skills is to improve my forcefulness in motivating people. As a consequence of poor communication skills, my capacity to motivate or move people is just as limited to a great extent. My strategies for this target is includes attend additional classes on leadership (Erez, M. et. al, 2001), reading pertinent books on motivation (Maddock and Fulton, 1998) and utilizing an effective communication. Motivation on organization is a big deal since organization basically involves people who need to have the internal drive to what they need to do. Given the fact that organization may not provide every thing what workers may need, I can top a great potential from them by knowing each of my team mates and really find out what drives to excel of perform better in their job. I would only be able to verify the attainment of these targets if there are positive responses of others to my improved motivational skills. If small goals get accomplished I would be pretty sure that I making a great motivation job on my teammates more often Another way of measuring the accomplishment of this strategy is the reality of having an accomplished goals and positive team responses. The time table to evaluate others responses and behaviors would be to undertake each monthly. 3. Conclusion Based on the above plans I believe I would be able to attain the target of becoming a price analyst. The requirements of the targeted position are very clear and I was honest enough to use the requirements to gauge whether I could actually satisfy the same. Driven therefore by the realization that I needed some skills, I should have the courage to correct my deficiency by tracing what are the behaviors that are causing me not to have the much desired requirements of the targeted position in terms of skills. I have categorized the some major requirements of the job as requiring the value of patience from the need for demonstrated ability to work well under pressure to meet critical deadlines as well as at the ability to adapt to changing priorities and handle multiple tasks. So important is the value of patience in the job and which I have carefully analyzed could be acquired by training me to consider work pressures as normal consider s part of the job that would also help me to adapt to changing priorities and handle multiple tasks to be part of the challenge. Improving communication between me and the people in the organization was could be by addressing the behavioral cause, that is the spontaneous and impulsive comments to teammates that I commit sometimes based from perceived bad comments. I would just have to stop offending their feelings by my having an honest reflection on how my comments would affect others. This is in addition to developing of course and an effective communication plan (Thorson and Moore, 1996) verbally and in writing which may involved the applicable of basic principles of effective communication that would be read in theory and experience if the actual workplace. Getting the right feedback from peers and friends would accomplish much for this. Improving my communication skill is also closely related with improving organization skills which I will have to develop over time through my observations, research, and others feedback. Having targeted to be proficient in the skills within the next three years, I believe would be realistic enough considering my targeted developed skills for communication. To improve organization skill requires me to improve delegation which I found to having been restricted by my fear of poor teammate contributions resulting in team failure. Being correctible by building on trust with my teammates by being first becoming a trust worthy person, I believe that my decision to delegation put me in the very right path to fully attain an integrated organizational skill (Heller et. al., 1998). I am however cautioned by knowing some limits in my planned delegation by doing still what I need to do best under the circumstances in avoiding to delegating everything. By my honest development of a system of evaluations of teammates, that would give them the proper feedback, I am hoping for the best about the accomplishment of this plan. Appendix: Chart of Personal Development Plan Skill to Improve Causes of Behaviors Strategies Measurement Time table for Assessing Progress Patience Perfectionism Analyzing the bad effects of too much perfectionism Making a working schedule Effective delegation to team mates -reduced frustration -successful accomplishment of work without much stress Will be monitored monthly Delegation Fear of poor teammate performance Make a system of evaluation of teammates Make an à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€¹Ã…“equal work policy. Making sure that deadlines are followed Less work to be performed more time for the main requirement of the job Assess feeling of teammates if delegation is received with respect Effective Communication Irresponsible and impulsive comments Reflect on the effect of comments and reduce the same if necessary Design and effective communication plan Absence of negative peer reactions Positive feedback from friends, managers and supervisors Must be confirmed monthly Motivation Poor oral and written communication skills Read good books on communication skills. Attend seminars related to Office communications Willingness of others to have more responsibilities Attained output targets Evaluation should be done monthly or as often as possible

Book Report on A Tale of Two Cities :: essays papers

Book Report on A Tale of Two Cities My favorite scene in A Tale of Two Cities is one of the last scenes, when Sydney Carton is about to go to the guillotine. It takes place in Paris, near a prison, and many people have gathered to watch french aristocrats be beheaded. The atmosphere is tense and chaotic; Sydney, however, remains calm, even though he is about to be killed. Sydney is holding the hand of a young girl who is given no name other than a "poor little seamstress". Sydney and the seamstress, who are both being wrongfully killed, comfort each other just before they reach the guillotine, and they seem to have an instant romantic connection with each other. I loved this scene because it showed that Sydney Carton had finally found someone who could love him, as he could love them, but it saddened me that he had found her just before their deaths. Another scene I particularly enjoyed was the scene in which a large cask of wine had dropped and broken in the street. Because many people had very little to eat or drink, a large crowd gathered around the dirty puddle and began drinking what they could of the spilled wine. This scene was very descriptive, explaining how the people tried to scoop up the wine in their hands, and how they soaked it up with handkerchiefs from women's heads and squeezed the wine into infants' mouths. Other people licked the stones in the street or sucked on the pieces of wood from the cask. This passage showed how unfortunate many of the people were, without actually saying that they were just poor. Specific words and phrases were used to effectively paint a vivid picture of the scene. One of the most important scenes in this novel was the scene in which Dr. Manette is at the house of the Evremondes', tending to a psychotic young peasant girl. The two Evremonde brothers convince Dr. Manette to come with them, to see someone who they believe needs help. When he arrives at their spacious house, he immediately hears piercing screams, coming from upstairs. He is taken to the room, to see a girl, about 20 years old, who is tied down to a bed, shrieking loudly, and thrashing around. The doctor gives her medication, seemingly to no avail. Meanwhile, the "elder" brother takes him to another patient, the girl's brother, who has a fatal wound in his chest.

John Locke and the Unequal Distribution of Wealth Essay example -- Empi

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It is stated by John Locke that in the state of nature no man may take more then he can consume. â€Å"†¦make use of any advantage of life before it spoils†¦whatever is beyond this is more than his share and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy. (Locke 14)† Locke then goes on to say, â€Å"God gave the world to man †¦ for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational- and labor was to be his title†¦ (Lock 15)† Both of statements can stand alone, each could be argued. For starters, it is not only selfish to take more then you ever will be able to use, it is just stupid, and if you make it with your sweat, why shouldn’t it be yours to keep or profit from. The only problem is, that one of these statements is the head of a starving serpent, and the other its delicious tale. It is hard to believe the head could stay alive without devouring the tale. We should start this argument at the head and work our way down. If John Locke were alive today he would be a lawyer. Not just any lawyer though, a big business lawyer working for a company like Enron. He would try to justify the destruction caused by overly rich, overly powerful people, with statements such as ones that will follow. When first reading Locke you might think, â€Å" Hey, this guy sounds like a lawyer....

C ++ Language :: essays research papers

C++ Programming Language C++ is a universal programming language, which considerably eases and comforts the work of a professional programmer. Roundly, C++ is an enhancement of C programming language: C++ offers flexible and effective tools of determination of new data types, which help programmer to split up his work into a number of easily controlled parts. Custom data types can be composed into some objects (called classes), specified by the programmer. Such objects are simple and reliable to be used in the situations, when data types are hard to be defined on the stage of compiling. Programming by using such objects is called Object Oriented Programming, and C++ is one of the most popular OOP languages. Origin of C++ takes source from programming languages of â€Å"C with Classes†, which have been developing during early 80th at the AT&T Bell Labs. â€Å"C with Classes† has been used for big projects of modeling and testing of opportunities in programming, which required minimum of process memory and time. But â€Å"C with Classes† was not satisfying with its lack of virtual functions and links, and that is why the specialists borrowed some features and tools (like classes) from another programming language, Simula. The name â€Å"C++† has been invented by Rick Mascitti in autumn 1983; it indicates an evolutional transformation from C to C++, because â€Å"++† symbolizes the function of increment in C. Since C++ must be classified as an extension of C programming language, it did not receive a name of a higher level group of languages, â€Å"D†. Early versions of C++ proved to be efficient for solving of growing complexity of the programming problems. Standard version of C++, released in 1998, includes the Core of the language and Standard Template Library, a modified version of C Library. C++ presented a lot of new functions and opportunities for a programmer. First of all, those are features of managing with the classes, like constructors, virtual functions, or implementation of encapsulation, abstraction, polymorphism, and inheritance. Besides, C++ offers some improvements in the very programming operations, like using declarations, namespaces, function overloading, default arguments, function-like casts, run-time type identification, inline functions, and many others. Design of C++ is modern and convenient, besides, C++ supports various programming styles (like OOP, data abstraction, etc.). The main advantage of C++ is its object orientation. Strategy of OOP helps to develop a great variety of software and to satisfy growing needs of modern programming.

Tuckman Group

Storming Stage: Every individual in the group will come up with different ideas to solve the problems of the reject; Also members will share their experiences and bring in what they have learnt from different projects form the past which will be great benefit to this one (what worked and what didn't work). At this stage every idea is valuable to make the project perfect -All ideas or contributions must be noted and treated as important. Morning Stage: At this stage, they work out strengths and weaknesses Of all the members to know who can do what based on individuals background, experience and area of expertise.The task is now assigned to everyone from the processes listed in the forming stage. They also prepare a timely schedule for the completion of the tasks as well as meeting dates in which each stage of task is fed back to the group ( as they are all from different countries, their meeting could be done using ‘Conference call' or online). They will have to prepare their sc hedule in line with the tight deadline they have been given. Performing Stage: This is the stage in which the project is actually completed, tested and executed. The improvement process is completed and updated unto the company's database.Samaritan oversees the whole process as a team leader. Paul will be in charge of the budget – looking at how much the company is willing to spend on this project; the actual cost of resources needed; cost of contracting out if necessary; and how well they can manage the fund available to complete the project. Michael has a good knowledge of stakeholders, so he is going to be looking at the needs of clients; the benefit and suitability of the improvement process to the company's operation. Michael along with Alice will be working together looking at the cost benefit analysis of the project.They will be considering and weighing the benefits of he project to its cost to the company in long term. Susan and Alice will be given the responsibility of writing the programmed, of needs to improve the process using programming languages, which will be incorporated into the existing process software and updated. Everyone is now aware of what is expected of him or her and from here they move onto the fourth stage which is; Adoring Stage: after the new process is implemented, then the team's objective is completed and thereby dissolved, this is referred to as the adoring stage.The basis for which the group was plopped has been actualities. When there is need for any other improvement then another group/team will be established which may comprise of the same or different set of people. Mourning Stage: This won't really apply to this team as their task has been completed and the team has been automatically dissolved. The mourning stage is when a group loses its member(s) and there happens to be no replacement. It may only apply to this team if doing he period they are working on the project, a member resigns is being sacked from the c ompany and not been replaced by any other person.

Gypsum Seting Time

g [pic] Faculty of engineering Civil engineering department ENCS 314 Building material lab Experiment No. 15&16 â€Å"Determination of water content used to prepare gypsum samples and the determination of the final setting for gypsum† Prepared by: Rasha Abed 1031107 Partners: Hazem No'man 1060155 Mohammed Hashlamoun 1060173 Ehab Alawi 1051449 Instructor: Ms. Randa Al- Asmar Date of experiment: 25-03-2008 Date of submitting: 01-04-2008 â€Å"Determination of water content used to prepare standardized gypsum samples and the determination of the final setting for gypsum† Introduction:In civil engineering, gypsum plays a role as a building material that contributes to many products such as cement and plaster. In this experiment, we investigated some properties considering hardening of gypsum, such as the standard water content and setting time. Aim of the experiment: – Determination of the proper water content to prepare gypsum paste samples – Determination of the final setting time for gypsum paste. Theory: Standard water content: amount of water added to gypsum to form a paste that'd allow the pointer of Vicat's apparatus to descend to a point (30-32) mm above the base of the mold.Setting time of Gypsum: the amount of time that passes from the moment of adding water to the gypsum paste (would be already determined); to the moment that Vicat's needle would descend to reach 3 mm above the base of the mold. Apparatus: †¢ Determination of the water content: – Vicat apparatus – Balance – Metal tray – Graduated cylinder †¢ Determination of the setting time for gypsum: – Vicat's apparatus (the pointer is replaced by Vicat's needle of 10 mm diameter. – Stop watch Procedure: †¢ Determination of the water content: . A 200 gm sample of gypsum is prepared, and put over a plate, to be added with a specified amount of water. 2. The gypsum is mixed thoroughly with water for 3 minutes, to form a moist paste. 3. A part of the paste is poured in the Vicat's mold, until the mold is filled completely with the paste and the surface of the mold is rimmed. 4. Vicat's mold is applied on the base of Vicat's device. The pointer of the device is adjusted to just touch the surface of the mold, then left to fall freely under the influence of its weight. . The reading of Vicat's pointer is taken. This reading indicates the depth that the pointer has reached above the base of the mold. 6. The experiment is repeated using a new sample each time; until the standard water content is reached (Vicat's needle would reach a height of (30-32) mm above the base of the mold. †¢ Determination of the setting time for gypsum: 1. A 200 gm sample of gypsum is prepared. The amount of water determined in the previous experiment is added to the sample. 2.The gypsum is mixed thoroughly with water for 3 minutes, to form a moist paste, and then part of the paste is poured in the Vicat's mold, until the mold is filled completely with the paste and the surface of the mold is rimmed. 3. Vicat's mold is applied on the base of Vicat's device. The needle of the device is adjusted to just touch the surface of the mold, then left to fall freely under the influence of its weight. 4. The reading of the device's pointer is taken, until we reach a reading of 3mm. 5. The time needed for the needle of the device would descend to a height of 3mm above the base of the mold is recorded using a stop watch.Data and calculations: |measured depth |The amount |Trial no. | |from the base (mm) |of added water (%) | | |39 |48 |1 | |34 |49 |2 | |35 |48. |3 | |32 |50 |4 | |50 |Standard water content (%) | |4. 16 |setting time (minutes) | Conclusion:As we can see from the results, the standard water content needed to prepare a standard gypsum paste = 50%, and we obtained a setting time = 4. 16, which compared to other building materials considered quick hardening. This advantage increases the role of gyps um as a component in Portland cement and plaster industry. [1] Engineering use: Gypsum is considered very valuable from the economical and industrial side, since it can be found a lot in nature. It can be used to manufacture plaster moldings (ceramic industry and engineering industry).Also gypsum plays apart in cement industry (for example: Gypsum cement and Portland cement). Many new techniques have been developed get benefit from gypsum and Portland cement. these techniques uses both the advantages of gypsum (early hardening, high early strength, enhanced workability) and Portland cement (improved durability in moist conditions), but are free of the deleterious effect of ettringite and thaumasite, which are formed when gypsum and Portland cement interact. Such properties enhance the workability of cement. [2][3]References: [1]: http://www. sciencedirect. com/science? _ob=ArticleURL=B6V2G-4BRRGD8-2=10=1==search=d=c=C000050221=1=0=10=4e71cbde7aba9b4d1338fea79920ab39 [2]: http://www. sciencedirect. com/science? _ob=ArticleURL=B6TWG-40GRJTP-7=10=1==search=d=c=C000050221=1=0=10=5c7ed60e8eed63f2ad9c9a5412b00080 [3]: http://www. apitco. org/Profiles/Gypsum%20based%20building%20materials. pdf