o   ESWB Google drive

o   Update exec contact information in Exec Contact Information

o   Folders for each exec member, and projects

o   Maintain Community, Faculty, etc Contact Lists

• Planning

o   Asana ?– program for team management, includes projects and tasks lists. Email reminders for assigned tasks.

o   Documentation and responsibility

o   Want a reference for events

o   Temporarily tabled

• Project Symposium

o   Mon April 22

o   OpenGrounds

o   5-7pm

o   Presentation expectations

§  5 local projects, 2 international projects

§  5 minutes presentation, 2 minutes questions

§  Content:

• Problem Identification/History – brief description
• Process
• Accomplishments
• Goals for the future
• LESSONS LEARNED
• Light and interesting
• Photos and presentation

§  All team members must be there!

§  Chance to get new interest for next year

§  Food: Wayside – Southern food – Angela’s task

§  Email Lindsey for final setup

§  Prize for best team – food-related prize (Arch’s, inexpensive dinner, location based on how many members)

§  Invitations

• Faculty invites – Prof Elzey, Clarence, David Luis, Berne, Green, Marshal,  
• Alumni invites
• Local Projects – Ricky. Make fancy invitation (Google form, RSVP)
• Project Leaders (expectations for presentations)- Ricky

§  Photos for slideshow – Deadline of Friday. Email to Ricky, who sends to Alisha

Local Projects for next year

• 2 week trial period?

o   Pros: determine commitment

o   Cons: too many people. Unproductive

• Then interview

§  Other Notes:

• Form for applying for gas money (reimbursement)

o   Need receipts

04/11/13

Recommendations

• Notification
  • Don’t email students when package is at the depot; not necessary information
  • Redesign email text – inform students that the package will be sent back after x amount of days
  • Automate second and third notice to make it quicker and more accurate
  • Why did some people not get a first email? – how to address that issue
• Dissemination of information
  • UVA On-Grounds tracking program
  • How students format their addresses
• Other things to consider
  • Text notifications about packages
  • Develop the tracking capability (an online app?)
  • Spacing considerations and organization in the new mailroom
    •  Bigger bins and new shelves
    • Organization of the mailroom
  • Separate sorting from getting packages
    • People specifically dedicated to sorting that are out of the way of the counter work
    • Separate computers for scanning the packages (mailroom 1 has two computers in the back – for this purpose?)
  • Issue of Gooch/Dillard – separate mailing number for every room
    • Building number, dorm
    • Suite number

Vickie Hawes – potential presentation times

• Mon 3-5
• Tues 1-5
• Fri 9-12
• Poll to figure out best time: John

Presentation!

• Work on the presentation over the weekend

Mailroom Survey – UVA Version Sent out

Slides – Due Sunday at 2PM to ESWB Drive

• Outline the objectives (client’s and team’s) – done
• Current state description (qualitative)
  • Pictures/sketches – ALLISON, label sketches
• Current state description (quantitative)
  • Simulation output with help – TIMUR
• General student satisfaction (qualitative) – CHETAN
• Comparison with other schools (qualitative; responses from polls) – Mihir, done
• Feedback from employees (can we include their names & years of experience as well?) – STEFANIE, MIHIR
• Our methodology – Grace, done
• Proposed solutions/recommendations – JOHN REAGAN
• Conclusions + next steps – group work

John – Doodle poll for Vickie Hawes presentation

Chetan & everyone – Keep pushing the survey

Timur – feedback on presentation (Sunday night)

4-4-2013

• Tasks
  • Timur: Fitting data to distribution
  • John: mailroom tomorrow
    • Can Kendall do that for us?
    • Start time, end time, how many they sorted -> generate an average
    • Otherwise, we can do shifts to determine times
  • John: meeting date with Vicky Hawes to determine presentation day
  • John: email to determine work hours/pay
    • Follow up on another email
  • Stefanie: sort through interview material (by Sunday)
  • Chetan: UVA student survey (before Sunday)
  • Everyone
    • Confirm with people they interviewed (find emails on people search)
    • Write a paragraph on their slides
• Slides
  • Qualitative current state – student satisfaction, interviews
    • Could we do survey of UVA students?
• April 22^nd
  • ESWB Project Symposium – project presentation
• Pitney Bowes notes
  • High volume
  • Housing department uses a lot of seasonal workers/unfamiliar with the system
  • Causes hiccups b/c of not familiar
  • Research into hiring procedures?

Goal: Preserve institutional memory and deal with tasking

Current Solutions that exist

• Meeting minutes
• Asana
• Basecamp
• Collab
• Github: the documents are hosting that folder, anyone can see them in their most current form
• http://openatrium.com/
• https://trello.com/

Need a balance between docs to be shared with outside world and other teams vs. doc used that don’t need to be shared or are too wordy to be shared.

Need to avoid information overload

What are we looking for (and current solutions):

• Task management – minutes
• Archive – google drive (no policy in place yet)
• Financial stuff – nothing really
• Institutional memory
  • ESWB Mission and Core Values – Exec training program
  • Concrete info on how we run things – tried several systems
• Communication system (?) – email
• Projects – website

Possible Set-up

• All members can log in
• Tasks and calendars and file management
• Everyone can see all of the other projects

Project Updates

-          Monthly: project pitch nights

-          Website: milestones (and minutes)

• Keep in the google drive?
• View only folders?

-          Institutional memory/succession

• Part of the deliverable: prepare a deliverable that can be shared with the next team
• Face to face meetings

How are the projects keeping documents together

-          Google docs

To do

-          Redirect on the old website/atuva to the new website

The WHAT

1) Urgent & Important – plan ahead; not everything should be a crisis

2) Not Urgent & Important – important; but we have time to manage it

3) Urgent & Not important – living in a world of distraction; urgent non-important things

4) Not Urgent & Not Important

What can we do that’s not really urgent but important enough to minimize the urgency; reduce crises situations

BHAGs: Big hairy audacious goals

• Holding a huge conference
• Vision of the local projects
• Transform ESWB into a project oriented organization
• Visionary BHAG
  • Target style: have a goal in mind
  • Enemy style: beat some other project
  • Role-model style: become the best at everything
• What is our vision
  • ESWB to be the club to join for engineers
    • Project base
    • Social aspects
    • Be the go-to for really cool things (resource workshops, professor lectures, speakers)
    • Not cohesive/community – change of venue?
    • Get an ESWB place: Rice 120
• Questions:
  • What would ESWB look like in the next 5 years?
  • What would it feel like to the students in ESWB?
  • If someone wrote an article in Cav Daily about ESWB what would it say?

-          Problems: General members

• Project member form vs. GM form
• Not just project teams, but also other events

Try a lot of stuff and keep what works

• Local projects: application, interview, scoping doc, website integration

Timur’s Simulation – Questions that need to be answered for the simulation to work

• Legend (meaning of all the columns) for the Pitney-Bowes data?
• What time do workers show up at the mail stations? What time does mailroom open for pick-up?
• When do the packages arrive at depot from post office?
• How long (in minutes) does it take for the van to get from the depot to the mail stations?
• How does the depot decide when to send the van/truck to the mail stations? Is it when all the packages have been sorted at the Pitney Bowse depot or is there a specific time that it leaves?
• What are the Max Min and Average times that it takes to Label and Shelve a package from the Depot?
• What are the Max Min and Average times that it takes to Label and Shelve a package from the UPS/FedEx/DHL?
• What is the behavior of the mailroom staff? 2 or 3 people working in each mailroom? Can we get their shift schedule?
• How long does it take for a student to be served at the counter? Need a distribution. [We can get this from the data we collected]

Side things to look into

• Emails @ depot?
• Students don’t always put correct addresses?

Things to do

• Massage our interview material into softer presentable material – Stefanie
• Confirm with interviewees about name release
• Draw insights from poll data and make them presentable – Mihir
• Key takeaways/conclusions
• Update the simulation + use data for distribution – Timur
• Sketching the area and detailing efficiencies in the mail station – Allison
  • Top-view sketches (to-scale)
  • Photographs
  • General observations of space (physical characteristics)
  • Potential concerns
    • Concerns with where to put packages
    • Bins too small w/ new dorms
•  Generate methodology – Grace
  • What our plan has been
  • What we have done
  • How we’ve gotten what we have
  • Check scoping doc

Deliverables

• Presentation package
• Report

Slides

• We have to make recommendations
  • Outline the objectives (client’s and team’s)
  • Current state description (quantitative)
    • Simulation output with help
• General student satisfaction (qualitative)
• Comparison with other schools (qualitative; responses from polls)
• Feedback from employees (can we include their names & years of experience as well?)
• Our methodology
• Proposed solutions
  • Student awareness campaigns
  • Specific improvements
• Conclusions + next steps

• keep the system as cheap as possible

• digestor will hold the heat, so don’t need sun all the time

• has done a fairly large amount of work with solar – could do parabolic, batch collector, tracking system

  • talking about very simple, self-made solar technology

  • LEF uses a parabolic cooker, as well as wood

  • plumbing on parabolic systems is difficult

• Alexis knows Commonwealth Solar people, might be able to get panels

  • he knows where to get various widgets

  • can teach us about plumbing, etc.

• already have a 1000 gallon tank, some flat plates out at the farm

• Maddie has a CFM number (16,000) for the amount of gas to produce

• smaller systems are not as resilient

• house heating

  • solar panels run blowers to push warm air through gravel & concrete at base of house in the winter, solar panels run irrigation system in the summer.

  • 1800 W output

  • already have the solar electric side

• funding

  • see how much we can fundraise (create a budget), then let Alexis know what they should provide

  • probably could fund a few thousand; no fixed budget

• needs

  • replicable

  • cheap

  • focus is not on new gadgets, but to make existing ones work

  • efficiency per dollar spent is better than efficiency per square foot

  • biogas will be used just for reliable cooking.

  • built in safety measures to prevent death by CO

• deliver

  • first steps: get a biogas digestor prototype running

  • square footage estimate for flat plates

  • test parabolic vs. flat plate effectiveness

  • try to build a tracking system?

  • build a prototype (possibly use one of the collectors that they have?) – can do it at his home by Ridge Street (2ish miles from here)

  • cost of air-based vs. solar collector system?

  • just focus on creating the gas; can be easily connected to the cooker

• how we can help

  • anything that gets them closer!  on paper design, prototype, actual thing

• keep the system as cheap as possible

• digestor will hold the heat, so don’t need sun all the time

• has done a fairly large amount of work with solar – could do parabolic, batch collector, tracking system

  • talking about very simple, self-made solar technology

  • LEF uses a parabolic cooker, as well as wood

  • plumbing on parabolic systems is difficult

• Alexis knows Commonwealth Solar people, might be able to get panels

  • he knows where to get various widgets

  • can teach us about plumbing, etc.

• already have a 1000 gallon tank, some flat plates out at the farm

• Maddie has a CFM number (16,000) for the amount of gas to produce

• smaller systems are not as resilient

• house heating

  • solar panels run blowers to push warm air through gravel & concrete at base of house in the winter, solar panels run irrigation system in the summer.

  • 1800 W output

  • already have the solar electric side

• funding

  • see how much we can fundraise (create a budget), then let Alexis know what they should provide

  • probably could fund a few thousand; no fixed budget

• needs

  • replicable

  • cheap

  • focus is not on new gadgets, but to make existing ones work

  • efficiency per dollar spent is better than efficiency per square foot

  • biogas will be used just for reliable cooking.

  • built in safety measures to prevent death by CO

• deliver

  • first steps: get a biogas digestor prototype running

  • square footage estimate for flat plates

  • test parabolic vs. flat plate effectiveness

  • try to build a tracking system?

  • build a prototype (possibly use one of the collectors that they have?) – can do it at his home by Ridge Street (2ish miles from here)

  • cost of air-based vs. solar collector system?

  • just focus on creating the gas; can be easily connected to the cooker

• how we can help

  • anything that gets them closer!  on paper design, prototype, actual thing

Design criteria

• cheap

• replicable

• maintainable

• ease of operation

• durability

  • plastic preferred over steel

• reliable/stable – produces steady amount of gas

  • consider the type of material put in and schedule of feedings

• gas production

  • 45 cubic feet of gas a day (probably an underestimate because Alexis’ calculations were based on natural gas)

Designs

Floating drum model

• inverted tank over organic material will rise when gas is produced

• simplest design

• what Alexis recommended

• daily input (1 kg input in morning, 1 kg in night)

• used on small-middle sized farms

• cheap – the tank is most of the cost

• 1000L tank produces enough gas to provide 2 hours of cooking per day

  • cooler climates: 200-300 L of methane per day

  • warmer climates: up to 800-1000 L of gas per day

• need: test the biogas to find how much BTU is produced by the gas

• possibly filter the gas – steel wool, pass through water to remove some sulfur compounds and H20, Co2

Polyethylene Tube Digester

• shallow underground

• pros

  • easily warmed though ideal for warmer climates

  • simple to build; parts easily replacable

• cons

  • all indoors

  • hard to insulate

  • lifespan is always the main issue (5-7 years)

  • requires a lot of maintenance

  • easily puncturable

  • cannot add coil heating system inside

• idea development

  • put it in a greenhouse to warm it more easily and keep animals away

  • gravel on top to maintain pressure?

Fixed dome biogas digestor

• entirely underground

• large scale

• pros

  • once built, INDESTRUCTIBLE!

  • 8 cubic meter tank produces 3 cubic meters of biogas per day

• cons

  • needs technical masonry to build initially

  • most complex design

Stacked tanks

• used in Cairo, Germany, other cooler climates

• water displaces gas

• above ground

• very expensive?

• http://solarcities.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-designs-for-cold-season-biogas.html – Digester 4

Narrowing it down

• We have chosen to build either an inverted tank or polyethylene tube digester

Things to research further

• prior art – where have these been done?

• detailed list of materials (real thing and prototype)

• find technical instructions from other work that has been done

• cost estimate

• time scale – how long does the material take to digest initially? (how to speed up our prototype)

  • ways to expedite the process

• enclosure designs

  • how to maintain temperature?

• detailed list of pros and cons

• specific concerns

  • polyethylene – pressure in bag needs to be maintained to keep gas pumped out

• Polyethylene tube research – LEF team

• Inverted tank research – Solar team

timeline

• 3/30 – final design, order materials, contact Alexis
• 4/6, 13 – construction
• 4/20 – testing
• 4/27 – analysis