AGP - Introduction and Course Objectives

Each of these projects may be considered by most Americans to be a construction project, but an engineer or an architect or a designer would see them with a different perspective. Without the support of individual engineers and without the vision and wisdom of quality project managers, these projects could not have achieved the success that they did. This statement is not intended to demean the many manufacturers and construction companies who were involved in these projects, because their foresight and experience was paramount to the success of each of these projects.

The first part of this course focuses on the Panama Canal Construction and the many largely unknown events leading up to its ultimate development and success. The second part of this course describes in great detail the construction of the Hoover Dam. Both projects highlight the tenacity of the engineers in the Federal Government as well as the engineers and supervisors of the contractors in the private sector to complete such enormous projects. Each of these projects has a story to tell and, hopefully, each of you will find these project stories both interesting and informative and will be motivated to do greater things.

Course Objectives

By the completion of this course, you should be able to:

• Explain the obstacles that confronted early engineers.
• Learn how early engineers coped with limited technology and very few resources.
• Acknowledge the roles that federal government officials played in the approval and development of some of the world's most well-known projects.
• Discover how leadership played such a major factor in each of these significant projects.
• Describe the methods used by the early engineers, project managers, and construction management.
• Visualize the techniques used by engineers and constructors despite lack of communications and an inexperienced workforce.