Book Description

Excerpt from Handbook of Construction Plant: Its Cost and Efficiency It has been a considerable time since my office commenced to gather the data that have been collated for this book, and during all of that period the manuscript sheets, and later the page proofs bound up for convenient handling, have been in almost daily use. Consequently many of the items have been used and verified; so that I have rather more confidence in the usefulness as well as the general accuracy of the material than if it had not passed through a fairly thorough period of seasoning. This time of seasoning has its disadvantages, however, as well as its benefits. Changing conditions in certain industries have affected prices, and a number of items have been radically revised in the making. It is to be expected, moreover, that the same thing will continue; and as I have said in the introduction, page 3, these figures should be checked by actual bids where a plant is to be appraised, etc. In order to facilitate this, lists of the principal manufacturers of the plant described are given. My principal reason for thinking that these notes would be useful to others is that I found them all but indispensable in my own practice, and not available in other form. My justification for the alphabetical method of classification is that this scheme admits of more rapid service on my desk than any other and I have attempted to supplement this arrangement by a very full index. For encouragement in this plan of procedure I am indebted to many of my engineering friends, who have aided by suggestions and useful criticisms. Finally, the keynote of the book has been practical utility to the man who has to buy, sell or use construction plant, or who needs to know what can be done with it. The existing facts in the shortest time on the reader's part, rather than interesting theory and clever comparisons have been kept most in mind. Because of this, a large wealth of material that would probably be of intense interest to the economist and the engineering student has been put aside for publication some time later if it seem desirable, but for which there is no space in this volume, which has grown to just double the size originally planned for it. A more general idea of the scope of the work, its field and its limitations may be found in the introductory chapter which follows this preface. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.