Cement Plants Expanding

on 04/04/2017

Independent sources describe cement industry as one of Pakistan’s top industries, significantly contributing to economy. Pakistan’s cement industry exports cement after serving domestic demand. The industry has attracted domestic and foreign investors in a big way. However, cement industry also has some problems and threats which could affect it negatively. It has seen a big slump in its major export destinations like Afghanistan. Reality checks show cement makers financial year gains are spectacular. Estimates set Lucky Cement at 48%, Kohat 46%, DG Khan 43% and Maple Leaf 43% as top units. Thus to meet cement’s extensive demand,manufacturers are set to expand their facilities and out lets without fear of price wrangling. One of the cement big names – Maple Leaf Cement Factory – is about to expand to new products. Its new 2.3 million ton brown-field expansion program will cost Rs22 billion. To cut down electricity costs and reduce dependence on national grid, the company has formed a wholly owned subsidiary, Maple Leaf Power Ltd (MLPL), primarily, to generate and supply low cost power. MLPL is currently running on 3.2 million tons of clinker production annually, which is about 7% of total cement production. Its share would go up to 8% in next few years. This report gives details of each firm’s spectrum expansion plans. Kohat Cement will expand by 2.3 million tons. Green field expansion may take longer compared to brown field. DG Khan Cement, another big player, would add 2.2 million tons, while Lucky Cement plans to build new expansion plant in Kalar Kahar with 2.3 million tons capacity.  Gharibwal Cement has announced it would add 2.4 million tons of production. Fauji and Thatta Cement have not made any commitment over their expansion plans other than those already under way.  But Thatta Cement has established and consolidated its position as profitable concern. Its position grew by 112% last year and its margins increased from 28% to 32%. Fauji’s silo collapse earlier this year had hurt its earning but after reconstruction of damaged line, it is well set to take its market share. If designed expansion plans come through by end of the decade, production capacity of cement manufacturers will go up from 45 million tons to 67 million tons, which is 50% increase in total capacity. Sector’s performance shows that Total dispatches went up by 10% by end of last year and cement demand is expected to grow about 9 to 15% annually. The industry will then be operating at 90% capacities, say cement producers. There is now enough space for new players to enter the industry, and those already working at lower tiers can reach higher leads. They can set multiple goals. A Chinese firm’s entry was going the rounds, when DCL sources confirmed they will be working with one top Chinese cement firm and that they have agreed with the Chinese firm for diligence.

 

NDRMF gets US$25 million

on 01/03/2017

The ECC has approved the allocation of $25 million equivalent of funds for the National Disaster Risk Management Fund (NDRMF). The Economic Affairs Division (EAD) has set up the fund to have a government-owned sustainable mechanism to support disaster risk financing instruments that can enhance the country’s resilience to natural calamities. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has shown an indicative assistance of $1.2bn as loan for this fund. The EAD and ADB had signed a loan agreement for $200 million in December 2016 as the first tranche against the total amount. The ECC also approved a grant of Rs12m as equity share of the government of Pakistan to clear liabilities and financial obligations to facilitate the wind-up process of Pakistan Textile City Limited.

Early warning system offered for Peshawar

on 01/03/2017

The Al-Khidmat Foundation has offered to finance early warning system for Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which is a disaster-prone city in the province. The offer came during a group discussion on `multiple hazards vulnerability and risk assessment of Peshawar district` the organization said it would install early warning system if the district government provided land for it. The Al-Khidmat Foundation and Riphah University jointly organised the event, which was attended by academicians and officials of the relevant departments. The system costs around Rs30 million and also requires one kanal of land. Though prone to multiple disasters, including flash floods, riverine and urban flooding, Peshawar doesn`t have an early warning system for them. Dr Attaur Rehman, who teaches at the Department of Geography, University of Peshawar, says the rapid and unplanned urbanisation will swallow the entire agricultural land of Peshawar district in the next 50 years. `There is a need for a specific legislation to immediately stop the conversion of agricultural land into residential and commercial areas in Peshawar district otherwise there will be no farmland left in the next 50 years,` he said. The data collected by the revenue department show that the rapid urbanisation and unplanned construction have swallowed more than 3,307 acres of agricultural land in Peshawar district over the last one and a half decade. According to it, the total agricultural land in the provincial capital was 109,883 acres in 2001-02 but that shrank to 106,576 acres in 2013-14. The agricultural land is also under pressure in the adjoining districts of Nowshera and Charsadda due to the unplanned urbanisation. The government has yet to legislate on how to regulate utilisation of land and stop conversion of farmlands into commercial activities. Dr Rehman said Peshawar was among the top districts exposed to the multiple manmade and natural disasters as it did not have any system to forecast nullah flooding. He said the national warning system did not cover streams and seasonal nullahs of Peshawar, which saw devastations caused by urban and riverine floods every year. Khan Zeb, an official of the Water and Sanitation Services Peshawar, said the situation was deteriorating due to non-implementation of the building bylaws in the district. He called for the implementation of the relevant laws to prevent urban flooding in the capital. The official said the level of groundwater in the district was also going down. A joint declaration issued after the discussion said the environmental degradation and climate change had increased the likelihood and intensity of natural hazards in Peshawar and other parts of the country. It demanded one per cent budget allocation for climate change adaptation in the next financial year and the use of 50 per cent of it for mapping and assessment related research and development. The declaration suggested that aH projects related to the proposed China Pakistan Economic Corridor include prior environmental assessments and hazard mapping in line with the NDMA`s National DRR Policy 2013 with the effective DRR plans on all CPEC routes. It called for the establishment of independent district disaster management units fully equipped with trained people and autonomous in implementing the guidelines in all 105 districts of the country.

What is agility in software engineering?

on 01/03/2017

Change is the most common attribute of this world. Nothing always remains similar for the entire period of time, although minor in some cases but a change is compulsory. In the field of software engineering this word “Change” plays a significant role because the user’s requirement does not always remain the same.

A software requires change when the user’s requirement is changed. “Agility” is the term in software engineering that is related to change,  that is effective (rapid and adaptive) response to change.
In order to response to change effectively there must be effective communication between all the stakeholders. Here I should clear one point, that stakeholders means all those people who are involved in the development of a software, e.g. analyst, designer, programmer and etc. In agility drawing the customer onto the team that is working on the software is very necessary and for that a team should be organised; that includes all the skilled and professional people so that it is in control of the work performed. Dissatisfaction with the overheads involved in software design methods of the 1980s and 1990s led to the creation of agile methods.

The agile methods are given below:

  • Focus of the software engineer should be on the code instead of design
  • Agility should be based on the interactive approach to software development.
  • The method of agility is intended to work on the software efficiently and quickly and deliver the project as early as possible because delivery of the software in time helps the team to meet the changing requirements.

In agile software development, there are some principles that are to be followed:

  • Satisfaction of the customer should be the highest priority of a software engineer and this goal can be achieved by early and nonstop deliveries of the valuable software.
  • A software engineer should welcome the change requirements open heartedly from the customer.
  • Software developers and the business people should work together with effective co-ordination
  • There should be face-to-face communication among all the stakeholders
  • Non-stop attention should be given to the technical work and to the design of software. This helps in enhancing agility.
  • Simplicity should be followed and complexity should be avoided because it is not necessary that the customer always will be a technical person. Complexity can cause various problems for a non-technical customer

A team that is involved in the software development should have creative thinking. A team should be always busy in thinking that how they (as a team) can become more and more effective. We all know that agile methods are so effective but there are some problems through which a software development team undergoes in agile methods, like: I

It can be very complex task to keep the interest of the customer especially when the customer is non-technical

Maintenance of simplicity requires some extra amount of work

Setting priorities for changes can be very difficult when there are multiple stakeholders

Team members may be unsuited to the intense involvement that characterises agile methods.

To follow the principles to agility is very necessary for a software development team in order to achieve the best results. A team should always try to overcome these problems in agility. The quality of a software engineer to give quick and effective response to change can lead any software engineer to the steps of success.

Humans cause climate change 170 times faster than natural forces

on 01/03/2017

For the first time, researchers have developed a mathematical equation to describe the impact of human activity on the earth, finding people are causing the climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces. The equation was developed in conjunction with Professor Will Steffen, a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University, and was published in the journal The Anthropocene Review. The authors of the paper wrote that for the past 4.5bn years astronomical and geophysical factors have been the dominating influences on the Earth system. The Earth system is defined by the researchers as the biosphere, including interactions and feedbacks with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and upper lithosphere. But over the past six decades human forces “have driven exceptionally rapid rates of change in the Earth system,” the authors wrote, giving rise to a period known as the Anthropocene. “Human activities now rival the great forces of nature in driving changes to the Earth system,” the paper said. Steffen and his co-researcher, Owen Gaffney, from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, came up with an “Anthropocene Equation” to determine the impact of this period of intense human activity on the earth. Explaining the equation in New Scientist, Gaffney said they developed it “by homing in on the rate of change of Earth’s life support system: the atmosphere, oceans, forests and wetlands, waterways and ice sheets and fabulous diversity of life”.“For four billion years the rate of change of the Earth system has been a complex function of astronomical and geophysical forces plus internal dynamics: Earth’s orbit around the sun, gravitational interactions with other planets, the sun’s heat output, colliding continents, volcanoes and evolution, among others,” he wrote. “In the equation, astronomical and geophysical forces tend to zero because of their slow nature or rarity, as do internal dynamics, for now. All these forces still exert pressure, but currently on orders of magnitude less than human impact.” According to Steffen these forces have driven a rate of change of 0.01 degrees Celsius per century. Greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans over the past 45 years, on the other hand, “have increased the rate of temperature rise to 1.7 degrees Celsius per century, dwarfing the natural background rate,” he said. This represented a change to the climate that was 170 times faster than natural forces. “We are not saying the astronomical forces of our solar system or geological processes have disappeared, but in terms of their impact in such a short period of time they are now negligible compared with our own influence,” Steffen said. “Crystallising this evidence in the form of a simple equation gives the current situation a clarity that the wealth of data often dilutes. “What we do is give a very specific number to show how humans are affecting the earth over a short timeframe. It shows that while other forces operate over millions of years, we as humans are having an impact at the same strength as the many of these other forces, but in the timeframe of just a couple of centuries. “The human magnitude of climate change looks more like a meteorite strike than a gradual change.” Gaffney and Steffen wrote that while the Earth system had proven resilient, achieving millions of years of relative stability due to the complex interactions between the Earth’s core and the biosphere, human societies would be unlikely to fare so well. Failure to reduce anthropological climate change could “trigger societal collapse”, their research concluded.