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How to search for trending civil tenders?

If something is “Trending”, it means that it is popular. It is otherwise defined by Oxford Dictionaries as a “general direction in which something is developing or changing”.

On the Leads 2 Business system, trending tenders fall within our Reporting feature, and are those tenders that have been viewed the most and/or monitored by the most clients – they have become topics of interest. They are popular.

In this post, we are referring specifically to trending civil tenders.

To locate the data on trending tenders, you need to navigate to Reporting:

Have a look at the menu on the left-hand side of your screen (while logged in to your profile), and find the “Reporting”.

Expand the Reporting menu, and then the Trending sub-menu. You should see an option to view Most Monitored and an option to view Most Viewed tenders. I have highlighted both of these options in the image below. Select the option that you would like to view.

When you click on one of the options, you will see that you land on the Search Results page.

As we are searching for trending civil tenders, the first thing that I would suggest that you do, using the search criteria menu on the left-hand side of your screen, is de-select both Tenders and Projects (the system has automatically selected both) from the Category option (the first option on the search criteria menu).

Expand the Tenders sub-menu (still under the Category option), and only select Infrastructure (civil construction tenders are categorised under the Infrastructure industry).

Once you have performed the above changes, your selected search criteria should resemble the images below (the second image is just to show that if you scroll down on the Tenders sub-menu, Infrastructure can be seen, and it has been selected):

Should you wish to, you can narrow the results down even further, by selecting specific Regions, CIDB Gradings, etc.)

We also have another wonderful feature on our website, which allows you to view the number of trending tenders on our database in graph form. The data that is depicted on the graph is dependent on the criteria you select.

Please navigate to Trending, under the Reporting sub-menu again. This time, click on Market Intelligence > Tenders.

You should now find yourself on this page:

The data can be manipulated using the blue All Industries drop-down menu; the green All CIDB Gradings drop-down menu; and the purple All Regions drop-down menu. From each of these options, you can choose a specific industry, CIDB grading, and/or region, or you can leave the options as default “All …”. You can select the Date Range for the data, by using the grey calendar bar at the top right-hand corner above the graph (the options are This Year; One Year Back; Three Years Back; Five Years Back; Ten Years Back; and Custom Range).

As an example, let’s say that we would like to see the data for trending civil tenders in KwaZulu-Natal, with no specific CIDB Grading, published in our database between 01 January 2017 to 30 April 2017:

We would select Infrastructure from the All Industries drop-down menu. The CIDB drop-down will be left unchanged, and we would select KwaZulu-Natal from the All Regions drop-down menu. The results can be seen in the image below.

I do hope that I have taught you something new about the way in which you can view information on our website and that you can utilise this information to enhance the way in which you carry out your business tasks.

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To view notes with screenshots on how to use our website, please visit our Wiki site.
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About Bianca Warwick

I had the privilege of joining the Leads 2 Business content team in January 2012. I work in the exciting Projects department, following the progress of construction developments in KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State.

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The difference between various road surfaces

Asphalt, Gravel, Concrete and Pavers, but many countries use certain material depending on the area conditions and climate, despite concrete roads having some major advantages. Concrete and Asphalt are more commonly used. Learn about the advantages and disadvantages of the different road paving surfaces in this article.

Asphalt:

One of the most popular types of construction ever since its inception in the early 1920’s is asphalt paving. In this construction technique, a layer of asphalt is laid on top of an equally thick gravel base. Advantages of this form of road construction are that the pavement proves relatively easy to repair and maintain as well. However, asphalts is known to be significantly less durable and stronger than most other choices and isn’t the best for the environment either. Polypropylene and polyester geosynthetics have also been used for this purpose and in some northern countries, a layer of polystyrene boards have been used to delay and minimise frost penetration into the subgrade.

Depending on the temperature at which it is applied, asphalt is categorised as hot mix, warm mix, or cold mix. Hot mix asphalt is applied at temperatures over 300 °F (150°C) with a free-floating screed. Warm mix asphalt at temperatures of 200-250 °F (95-120°C), resulting in reduced energy usage and emissions of volatile organic compounds. Cold mix asphalt is often used on lower volume rural roads, where hot mix asphalt would cool too much on the long trip from the asphalt plant to the construction site.

An asphalt concrete surface will generally be constructed for high-volume primary highways having an average annual daily traffic load greater than 1200 vehicles per day. Advantages of asphalt roadways include relatively low noise and relatively low cost compared with other paving methods. Disadvantages are less tensile strength than concrete, the tendency to become slick and soft on hot weather and a certain amount of hydrocarbon pollution to soil and groundwater or waterways.

In 1960’s, rubberized asphalt was used for the first time, mixing crumb rubber from used tires, with asphalt. While a potential use for tires that would otherwise fill landfills and present a fire hazard, rubberized asphalt has shown a greater incidence of wear in freeze-thaw cycles in temperate due to non-homogeneous expansion and contraction with non-rubber components. Also, application of rubberized asphalt is more temperature-sensitive and in many locations can only be applied at certain times of the year. Study results of the long-term acoustic benefits of rubberized asphalt are inconclusive. The initial application of rubberized asphalt may provide 3-5 decibels (dB) reduction in tire-pavement source noise emissions; however, this translates to only 1-3 decibels (dB) in total noise level reduction (due to the other components of traffic noise). Compared to traditional passive attenuating measures (e.g. noise walls and earth berms), rubberized asphalt provides shorter-lasting and lesser acoustic benefits at a typically much greater expense.

Concrete:

Concrete is another popular choice for roadways, though it is typically only used for local roads and not other types of construction. Concrete surfaces (specifically, Portland cement concrete) are a created mix of Portland cement, coarse aggregate, sand and water. In virtually all modern mixes there will also be various admixtures added to increase workability, reduce the required amount of water, mitigate harmful chemical reactions and for other beneficial purposes. In many cases, there will also be Portland cement substitutes added, such as fly ash. This can reduce the cost of the concrete and improve its physical properties.

The material is applied in the freshly mixed slurry and worked mechanically to compact the interior and force some of the cement slurries to the surface to produce a smoother, denser surface free from honeycombing. The water allows the mix to combine molecularly in a chemical reaction called hydration.

There are three major types of concrete road surfaces – jointed plain (JPCP), jointed reinforced (JRCP) and continuously reinforced (CRCP). The distinguishing feature between the three being the joint system that is used to help prevent cracks from forming. Jointed plain concrete pavements contain joints to control the location of all the expected shrinkage cracks. The concrete cracks at the joints and not elsewhere in the slabs. Jointed plain pavements do not contain any steel reinforcement. However, there may be smooth steel bars at transverse joints and deformed steel bars at longitudinal joints. The spacing between transverse joints is typically about 15 feet (4.6m) for slab 7 to 12 inches (180 to 300mm) thick. Jointed reinforced concrete pavements contain steel mesh reinforcement (sometimes called distributed steel). In jointed reinforced concrete pavements, designers increase the joint spacing purposely and include reinforcing steel to hold together intermediate cracks in each slab.

The original pavement was laid in the 1950’s and has been significantly altered since.

Something to know about:

• Durability and maintenance free life: Concrete roads have a long service life of forty years, whereas asphalt roads last for ten years. Moreover, during this service life concrete road do not require frequent repair or patching work like asphalt roads.

• Vehicle consumes less fuel when running over a concrete road, consumes 15-20% less fuel than that on asphalt roads. This is because of the fact that a concrete road does not get deflected under the wheels of loaded trucks.
• Resistant to automobile fuel spillage and extreme weather: Unlike asphalt roads, concrete roads do not get damaged by the leaking oils from the vehicles or by the extreme weather conditions like excess rain or extreme heat.
• Greener process: Asphalt (bitumen) produces lots of highly polluting gases at the time of melting it for paving. Also, less fuel consumption by the vehicle running on a concrete road means less pollution.
• Saving of natural resources: Asphalt (bitumen) is produced from imported petroleum, the reserve of which is becoming reduced drastically. On the other hand, concrete (cement) is produced from abundantly available limestone.

Pavers:

A paver is a paving stone, tile, brick or brick-like piece of concrete commonly used as exterior flooring. In a factory, concrete pavers are made by pouring a mixture of concrete and some type of colouring agent into a mould of some shape and allowing to set. They are applied by pouring a standard concrete foundation, spreading sand on top, and then laying the pavers in the desired pattern. No actual adhesive or retaining method is used other than the weight of the paver itself except edging. Pavers can be used to make roads, driveways, patios, walkways and other outdoor platforms.

Gravel:

A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. They are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of South Africa. In New-Zealand and other Commonwealth countries, they may be known as ‘metal roads‘. They may be referred to as ‘dirt roads’ in common speech, but that term is used more for unimproved roads with no surface material added. If well constructed and maintained, a gravel road is an all-weather road.

Sources:

https://globalroadcom/road-construction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_surface

https://pixabay.com/en/road-asphalt-freeway-route-travel-691127/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hex_pavers_sliding_to_Hudson_W60_jeh.jpg

https://pixabay.com/en/photos/gravel%20road/

If you are interested in becoming one of our subscribers, please visit our website.
To view notes with screenshots on how to use our website, please visit our Wiki site.
To view more articles, please visit our blog.

About Devika Suresh

I started at Leads 2 Business in January 2010 (12 Years ago). I am presently Deputy HOD of L2Q. I started in the Daily Tenders Bills department and worked my way up to the L2Q department.

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