History of the building industry

UNIT 1

BUILDING CONSTRUCTION

Подберите русские эквиваленты следующим словам, содержащим интернациональные корни

Specialist, communal, finance, plan, organize, sort, profession, engineer, tradition, material, canal, operate, calculate, elevator.

Запомните необходимый минимум профессиональной лексики

construct	строить
build	строить
building construction	домостроение
master stonemason	главный каменщик
craftsman	специалист, рабочий
raw material	сырье
building designer	конструктор здания
collapse	обвалиться, разрушиться
calculate accurately	вычислить точно
surveyor	геодезист, маркшейдер
skyscraper	небоскреб
contractor	подрядчик
estimate	оценка
steel framing	стальной каркас
assemble	собирать
building site	строительная площадка
construction management	управление строительством

Прочитайте текст. Пользуясь словарем, определите значение незнакомых слов

HISTORY OF THE BUILDING INDUSTRY

In early times there were few specialist builders. People constructed their homes from available materials. In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, large buildings were financed by the rulers of the country and built by slaves. Stone was used if it was available and where it was not, brick-making industry developed.

After the end of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD there was very little large-scale building done in Europe for about six hundred years. There were two kinds of communal buildings: castles and churches. Building a cathedral was such a vast undertaking that someone was required to organize all the craftsmen needed for the work. This was usually a master stonemason.

At the time of the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries a new sort of building specialist appeared. He was usually a philos­opher or artist who would get together a team of building workers and make arrangements to pay them. This was the beginning of the profession of architecture.

The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century brought to an end the craft traditions in building. Many new functional buildings were put up in the big developing towns. They were not planned to be beautiful but were to house machinery and the workers who operated it. They had to be built quickly and cheaply. The building materials were brought across the country on the new canals and railways that were quickly constructed to get the raw materials to the places where they were needed.

When the railways were built, tunnels were dug, and bridges, aqueducts, and roads were built. New materials such as steel were introduced and engineers were trained to use them. Advances in science meant that building designers could calculate in advance how a building should be constructed to ensure that it would stand up, instead of relying on a system of trial and error, for it sometimes happened that a building would collapse while it was being built.

It was important to calculate accurately the cost of materials and labour, and there came to be so much competition for doing the work that a system of tendering developed. Different contractors would calculate what it would cost to complete a project and then the lowest estimate would be chosen. The quantity surveyor appeared in the late 19th century as a professional specialist in building finance, who could accurately predict the cost of a project.

In the late 19th century, all kinds of new technological developments affected the building industry. The emergence of the skyscraper in Chicago, United States, was made possible not only by the use of steel framing in the structure, but also by the invention of the elevator, the telephone, and air conditioning.

The present state of building construction is complex. There is a wide range of building products and systems which are aimed primarily at groups of building types or markets. The design process for buildings is highly organized; it includes the manufacturers of building products and systems, the craftsmen who assemble them on the building site, the contractors who employ and coordinate the work of the craftsmen, and consultants who specialize in such aspects as construction management, quality control, and insurance.

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