James Norman – författare

The series debut of Gimiendo Hernandez Quinto, the Hercule Poirot of Mexico...and China! Fans of Golden Age mystery and exotic locales will love this long-out-of-print yarn set in 1930s China, during the war with Japan. At its center is Gimiendo Hernandez Quinto, who once rode with Pancho Villa but now trains fighters for Chiang Kai-shek...and solves the odd murder on the side. At his side is the dangerously beautiful Mountain of Virtue (don't play poker with her), and rounding out the list is a collection of international characters: a hard-drinking English journalist, an American cowboy as handy with a six-shooter as he is inept at romance, a young Chinese soldier weighed down with worries for his country and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and a host of others. Any of them could have killed Harrow, an ambulance driver who appears to have died three different times.

As the starting point for any engineering project, mastering conceptual design means you'll understand how to work from a client brief, produce viable structural solutions, and test the feasibility of your ideas. You'll identify and solve major problems before you embark on a detailed design, and learn the skills to work with clients and colleagues from all disciplines.Drawing on the expertise of seven engineering/teaching professionals, and led by the University of Bristol's Dr James Norman, this book sets out to develop students' and graduates' understanding of the process - providing inspiration for the Institution's IPD core objective on conceptual design.Topics covered include: generating and communicating ideas through sketching and writing, preparing the brief, the concept design process itself, consideration of site constraints and ground conditions, developing a structural scheme, understanding robustness and stability, sizing of elements, and what to produce at the end of the process. It also includes worked examples.

'Sustainable design' asks; How we can design while aiming to do no harm? Unfortunately, when we don't reach that aim, we end up doing harm. 'Regenerative design' asks a different question; How can we design in a way that increases biodiversity, reduces carbon and leads to flourishing communities? In short how can we design so that people (and the ecosystems that support them) thrive. In this book the authors explore how, as structural engineers, we can bring about change. Using creative metaphors and case studies they:* Explain how engineers can change their practice now - to create a regenerative future* Explore the different levels of change - from individual projects to the culture of our industry* Illustrate how we can learn from living systems* Show how, by considering not just our site but the whole supply and waste chain, we can reimagine our impact - both positive and negativeThe book is a creative call for radical change; encouraging engineers, and anyone else involved in the built environment, to think and design differently - to do more good