ONE – WAY SLAB

One – way slabs are those slabs with an aspect ratio in plan of 2:1 or greater, in which bending is
primarily about the long axis
so, the slab is one way where L/B>=2

Types of one way slab

One way slab may be…
1) Solid
2) Hollow
3) Ribbed

TWO – WAY SLAB

Two way slab is a slab supported by beams on all the four sides and the loads are carried by the
supports along both directions, it is known as two way slab. In two way slab, the ratio of longer span (l)
to shorter span (b) is less than 2.
In two way slabs, load will be carried in both the directions. So, main reinforcement is provided in both
direction for two way slabs.
This construction video provides detailed guidelines on foundation marking. In the video, the
plan of building is given for living room and kitchen room. The center line marking is also
provided with 6 numbers of columns. Initially, you have to set the base point as it is very
crucial for marking. After that, a base line is arranged from that base point with a thread for
fixing the second point.

The centre line of the wall perpendicular to the long wall, is marked by making a proper
angle. Right angle is arranged by creating triangles with sides 3,4 and 5units long. If we set
the two sides of the right angles triangle to be 3 m, and 4 m, then the third side i.e. the
hypotenuse is assumed at 5 m. A steel tape should be used to fix all the dimensions.
The formula is used here as √(L2+B2)
The right angle can be fixed by applying a theodolite. This instrument is very useful in fixing
acute or obtuse angles. Small right-angled Projections are generally laid out with mason’s
square.
Proper marking of the foundations is specifically important for new walls to make sure that
the foundations contain the exact size and are in the perfect position to bear the load of the
wall. Good foundations are essential to make sure that no movement can occur because
any movement can lead to cracks and problems in the building that is supported with the
foundation

Why Warren Buffett Does Not Believe In EBITDA

in the 1986 shareholder letter Buffett delves into what he calls “owner earnings”, which is what he
deems to be the correct metric to use for company valuation purposes. When Buffett went into owner
earnings it was also a critique against what many deem to be a company’s “cash flow”. Although he
does not specifically mention it in the 1986 shareholder letter, he has criticized the term elsewhere –
EBITDA, a metric used by many people as a proxy for “cash flow, is an example of “cash flow” that is
heavily flawed.

The primary reason cash flow metrics like EBITDA or net income plus depreciation and amortization
(D&A) are not fully reflective of a company’s cash flow is because they leave out two recurring cash flow
changes that most companies experience every year: capital expenditures and changes in working
capital. In other words, EBITDA overstates a company’s cash flow by not taking a charge for CAPEX and
working capital while the other common method of simply adding depreciation back to net income also
is inaccurate – adding back depreciation without any adjustment for a recurring capital expenditure
paints the false picture of a company that does not need to spend any CAPEX to maintain its competitive
position or unit volume. It’s not a realistic picture. See the excerpt below from the 1986 shareholder
letter:

[drizzle]

“If we think through these questions, we can gain some insights about what may be called “owner
earnings.” These represent (a) reported earnings plus (b) depreciation, depletion, amortization, and
certain other non-cash charges such as Company N’s items (1) and (4) [i.e. non-recurring non-cash
charges] less (c) the average annual amount of capitalized expenditures for plant and equipment, etc.
that the business requires to fully maintain its long-term competitive position and its unit volume. (If the
business requires additional working capital to maintain its competitive position and unit volume, the
increment also should be included in (c). However, businesses following the LIFO inventory method
usually do not require additional working capital if unit volume does not change.)

Our owner-earnings equation does not yield the deceptively precise figures provided by GAAP, since (c)
must be a guess - and one sometimes very difficult to make. Despite this problem, we consider the
owner earnings figure, not the GAAP figure, to be the relevant item for valuation purposes - both for
investors in buying stocks and for managers in buying entire businesses. We agree with Keynes’s
observation: “I would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.

So what is the best way to estimate (c) the “average annual amount of capitalized expenditures for plant
and equipment”?
We can think of a couple of ways. Because D&A charges can fluctuate, one could take the average D&A
over several years, with the average taken over more years if there are longer life assets on the
company’s balance sheet. One could also take the average CAPEX from the cash flow statement and
deduct this figure. The tricky thing with both methods is that part of the CAPEX will be maintenance
CAPEX and part will be growth CAPEX.

Here is another excerpt where Buffett describes the flaw of EBITDA in the 2000 shareholder letter:

“When Charlie and I read reports, we have no interest in pictures of personnel, plants or products.
References to EBITDA make us shudder – does management think the tooth fairy pays for capital
expenditures? We’re very suspicious of accounting methodology that is vague or unclear, since too
often that means management wishes to hide something. And we don’t want to read messages that a
public relations department or consultant has turned out. Instead, we expect a company’s CEO to
explain in his or her own words what’s happening.

No the tooth fairy does not pay for CAPEX. We have to account for it to assess a company’s true
earnings power.

There have been numerous warnings about EBITDA throughout the years in the shareholder letters.
Here is an excerpt from the 2002 shareholder letter:

“Trumpeting EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is a particularly
pernicious practice. Doing so implies that depreciation is not truly an expense, given that it is a “non-
cash” charge. That’s nonsense. In truth depreciation is a particularly unattractive expense because the
cash outlay it represents is paid up front, before the asset acquired has delivered any benefits to the
business. Imagine, if you will, that at the beginning of this year a company paid all of its employees for
the next ten years of their service (in the way they would lay out cash for a fixed asset to be useful for
ten years). In the following nine years, compensation would be a “non-cash” expense – a reduction of a
prepaid compensation asset established this year. Would anyone care to argue that the recording of the
expense in years two through ten would be simply a bookkeeping formality?

And more recently from the 2014 shareholder letter:

“Depreciation charges, we want to emphasize, are different: Every dime of depreciation expense we
report is a real cost. That’s true, moreover, at most other companies. When CEOs tout EBITDA as a
valuation guide, wire them up for a polygraph test.

EBITDA is not a totally useless metric as a proxy for cash flow available to all stakeholders (i.e. debt
holders, the government, equity holders, etc). We think it’s very valuable especially if it has been
adjusted for non-recurring charges, particularly those of the non-cash variety. But Buffett is right, as
depreciation is a real, ongoing expense – hence, having EBITDA minus ongoing, recurring CAPEX (EBITDA
– CAPEX) paints a more accurate picture of a business as a going concern. Taking a multiple of EBITDA
minus CAPEX is a way of valuing companies that must be considered.

Warren Buffett Once Shared This Priceless Advice to Keep People From Making Dumb Mistakes
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has sage-like wisdom. At 87 years young, we expect and look to the
third-richest person on the planet to impart profound advice to us mere mortals.

No matter how boring or old-fashioned his counsel (and some of it is, let's face it), once we process it
earnestly, it resonates in the deepest crevices of our souls -- the type of wisdom that could literally
transform us if we apply it.

Take, for example, this quote from one of his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders years
back:

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things
differently.

How to ruin your reputation in five minutes.

Anyone's reputation, whole career, or success can quickly fall like a house of cards no matter the hard
effort made or accolades won over the years. Just ask Martin Winterkorn, the former chief executive of
Volkswagen, who resigned following the embarrassing diesel emissions deception and cover-up, in
which he admitted responsibility.

What Buffett is alluding to in his discerning quote is that, without integrity running through your veins as
the source of your decision-making process, and without integrity as your internal GPS system
navigating you through life, you're going to eventually fail.

Buffett is so unmistakably assured that integrity is the life force that gives a person his or her influence
and success, he once said that if you hire or promote people with intelligence and energy but who lack
integrity, "you really want them to be dumb and lazy."

3 things you can do differently now.

The second part of Buffett's quote is equally important because it calls us to action. Every person is
capable of operating within the parameters of integrity, but it's always a choice. Buffett once told
a classroom full of University of Georgia students, "You can't change the way you are wired much, but
you can change a lot of what you do with that wiring."

So what are three things you can do differently now, whatever your wiring? I posit that intentionally
choosing to act on these three items will dramatically shift your reputation.

1. Surround yourself with people better than you.

Taking another chapter out of Buffett's endless wisdom, if you see any undesirable traits in yourself that
are becoming detrimental to how you conduct work, business, or relate to people, you can get rid of
them all by choosing to be around the right people -- the people who possess the very traits you find
lacking in yourself. Your starting point: If you want to be admired by others, look around and ask
yourself, "Whom do I admire?" Absorb everything they say and do, behave in a similar manner, and
soon other people will begin to admire you.
2. Confront yourself with truth at all times, no matter how small a problem.

Albert Einstein once said, "Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with
important matters." I fully admit that, if I said I was living in total integrity, I'd be lying. We're human and
flawed; we cut corners on the truth once in a while; and we are guilty of the occasional white lie.
However, staying true to yourself and your values, even when the results may be unpopular, is always
the right path. Remember the lesson: Five unethical minutes can dismantle 20 years of a solid
reputation, burn bridges, and make quick enemies.

3. Practice displaying your authenticity.

Lets face it, authenticity doesn't come naturally. Sometimes it's more convenient to ignore hairy
situations and avoid confrontations, as they can take up so much energy. Who likes drama? But
sweeping things under the rug will lead to drama, and more conflict. If you really want to learn to show
up with your best authentic-self, it's important to de-program habits that no longer serve you. Perhaps
it's an enormous ego that always gets its way at the expense of others. Or maybe it's the way you order
people around or forcefully command attention with a false charisma. Whatever the case, being
authentic, I'll leave you with a life-changing prescription to kick-start your way to authenticity. Yoda, in
the movie Empire Strikes Back, famously said, "You must unlearn what you have learned." That's great
advice, even for a fictitious Jedi Master. So the $2 million questions are: What is it that you need
to unlearn to be authentic? What do you need to unlearn to keep from ruining your reputation in five
minutes?

The Basics Of Business Forecasting

It is not unusual to hear a company's management speak about forecasts: "Our sales did not meet the
forecasted numbers," or "we feel confident in the forecasted economic growth and expect to exceed
our targets." In the end, all financial forecasts, whether about the specifics of a business, like sales
growth, or predictions about the economy as a whole, are informed guesses. In this article, we'll look at
some of the methods behind financial forecasts, as well as the actual process and some of the risks that
crop up when we seek to predict the future.

Financial Forecasting Methods

There are a number of different methods by which a business forecast can be made. All the methods fall
into one of two overarching approaches: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative Models

Qualitative models have generally been successful with short-term predictions, where the scope of the
forecast is limited. Qualitative forecasts can be thought of as expert-driven, in that they depend
on market mavens or the market as a whole to weigh in with an informed consensus. Qualitative models
can be useful in predicting the short-term success of companies, products and services, but meets
limitations due to its reliance on opinion over measurable data. Qualitative models include:

 Market Research Polling a large number of people on a specific product or service to predict
how many people will buy or use it once launched.

 Delphi Method: Asking field experts for general opinions and then compiling them into a
forecast. (For more on qualitative modeling, read Qualitative Analysis: What Makes A Company
Great?)

Quantitative Models

Quantitative models discount the expert factor and try to take the human element out of the analysis.
These approaches are concerned solely with data and avoid the fickleness of the people underlying the
numbers. They also try to predict where variables like sales, gross domestic product, housing prices and
so on, will be in the long-term, measured in months or years. Quantitative models include:

 The Indicator Approach: The indicator approach depends on the relationship between certain
indicators, for example GDP and unemployment rates, remaining relatively unchanged over
time. By following the relationships and then following indicators that are leading, you can
estimate the performance of the lagging indicators, by using the leading indicator data.

 Econometric Modeling: This is a more mathematically rigorous version of the indicator

approach. Instead of assuming that relationships stay the same, econometric modeling tests the
internal consistency of data sets over time and the significance or strength of the relationship
between data sets. Econometric modeling is sometimes used to create custom indicators that
can be used for a more accurate indicator approach. However, the econometric models are
more often used in academic fields to evaluate economic policies. (For a basic explanation on
applying econometric models, read Regression Basics For Business Analysis.)

 Time Series Methods: This refers to a collection of different methodologies that use past data to
predict future events. The difference between the time series methodologies is usually in fine
details, like giving more recent data more weight or discounting certain outlier points. By
tracking what happened in the past, the forecaster hopes to be able to give a better than
average prediction about the future. This is the most common type of business forecasting,
because it is cheap and really no better or worse than other methods.

Financial models are important tools in business forecasting and investment plans. If you want to
learn the skills to accurate evaluate your businesses endeavors check out Investopedia
Academy's Financial Modeling Course with over 8 hours of professional level training.]

How Does Forecasting Work?

There is a lot of variation on a practical level when it comes to business forecasting. However, on a
conceptual level, all forecasts follow the same process.
1. A problem or data point is chosen. This can be something like "will people buy a high-end coffee
maker?" or "what will our sales be in March next year?"

2. Theoretical variables and an ideal data set are chosen. This is where the forecaster identifies the
relevant variables that need to be considered and decides how to collect the data.

3. Assumption time. To cut down the time and data needed to make a forecast, the forecaster makes
some explicit assumptions to simplify the process.

4. A model is chosen. The forecaster picks the model that fits the data set, selected variables and
assumptions.

5. Analysis. Using the model, the data is analyzed and a forecast made from the analysis.

6. Verification. The forecaster compares the forecast to what actually happens to tweak the process,
identify problems or in the rare case of an absolutely accurate forecast, pat himself on the back.

Problems With Forecasting

Business forecasting is very useful for businesses, as it allows them to plan production, financing and so
on. However, there are three problems with relying on forecasts:

1. The data is always going to be old. Historical data is all we have to go on and there is no guarantee
that the conditions in the past will persist into the future.

2. It is impossible to factor in unique or unexpected events, or externalities. Assumptions are dangerous,

such as the assumptions that banks were properly screening borrows prior to the subprime meltdown,
and black swan events have become more common as our dependence on forecasts has grown.

3. Forecasts can't integrate their own impact. By having forecasts, accurate or inaccurate, the actions of
businesses are influenced by a factor that can't be included as a variable. This is a conceptual knot. In a
worst case scenario, management becomes a slave to historical data and trends rather than worrying
about what the business is doing now.

The Bottom Line

Forecasting can be a dangerous art, because the forecasts become a focus for companies and
governments, mentally limiting their range of actions, by presenting the short to long-term future as
already being determined. Moreover, forecasts can easily breakdown due to random elements that
can't be incorporated into a model, or they can be just plain wrong from the beginning. The negatives
aside, business forecasting isn't going anywhere. Used properly, forecasting allows businesses to plan
ahead of their needs, raising their chances of keeping healthy through all markets. That's one function of
business forecasting that all investors can appreciate. (Interested in more methods employed
in financial modeling? Read Style Matters In Financial Modeling.)