Assignment 2 Project 4.1 -Checking an Insurance Claim

Assignment 2
Project 4.1: Checking an Insurance Claim
 
Assume that you are employed by the local branch of H. L. Winman and Associates. When you arrive at work this morning, branch manager Vern Rogers calls you into his office.
 
“We’ve had a call from Hugh Smithson in our Buffalo branch,” he says. “Twelve cartons of special instruments they shipped yesterday were in a truck that rolled off the highway 8 miles east of Rochester, New York. The insurance company wants someone to look over the damage with one of their adjusters, to confirm how much can be repaired or salvaged.”
 
In Rochester you meet Noella Redovich of Milltown Insurance Company. She takes you to a warehouse where the smashed crates tell their own story of the violence of the accident. Very few of the delicate instruments could have survived such an impact.
 
You examine the crates, which are a jumble of broken glass, tangled wire, and chipped and splintered instrument cases. As you check each container, the adjuster notes the numbers in her book: 10, 4, 12, 11, 6, 3, 1, 9, 8, and 2 are totally beyond repair and obviously have no salvage value. Crate number 5, surprisingly, is hardly marked: somehow it must have been cushioned. You examine its contents.
 
“This one seems okay,” you say.
 
Noella adds up the totals: “Not very good for us,” she says. “Ten out of eleven means a heavy claim.”
 
“Twelve,” you say. “There were twelve crates.” Noella checks her figures and you recheck and count the crates. There are 10 smashed ones and one good one. “One is missing,” you say. “Number 7.”
 
Noella suggests it might have been stolen before the accident occurred. “The police were on the scene immediately. There would not have been time after the accident.”
 
When you return to your office, Vern Rogers asks you to write a report and fax or email it immediately to Hugh Smithson. Here is additional information you may need for your report:
 
• The shipping company was Merryhew Van Lines Albany.
 
• The waybill number was C2719.
 
• The 12 crates were being shipped to Melwood Test Labs, Syracuse.
 
• Milltown Insurance Company’s local address is Room 14A, 22 Western Avenue, Rochester, New York. • The crates are being held at C and J Storage Inc., 63 Crane Street, Rochester.
 
•You reported the missing crate to the police in Rochester at 2:25 p.m., immediately after completing your inspection.
 
Write the trip/inspection report.
 
Project 4.2: Accident at Cormorant Dam
 
You are an engineering technologist employed in the local branch of H. L. Winman and Associates. Currently you are supervising installation work at a remote construction project at Cormorant Dam.
 
The day before you left for the construction site, your branch manager (Vern Rogers) called you into his office. “I’d like you to meet Harry Vincent,” he said, and introduced you to a tall, gray-haired man. “Harry is with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and he wants you to take some air pollution readings while you’re at Cormorant Dam.”
 
Mr. Vincent opened a wooden box about 14 × 10 × 10 inches, with a leather shoulder strap attached to it. In the box, embedded in foam rubber, you could see a battery-powered instrument. “It’s a Vancourt MK 7 Air Sampler,” he explained, “and it’s very delicate. Don’t check it with your luggage when you fly to Cormorant Dam. Always carry it with you.”
 
For the next hour Mr. Vincent demonstrated how to use the air sampler, and made you practice with it until he was confident you could take the twice-daily measurements he wanted.
 
Now it is 10 days later and you have just finished taking the lateafternoon air sample measurements. You are standing on a small platform halfway up some construction framework at Cormorant Dam, and are replacing the air sampler in its box.
 
Suddenly there is a shout from above, followed immediately by two sharp blows, one on your hardhat and the other on your shoulder. You glimpse a 3-foot length of 4-inches square construction lumber tumble past you followed by the air sampler box, which has been knocked out of your hand. The box turns end over end until it crashes to the ground.
 
When you retrieve it the box is misshapen and splintered and the air sampler inside it is twisted. Also, your arm is throbbing badly and you cannot grip anything. An examination at the medical center shows you have a dislocated shoulder, and now your arm is supported by a sling. (Fortunately, it is not your writing hand.)
 
Part 1 Write an incident report to Harry Vincent of the Environmental Protection Agency. Tell him
 
• what has happened,
 
• that you have shipped the damaged air sampler to him on Remick Airlines Flight 751, for him to pick up at your city’s airport (you enclose the airline’s receipt with your report), and
 
• that if he wants you to continue taking air pollution measurements, he will have to send you another air sampler.
 
Harry Vincent’s title is Regional Inspector and his address is Environmental Protection Agency, Suite 306, 444 Waltham Avenue of your city.
 
Part 2
 
Write a memo-form incident report to Vern Rogers. You can mention that you were absent from the construction site for 24 hours, but that otherwise the incident has not affected your supervision work.