4.2

QESTLab

Concrete

Concrete Shrinkage Screen and Test Report Redesign

There will be a new QESTLab Test Screen and Test Report for Concrete Drying Shrinkage, designed to support the 2015 standards AS 1012.8.4 and AS 1012.13. The new screen is split into tabs to better separate the preparing and measurement steps. It includes support for selecting more equipment items, allowing data to be entered for humidity and evaporation rates, transportation history for specimens and other information required by the standards.

The new Concrete Shrinkage Test Report will support the requirements of the standards. When the preparing and measuring laboratories are not the same, it will be possible to produce separate reports for the preparation and the measurement. When one laboratory performs both, the different parts will appear on separate pages.

=====Concrete Batch Plant Inspection Ticket===== This introduces a new QESTLab Test Screen and Test Report to complement the existing QESTField Workflow. The QESTLab Test screen has been created to mimic the existing QESTField Workflows functionality. It will allow the user to enter in details, create and remove mixtures of the three material types (Aggregate, Cementitious Materials and Admixtures), enter in Water details and add comments, which will be included on the report.

The 'Batch Plant Inspection Ticket Report' has also been created. This report will be automatically generated when the Ticket is created, whether in QESTField or QESTLab.

Finally, a new feature has been implemented to lock the Concrete Samples 'Mix Data' grid, when a child Batch Plant Inspection Ticket is present under the sample. This is due to the data that is entered into the Ticket being automatically exported to the Concrete Samples 'Mix Data' section.

Publishing

=====Test Report Email Subject===== A new option, "Constructed Email Subject", has been added in the QEST Administrator Console (accessible via Configuration -> Options -> Publishing -> Email) that gives customers the ability to configure the Subject of the Email when sending Test Reports directly from QESTLab.
The option lets users configure which database fields appear in the subject line by including the field name within double box brackets.

E.g. If the option is configured as "Report No: [[ReportNo]] of Client [[ClientName]]" then it will generate the following email subject line; "Report No: WO-12345S01 of My Test Client ABC".

The fields that can be included in the subject line are restricted to the following:

• ReportNo
• WorkOrderID
• ClientCode
• ClientName
• ProjectCode
• ProjectName
• LabName

If an incorrect field or format is entered then the entire Subject will revert to the default value which is, "Test Report [[ReportNo]]"

QESTField

Concrete

=====Inclusion of Load No. and Lift No.===== For any Aggregate/Soil Field Density workflow, the Lift No. will now also be available for data entry. It will be found in the Test Location section.

=====Reporting of Density (MPUV) for AU Concrete===== Users will be able to conduct Mass per Unit Volume (MPUV) tests in QESTField for the AS1012.5 - 1999 and RMS T303 standards.

On the Field Data phase of the Concrete Workflow a drop down for Measured Density Method has been added. From this drop down the user can select either 'Full' or 'Reduced', which will add the Mass per Unit Volume full test or reduced test, corresponding to the selected Standard, to the concrete sample. This means that if the selected standard is RMS it will add the corresponding RMS T303 test and if the selected standard is AS (2015) it will add the corresponding AS 1012.5 test.

If the selected test is the reduced screen then a field will be shown for entry of the Measured Density. For the full test, a 'MPUV' phase will be added to the Concrete Workflow to provide the test's workflow. If no test is selected, 'Measured Density' can be entered directly as before.

In QESTLab the Concrete Sample (AU) will now import the Measured Density from the child MPUV test.

The following tests can be added:

• Mass per Unit Volume of Freshly Mixed Concrete [AS 1012.5]
• Mass Per Unit Volume (Yield) [AS 1012.5] *
• Mass per Unit Volume of Freshly Mixed Concrete [RMS T303]
• Mass Per Unit Volume (Yield) [RMS T303] *

Updated Test Methods

Florida Department of Transport (FDOT) Standards

[FM 5-515 - 2015]

Limerock Bearing Ratio

American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Standards

[AASHTO T 84 - 2013]	Specific Gravity and Absorption of Fine Aggregate
[AASHTO T 85 - 2013]	Specific Gravity and Absorption of Coarse Aggregate
[AASHTO T 99 - 2015]	Proctor - Standard
[AASHTO T 180 - 2015]	Proctor - Modified

American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Standards

[ASTM D 1556 - 2015]

Sand-Cone Method

System Requirements

Database Server
Minimum Hardware Requirements	4 CPU Cores > 16 GB RAM * > 300GB+ Hard drive space
Software Requirements	Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 or above # (Enterprise Edition recommended)
Sizing	Database sizing requirements vary depending on the volume of data. As a guide, an operation that has an annual output of 100,000 Work Orders, 150,000 Samples, 500,000 Tests/Inspections and 200,000 Test Reports would grow approximately 40GBs per annum. Of this almost 50% is used for storing the binary images (PDFs) of Test Reports. If these have been published to Construction Hive they can be purged from the database.

A completely separate machine guarantees more dedicated resources to executing the SQL queries initiated by QESTLab. The Database Server (if separate) should have the following specifications. It is not recommended to attach any other databases to this Server.

It is vital that latency between the Database Server and Application Server(s) is minimised. As a guideline, good performance requires latency under 1ms between these servers - this requires that the servers are co-located in close proximity, and where possible connected to the same network switch.

Care should be taken when designing a deployment in which one or more QESTLab servers are virtualised. Please ensure that the physical hosts will remain proximate and that virtual switching does not add unacceptable latency overhead.

Application Server
Minimum Hardware Requirements	4 CPU Cores (or VCPU) 4 GB RAM * 1 GB Hard Drive space
Software Requirements	Required: Virtualisation software (Terminal Services / Citrix) Adobe Acrobat Reader IX or later .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 ^ Optional: Microsoft Office 2007 or later to enable External Documents Functionality Ghostscript (Postscript and PDF Interpreter) to enable inclusion of PDF documents as image attachments on test reports
Sizing	30-50 users per application server

This machine will run instances of the QESTLab Client, QEST Crush Station, and QESTWeigh Station processes (QLC.exe, QCS.exe and QWS.exe respectively) for each user. These are the most CPU and memory intensive QESTLab modules and require greater hardware commitments as the number of users increases.

Each server with these specifications will be able to handle between 30 and 50 concurrent users. Once there are more than this number of concurrent users a new server should be introduced to lighten the load.

System Requirements Notes

* In order to make effective use of RAM greater than 4GB, Spectra QEST recommend only 64 bit operating systems be used.

# Microsoft SQL Server Express is included with QESTLab. The software will be installed by Spectra QEST personnel when installing QESTLab if no dedicated Database server is available. However, as of the 2014 edition, SQL Server Express has the following limitations:

• Maximum Number of CPU cores allowed: 4 cores
• Maximum amount of RAM utilised: 1 GB
• Maximum Database size: 10 GB

^ .NET Framework 4.0 and later are not backward compatible with applications targeted at .NET Framework 2.0.

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 supports applications targeted at earlier versions, and remains fully supported in Windows Server 2012 and 2016. It can be installed side-by-side with .NET Framework 4+ if required.