a- • Must a contractor be delayed beyond the contractual project duration in order to successfully file a claim for 15 delay damages? • Explain your answer

b- • A contract contains the following clause: • “The owner specifically reserves the right to modify the progress schedule as required by the conditions of the work.” Can a contractor that has been delayed by the owner’s revisions to the order of the work in the schedule successfully file a claim for a time extension? • Explain your answer

c- • What is the role of “as-built” schedules in litigation involving delays?

d- • To minimize the chance of losses, suggest a methodology to follow when a delay, that has the potential 18 of resulting in litigation, occurs on a construction project.

e- • Explain two of the added costs that might be incurred by the contractor as a result of a change issued by the owner.

Use Excel to answer the following question:
Sundance Detective Agency purchased new surveillance equipment with the following estimates. Note: The year index is k = 1, 2, 3, ... to calculate the maintenance costs and extra revenues for the corresponding years.

(a) Prepare a cash-flow (CF) table, do present worth (PW) analysis using an appropriate Excel built-in function to calculate the discounted payback period x with a return of 10% per year.
(b) For a preliminary conclusion, should the equipment be purchased if the actual useful life is 7 years? Comment.

2. The average distance between two neighboring stars in our galaxy is about 5 light-years. (a)

How many years would it take the Voyager 1 Space Probe to travel 5 light-years?

(b) If an alien civilization built a spaceship that can travel 5 light-years in 1000 years. How many kilometers does this spaceship travel in 1 second? (hint: Google “how far is 1 light-year”)
3. (a) How many minutes would it take the alien spaceship in question 2 to go from Earth to the moon?

(b) How many minutes would it take Voyager 1 to travel the same distance? (hint: Google “average distance between Earth and Moon”)

Create properly formatted script file (Initials_Final_pb_02.m) that will prompt the user to input a 1-D array of numbers (positive, negative, zero) and then use loop and conditional statement to find the number of all non-zero elements in this array and their products

Do NOT use the built-in commands such as sum, prod, length, size, … etc.

-        Use proper names for input and output variables.

Use the following 3 vectors to test your function and include the results as a commented text at the end of your script file. [3 -1 0 -4 2], [10 -15 20 -15 0], [1 0 -2 5 -2 3]

Format the output using fprintf similar to the following:

There are 4 non-zero numbers and their product is 24

Luke and Sarah lived in a house in Albury where they both had permanent jobs. In July 2012 they purchased a rural block of 30 acres for $160,000 with the intention of building a house and moving out of town. In September 2012 they listed their house in Albury for sale at $570,000, however given a downturn in the market the house remained unsold until March 2014 when they finally accepted an offer of $460,000. Settlement took place in April 2014 and they commenced construction on the new house in May 2014. Whilst the house was being built Luke and Sarah rented the Albury house back from the new owners at an amount of $480 per week.

In November 2014 the new house was completed at a cost of $410,000 and Luke and Sarah moved in. Additional costs incurred by them included construction of a road for $15,000, sinking a dam at a cost of $30,000 and connection of electricity at a cost of $40,000. They financed the new property with a home loan of $450,000 payable over 30 years at a rate of 4.20%.

Luke and Sarah began a horse agistment business in January 2015 to which they allocated 20 acres of their property. They constructed fencing to create smaller paddocks, built shade shelters and installed water troughs at a total cost of $80,000. To fund the cost of the improvements they took out a small business loan for $80,000 payable over 10 years at a rate of 5.30%.

In October 2019, Luke was offered a promotion in his job which required them to re-locate to Queensland. They listed the rural property for sale and in December 2019 it sold for an amount of $850,000 with settlement occurring in January 2020 at which time Luke and Sarah moved to Queensland.

Required

Advise Luke and Sarah of the taxation consequences of selling the rural property including whether any taxation exemptions or concessions may apply. You do not need to calculate the amount of any resulting capital gain or loss .

Suppose Elon Musk has an existing business making electric bicycles. Sales are so strong that he is considering selling his existing factory and replacing it with a new factory.   Assuming the following, what is the NPV of the project and is it financially worthwhile? (12 points available; 9                                                    points gets full credit toward final score)

a. The current factory can be sold for $200mm; it has a tax value of $100mm. The current factory produces annual after tax cash flow of $50mm.   Elon believe that after six years from now, the existing factory would have a resale value of $10mm which would also be its tax value.

b. A new bicycle factory can be built for $500mm and equipment will cost $400mm plus installation costs of $100mm. Assume the plant and equipment can be built and operational on day one.

c. Expect incremental working capital needs (starting on day one) of $50mm of Accounts Receivable and $75mm of Inventory; expect an incremental $25mm of Accounts Payable.

d. He initially projects after-tax cash flows of $275mm per year for eight years occurring on the last day of each year, starting at the end of year one and finishing after eight years of operations. This cash flow is for the new project alone (remember you are no longer going to have the cash flow from the current factory if you do the new project)

e. Now assume that after six years, Elon gets bored and liquidates the business. Assume the working capital is liquidated and the PP&E is sold for $200mm (assume it had been depreciated to $150mm.

f. Assume a tax rate of 30% and a cost of capital is 17%.

g. For an optional extra 2 points (potentially 14 total points for this problem 12), what is the IRR of the project?

Luke and Sarah lived in a house in Albury where they both had permanent jobs. In July 2012 they purchased a rural block of 30 acres for $160,000 with the intention of building a house and moving out of town. In September 2012 they listed their house in Albury for sale at $570,000, however given a downturn in the market the house remained unsold until March 2014 when they finally accepted an offer of $460,000. Settlement took place in April 2014 and they commenced construction on the new house in May 2014. Whilst the house was being built Luke and Sarah rented the Albury house back from the new owners at an amount of $480 per week.

In November 2014 the new house was completed at a cost of $410,000 and Luke and Sarah moved in. Additional costs incurred by them included construction of a road for $15,000, sinking a dam at a cost of $30,000 and connection of electricity at a cost of $40,000. They financed the new property with a home loan of $450,000 payable over 30 years at a rate of 4.20%.

Luke and Sarah began a horse agistment business in January 2015 to which they allocated 20 acres of their property. They constructed fencing to create smaller paddocks, built shade shelters and installed water troughs at a total cost of $80,000. To fund the cost of the improvements they took out a small business loan for $80,000 payable over 10 years at a rate of 5.30%.

In October 2019, Luke was offered a promotion in his job which required them to re-locate to Queensland. They listed the rural property for sale and in December 2019 it sold for an amount of $850,000 with settlement occurring in January 2020 at which time Luke and Sarah moved to Queensland.

Required

Advise Luke and Sarah of the taxation consequences of selling the rural property including whether any taxation exemptions or concessions may apply. You do not need to calculate the amount of any resulting capital gain or loss .

MaxiCare Corporation, a not-for-profit organization, specializes in health care for senior citizens. Management is considering whether to expand operations by opening a new chain of care centers in the inner city of large metropolitan areas. For a new facility, initial cash outlays for lease, renovations, net working capital, training, and other costs are expected to be about $19 million. The corporation expects the cash inflows of each new facility in its first year of operation to equal the initial investment outlay for the facility. Net cash inflows are expected to increase to $3.0 million in each of years 2 and 3; $2.5 million in year 4; and $3.0 million in each of years 5 through 10. The lease agreement for the facility will expire at the end of year 10, and MaxiCare expects the cost to close a facility will pretty much exhaust all cash proceeds from the disposal. Cost of capital for MaxiCare is estimated as 12%. Assume that all cash flows occur at year end.

Required:

1. Compute (using the built-in NPV function in Excel) the net present value (NPV) the proposed investment. (Negative amount should be indicated by a minus sign. Enter your answer in whole dollars, not in millions, rounded to nearest whole dollar.)

2. Compute (using the built-in IRR function in Excel) the internal rate of return (IRR) for the proposed investment. (Round your final answer 2 decimal places. (i.e. .1234 = 12.34%))

3. What is the breakeven selling price for this investment, that is, the price that would yield an NPV of $0? (Use the Goal Seek function in Excel to determine the breakeven selling price. The following online tutorial may be helpful to you: Goal Seek Tutorial.) (Enter your answer in whole dollars, not in millions, rounded to nearest whole dollar.)

Use this constant dictionary as a global variable:

tile_dict = { 'A': 1, 'B': 3, 'C': 3, 'D': 2, 'E': 1, 'F': 4, 'G': 2, 'H': 4, 'I': 1, 'J': 8, 'K': 5, 'L': 1, 'M': 3, 'N': 1, 'O': 1, 'P': 3, 'Q': 10, 'R': 1, 'S': 1, 'T': 1, 'U': 1, 'V': 4, 'W': 4, 'X': 8, 'Y': 4, 'Z': 10 }

Implement function scrabblePoints(word) that returns the calculated points for the word based on the tile_dict above. The word parameter is a string. This function takes the string and evaluates the points based on each letter in the word (points per letter is set by the global dictionary). P or p is worth the same points. No points calculated for anything that is not A-Z or a-z.

[You may use upper() and isalpha() ONLY and no other method or built-in function]

Examples:

word = “PYTHON”

print(scrabblePoints(word))

returns:

14

word = “hello!!”

print(scrabblePoints(word))

returns:

8

word = “@#$=!!”

print(scrabblePoints(word))

returns:

0

Note: This function relies on scrabblePoints. Function you solved in Question 2.

Implement function declareWinner(player1Word = “skip”, player2Word = “skip”) that returns either “Player 1 Wins!”, “Player 2 Wins!”, “It’s a Tie”, “Player 1 Skipped Round”, “Player 2 Skipped Round”, “Both Players Skipped Round”. The player1Word and player2Word parameters are both type string. Assume input is always valid. This function should call on the function scrabblePoints to earn credit.

[No built-in function or method needed]

Examples:

player1Word = “PYTHON”

player2Word = “Pizza”

     print(declareWinner(player1Word, player2Word))

     returns:           

     Player 2 Wins!

              print(declareWinner(player1Word))

              returns:           

              Player 2 Skipped Round