Engineers! who needs 'em?

[stock]

Took this of another site because I know how many time this happens,what your story
Ok i thought i'd seen it all

This is a traveller given to me on a temp foul drain run from the site offices!

The Engineer was fresh out of Uni.

We're going to abuse him on this job!







He ordered 4 inch pipe and 6 inch manholes chambers,

After the first dig he lowered everything 500mm!

The pipeline and two manholes started off 90 mm low then 250 mm high without moving a thing!

Then just when i thought it can't get any worse the he checked the fall on a plastic duct for an electric cable!

 

[heavylift]

it's fun to screw with new engineers.... especially the gullible ones.... that believe everything you tell them....

we did a building ....the engineer ...sloped the back lot to the building....which drained about 5 acres into the building...

I spend about a week building berms and swales to get the water to drain out to the street.

 

[Tanstaafl]

Ahh yes, engineers. Who else can the super blame when they screw something up? 'That's what he told me to do!' Yeah, only because it was your idea and you wouldn't believe me that it wouldn't work and I got tired of arguing about it and said just do it how you wanted.

In all reality, I'll admit that we engineers screw up on occasion and what works on paper and in our heads, doesn't really always work in the field.

Oh, don't abuse the new guy to much, some of us have thin skin and then we get pissy and bitter.

 

[Digger Dan]

To me the term "Engineer" means the one responsible and that in turn means the one accepting blame so I have the uttermost respect for them and use them anytime the budget allows so Still nice to play with the newbies though:drinkup

 

[dieseldave]

he checked the fall on a plastic duct for an electric cable!

Didn't ya know that 'lectricity won't run uphill? :lmao:lmao:lmao

 

[heavylift]

The trust these companies put mid 20 years old kids.... to layout 20+ million dollar projects amazes me...

There will always be mistakes... some little , some big.... them the OMG.....

 

[JCLadson]

HAHA, Well I will be graduating in December with my 4 year degree in Construction Management, so I guess I have to look forward to this!:Banghead

 

[watglen]

Send him to get a bucket of steam

:naughty

I was a newbie once, and i was tasked with relocating the waste treatment facility in a food processing plant.

Now i'm not one to put too much faith in my own abilities, but i am a bonafide fluid dynamicist, and so i figured that this was a good time to test what i knew. I designed a 12" main with nearly no slope for the main drain out of the plant. I knew it stood a good chance of not working, it was going to be close, and i had a backup plan.

This job was done over a weekend during a plant shutdown. We worked 3 24s to relocate and reinstall a pile of large diameter plumbing (waste flow was 300 gal/minute if i recall) So by the time startup came i was home in bed. Took the next day off. When i went in the following day, I learned the flood only covered about 3 acres of parking lot, not too bad .

Murphy was the sub on that job.

:Banghead:Banghead:Banghead:beatsme

 

[EZ TRBO]

Few years ago had to install a man hole in the side of a lagoon we had built, the engineer told us how high of man hole we needed and what the finish elevation would be. So I started shooting grades and the elevation of my benchmark was 3 feet higher than what my inside elevation of the bottom of my man hole was(the benchmark was down on a post on the "lower" lagoon. I was thinking in my head that when we built the "upper" lagoon that the bottom of it was close to level with the top of the lower one. I go back to my old plans and he had given me the sub grade(before clay liner) of the upper lagoon so now I had 3 pieces of concrete man hole that wouldn't work. I was able to take the shorter of the two and make it work but took me alot more figureing to get the elevations correct and all he had to say was "oh i guess I messed that up, well you guys can just field fit it".

I will honestly say one of the best engineers I have been able to work around was a young lady(still at the time few years older than myself) just a few years out of college. She was very bright and knew what needed to be done but was also willing to listen to a person like my dad who had been DOING this type of work for longer than she had been alive. If he seen somthing that he thought needed to be changed they discussed it and then ran with it, and there were times that as the project progressed that she saw that they way things were designed didn't look like they would be as good in real dirt as they looked on paper and would discuss and change.

Trbo

 

[Raildudes dad]

I will honestly say one of the best engineers I have been able to work around was a young lady(still at the time few years older than myself) just a few years out of college. She was very bright and knew what needed to be done but was also willing to listen to a person like my dad who had been DOING this type of work for longer than she had been alive. If he seen somthing that he thought needed to be changed they discussed it and then ran with it, and there were times that as the project progressed that she saw that they way things were designed didn't look like they would be as good in real dirt as they looked on paper and would discuss and change.
Trbo

I've been a degreed engineer for 37 years and licensed for 33 years. I've never felt that I was the smartest guy on the job. I was and still am very willing to listen to the contractor. To me it's a joint venture between the engineers, surveyors and contractors to get the project built, meeting the spec's, in the most efficient way and hopefully, profitable to the contractor (profit is not a 4 letter word )

I always start my projects with this understanding with the contractor, I screw something up, I'll pay to fix it. The contractor screws something up, he pays to fix it. I've done some value engineering on projects with good contractors, saved my employer some $$$$ and got a better product.


My philosophy is to treat the contractors fairly. It pays off. We had a $1 million dollar job and the low bidder left $250,000 on the table. I asked him what he missed - he said nothing. He asked me if the 2nd low had ever worked with me (or my employer) before - I said no. He then told me the 2nd low had probably put in about $250,000 in contingencies for the unexpected (it was a tough complicated project with a bunch of possible unknowns). He told me he put nothing in for contingencies because he knew I (we) would treat him fair and compensate him fairly for the unknowns. We've had other contractors tell us the same thing.

 

[dayexco]

i'm sure if we all went to a civil engineer's forum.....we'd be reading crap about incompetent contractors...if you run across an error in design/ staking....why not use that to your advantage? politely, discreetly point it out to those who made the error...why get the owner of the project all wound up in it until it becomes a real terror? you'll quickly gain the respect of that engineer....who will be probably MORE than willing to work with you on a problem should you have your nuts in a vise...it all boils down to everybody wants a workable completed project, and everybody wants to get paid. especially us old farts out here...don't beat up the young engineers...we have a golden opportunity to give them their field education.

 

[swampdog]

Engineers and architects are human too and make mistakes or forget to allow for things.

I used to build buildings for a living and sometimes had to call the engineer or architect when it became apparent their design would not work. On one job, for example, if we had used the roof slope called for in the blueprints, the exterior wall would have been about two feet high.

On another job, the architect wanted to use a very long, laminated ridge beam to highlight the twenty five foot high cathedral ceiling. That beam had to support the weight of the roof. The only problem was that there was virtually no framing to support the beam at the one end; it fit into a wall of nearly solid glass. In the end, the beautiful beam went back to the factory and we framed the roof with a type of modified truss. Better that than have the roof fall in the first winter.

 

[swampdog]

Have a look at: http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/housebridge.asp

The story mentions engineers, although I'm not sure we can blame this one on them. I'm wondering how they got the house out of there after the collapse.

 

[stock]

A computer error

Taken from a daily paper today.
My understanding of this is the concrete supplier batched a load of 20 newton concrete when it should have been 60 newton but the delivery docket stated 60n,it only came apparent when the cubes failed, and when the cores failed at 21 days the proverbial hit the fan;now the deck section that is bad has to be broken out by hand so as the re-bar won't be damaged.


Public to escape bill for road repair

By Vincent Ryan and Conor Kane
Wednesday October 21 2009

THE public will not have to foot the bill for dismantling part of a new motorway which contains the wrong batch of concrete, the National Roads Authority said last night.

The N9/M9 linking Waterford and Dublin remains on schedule despite the problem identified at a new bridge over the river Nore.

According to an NRA* spokesperson, the contractor for the multi-million euro project, Sisk Roadbridge, is responsible for the cost of rectifying the mishap which affects about one-sixth of the bridge's deck.

This section of the deck was constructed with the wrong mix of concrete because of a computer error, according to Kilkenny County Council engineer Joe Gannon.

"One batch of concrete that was supposed to go to one end of the site went here and vice versa.

"As the client we don't care what went wrong, we just want it sorted out."

The NRA spokesperson said that the problem will be rectified "immediately" and the remedial work will not need to be funded by the taxpayer.

- Vincent Ryan and Conor Kane

Irish Independent

* NRA :-national roads authority

 

[special tool]

...

 

[special tool]

I've been a degreed engineer for 37 years and licensed for 33 years. I've never felt that I was the smartest guy on the job. I was and still am very willing to listen to the contractor. To me it's a joint venture between the engineers, surveyors and contractors to get the project built, meeting the spec's, in the most efficient way and hopefully, profitable to the contractor (profit is not a 4 letter word )

I always start my projects with this understanding with the contractor, I screw something up, I'll pay to fix it. The contractor screws something up, he pays to fix it. I've done some value engineering on projects with good contractors, saved my employer some $$$$ and got a better product.


My philosophy is to treat the contractors fairly. It pays off. We had a $1 million dollar job and the low bidder left $250,000 on the table. I asked him what he missed - he said nothing. He asked me if the 2nd low had ever worked with me (or my employer) before - I said no. He then told me the 2nd low had probably put in about $250,000 in contingencies for the unexpected (it was a tough complicated project with a bunch of possible unknowns). He told me he put nothing in for contingencies because he knew I (we) would treat him fair and compensate him fairly for the unknowns. We've had other contractors tell us the same thing.

Interesting post
How many mistakes have you taken responsibility for?:drinkup

 

[Raildudes dad]

Interesting post
How many mistakes have you taken responsibility for?:drinkup

I'm just finishing up managing the design and construction of a fueling facility. I dimensioned the bump post spacing therefore the takeoff of the number of posts on the plan was wrong. I could have told the contractor he should have know better since he's built a number of these facilities and the spacing is a state reg. I didn't, I paid extra for the extra posts.

A couple weeks ago, the contractor installed a catch basin according to the "plan". Once it was in, I realized it wasn't going to work like it was intended. I paid him to dig it up and reinstall it in a different location and a different elevation.

We staked a deck on a bridge on a horizontal curve, a vertical curve and with superelevation. The contractor built it to our grades. One lane of the WB approach didn't ride very good. Since he built it to our grades I paid an extra $12,000 to diamond grind it for ride quality. On the same bridge, the contractor's abutment forms shifted leaving an irregular, unprofessional looking wall. I could have let him "repair" it and probably would have had some maintenance problems in the future. I told him there was no way I was accepting the workmanship. He tore it out and replaced it at his cost to the tune of about $15,000.

These are just in the last couple years, w/o thinking about it too much. Need any more examples?