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TOPs April 2006 Newsletter exerpt:
Design Engineers, they screw up everything.
We often hear from our clients that the engineer on any particular job has made
some serious design mistakes. They open the plans, and quickly find 3 or 4
obvious problems with elevations, slopes, or other design detail. What is the
engineer getting paid for?
Since the beginning of time, the engineer was responsible for producing a set of
paper plans that allow the contractor to build a given job without the need to ask
any questions during the job. A majority of the effort expended by the design
firm is the accomplishment of this task; make a set of paper plans that will
survive the light of day at a government agencies plan review and steer the
contractor in the right direction.
Before the job was placed on a stick with a GPS antenna, the surveyor was the
next line of defense. They would plot points, adjust some of the elevations found
to be incorrect, and the job became a bit closer to how it needs to look when
everyone eventually goes home. Is it any mystery that many engineering firms
also have their own survey divisions? Yes, it is a profit center, but more
importantly, it is the internal plan checking and problem fixing that keeps things
in house a bit longer. As the job was being built, mistakes are corrected along the
way, usually by an experienced eye on the site. When this process is over, the
job is complete, and the contractor has the ultimate responsibility for making it
correct.
The advent of GPS layout and machine control now focus on the plans from paper
to model without the above-mentioned steps. The time-honored process of just a
few more eyes has now been done away with. The contractor gets the plans and
electronics, enters the numbers as they appear on paper, and then sends them
out to the field. Is it any wonder that all of a sudden people feel engineers are
doing work worse than they used to? It is the responsibility of the data people to
take these next two steps of dynamic plan review and work those adjustments
into the model.
Are engineers actually doing
poorer work than in years past,
the answer is no. As I stated
before, their product is a well prepared
set of paper plans,
complete with volumes of legal,
technical, and practical
information. To that end, their
job is getting harder due to
regulations, environmental
concerns, and stricter review
agencies. The good easy to
work land was sold to our
grandfathers, poor soil, bad
drainage, rocks, cliffs, and old
farm fields are the palettes for
today’s development.
We have all heard talk about dynamic site design and dirt moving, the engineer
produces the site, and sends the completed design to the operator in the field
and the job gets built. A lofty goal, but consider the factors above. For
generations, the engineer has relied upon the successive review of their plans to
help eliminate the inherent flaws in the design process, ensuring a job well done.
Newletter Central
Articles in Archive
December 2006 · Market Forecast, 2007
December 2006 · 3 Easy Pieces - Doing Business with TOPs
April 2006 · Design Engineers Screw Up Everything
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