Got a call first thing this morning that they were having some problems with dimensions I gave them on a small bridge, and they're pouring concrete at 11am. I'm thinking "Shit! What did I fuckup on this one?!". These small county jobs are deceptive. There isn't much to them, and they look like they should be easy. Problem is the plans are almost always garbage, and you're half making it up as you go. There wasn't enough information on the structures to check in my comps, so you just do what you can, try to be careful, and hope for the best.
I get in the office, and start going over my comps, and... everything looks ok? We go out to the job on the other side of the county so I can talk to them in person, and see directly what the problem is. Turns out they thought the beamseat offsets were aligned with the bridge skew, but I laid them out 90° to the abutments. That's the way I always do it, but in this case, it's only a 20' span, and they pulled strings to setup the seats, which won't work. On big bridges, you can't pull strings, so it's obvious that the offsets are 90° to the structure. This could've been done either way, and I guess I should've specified exactly what I gave them, but I've been doing it the same way for the same people for over 30 years, so I didn't give it any thought. Oh well. I like problems that I didn't cause, and don't take a gun to fix.
Next job we went to, I saved the day. Boss pulls out the metal detector to find some property corners, and the batteries are dead. We had a good idea about where they were, but didn't know where the pins were. I pulled out my phone, used it as a metal detector, and found the 2 pins so we could get started on the job. I was little surprised myself that it worked so well. Like a higher tech version of the old dip needles that were in use slightly before my time. I've played with those in the truck(almost 40 years ago), but never used one to find a property corner.
I get in the office, and start going over my comps, and... everything looks ok? We go out to the job on the other side of the county so I can talk to them in person, and see directly what the problem is. Turns out they thought the beamseat offsets were aligned with the bridge skew, but I laid them out 90° to the abutments. That's the way I always do it, but in this case, it's only a 20' span, and they pulled strings to setup the seats, which won't work. On big bridges, you can't pull strings, so it's obvious that the offsets are 90° to the structure. This could've been done either way, and I guess I should've specified exactly what I gave them, but I've been doing it the same way for the same people for over 30 years, so I didn't give it any thought. Oh well. I like problems that I didn't cause, and don't take a gun to fix.
Next job we went to, I saved the day. Boss pulls out the metal detector to find some property corners, and the batteries are dead. We had a good idea about where they were, but didn't know where the pins were. I pulled out my phone, used it as a metal detector, and found the 2 pins so we could get started on the job. I was little surprised myself that it worked so well. Like a higher tech version of the old dip needles that were in use slightly before my time. I've played with those in the truck(almost 40 years ago), but never used one to find a property corner.
