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csd72, do you think they are willing now?

Also, work with city/county zoning board to disallow trees close enough to the road to damage the pavement. It also depends on how big of trees you're dealing with.

Cut the trees down if they are in the R.O.W. continue cutting trees that might grow back from the existing root system.

I'm fresh from school. I used a computer model in one class for one project (EPAnet); we solved similar problems on paper first. We would have to write our own VB programs, or MathCAD, or Excel in order to solve problems. For the way I think, I have to write everything on paper first, then...

Referring to the OP, and the barriers to women working in engineering. Schools are more than happy to accept women, and engineering students are happy to have women in their classes (I went to an engineering school, not a big univ.- we really wished there were more women engineering students.)...

Dozer: If I don't try to stay optimistic, I would probably have to go on some sort of anti-depressant- I don't want to do that. There are a lot of doom and gloom predictions, and to get a more accurate over all picture of the future there needs to be some optimism. The future will probably be...

A lot of postings in this thread focus on the poor work that has been produced in the past several years and the poor quality of work being produced now. In the next 5 years, there could be a greater focus on the quality of work and greater awareness of professionalism. This will cull out...

Is switching jobs fairly often acceptable? For example, I worked in a job for 4 mo, and I didn't see eye to eye with the company owner on a number of issues. (I think he saw PEs as just plan stampers, and that was his plan for me.) Then I took a job with a ready mix company to work as a...

I imagine your client has some picture in their head of a bunch of kids stomping around barefoot in concrete as if they were making mud bricks. I don't think this is a good idea. Some people's skin is hypersensitive to cement, and before the concrete is well mixed, there can be higher...

Civilperson, I work for a concrete producing division of a materials company. We really can't choose our producer for most work. Specifications for transportation projects here still call for "Dacotah" brand (used to be a state-owned plant, now owned by Grupo Cemento Chihuahua (sp?)). When...

One of the reasons I left my last job is extra hours expected EVERY WEEK with no extra pay or comp. time. I had numerous job offers- and my old employer struggles to find engineers. The funny thing is that the owner isn't even an engineer. I figure it must be hard to have an engineering...

Can we use the overpass collapse in San Francisco to direct attention to the infrastructure nation-wide that needs to be replaced? Sure, age and maintenance neglect didn't cause the failure, but it shows what happens when highways are unexpectedly out of commission.

Is it wrong to be excited about the prospect of the new, large, exciting projects addressed by sms? I recall reading that in the not-so-distant future, that the oceans will be pretty well fished out. Global warming can provide new habitat for these fish and maybe save seafood.

If pollution will self correct its self, then I've been wasting my time studying environmental engineering and working on environmental projects. We can kind of correct pollution with remediation and reclamation. (In other words, sweep this stuff under the carpet and hope no one finds it.)...

Why would ethanol companies' investors (corn growers) want to switch to ethanol from switch grass? The ethanol company would make higher profits, but the corn prices would crash. The main purpose people have invested in ethanol plants in the U.S. is that it provides more of a market for corn...

Higher temperatures cause faster metabolism by aerobic and anaerobic bacteria which release carbon dioxide and methane. At least thats the trend I used in the design of waste water treatment plant components.

I think the definition of sustainable devolopment is something like: Meeting today's needs without compromising the ability to meet future needs. The scope of sustainability generally includes social, economical, and environmental. I don't understand how anyone can hope for sustainable...

How about using ocean currents to turn a very large conducting coil in Earth's Magnetic field in order to have a virtually unlimited supply of electricity. I haven't heard anyone slinging this idea before, but after I just made it up, I thought it was ridiculous enough to be relevant to this...

FOETS, Regular or decaf? Also, would you care for a bagel along with that? If a request for coffee is the most rude thing I get in a day, it's a good day. Construction contractors in this town sometimes resort to physical violence; good thing I played (American) football in college.

I can only imagine the kind of look I would get if I hand a flash drive to a contractor when they ask for plans. They aren't going to buy AutoCAD to read drawings. You can't easily scale off of a pdf unless you print it. For civil work, paper is here to stay.