Help with Draftsmen who wont follow instructions?

[opeg1000]

I've been a Civil/Structural Engineer who almost always drafts my own work, in the rare case others have its usally not been an issue and worked out fine.
I recently got a pay raise and with that they asked me not to draft my own work anymore as it takes away from my design time (at the moment design work is our bottleneck) we have two drafters (one is in his 40's qualified and with 20+ years of experiance the other one is a grumpy old guy who used to work IT with <3 years of drafting experiance.

Obviously they asigned me the old guy who is exclusivily WFH and has only done civil drafting.

He will mess up both the structural and civil work i give him since he has a bad habit of doing his own thing and not asking questions if he gets stuck. I've tried writting lists with hold points for him to call me to see how hes going and he just ignored them.

In the last job i gave him some paramters for a retaining wall and asked him to grade the site along the alignment i had given him. I had asked him to make sections at each chainage and use trig to determine the offset and angle needed to tie into the hill side with minimal cut or fill not exceeding a specified angle. He comes back after 1 day with the same 2.5m high retianed grade all the way along the alignment (we are talking 100+m of retaining) it seems like he did a 5min job as he only had two grading rules for the entire site and didint even bother to align the stations on his feature line with the road chainages i had given him or even create sections at each chainage, the backfill was near vertical in places.

i was pissed but i kept my cool and just told him to jump on the next job, i had to come in on the weekend to do it properly, i stated from scracth and it took me about 3 hours max.
i am at the end of my rope i am working longer hours only to deliver projects after deadlines with blown out budgets as he will charge days to a project with little to show for it. I'm not
even goin to trouble you with structural drafting he cant get his head around drawing the same thing from different angles.

What is your advice, am i blowing things out of proportion, should i suck it up and teach him or should i take the pay cut and step back down?

 

[BridgeSmith]

This seems like the time to discuss this with your supervisor.

What's not clear to me from what you've written is whether this person is not willing to follow your directions or is unable (doesn't know what to do, but won't ask).

If he's unwilling to do what he's been directed to do, he's gotta go.

If he's willing but doesn't know what to do, perhaps there is room for you to train him on how to perform the tasks. You should get extra time on your projects to do this, though; you shouldn't be doing it on your own time.

 

[SWComposites]

Yeah, you should not be covering for him. Immediately talk to your manager. And document all of the issues in great detail.

 

[IRstuff]

Covering for someone is never a good idea; in the this case, it potentially degrades whatever good vibes you get from the work you enjoy and potentially can turn you resentful and crabby

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[TerryScan]

This may be semantics or different word usage, but what I am familiar with: a Draftsman is not a Designer (or Engineer).

Does your worker know how to do grading? This is something that requires training. You are asking him to design and engineer not draft.

 

[TigerGuy]

There are drafters, and there are design techs. A drafter takes your marks on the page and inputs them into the drawing file. A design tech takes your verbal instructions and makes it happen on the plans.

It would be similar to having somebody working on the latest version of Civil-3D (or whatever is being used these days), and then having them do the same operations with the student version of 2D CAD in the same time.

One thing I have to learn over and over and over is that each team member does not have the same experience, knowledge, and insightful nature as the others. While one may learn a task quickly, another may take a few repetitions to figure things out.

IT experience does not equal drafting expertise.

 

[udraft]

...........bad habit of doing his own thing and not asking questions..............
Start by discussing this with the old guy, no joy, then go to the supervisor.