Is our profession being ruined? 24

[MIStructE_IRE]

Ruined by red tape, paperwork and seemingly everything BUT engineering!

For years we issued planning reports to the local authority for all projects. This was standard in my country for decades to gain approval prior to commencement.

Now, the planning process involves the usual report, a basement audit report, a construction management plan, a construction waste management plan, a flood risk assessment and a road safety audit! And of course no one wants to pay more for it!!

Then...we eventually get the project moving, have stage 1, 2a, 2b, 3 and 4 reports/letters/presentations, not to mention the endless meetings and emails.

The job ultimately gets to site and we have client advisors breathing down our necks to see if the aggregate used in the concrete mix complies with standards X, Y and Z - or that the mill cert for the rebar used expires halfway through the job and how will we ever deal with that!!!!

Christ Almighty!! Isambard Brunell, Thomas Telford and Ove Arup would be spinning in their graves to see the administrative clerks we have become!

I suffered a 3 hour meeting last week with a baby faced architectural technician telling me how structural elements are to be inspected..

Honestly, this stuff is pushing me closer and closer to the door!

I really hope things are different on your side of the Atlantic..

 

[bridgebuster]

It's exactly the same over here


July 8, 2022

 

[glass99]

@MIStructE - That does sound awful. Are you sure you don't work in France?

Here in the US it depends a lot on which jurisdiction you are in. For example, the City of LA has super extensive and intrusive oversight of your projects, but on the other side of the street in Orange County they are fine and normal. Every product you use in the City needs a specific approval, but most products don't have an approval so you are stuck either slogging through a months long testing regime or being limited to decades old products.

NYC in the 90's was just coming out of the boogie down Bronx days and was just so grateful that anyone would actually want to build something that they gave you a free hug with your building permit. But every year that passes the building code gets a little longer...

 

[dhengr]

MIStructE_IRE:
Why isn’t two thirds of that kinda crap the Arch’s. responsibility and turned over to him/her for handling? They are the building consulting team member getting the big bucks for coordinating all things important on the project, but instead spending much of their time picking the brick and trim color. They can explain the project plans, specs., intentions, etc. to the questioning party. The City, the AHJ, and like parties will continue collecting more and more junk and paperwork, and authority, if nobody ever says no. Soon they need more office space, employees, tax dollars, etc., all to no real improvement/betterment of the project or of the community. Then, 15-20 years later, when someone wants to improve/change the bldg. the city can’t even find a set of the plans, let alone these volumes of other materials.

 

[howan]

I worked as a structural engineer for 9 years, and I feel for all the structural engineers out there, and even all the design consultants (architects, MEP engineers, design managers, etc...). It's an endless barrage of meetings, emails, bureaucracy. Nowadays, it's hardly about the engineering any more.
That's why I switched over to software development, so that I can try to start my own business. I wrote my own software Spandraw, aimed at engineers and architects hoping to improve the design process. I don't know if it's going to take off, but I am certain that a future as an engineer in software, robotics, machine learning, or any other tech field, is going to be a lot more interesting than one as a 'traditional' engineer.

 

[rb1957]

I think it's a sign of the times. Part is due to "ambulance regulation" … once there's an accident then there's a rule to prevent that specific event happening again. Part is due to special interest groups, in part responding to abuses in the past (waste disposal plan, work site safety plan). Part is also due to the lack of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's practicing, and part due to the increase is shysters practicing today.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[r13]

I guess this over-management/control phenomenon is often seen in public funded projects, for which the stream of money is never end.
In private sector projects, the design-built is the worst, as the innate bad blood/lack of trust between the partners. Meeting after meetings, even some simple things can only be settled at the last second due to pressure from delivery schedule.

 

[IRstuff]

Isambard Brunell, Thomas Telford and Ove Arup would be spinning in their graves to see the administrative clerks we have become!

The issue is that most engineers aren't these guys; the fact that we have a Engineering Failures and Disasters forum proves that. And we don't know how these guys would do in designing a modern structure, since they had limited analytical tools and limited theoretical basis for their designs. And, this ignores the fact that designs are much more complex now, compared to then. That's certainly the case in military and aerospace; the planes with canards are generally unstable under manual control and require computers to correctly fly the planes. The 737Max incident is an example where even the voluminous paperwork and requirements flow/allocation/management that already exist still isn't enough.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[DrZoidberWoop]

Still beats working in nuclear power plant construction... never again. However, in the commercial sector, this is why you need a strong-willed project manager who isn't afraid to be a short-tempered a-hole and go after anyone who puts your company at a disadvantage. Everybody hates these guys in the office, until you get to sic them on someone who is leveraging the bureaucracy against you. Long ago I became a cynic about engineering. I endorse bourbon

 

[cliff234]

I long for the days when architects knew that columns had to align from floor to floor. It's been several years since we had a concrete project where there were no "walking" columns. Designing and detailing walking columns is time consuming, and we don't get any additional fee for designing such columns because we don't know if there will be any (or more importantly, how many there will be and how big the walks will be) when we develop our fee. And as with so many other things in our profession, the engineer who ignores the cost and effort involved in considering such things will always have the lowest fee.

 

[Ron247]

Those who do right, are punished because of those who does wrong. In ancient times, the 80s lets say, you could stamp the top drawing of a set. Someone would slide an extra sheet into a set and "rode" on the front page stamp and no one noticed until there was a problem. For that reason, we went to stamping the top drawing provided there was a list of all drawings that stamp covered. Someone still slid and extra sheet into the set and no one noticed until there was a problem. So we went to stamping every drawing.

End result of all of this was the people who have been doing right all along suffer because of the people who do not do right. I could have bought a deceased architect's stamp at a yard sale once and I could have bought a deceased engineer's stamp at an auction once. With those 2 stamps, I could stamp a lot of sheets before something went wrong. When it did go wrong, what next? Is there now going to be rule someone has to confirm every stamp is valid and current?

People who are willing to do wrong, will do what they can get away with at that point in time. They do not tend to think down the road. The new rules to try to prevent them from doing wrong, generally affect the honest ones only.

 

[dauwerda]

I could have bought a deceased architect's stamp at a yard sale once and I could have bought a deceased engineer's stamp at an auction once. With those 2 stamps, I could stamp a lot of sheets before something went wrong. When it did go wrong, what next? Is there now going to be rule someone has to confirm every stamp is valid and current?

Why go through all the effort of finding one at a yard sale - just order it with any name and number you find on the online database every state has. It's not like our stamps are some special thing that no one has access to but us.

 

[Ron247]

Yeah, but it was only $1 at the yard sale.

 

[WARose]

What (I think) is probably doing the most damage to our profession (and I'm amazed there hasn't been some sort of rebellion over it) is all the outsourcing of design work overseas. Someone (domestically) is sealing that work. I personally feel the rules should be changed to stop that.

 

[Compositepro]

"People who are willing to do wrong, will do what they can get away with at that point in time. They do not tend to think down the road. The new rules to try to prevent them from doing wrong, generally affect the honest ones only."

The problems is that most people erroneously believe that laws prevent crime. Logically, laws create crime, for there can be no crime without a laws that makes it so. Enforcing laws rigorously is what tends to prevent future crimes. The fundamental change in our society is that people want all crime prevented. Imagine what would happen to a society that tried to prevent all crimes before they happened. You are seeing it now. Everyone is treated as a potential criminal who has to be monitored and request permission before doing anything. But still that will never prevent crime.

We could go back to the times when all adults were expected to act responsibly, and were dealt with individually when they were not.

 

[IRstuff]

Enforcing laws rigorously is what tends to prevent future crimes.

I think that, as a general rule, it doesn't really work; otherwise our jails would be empty. Violating PE laws is unlikely to be due to lack of impulse control or due to "passion;" it's more likely due to cold calculation, that the prep won't get caught, which is the same reason burglars burgle. There used to be a joke that this was a trait shared by criminals AND entrepreneurs.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[Compositepro]

"Violating PE laws is unlikely to be due to lack of impulse control or due to "passion;" it's more likely due to cold calculation, that the prep won't get caught"

That simply makes my point.

 

[3DDave]

"Members of the jury, this man, a licensed structural engineer and PE, in a fit of rage, stamped plans and stamped them and stamped them, without heed or care as to the consequences. He still held that stamp in his hand, raised high over another stack of drawings, ready to stamp some more, when the police burst into his office to stop him. Had an architect not been violently been escorted from the office with a firm grip on the arm that might have raised a bruise were it just a bit tighter, and had that architect not called for help, who knows just what depravities this man might have stamped. Tree houses, free-standing garages, a child's fort, were all among the carnage that day. And what was the reason for that violence? His excuse is a slight change to the office building that would see several of the floors turned over from office space to parking, and with three days to spare to the due date. The cocktail napkin with the stain that clearly showed the changes before the client spilled a gin and tonic on it was still mostly flattened and almost legible; at least one could tell the ink was probably blue. Help protect us all from this sort of sordid behavior and put this man away and make that architect whole again. The Prosecution rests."

It feels like Friday for no reason I can articulate.

 

[IRstuff]

My point is that there is no deterrence, just as with "normal" crimes. It's a calculation that usually involves the Dunning-Kruger effect on the perp.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[EireChch]