Worst Workmanship - Deficiencies - Terrible Detail (&/or interpretation) - Crazy Fixes - ETC... 2

[CELinOttawa]

In chatting on another thread, AELLC suggested this might be a fun topic. I agree.

I will get the ball rolling with the attached photo. This is meant to be a full moment, 25% shear, connection to an equal size embedded column as the base for a portal frame which supports 100% glass glazing. Warning: One cannot un-see such terrible work. Hide the kids.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Colin: Screw it, that's not corrosion. THIS is corrosion!

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[CELinOttawa]

Love the local failure shot... Where does this one go Pirate? Any chance of an overall shot?

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Unfortunately I don't have an overall shot for that one.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[n93s412]

We had the contractor seeking advice on how to best prepare this beam for painting.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

That's pretty bad, I've seen some like that but not outside an industrial facility. Time to get out the needle gun...

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[CELinOttawa]

Square and twisted, correct? Pretty common around here in old govvy buildings and the canal works done way back... I've even found them "growing" out of the ground next to a very old series of arch bridges.

 

[3DDave]

n93s412 - a little putty and some paint. Good as new.

A guy I worked with said he was an inspector for a very high ceiling building (like VAB) where it took so long to climb the stairs to get to the top workers would just relieve themselves off the side of the building and it wouldn't make it to the ground. Or maybe nobody noticed.

He said he was looking at bolted joints on the upper beams when something caught him as odd. Apparently there was limited access to one side of the beam and so instead of installing all the bolts, the installers cut the heads off some of them and welded the heads in place. I guess from floor level they looked OK.

 

[Ingenuity]

...the installers cut the heads off some of them and welded the heads in place. I guess from floor level they looked OK

Similarly, the following photos are bolts that were designed to be epoxy embedded into a concrete beam to attach a steel angle to support a infill concrete slab as part of a seismic upgrade of a to a historical US military facility. The contractor evidently hit rebar in the beam so could not get the required embedment depth, so they cut off the bolt shank to mach the drilled depth and epoxied the remaining head and washer with epoxy to the face of the angle. We found the condition about 10 years after the work was done. It was removed and replaced to match the design intent.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Seems like it would have been easier to just do the job right.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[CELinOttawa]

Didn't have the diamond bit, or have worked on a job where an engineer ovstinently refused to allow any bars to be cut. I've seen that before, and usually where there was no reason to guard every bar like it was made of gold.

 

[Ron]

Long thread, but a couple of comments.

@slickdeals.....but look at how nicely those cuts were made! The guy with the guided torch was probably very proud of that!

As for answering the phone at 4:00 on Friday afternoon.....I've made that mistake more than once. On one occasion, I had been a consultant to a "big box" retailer and got a call late on Friday (even after 4:00) that there had been a fire in one of the stores about 150 miles away. Being very familiar with the structures, I started to ask questions about damage and got around to asking the cause of the fire. It seems that a young salesperson in the paint department was demonstrating to a customer that mineral spirits was NOT flammable. He opened a can, squirted a copious amount onto the bare concrete floor and proceeded to light a match and toss it onto the puddle. Guess what? It's flammable. Well....evacuation, emergency shoring for the remainder of the affected structure and several hundred thousand dollars later...no problem.

Since I do failure investigations for a living, I have thousands of photos, most of them related to serviceability failures. I'll try to pull a few that are not covered by confidentiality and post. Have seen a lot of stupidity in 35 years.

 

[sandman21]

Sadly I cant post some of the better ones. I have had a string of bad construction lately.

The best was after pulling the form they discovered a 10' long x 4'tall hole in the concrete wall about 12" from the top of the wall. Several years ago I had a contractor install a SCBF 180 degrees off.

 

[ztengguy]

"We had the contractor seeking advice on how to best prepare this beam for painting."

You told him to just use structural paint correct?