Change the term "engineer" to "surveyor" if it will help
?ÿ
Reminds me of a comment from my boss way back when. He starts with "We all learn from our mistakes, but you are learning too much."
The best part of my reply regarding the error was "But it was 1'-4" exactly." We had excavated to install crane column/building foundations and the plans include control line and crane run column to building column offsets all of which were 1'-4". I missread it for excavation and footer layout, which had been then poured. After completing the rebar, column formwork and positioning anchor bolts, the Survey crew check found the difference in all the columns. The engineering department determined that the 8'x14' footers would be OK if we added rebar to include an extra 1'-4", moved the anchor bolts and reformed a larger column base.?ÿ
I will note that an alternative excuse I could have used was, "I was distracted by Mickey Mouse."
Paul in PA
Well.......I was once told that because the principals and other managers had already received most of the company profits in the form of bonuses that there was not much left for the field crews so I was only gonna get a nickel an hour raise.?ÿ
My old Boss once told me. "There's Thinkers and Doers in this Organization. I think I want to see you doing alot more doing and alot less thinking." 😕 ?ÿ
Firm with 3 partners. 1 of the partners builds a super luxurious office building and leases it to the firm. Firm starts losing money and takes employee bonuses with it. Nice guy. Partners and wives all drive expensive company cars too.
I mostly worked for employee-owned companies over the years and I didn't think much of it, until I worked for places that weren't.
I've been thinking a lot about what to do, so I've been doing a lot of thinking.
Many years ago a bunch of stopwatch operators were assigned to do a study of a few engineering departments where I worked.?ÿ Dumbest idea ever.?ÿ Movement does not necessarily correlate to productivity when thinking, pondering and processing are involved.?ÿ I made a point to bring in a copy of the USA Today and start working on the crossword puzzle as soon as I heard the footsteps approaching.?ÿ All he ever saw me do was try to fill in #22 across.?ÿ The dumbbutt who ordered the study finally realized what a stupid move it was.
Many years ago a bunch of stopwatch operators were assigned to do a study of a few engineering departments where I worked.?ÿ Dumbest idea ever.?ÿ Movement does not necessarily correlate to productivity when thinking, pondering and processing are involved.
Not just for thinking.?ÿ I had an uncle who threw tires into and out of the curing molds for 30 years.?ÿ He said whenever the stopwatches came around he found several "justifiable" motions to put in the process.?ÿ Instead of throwing the tire out of the mold into the rack, he let it bounce on the floor, etc.?ÿ More therbligs.?ÿ He always exceeded his quotas.
@holy-cow That's kinda like one company that I worked for. The "Lead" RLS was trying to figure out how to decide if the field crews were being productive enough. He decided to check how many shots they were getting in a day. Of course it didn't take the crew chiefs long to figure it out. Instead of two shots on the tangent of curbing there would be at least six. I tried to tell him but I don't know if he had ever worked in the field. Intelligent and well educated, just ignorant on that subject.
Andy
When I first got out of school I asked how I might gauge if I'm doing a reasonable job in the field. I was told 500+ points a day. I didn't know any better so I kept that in the back of my mind while I was working. If I didn't hit that number I figured I was just bad at it.
Later on I was told that's kind of nonsensical.
Years ago I was charged with scanning, validating and indexing 100,000 Survey records (in storage boxes) for database intranet accessibility dating back to 1900.?ÿ When we were scoping the project (dumped on us by the engineering Dept.) I pointed out it would take several years @ 250 records a day, plus maybe?ÿ $200,000+ for contract scanning and administration.?ÿ My doofus boss said "we're the go to department to make it happen" and signed me up.?ÿ I got the job going fuil boil but about a year later my boss said OMG you're charging 80% of your time on it and we can't afford an LS to do mundane record keeping so we're assigning you 3 admin/secretary assistants that you'll monitor concerning performance.?ÿ I pointed out that's a disaster in the making but was forced to accede.?ÿ Since it was all computer stuff I developed productivity monitoring software and quickly proved the admin folks were egregiously slow (50 records/day charged for 4 hours daily time, pathetic) and ran a spot review program which showed 20% of their work was plain wrong, illegible scans not flagged, wrong location or descriptions, etc., and would result in a junk database.?ÿ He finally woke up and let me spend 60% of my time working on it by shifting my time charges to contemporary projects for "record keeping", sh*tcanning the secretaries idea?ÿ and somehow my worthiness as a staff LS pencilled out.
Two years later the intranet site went live and was a huge success; all departments knew to consult it concerning previous surveys of their projects (and all the asbuilt records).?ÿ At the end when I crossed the 'Ts and S's and it was up to date and clean, I mentored select coworkers as to how to keep it up to date with little effort.?ÿ Then I retired, too old to keep it up.?ÿ Have no idea if it's still a modern up to date datastore, and don't care.
I guess what I'm trying to say is you've gotta have somebody competent concerning land surveying records, just like doctors and dentists do.?ÿ It's not what you've done today, it's what you've done decades ago that may matter.
