Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Contractor job site disagreement
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I’m constantly reminded that I’m not building a clock or a nuclear reactor…
unless we are….
Haha, same. “Not aligning the components inside an underground missile silo.” Unless we were…
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Anchor bolts for a power plant all off by inches in different directions- lots of fingers pointed, mostly at us. We had done the control and referenced all the grids, but the building was tented in any thing outside the tent was hard to use, but doable. Concrete sub did their own layout off of our work and didn’t bother checking in- we were able to find and verify most of our points, and they checked well. Turns out the contractor was in the habit of burning an inch- and never checking between rows of adjacent columns, as it was winter construction and the tenting was usually in the way. They let them torch the columns and base plates to make it work, but it was around a 200k fix for the concrete sub.
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Anchor bolts for a power plant all off by inches in different directions- lots of fingers pointed, mostly at us. We had done the control and referenced all the grids, but the building was tented in any thing outside the tent was hard to use, but doable. Concrete sub did their own layout off of our work and didn’t bother checking in- we were able to find and verify most of our points, and they checked well. Turns out the contractor was in the habit of burning an inch- and never checking between rows of adjacent columns, as it was winter construction and the tenting was usually in the way. They let them torch the columns and base plates to make it work, but it was around a 200k fix for the concrete sub.
Finger pointing always happens with anchor bolts…and then you watch, in horror, the labors pouring the concrete around the bolts with reckless abandon.
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In one of my first projects as a new business owner we staked a 225′ by 1050′ apron for a regional airport. The apron consisted of 9″ of concrete, topped by 6″ of a different mix (lean?) concrete. We set redtops on a 12.5′ by 25′ grid for the wirelines. After the base course was poured and cured we began setting PK nails for the next layer. Fills should have been 0.50′ but they were all coming up 0.43′ to 0.47′. The value deduction determined by the FAA was over $400K and the contractor was blaming me! After a week of no action and little sleep I hired a testing company to core up a couple of our redtops. The cores, with the hubs imprinted in the bases, measured 5 1/4″ and 5 3/8″. The contractor spent two weeks with motor graders grinding the surface down to grade.
And I belatedly purchased my first E&O insurance policy.
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Some some contractors only need a couple BM’s and the centerlines with offsets and some want everything staked.
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I tell them jokingly (and seriously) that they don’t need us except for the insurance money….
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One of my favorite surveyors used to say “we’re not building a Steinway” but he also told me I’d be better off going to truck driving school.
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I’ve told this story before but it seems to fit. I was an “in house” surveyor on the construction of a paper mill. I had laid out the footings, anchor bolts, marks for baseplate elevations etc. for a chip screen building that was to be three floors (about 40 feet tall). When the “Red Iron” started I got a call from the iron worker superintendent that the columns were in the wrong place and that the beams didn’t fit. Heart in throat time. The FIRST thing I did was check the footings, the anchor bolt spacing and the elevations. All WELL within tolerance. DANG. What went wrong. We all had a sit down, went over the plans, and tried to figure out what went wrong. The foreman came in with a red face and said, “I’ve got the south beams on the north and the west beams on the east.
Can you say “AAAHHHH”.
I got a little more respect from all the crafts after that though.
Andy
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