The power of 'No'.

Posted by: @williwaw

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..... I'm called into the head honchos office where he and the head of their ROW department want to ask me a few questions....

That passage caught my eye. It seems like a ROW department should have a surveyor on staff, or at least a relationship with the organizations surveyor - you.  You and this ROW Department Head should have had a discussion about this before the "head honcho" got involved. I'd have a big problem with getting put on the spot like you were. Kudos to you for standing your ground. 

Engineers bury their mistakes, Surveyors monument them. Engineers and Surveyors have different attitudes. The engineer assumes that his works have a design life. He accepts that it will fail eventually. Surveyors know that their work has to stand for all time.  There may be a statutory time limit to the surveyors professional and financial liabilities, but nobody wants people a hundred years from now cursing their name because of shoddy work. If an engineering work fails a hundred years after it's built it is considered a great job.  

@norman-oklahoma 

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One million attaboys are hereby duly awarded.

@cv 

The economists arrived first and demanded cost to benefit determinations be made before anything else is done.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you set your mind to it, providing that you have an endless supply of expendable labor.

The first couple of times I said 'No' I got fired.

I had worked at a discount shoe store a few weeks when a man wearing a suit and carrying a brief case walked in. He said he was a regional manager here to check out the store and he would start with the cash register. I said my manager had not told me about you and I will need to call him before I give you access to the cash register. It took an hour to work things out and I don't think the regional manage was happy being told 'No' by an eighteen year old kid. The next week I was fired; a week later I had a better job.  

@holy-cow True that!

I can design a roof for your building that will not fail until a combined snow and wind situation happens based on an expectation of that loading only happens once in 25 years.  I can do the same but with a 50 year recurrence expectation.  Or 100 years or 2000 years.  How much are you willing to spend.

Today's highway bridges need rebuilt in 50 years.  I have witnessed a few cases where I know I am looking at the third bridge in the same spot.  One was rebuilt last year to replace one built in 1960.  It had undergone at least two major repairs to extend it for 15 years.  My home county has nearly 300 structures that are maintained by the county that qualify as bridges.  That does not count those maintained on State and US highways or within city limits.

Posted by: @pls8xx

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The first couple of times I said 'No' I got fired.

I use to think getting fired was the worse thing that could happen to me, until the time came when I was pressured to do work I considered unethical for someone in a position of power over my job, at which point my attitude changed to seeing it as an outright blessing.

As the owner of a land surveying firm, it sometimes took great creativity to give the potential client justifications for not agreeing to put their job on our list of projects.  It is a skill that must be learned well.

@pls8xx I would have thought that your actions would have greatly appreciated.  What would their response have been if you let a stranger take their money out of the till?

Posted by: @pls8xx

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The first couple of times I said 'No' I got fired....

In the situation you describe you were obviously in the right. But then there is the young twerp who refuses to follow the instructions of his seniors because he knows-it-all.    It takes a lot of wisdom to know when to say NO.

Posted by: @john-putnam

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@pls8xx I would have thought that your actions would have greatly appreciated.  What would their response have been if you let a stranger take their money out of the till?

Exactly! Being fired told me it was a place I didn't want to stay at.

The second time I said 'No' I was 25 years old in the third year of managing a large non-franchised pizza joint. From the start, the place had significant growth and high profits. Three of the 4 original owners sold their stock, the third got about 10 times his original investment. At the end I had four owners trying to tell me what to do. I told them I would listen to their suggestions but 'No' I would run things as I saw fit. They fired me and 6 months later the place closed. 

I made a habit of saying 'No' to both customers and bosses.