> I have been drawing full color, negative engraved, 15 minute and 7.5 minute topographic maps and full blown topographic site surveys since 19639. In all of that time I can count on the fingers of one hand the TOTAL number of architectural drawings that I have worked with on which all of the interior dimensions add up to the indicated overall building dimension. And I am NOT talking about a difference of an inch or two. :-/
I've held fire on this one because I was *sure* someone would pipe up with this beef. For some reason in the seventies I too was tasked with adding up the interior dimensions of many dozens of arch plans (big firm) to see if they matched the overall structure dimensions. As you recount, they rarely agreed, less than a foot usually, but sometimes by ten or more feet on large buildings. :-S Usually solved by reducing maintenance and elec service closets to where a fat technician would feel encaged.
Worst case was a monastery with a central dome (not geodesic, laminated wood curved roof supports, very sexy) with ancillary buildings radiating out from the dome. No easily added together right angle measurements were anywhere on the arch plans. It was paper plans back then and I was overwhelmed and the company computer COGO guru running our Intergraph CAD station (the only private one in the State at the time) spent almost a week unsnarling the design. He was a sweaty poorly dressed guy with really thick glasses and generally unpleasant but delivered when tasked. The arch plans were so FUBARed the thing couldn't be built using them, foundations interfering, HVAC ducting ignored, etc., causing ridiculous dimensional errors up to twenty feet depending on which way you measured. Solved by a lawsuit and replacement of the architect (we weren't involved, we were only the whistleblowers along with every contractor who viewed the plans). Second set of plans, six months later, were pretty good. We made money as the only surveyors who could figure out the new plans vs. our original work.
The experience made me ruminate. Serendipitously my best bud in college's father was a prominent architect in Oregon (no high rise, specialized in residential difficult building sites) and I got to spend a few nights at our cups with him as we both shared a mountaineering passion. His point was, look, I've got essentially a PHd Art degree; my job is colors, texture, materials, space integration, consideration of adjacent impacts, topography considerations, light, efficient utilization of the site and interior building space, this stuff may last for centuries, etc. The technical structural aspects of the project, not my job. As the conductor of the orchestra, I farm out the details to engineers, who tell me what and what cannot be done for various costs, they convert my vision into a set of plans. You surveyors show up late in my work flow, and are an irritant because you point out egregious errors in plan dimensions during construction, well, it's the engineer subs you've got a beef with. I'll edit dimensions on my plans no problem to save the project, as long as the my vision is fulfilled, except when reality makes my plans an impossibility.
I hate architects, they're the most disconnected people on the project concerning getting the damn thing built and are evasive when the problem is obviously their problem. They're f**king college boys who have mastered shifting responsibility for their work to others.
> >I hate architects, they're the most disconnected people on the project concerning getting the damn thing built and are evasive when the problem is obviously their problem.
I second that emotion!!!
Mike, I think your monastery experience takes the cake. When the architect has got to get fired, then another hired to make it work, that pretty much is the pinnacle of incompetence. I can see why your opinion of architects is so harsh. I knew it had to have gotten far worse than what I've seen.
But Cash Padnen cut figure written on the stake and the imagined belly laugh of the grading contractor are going to echo in my head for awhile.
I have to agree about architects generally. I've only seen a few exceptions and was quite happy to be staking out their projects. Here's one I did not stake, but the architect was quite good, Frank Robinson. His son has taken up the trade and done very well to not make the typical errors.
This one would have been interesting to stake, but the way the architect depicted it with arc lengths and radi of spirals, a surveyor wasn't needed to define the geometry.
Its ferro cement.
http://www.ferrocement.com/casa-ca1/ch1.en-ferroHouse-web.html
Interesting fact. Big fire in 2009, the Tea Fire. The owner survived by closing the doors to the living room after bringing all the flammables from the outer rooms into the living room. The house was untouched.
The architect considered this his most important project, it was his last. I wish civil engineers could deal with the structural calculations as well as he did. This form of construction has the greatest integrity in this high fire area.
I, like you have actually made good money dealing with the architects blunders, errors oversights etc. But as you say, the arrogance is hard to stomach sometimes.
I won't forget the first one I found that was serious, because it violated a side yard setback badly. The architect was very high end. Mostly building estates in an area called "Montecito". This was a small residential project in the same area that he graphically filled the lot with footprint right up to the minimum setbacks. What was defined as a 10.0' setback on one side got shrunk to 4.5' feet because the owner happened to know the neighbor who didn't bring attention to it with the building inspectors, so the error all went over on that side. The architect skated on that one. But he learned the power of cogo and the precision that boundaries have and never made the mistake again. his setbacks were always a little bigger after that and I staked quite a few structures for his main contractor.
I've been able to talk a few of the best architects into providing the conceptual footprint and split level schema after providing the topo for them to design with; and letting me site the structure according to the topographic limits on ground so steep that no filling is allowed. This saved their clients tens of thousands in walls that normally would be needed to cover oversights in foundation daylight minimums, site walls for yard space, parking, turnaround etc.
After a surveyor topos a steep, restrictive site, getting a good fit to a footprint that is 80% defined is easy having that last 20% to play with vertically and horizontally. The better architects realized the savings plus the fact that I would charge a fraction of what they would, and the contractors were happy when the job went smooth:-) because there were no unforeseen walls needed.
Man, that's bad. No drinking fountains and all that gushing about the tricky wall. OMG, that would be hard to stomach. The way you tell the story, it kinds sickens me.
The one consolation is that the municipality probably didn't put him to work after that, and he probably could not use them for a reference. Probably was afraid to even talk about it when classrooms were too few, with all those thirsty kids.
With architects the problem is with their mindset. They seem to honestly believe that if they can dream it, it can be built.
The latest breed of architects are going nuts with LEED designs. The get so focused on worthless details outside of the building envelope that they don't give enough attention to the critical design. On one project I had some involvement with they insisted that no part of the property outside of an entry road and ten feet outside the exterior of the building would be disturbed in any fashion by the construction process. This was a very rough piece of pasture land with tiny abandoned oil wells dotting the acreage, of which they were using only about ten percent. Junk trees, noxious weeds and briars were everywhere, yet were not to be touched so the final LEED rating could be maximized. Needless to say, smarter brains prevailed and the surroundings have been converted.
Last year client had his brother in law architect that designed layouts for these giant tour ships design his house doing REDIT.
Met the client and his builder on the lot and the architects drawing included the boundary of the lot, offset lines and the building locations as the client wanted to lay according to an azimuth alignment.
Spent a little time to input the major corners of the house so the builder could begin preparation.
First thing happened was that the location did not fit inside the offset lines and then rechecked everything and found that the brother in law had stretched the boundary and offset lines so the buildings would fit his design.
I fixed it real fast and whether he liked it or not, the client's house is facing southeast about 15° more than planned.
A Harris, post: 321964, member: 81 wrote: Last year client had his brother in law architect that designed layouts for these giant tour ships design his house doing REDIT.
Met the client and his builder on the lot and the architects drawing included the boundary of the lot, offset lines and the building locations as the client wanted to lay according to an azimuth alignment.
Spent a little time to input the major corners of the house so the builder could begin preparation.
First thing happened was that the location did not fit inside the offset lines and then rechecked everything and found that the brother in law had stretched the boundary and offset lines so the buildings would fit his design.
I fixed it real fast and whether he liked it or not, the client's house is facing southeast about 15° more than planned.
Wow, a quote function! I don't have to remember what you said . . . wait a minute, I can't forget that, there's like 3 posts in this thread where architects are changing the boundaries of the lot they are working on.
I wonder what it is that makes them think its okay to do that?
I should finish this story about now.
ChristopherABrown, post: 321735, member: 9944 wrote:
When I went to stake out the near corner of the new house to the pool, it fell in the shallow end of the pool.I really should have just called the engineer owner and told him, bypassing the contractor, but it turned out okay EVEN after 9 foot concrete walls were built on the relocated footprint lines. Not good, but OKAY.
The top of wall elevation/location was all the engineer needed to see to know something was wrong. The fit hit the shan.
The walls had been built and backfilled against the cut re compacted building pad when the engineer finally noticed that the grade on one side of the circular drive that was lower by a good bit at the R/W than the structure. The original erroneous plan showed about a 12% grade climbing up to the walkway leading to the slab-on-grade structure. No steps from the drive way grade. The actual grade was about 20% by the time the 30' foot horizontal was subtracted from the actual position of the house.
I told the contractor that we should tell the engineer owner, explain three steps to the drive from the walk would get the drive back to around 15% grade for the drive. "NO, the architect got us the job, we can't do it". The grading contractor that got me the job said, "NO, I want to work for the contractor again."
I explained that the engineer WAS going to see it.
I got a call from the grading contractor that brought me into the job telling me there were surveyors at the site measuring the walls. I went there and there was a 3 man crew with 2 sitting, waiting, while the surveyor was in the garage with the plans and a calculator crunching his measurements. I saw this and realized the engineer had told them ASAP, he wanted to know what happened because its fairly rare that a surveyor will take measurements and sit down with a calculator to produce results rather than going to the office and using a desktop computer and cad.
Pins and needles for a few days, and I got a check from the engineer.
Our part on the job was done, but I went by and looked at it a week later and saw the construction progressing as if nothing had happened.
The contractor said that the surveyor determined that the house was sited exactly per plan with the pool/house relationship shown and rotated the 5 degrees as the engineer had requested while 3 steps were being added to the walkway to get down to the driveway grade.
What bugged me is that the contractor never put me to work again on his projects. It turned out that the contractors brother had to take over the business because of the management issues prevalent, so I knew that the one I was working with had a problem. But still, try to get everyone to do the right thing and they won't; do the job they want without the owners okay; bitch about it showing the integrity they should have, and still lose the repeat business.
After thirty years of repeat and referral business with not even a business card or a yellow page listing, I guess I can handle one of those.
I try to be positive in my mindset and give people the benefit of the doubt. And I try to remember that as a Land Surveyor, I am probably in a much better position to understand the importance of things like boundary lines, easements, grade differentials, and so on, than an architect (or even an engineer).
I really do try to remember these things, yet it is stupid stuff like these stories here that make it so hard to remember these things.
I think my "favourite" architect story was when I was staking a school site. It was a brand new middle school on the outskirts of a smaller town in my home county. My office technician had gotten the CAD files from the architect and then moved and rotated the drawings to be on the actual boundary coordinates (which had previously been provided to the architect at their request) and also scaled it by the factor of 12 to get it into feet... Anyway, we calculated up some coordinates for the building envelopes so that we could go out and stake the pads for rough grading. An easy job and should only take about half a day. The grading contractor was onsite and ready to roll right behind us so we got out there early and jumped right in.
We had all 6 buildings staked and offset and put some cuts on the lath and I thought, "Let's pull a cloth tape between these stakes and make sure we're matching with the plan dimensions." That's always a good check to make sure that you didn't bust your setup.
I measured between the first two buildings and got 28', the plans said 30'. I thought that was odd, but I moved on to another check. I measured 30' but the plans said 50'. Between two other buildings, I missed the plan dimension by 13'. It was all over the place! I told the grading foreman about the problem and he said he'd hold off until I sorted things out.
First, I reset up the instrument, rechecked my backsight and then rechecked a couple control point shots. Everything was checking spot on. I then ran around shooting the corners we had staked and everyone was hitting correctly. I then set up on a different site control point, backsight, checked my control, and rechecked the stakes. It was all green lights.
So then, I called in to the office and talked to my tech. He pulled up the CAD files and checked and doubled checked the coordinates of the control points, the building corners, and all of that. I was convinced that my points on the ground matched the CAD files.
Then, for some reason, I asked my tech to measure the distance between the buildings. That's when I realized the issue. The distances in CAD matched what I had pulled with a cloth tape just fine. But the distances in CAD didn't match the distances that were shown on the plans!
So I called the architect directly after that. I explained what had happened and asked why the dimensions didn't match what was measured in CAD. I was told that the CAD files were "schematic only" and that the actual distances on the plans were what was intended to control the building placement.
I asked the architect why he would bother drawing them in CAD if he wasn't going to place them where the buildings actually were. He said it was "common practice" to do this. I then asked him if he realized that all of the civil design for the utilities and the concrete flatwork and grading and pretty much everything else that wasn't done by the architect had been designed using the CAD layout. He said that wasn't supposed to be done that way and that the printed plans were what would control the site layout.
I got off the phone and called the engineer at my office to explain what was going on. We pulled off the site and construction halted until the entire site was redesigned with corrected CAD drawings.
Every since then I have lovingly referred to architect plans as "crayon drawings" because that's about how good they tend to be.
Is it technically a blunder if it comes out looking exactly like the architect intended?
"You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. "
-Prince Charles
skwyd, post: 322512, member: 6874 wrote: I try to be positive in my mindset and give people the benefit of the doubt. And I try to remember that as a Land Surveyor, I am probably in a much better position to understand the importance of things like boundary lines, easements, grade differentials, and so on, than an architect (or even an engineer).
I really do try to remember these things, yet it is stupid stuff like these stories here that make it so hard to remember these things.
I think my "favourite" architect story was when I was staking a school site. It was a brand new middle school on the outskirts of a smaller town in my home county. My office technician had gotten the CAD files from the architect and then moved and rotated the drawings to be on the actual boundary coordinates (which had previously been provided to the architect at their request) and also scaled it by the factor of 12 to get it into feet... Anyway, we calculated up some coordinates for the building envelopes so that we could go out and stake the pads for rough grading. An easy job and should only take about half a day. The grading contractor was onsite and ready to roll right behind us so we got out there early and jumped right in.
We had all 6 buildings staked and offset and put some cuts on the lath and I thought, "Let's pull a cloth tape between these stakes and make sure we're matching with the plan dimensions." That's always a good check to make sure that you didn't bust your setup.
I measured between the first two buildings and got 28', the plans said 30'. I thought that was odd, but I moved on to another check. I measured 30' but the plans said 50'. Between two other buildings, I missed the plan dimension by 13'. It was all over the place! I told the grading foreman about the problem and he said he'd hold off until I sorted things out.
First, I reset up the instrument, rechecked my backsight and then rechecked a couple control point shots. Everything was checking spot on. I then ran around shooting the corners we had staked and everyone was hitting correctly. I then set up on a different site control point, backsight, checked my control, and rechecked the stakes. It was all green lights.
So then, I called in to the office and talked to my tech. He pulled up the CAD files and checked and doubled checked the coordinates of the control points, the building corners, and all of that. I was convinced that my points on the ground matched the CAD files.
Then, for some reason, I asked my tech to measure the distance between the buildings. That's when I realized the issue. The distances in CAD matched what I had pulled with a cloth tape just fine. But the distances in CAD didn't match the distances that were shown on the plans!
So I called the architect directly after that. I explained what had happened and asked why the dimensions didn't match what was measured in CAD. I was told that the CAD files were "schematic only" and that the actual distances on the plans were what was intended to control the building placement.
I asked the architect why he would bother drawing them in CAD if he wasn't going to place them where the buildings actually were. He said it was "common practice" to do this. I then asked him if he realized that all of the civil design for the utilities and the concrete flatwork and grading and pretty much everything else that wasn't done by the architect had been designed using the CAD layout. He said that wasn't supposed to be done that way and that the printed plans were what would control the site layout.
I got off the phone and called the engineer at my office to explain what was going on. We pulled off the site and construction halted until the entire site was redesigned with corrected CAD drawings.
Every since then I have lovingly referred to architect plans as "crayon drawings" because that's about how good they tend to be.
I had the same experience, but the architect I was dealing with called it "dimension edits". The project was for a children's home for special needs kids. I had done the boundary and topo, sent all of the cad files to the architect with the understanding that I would receive his files for layout purposes. After several plan revisions on the buildings to meet project costs, and numerous calls to his office, one of his interns gladly sent me the files. When we started the layout, the building footprints and location did not match what was on the printed set of plans I got. The architect was very upset that I had his cad files, but even more upset that he had to admit that he had charged for the "dimension edits" as complete revisions. Oh, and he really got upset that a surveyor brought it to the owner's attention that they were building a 10,000 square feet building, with a metal roof, that had the rainwater from the roof being drained through gutters into a 4 inch under drain. He hung up on me when I asked him if his mom ever slapped him for trying to kiss her with that filthy mouth.
skwyd, post: 322512, member: 6874 wrote:
I asked the architect why he would bother drawing them in CAD if he wasn't going to place them where the buildings actually were. He said it was "common practice" to do this. I then asked him if he realized that all of the civil design for the utilities and the concrete flatwork and grading and pretty much everything else that wasn't done by the architect had been designed using the CAD layout. He said that wasn't supposed to be done that way and that the printed plans were what would control the site layout.I got off the phone and called the engineer at my office to explain what was going on. We pulled off the site and construction halted until the entire site was redesigned with corrected CAD drawings.
Every since then I have lovingly referred to architect plans as "crayon drawings" because that's about how good they tend to be.
That is downright scary.
Makes me REAL glad I do not use auto-cad cogo. Makes me wonder how many times I avoided a similar situation by reloading plan dimensions into cogo, because I had to. What that arch refers to as "common practice", I've never heard of. Although when I think of it, I do remember a few times trying to scale non dimensioned things off of a cad site plan to find it didn't match the stated dimensions. I'll be warning my partner who does use auto-cad about this one.
I use a program for the mac called LanDesign. Very easy and versatile control over data location on the drawing. Highly precise. I cut and paste points lines and curves into an auto-cad type drawing program.
I want to thank you for that post. That is some important information in construction stake-out to be aware of.
summerprophet, post: 321887, member: 8874 wrote: 35 million dollar high school, 1.5 million dollars spend on an architectural feature of a spirally curved wall that goes from vertical on one end to 15 degree lean on the other.
All the architect could talk about was this incredible wall......
Numerous rooms didn't meet minimum classroom size, and they forgot water fountains. No water fountains for 3000 students, and not enough classrooms to teach in.
Someone can correct me, but I believe Indiana a few years ago passed legislation barring such lavishness on public schools.
It is common practice for them to just adjust dimensions. It is bad common practice but they do it all the time.
That is why the paper plans are stamped "for construction" and the CAD plans are not to be used without thorough cross checking to make sure the linework is actually right. Even just going off one set of paper plans sometimes is wrong as well. You need to make sure the structural and architectural paper plans match and they often will not.
The paper plans will have missing dimensions, and they wont match to other paper plans, but it is still our fault.
I ask for CAD files on all my projects so I can use the linework but it takes a lot of work get the CAD files into something that I know is actually correct and usable. Sometimes it is less work to just create your own drawings from scratch from the paper plans. It is not good that they don't maintain accurate CAD files but that is just the way it is and if you use a CAD file incorrectly, I'm sorry, but that is your fault.
Luckily there is starting to be a big migration to BIM models that I am hoping will fix this issue.
powman, post: 323005, member: 8761 wrote: It is common practice for them to just adjust dimensions. It is bad common practice but they do it all the time.
That is why the paper plans are stamped "for construction" and the CAD plans are not to be used without thorough cross checking to make sure the linework is actually right.
I ask for CAD files on all my projects so I can use the linework but it takes a lot of work get the CAD files into something that I know is actually correct and usable. Sometimes it is less work to just create your own drawings from scratch from the paper plans. It is shitty that they don't maintain accurate CAD files but that is just the way it is and if you use a CAD file incorrectly, I'm sorry, but that is your fault.
Wow - so the new forum layout will allow previously banned words - hmmm ...
Arkyteck has more than four letters. Is that the offending word to which you refer?
ChristopherABrown, post: 322802, member: 9944 wrote: That is downright scary.
Makes me REAL glad I do not use auto-cad cogo. Makes me wonder how many times I avoided a similar situation by reloading plan dimensions into cogo, because I had to. What that arch refers to as "common practice", I've never heard of. Although when I think of it, I do remember a few times trying to scale non dimensioned things off of a cad site plan to find it didn't match the stated dimensions. I'll be warning my partner who does use auto-cad about this one.
I use a program for the mac called LanDesign. Very easy and versatile control over data location on the drawing. Highly precise. I cut and paste points lines and curves into an auto-cad type drawing program.
I want to thank you for that post. That is some important information in construction stake-out to be aware of.
The paper rules in court, and CAD in the hands of those not geared to real world dimensions is only used to produce the paper.
I did a small amphitheater years ago and knew within minutes what the intent was, and that the CAD drawing was not right. It was a radial foundation layout, overall delta angle was easily divided to show 12° of arc to hit the centerline of each foundation and the radii increasing by 16' to each pile cap.
The CAD drawing was close, but no chord from centerline to centerline matched. Some were out by a few tenths, some by feet. A quick call to the contractor's engineer confirmed the red iron to span cap to cap was indeed ordered in consistent lengths, so the intent was the cap centerlines be equidistant.
A few hundred emails later and after kicking over a MASSIVE beehive we were instructed A) No paper sets with dimensions would be provided. All work was to be done from the electronic data. B) No RFI's were to be submitted relating to inconsistencies in dimension, build what the CAD file tells you to build.
C) Materials were the province of the contractor, not any of the peon subs.
I was specifically told in a contractor's meeting to do my job and don't stick my nose into what everyone else was doing. I asked him (the general contractor's project manager) if he would sign and date a handwritten note to that effect. He responded, with pleasure.
I faxed a copy to our HR department and long story short, was on my way to another project the next morning, as the bosses determined while I may be right, didn't want to keep me there, as I had ruffled feathers all the way up the food chain. The guy they sent to take my place quickly came to the same conclusion I had, talked with him on the phone may times over the next few weeks.
He did what he was instructed to do, used the coords generated from the CAD files for stakeout, and documented it every step of the way.
The resulting lawsuit stretched for two years, and the end of the story was, our company was able to prove without a doubt we had identified the problem early, attempted to resolve the problem beyond reasonable due diligence, and had fulfilled our contractual obligations even though we knew they were in error.
What all shook out in the wash was, the architect was specifically contracted to provide a dimensionally correct digital file. He lost his license when it was determined he had acted outside his professional abilities, as that was the realm of the engineer. Their own freakin' BOR acknowledges they can't produce a mathematically correct product!
Residential half acre lot.
Architect designs the building. He is 50 S.F. over the coverage.
A: Well the building is 50 feet deep, so we will take out a foot in the middle. No, better yet, let's take out 18" to give us some slack.
S: Why don't you take out 16" and remove a joist?
A: Oh no, I let the structural engineer figure out the framing.
Residential 3/4 acre lot.
Architect designs using 1/128" dimensions on the foundation.
S: Why do you have these dimensions to 1/128". There is no way that form guys can meet that.
A: Wood is forgiving.
S: But there is no way the framers can cut to 1/128".
Coffee Shop.
The owner introduces me to an architectural professor from MIT:
S: Would you do me a favor.
A: Of course.
S: Would you please teach your students mathematical closure.
Architect Prof turns white as a sheet
A: What do you mean?
S: Building designers seem to get it right all the time, but I have only seen one or two architectural plans close in my career.
Mike Marks, post: 321898, member: 1108 wrote: > I have been drawing full color, negative engraved, 15 minute and 7.5 minute topographic maps and full blown topographic site surveys since 19639. In all of that time I can count on the fingers of one hand the TOTAL number of architectural drawings that I have worked with on which all of the interior dimensions add up to the indicated overall building dimension. And I am NOT talking about a difference of an inch or two. :-/
I've held fire on this one because I was *sure* someone would pipe up with this beef. For some reason in the seventies I too was tasked with adding up the interior dimensions of many dozens of arch plans (big firm) to see if they matched the overall structure dimensions. As you recount, they rarely agreed, less than a foot usually, but sometimes by ten or more feet on large buildings. :-S Usually solved by reducing maintenance and elec service closets to where a fat technician would feel encaged.
Worst case was a monastery with a central dome (not geodesic, laminated wood curved roof supports, very sexy) with ancillary buildings radiating out from the dome. No easily added together right angle measurements were anywhere on the arch plans. It was paper plans back then and I was overwhelmed and the company computer COGO guru running our Intergraph CAD station (the only private one in the State at the time) spent almost a week unsnarling the design. He was a sweaty poorly dressed guy with really thick glasses and generally unpleasant but delivered when tasked. The arch plans were so FUBARed the thing couldn't be built using them, foundations interfering, HVAC ducting ignored, etc., causing ridiculous dimensional errors up to twenty feet depending on which way you measured. Solved by a lawsuit and replacement of the architect (we weren't involved, we were only the whistleblowers along with every contractor who viewed the plans). Second set of plans, six months later, were pretty good. We made money as the only surveyors who could figure out the new plans vs. our original work.
The experience made me ruminate. Serendipitously my best bud in college's father was a prominent architect in Oregon (no high rise, specialized in residential difficult building sites) and I got to spend a few nights at our cups with him as we both shared a mountaineering passion. His point was, look, I've got essentially a PHd Art degree; my job is colors, texture, materials, space integration, consideration of adjacent impacts, topography considerations, light, efficient utilization of the site and interior building space, this stuff may last for centuries, etc. The technical structural aspects of the project, not my job. As the conductor of the orchestra, I farm out the details to engineers, who tell me what and what cannot be done for various costs, they convert my vision into a set of plans. You surveyors show up late in my work flow, and are an irritant because you point out egregious errors in plan dimensions during construction, well, it's the engineer subs you've got a beef with. I'll edit dimensions on my plans no problem to save the project, as long as the my vision is fulfilled, except when reality makes my plans an impossibility.
I hate architects, they're the most disconnected people on the project concerning getting the damn thing built and are evasive when the problem is obviously their problem. They're ******* college boys who have mastered shifting responsibility for their work to others.
My biggest survey related problems were when the structural and site/grading drawings were done within the same firm as the architectural firm and no outside consultants were utilized. Sheet S1 had the answers over A1 unless done in-house. My 2 cents, Jp
