I'm one month into my "new" career and I don't like it much

[Zeke]

I used to do this kind of work 25 years ago. However, the seismic engineering aspect is way different and this thing is going to be built like a bank. What's happening is this whole side/corner of the house is coming down and we're catching the old floors at each story with parallams and a whole truck load of hardware. As it is the house is sitting on jacks, piers and temp walls as we proceed.





Concrete went in yesterday, so the lumber drop is Monday.

I long for the finish carpentry, door and window work I did for so long. But thanks to the economy, I'm back digging ditches. (yes, I did a good portion of that under house stuff myself)

[Zeke]

These steel posts are pretty cool. We've got a lot of the second floor supported from right below. Not a good time for an earthquake.

[daepp]

Very impressive work. Looks like you place a fair amount of pride in what you do!

[Zeke]

Well, if you've seen some of the finish work I've done, I'd have to say that I am interested in what I do and try to do it well. But, the structural aspect of a project like this is all up to the civil engineer, then the city inspector, in that order. I've already butted heads big time with the structural guy because he has come back 3 times with revisions as the job has developed. The lesson I'm learning is that this is the norm nowadays. If he didn't see something in the beginning, he gets to change the rules. Hey, if I was in a contract bound by a solid price, I'd be up a creek. However, I'm not and I will never bid a job like this unless I just simply add up the costs and triple the number.

You see, this is what gives contractors such a bad reputation. They all want to work, just like the next guy. But to survive in the business, you have to come in low and then up the ante, sometimes by not the best of negotiations. I won't behave that way.

At least we know this much so far, the engineer is newly in his own practice. He used to work for a big firm. Now, he doesn't have all those layers of back up to fall back on. And, when I backed him into a corner showing him his inconsistencies (attested to by the lumber take off guy and the framing lead guy), he balked and ducked, but left me looking bad by saying that things had to be redone. Things that were done to his specs from the get go.

This is why I posted this thread, to show the pitfalls for owners and contractors alike. We have had a lot of discussion on contracting here in the past and most folks don't particularly like contractors. It's two-way street. The better all are in sync, the better the outcome. Lots of give and take. At least that's the way it's shaping up. I'm used to one to five days jobs, not 6 months at a haul. I know now why I left the room addition business after only 5 years.

You do what you gotta do. I been doin' it for 37 years as a contractor.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

That looks like quite a project. Nice work!

[SLO-BOB]

Originally Posted by milt

This is why I posted this thread, to show the pitfalls for owners and contractors alike. We have had a lot of discussion on contracting here in the past and most folks don't particularly like contractors. It's two-way street. The better all are in sync, the better the outcome. Lots of give and take. At least that's the way it's shaping up. I'm used to one to five days jobs, not 6 months at a haul. I know now why I left the room addition business after only 5 years.

You do what you gotta do. I been doin' it for 37 years as a contractor.

I hate residential. Now I do hospitals - period. Much easier.

[Taz's Master]

There is an easy way to avoid problems with contractors. Do your projects without them.

That's also the method for truly appreciating contractors.

[Racerbvd]

Milt, when you post pix of the finished product, I bet you won't feel the same. Hard work, yes, but you are willing & able, many others would just not work.
You have true talent and you aren't wasting it. We all remember our roots and it is not a bad thing to revisit them, it only builds you as a person. My father was with the NMU most of his adult life (from the end of W.W.II to the 70s) and after the Government froze & seized all the upper Union guys assets & pensions, he did the only thing he knew, at age 60, he went back to sea. Neever bothered him that he was the oldest guy on the ship or that he use to be the guy who got these guys jobs and worked to make thier world better.

[oldE]

Milt,

Rebuilding old houses is as bad as rebuilding old cars. When it is all done, you know there is that one thing that should have been done but the owner didn't want to pay for.

Was that an addition which had settled or some other screw-up that you guys had to fix?

The good part of that kind of work is that every now and then you get to 'save' a house that really deserves it for the craftsmanship that went into it in the first place.

A lady here in Annapolis Royal bought the old (circa 1910) brick train station which was rotting out from the bottom and spent around 300K with local contractors re-engineering a basement under the middle part, then rebuilding the floors, and cleaning the old oak woodwork and re-doing the plaster where it needed it. It is a showpiece for the work of the local guys, but no-one else had the vision to see what it could be.

Sometimes you get to be a part of those jobs.

Les

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Milt, I normally agree with you (and I was going to keep quiet on this) but in this case I think you're being a little disingenuous towards the designers for your project. I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that the changes you're seeing and getting so torqued up about are not the result of any professional misconduct or negligence on the part of the engineer. These are becoming more and more common as developers try to constantly fiddle with the traditional contracts for professional services and timetables for DD/CD production.

I see this quite a bit - owners/CMs/developers are more inclined to say "chuck the traditional scope of work and/or schedule and use this one" (usually CONSIDERABLY shorter/cheaper than what has traditionally been the case and established out of knowledge and experience of what works best. . .) They all think they can somehow "out-think" the traditional scope agreements, relationships, responsibilities, schedules and fee structures that have been proven over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to work well. They all think they have a "better way" that will magically work better.

Contractors are getting hit the same way, I get that. It's certainly not like you guys have it easy and guys like me (architects, engineers) get the raw deal. EVERYONE is getting the raw deal. We all feel it. However, to think that architects or engineers just sit around frittering away time and then leave major decisions until the thing is built and then just say "oops, my bad - just change it at no increased cost" is just laughable. As design timetables shorten, the only way to stay solvent is to push the stuff out the door before it's fully resolved. "100% CD" sets are what used to be called "75% CD sets" (or worse). Stuff admittedly goes out for permit or construction less resolved than one would ordinarily like it to be. It's the only way to take on an adequate volume of work in order to keep in the black. Only very small "niche" places can make $$$ on per-project. Mostly it's made on volume. And that means something has to give, unfortunately.

Put it this way: I have a sign hanging over my desk at work that reads simply: "FAST/ACCURATE/CHEAP - PICK ANY TWO". I show it to clients sometimes so they understand the game, or more correctly so they realize I understand the game. It's not a slight on them, it just illustrates the point that I understand the game they're going to try to play (they're often obligated to by the nature of their job) and that I'll do the best I can to work within those parameters (for most clients, it's "fast" and "cheap" that they pick, so guess what suffers?)

Anyway, the point here is that I see very often situations where the design/production process is muddied quite a bit, no longer broken into clear phases with clear milestones. Revisions are getting done (by necessity) often in a panic, right up to the point something is built. There's a lot of "just do it this way and we'll deal with the ramifications later" going on. Changes made after permit issuance, changes made in the field, changes made after an initial portion of the work is completed. And yet strangely, even though this is way messier, creates way more headaches and ultimately costs everyone (especially the owners) more, they DEMAND it. They feel obligated to go to their bosses and show the battle scars as evidence that they fought tooth-and-nail for faster & cheaper, even though doing so (versus traditional arrangements) almost ALWAYS results in "longer and more expensive".

So I feel for ya'. But it's not us.

Another thing to consider (and I'm sure you know this as a seasoned/experienced guy) that once interest rates start to climb, there's going to be even MORE pressure for shortened timetables and more of this kind of design-build/in-the-field crap than today, since the notes the developers are holding cost them significantly more $$$ every day that construction or design takes.

But I guess that's why we get paid the big bucks right?

[Zeke]

I knew a freakin' engineer would take exception to my remarks. The long and short of it is that the architect and his buddy the engineer told the owners they surveyed the under house area and the owners watched them enter the crawl space from the finished basement.

Now when the assbite engineer comes out twice and says he didn't know there wasn't an existing 20 foot long footing, only a girder on piers, I take exception to his integrity. Then he tells me he designed his calcs from "as built" plans. I asked to see those plans and he couldn't produce them.

I didn't intend this to be a slam on engineers. I simply related the sequence of events. Now that you've opened the debate and degraded the thread, I'll tell you I think most engineers are squirrels. And, I'm not alone on that AFA this job is concerned. The owners despise the SOB and the framer just laughs at the ridiculousness of all this. I wish I could just laugh, but I was told a couple of bald face lies, and that don't work with me.

One of the owners is an attorney, and although he didn't really want to play that card this early, he did and the engineer acquiesced to let us pour the concrete ahead of today's rain. With a few pics of even more modifications, that is. The joke Friday, when the concrete was being pumped, was which hole we should have buried the f****r in. That helped the day along, let me tell you.

No, I won't be doing any more of this kind of work. I'm rather anti-authority anyway. I've had more than my share of inane judgments by city officials, etc. Just for an example, I had a planning commissioner here in LB tell me he would prefer and therefore approve some plans for an addition if I would relocate the concrete steps in the property setback. Not only would that have blocked the walkway for mower and trash can access, it most likely would not have even made it through zoning, much less plan check. I threw two years of designing in the trash and never built the thing. I have absolutely no respect for people who have power yet no knowledge. The various jurisdictions are full of such people.

Your turn.

[Flatbutt1]

This why I chose to do a partial demo on my house rather than repairing in place. Yes more expensive for me but overall I get a better house out of it.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by oldE

Milt,

.

Was that an addition which had settled or some other screw-up that you guys had to fix?



Les

No, everything is original. The owners just want a bigger kitchen. So, in the design, they are getting about 200 new sq. ft. on the 1st floor kitchen and 150 more upstairs all dedicated to a bath. The upstairs is set back on the open kitchen ceiling, hence all the engineering. 2 large parallams that cantilever out to a point in mid ceiling under the 2nd story carry the upper ext walls.

The kitchen used to have a breakfast nook (where the demo chute exits). So, the new design moves that over to the out side corner. If you look at the concrete forms, you can see the footprint of a fireplace on the left wall.

This is a very expensive project. The cabinets alone are in the 40K range. It will all be done in a Spanish style to match the existing house. I guess that's why they picked me as I specialize in period reproduction.

If I could scan some of the plans and upload, I would. But, I can't and I suppose that's a copyright issue as well.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

No offense taken in particular. All I wanted to do was point out that the designers aren't necessarily the ones at fault here. More often than not, "sloppiness" on the part of the design team (which can understandably frustrate the guys in the field) can be traced back to unacceptably short timetables to do the work and ever-decreasing profit margins on compensation/fees. The textbook professional practice answer to that problem is, "well, as a licensed professional one shouldn't be accepting work that they can't deliver at the highest level of quality". The reality is that if you don't simply go after and take those commissions anyway and adopt a "git 'er done" approach to them and bang those jobs out, you're going to find yourself out of business pretty quickly. The architect or engineer is forced to walk the knife edge between quality and speed.

The professional standard for design services is known as the "standard of reasonable care". It's not the standard of "perfection" or the standard of "100% accuracy". It's defined as "performance at a level that would be expected of another reasonable professional doing the same work". This is the same standard one gets from lawyers, doctors, etc. Unfortunately when the entire profession is subjected to the kinds of demands that it is in terms of compressed timetables and reduced fees from clients, guess what happens to the "standard of reasonable care"? It lowers, and if one were ever to go after a design professional on the grounds of professional malpractice, it would be actually harder to do in today's sort of climate, since "another reasonable professional in the same situation" wouldn't have necessarily been able to do much better. It's difficult to prove professional malpractice unless the architect/engineer has been pretty grossly negligent and caviler towards his/her job, and very few are. Most are honest people just doing the best they can with incomplete information and inadequate time, for ever-decreasing fees. To prove that someone acted outside the "standard of reasonable care" in today's climate given how we're ALL getting beaten up on schedule and compensation would be difficult at best, and the onus of proving it would be on the one bringing such a claim. It's tough to prove, if not impossible.

That isn't meant to sound smug or to "pass the buck" or to say "good luck suing one of us", it's simply to point out the reality that the overall expectations are being lowered and it isn't because of any lack of willingness, work ethic or professionalism on the parts of architects and engineers. You're (unfortunately) going to see more "go-back-and-fix-it-later" issues, more coordination issues, more "work-around-the-mistake/damage control" issues, etc. It's an inevitable consequence of the developers and owners' reps and CMs trying to constantly re-invent the wheel and push the limits of what's reasonable or possible. Most guys I know who are practicing actually really dislike this about rendering professional services in this day and age. They are dedicated, hard-working people that want to do a good and thorough job and work in a disciplined and methodical manner. It's difficult for people like this to constantly have to "push it out the door" in order to meet an arbitrary deadline or to avoid burning too many man-hours on a job and going bankrupt.

On the one hand I think the stress created by these sorts of expectations is a good thing. The proverbial pedal needs to be kept all the way down, all the time in order to motivate people to find the best new ways to be productive. I find that you typically get 80% to 90% of expectations. Therefore if you settle for a lower standard or "keep it reasonable", you're likely to get 80% or 90% of those expectations. As a manager, I'd rather see 80% to 90% of higher expectations than lower ones. Of course there are side effects to this kind of thinking (employee burnout, disillusionment, etc.). As a manager, it's tough to do this, but you have to, lest you fall behind, and in this game - he who falls behind is left to die. I don't fault the clients or owner's reps for doing their jobs and constantly trying to "push the envelope" in this way, which creates these situations. I do understand where they're coming from. OTOH, when it creates a situation where everything ends up being a compromise between quality/due diligence and end quality of product, it hurts the profession as a whole, since people see more and more mistakes and issues come up. It's difficult to reconcile.

I realize architects and engineers sometimes make easy targets, especially to people that don't fully understand what we do and how much work/effort/time/liability it involves. I've even had some particularly ignorant owner's reps say that architectural fees were "pure waste". This is a very sad, ignorant and very incorrect way of looking at it.

The current state of construction is a difficult one for everyone, and it's not getting any easier. We're ALL along for the ride - the owners, developers, financial backers, designers, builders and project managers. It's sort of like a runaway train and there's no silver bullet to fix it without hurting one or more of the above financially. So the status quo persists, and actually gets a little worse all the time. . .

Sorry to sound dour or bleak. I really do enjoy what I do, as I'm sure you do. It could always be better, but it could most certainly be worse. At least we're all working!

Best of luck on your project. It looks interesting and I hope it all turns out okay for you.

[azasadny]

We did this type of work a few years ago when we doubled the size of our brick colonial, that was built in 1936 and I don't know how you guys can do this work on a regular basis, as it almost killed me! I don't know what was worrse, hauling bundles of shingles to the roof, ripping out old walls and floors, installing new hardwood floors with a Porti-Nailer and a 4lb sledge hammer or hauling lumbers, mortar, concrete blocks, etc... Very physically demanding work!

[Zeke]

Jeff, you make things sound terrible. I don't see why the various partners in development can't do better on the time frame. Not properly planning until the last minute and then working on the fly sounds to me like how the Queen Mary debacle went, You should have been there; I was as a twenty something. Engineers worked literally double shifts to keep plans in the hands of the single shift construction crews. As a result, the cost overruns were 10 x the original budget; from 8 million to 80.

I thought someone would have learned something there. Maybe they did, but it's been 40 years since.

However, our engineer simply did not do his job. Read my posts thoroughly and you will see some of what he missed. That's just libelous in my opinion. He heh, when I brought that up, the discussion went south. He didn't like my tone of voice at all and I can say I really don't give a rat's ass if that's how things are done today. I'm a bit more methodical in my approach to any work. For instance, doors an windows were ordered last month as well as cabinets and fixtures. Some are already on the job due to my planning.

For the rest of you reading along, I'll make occasional updates. When we get to the finish stage, it should get interesting; even a bit opulent. Lots of neat stuff planned.

Art, that's what it is. No glory in this work.

[cgarr]

You need to work where the ground don't move....

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Yea, occasionally there are lazy designers too. Not often, but occasionally. Maybe you got one of them.

[pwd72s]

Milt...If lotto numbers ever came in for me, I'd hire you as home building project manager...

[tabs]

Tear the whole fking thing down and start over, it is one fugly lookin house to begin with.