As an EIT, there were many times I was challenged to prepare bidding and contract documents, but felt inadequate in the preparation due to no class work in this area. I did feel confident in preparation of construction drawings, but that was due to having worked in construction and engineering while in school. I think a required construction document preparation course would help.
As a contractor and engineer, I will say that some of the best experience to be gained in this area is estimating and bidding projects for a general contractor. I know of no experience that exposes one to more review and critique of construction documents prepared by numerous engineers and architects. A one-year internship working some specified number of hours as an assistant estimator would be helpful, or similar post-graduate experience.
That said, I for the most part agree with the statements in the Nov/Dec 06 issue of The Construction Zone. I see very few sets of construction documents that I would consider good or better quality. Many are fraught with errors and omissions, lack of coordination between disciplines, insufficient detail, and unnecessary cost to the owner due to over design or poor design concept. There are many construction document failures that never come to light, primarily because they have led to additional contractor profits. The things that cost additional money almost always become known, but even then the true cause may not be clearly evident.
The bottom line is that you have to know the details of how things are built to design them, you have to know how to put together bidding and construction documents, and somehow that needs to be adequately addressed by the licensure process.
T.A. “Art” Manning III, P.E., M.ASCE
Clayton, NC
As a construction engineer who has resided on the contractor side of the industry for most of my 38 years, Jon Rauschkolb’s response is right on target.
I would not limit the responsibility of the construction to just engineers, but should include all the design professionals, including architects.
Owners and developers have grown to trust the contractors' opinions more often since contractors have both the exposure to the construction costs and to the lawsuits generated because of incomplete and or defective design.
Jim Roach, P.E., M.ASCE
Houston, TX
You are correct. I guess.
But the title of your article was “Construction Industry Problems,” and engineers are only part of the problem.
Key Problem Players include definitions, owners, engineers and contractors.
Definitions
What constitutes “project failure”? Contingency used up? Ten-percent over budget? More than 25% over budget? Two months late? Two years? Ten-percent past scheduled completion? More than 25% past scheduled completion?
Because “failure” is rarely defined, projects (or programs) rarely “fail.”
“Sure, our new building cost us 40% more than we thought it would; and we got it a year late; and we didn’t build the area for expansion that was in the original scope; but we got our building! Some of the employees are too cold, others are too hot. And there’s a leak here and there. But everyone agrees that it looks beautiful!”
Owners
About 90% of the time, projects “fail” because the owner doesn’t provide competent, clear, technically-knowledgeable leadership.
Many times, it’s the nature of owner organizations which confounds the construction process. Complex, politically-intense, byzantine organizations lead to unwieldy and conflicted decision-making. Which, in turn, leads to an unwieldy and conflicted project procurement-design-construction process.
Engineers
You know more about their problems and failings than I do, but I suspect significant contributors to their problems include negative answers to the following rhetorical questions:
- Is our work marketed and negotiated by individuals who will have to do the work?
- Are our design managers taught to manage design (not just do design)?
- Are our design managers taught to manage clients (not just liaise with clients)?
- Are our marketing managers empowered to say “no” to clients or potential contracts – and to their company’s upper management?
Contractors
All I can say to my fellow contractors is, “WAKE UP!”
- Understand risk
- Start bidding for risk
- Quit marketing, bidding or negotiating work at cost “in the hope” that change orders will generate a profit
- Start giving the individuals who will have to do the work significant input to the marketing, bidding and negotiating
- Start pricing for adequate staffs to manage and document the work
- Start saying “no” to clients or potential contracts which aren’t well-defined or which pose too great a risk
- Start pricing all your work with larger (sometimes much larger) “general conditions” costs so that you have the financial ability to (i) train, (ii) mentor, (iii) retain, and (iv) grow competent, professional management and supervisory staffs
I’ve often said that if – somehow – hard-money bidding in all jurisdictions public and private throughout the U.S. were made illegal on Tuesday, then on Wednesday Atlantic City and Las Vegas would be completely overrun with contractors looking for a place to lay down their bets hoping for the “big win.”
Alternative Project Delivery Methods:
These are mostly headed down the same path as all the other “magic bullets” which have come and gone over the last 30+ years.
Isolated examples of success can be cited. But, in general, none of these has served to reduce the general and steady decline in the industry – in its financial, professional or societal standing.
Remember “construction partnering”?
How about “contractor quality control”?
And now, it’s “design-build.”
Done right, design-build can be win-win-win: Win for engineer, win for contractor, win for owner.
Done wrong, design-build is just another, more complicated way of losing money and reputation.
And who does it right?
One might guess that, certainly, the biggest, most sophisticated contractors, designers and owners would know how to do it right. One would be wrong. (Engineering News Record printed an article in its 25 December 2006 edition about large, sophisticated firms suffering losses and filing claims on “alternate delivery” projects with a number of state transportation agencies.)
Proven Project Delivery Methods:
Again, this starts with the owner.
- Define your project’s scope. (I know, it’s not easy. Fifteen departments, five unions, seven different “users” – it’s hard. But if you wait until you’ve already hired a designer – or design-builder – it’s going to hard and very, very expensive).
- Put technically competent people in charge.
- Limit your project leadership to one single entity (one person or one cohesive team) and give them total control over project scope, budget and schedule.
- Make it absolutely clear to your entire organization (at least all those having a stake in, or being impacted by, the project) that your project team is the final authority: Until the project is completed, the stakeholders’ role is to provide “support-consulting-advisory” services to the project team.
- Hire (and be willing to pay for) reputable, professional design and construction service providers.
If the owner does the above, it probably doesn’t matter which of the dozens of “project delivery” schemes he uses. He will have a “successful” project.
Yes, I agree that engineers and architects need to know how things are built. So do contractors.
But neither can read an owner’s mind.
And neither can build and maintain staffs with the training, experience and knowledge necessary to perform high-quality professional services if they aren’t pricing their work properly.
G.W. Gehring, P.E.
Lakehurst, NJ
Your recent issue of The Construction Zone raised an issue that is close to my heart. As a retired civil/structural Engineer, I fully agree with the position that many of the young engineers do not grasp the concept of constructability. My background was as a design engineer who spent approximately two-thirds of my career in the field in a resident position.
From this perspective, I have seen consistent hostility between construction and design, whether from the same company or different companies. Designers tend to feel that construction personnel do not make the effort to follow design documents, while constructors tend to feel that design personnel have no concept of construction processes. Domestically, this is exacerbated by many foreign-born engineers in the design office, while the construction personnel are primarily US-born. Communication is often non-existent.
Two advantages I had were that many of the professors I had during college (University of British Columbia) were also consultants, and my summer jobs included working as a construction laborer on the WAC Bennett Dam in northern B.C. The professors tended to use practical examples from their recent experiences, and the work experience included dealing with design detail problems, such as tight rebar spacing.
I have long advocated that young engineers should be required to spend time on a jobsite to gain an appreciation of the problems encountered by construction. However, I realize that this poses a short-term added cost to the company. I feel that in the long term that this would be a cost-effective investment. Also, many young engineers do not want to leave a city atmosphere for a temporary move to a small town where the project will be built.
With the gradual transition to computer-dominated design, many young engineers tend to have blind faith in computer output, instead of having a "feel" for proportionality of members in the design. I have personally reached total frustration when attempting to reason with "the computer says..." engineers, who have forgotten the basic GIGO we learned years ago. Present calculations are not supported by "hand crank" simple beam formulae or free body diagrams to balance forces. The drawings (also computer-generated) tend to just have lines for beams, columns, or rebar, not highlighting problems of proximity, such as rebar spacing that would not allow for vibrator insertion.
However, the issue is not totally one-sided. "Minor" changes made in the field can end up invalidating key portions of the design for nearby elements. Having a design engineer familiar with the design could work with construction personnel to provide an alternative fix and avoid the problem. Having construction personnel involved in the design stage would help alleviate these types of problems. My personal experience has shown that many well-qualified engineers choose to enter construction instead of design and provide a great deal of value in the construction process.
In conclusion, I agree that this is truly a problem, which can only be alleviated by cooperation of educators, licensing boards, and engineering/construction companies. As history has proven, the social aspect of domestic construction personnel and foreign design personnel may be more difficult to resolve.
Doug Palmer, P.E., M.ASCE
Athens, AL
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Construction Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers