While I am retired, I’m under contract to my former company, CEI Engineering Associates, Inc., to provide services when called upon. These haven’t been too many, as for the most part they are getting by just fine without the old man.

I left two things hanging when I retired January 1st. They were both Children’s Learning Adventure facilities, one in Minnesota and one in Missouri, outside St. Louis. These were projects started by another project manager at the company. They bogged down in construction, each having problems with the storm water treatment pond. The other project manager, who was very good, wasn’t an engineer and couldn’t deal with the issues that arose. She was significantly over-loaded with many projects. To help off-load her, I got these two projects in November 2017, along with three others that weren’t as critical.

For the last year of my fulltime career, this work took up a lot of my time. The project in Minnesota came together first. The issues were clear. Two ponds had to be redesigned and reconstructed. Of course, it included working with the City and the Watershed District, both of which had jurisdiction. We received approval from them, and moved forward with construction in Sept-Oct 2018. As this was a working childcare facility, the work had to be done on the weekends. I spent three weekends in Minnesota, overseeing the work and doing some facilitating to keep it from stretching out to a fourth weekend. We had a final inspection in November, and all that was left was a warrantee period inspection this summer, which another man with the company handled.

The St. Louis area project was tougher. We fought the contractor over that. He said the pond was designed incorrectly, that it didn’t account for adjacent groundwater flow, etc., etc. I had data that showed some layers of the pond were the wrong material, or perhaps contaminated material. The contractor finally said he would rebuilt the pond, but winter season was upon us by then. When I retired, the other man at our company was up-to-speed on this, but planned on bringing me in to visit the site while the rework was going on.

The contractor said he’d rebuilt the pond, but that it wouldn’t make any difference in performance since it was our error. Well, in May-June of this year, while I was away in Texas and unable to go to the site, they did rebuild it. I talked with the other engineer recently, and he said the pond is now working perfectly. It wasn’t a design error at all, but a construction problem. While I would have liked to have seen it during construction, I’m glad it all was done.

Meanwhile, back in the real world of 2019, the company continues to call on me from time to time, mainly for City of Centerton work. The engineer I trained and mentored for two years to take over this work has been promoted to department head, and is very busy as a result. More and more she is calling on me. I spent over four hours on that work on Tuesday, going into the office for it. We had a conference call with FEMA on one project, then I spent close to two hours going through accumulated construction reports for several developer projects for which we serve as city engineer. I filed the reports and photographs, and prepared the e-mails for archiving. Next time I’m in the office I’ll do the archiving.

In my reviews, I found items that will have to be put in a change order by the design engineer (another firm). I also found a couple of failing tests, which the geotechnical engineer acknowledged and addressed. Still, it’s something our construction folks will need to be aware of. I sent an e-mail to all of them so they are aware of the problems. I also sent an engineer to that other firm about preparing the needed change order.

The department head has asked me to be that main one to review the reports going forward. That means when I check company e-mail on my cell phone and see emails come through with attachments, I’ll have to drag out the company laptop and deal with them. It will be a daily 5 minute task, the time for which I will accumulate and bill in 15 minute increments. It’s good money, good enough to pay a bill or two every month, but shouldn’t be so much that I get dinged by the IRS for making too much. Now, if one of my books catches fire and begins selling, that will be a different story.

I still have my engineering licenses in Arkansas and Missouri, my Kansas license being retired last April. Missouri comes up for renewal the end of this year, and I will most likely retire it at that point. Arkansas is good until December 2020. We’ll see what happens then. They may finally have weaned themselves from the old man.