Category Archives: Engineering

Engineering, Writing

Different Writing: A Professional Paper

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I continue with my creative writing endeavors. Last night I made good progress on Documenting America: Civil War Edition. I typed some writing from manuscript, and added to it on the computer to complete a chapter. Then I continued research into the next chapter to be written. Today I completed reading the source document, and read some background material. Tomorrow I’ll excerpt the material and write the chapter. Good stuff, good progress.

But my main writing work yesterday and today was working on my technical paper for the EC15 conference. The paper was due today to the International Erosion Control Association. I still haven’t finished and submitted it. The presentation will be in Portland, OR next February. Long lead time, I know.

The idea for this paper came to me over a year ago, and gelled into an outline at the EC14 conference in Nashville last February. The concept was: gather data from the bid forms from a number of projects about how erosion control work is bid out. Analyze the data, as well as qualitative information from the projects, to see if one method of contracting seems to be better. My hopes, and soft expectation, was that unit price contracting, as opposed to lump sum contracting, would be better for erosion and sediment control work. Hence the name of my paper: “Unit Price Contracting for Erosion and Sediment Control Work: Does it Improve Our Practice?”

I gathered the data (i.e. the bid forms) from ten projects several months ago, and talked with our employee who handled the field work on several of those projects. I’m a big fan of unit price contracting because it is a risk-sharing approach to construction contracting. Explaining what I mean with that would be way too long for a blog post. I teach a 90 minute class on that topic. I felt that going with this risk-sharing approach for erosion and sediment control work would result in better prices, better implementation  of devices and practices, better maintenance of these devices, and less pollution to the environment. It was the ultimate win-win situation to me.

But that’s my intuitive analysis, based on my own biases and qualitative analysis. What would the data say? As I said above, I gathered the data some time ago, and had aggregated it into one spreadsheet. I created my outline about a month ago, and wrote a tentative introductory sentence. There the paper stood until yesterday just afternoon.

At that time I started with the real writing. I had much more introduction to write, then get into an explanation of what I mean by “improved practice.” I also had a little more outline to think over, and dusting off and re-looking at the data. I did all this, and by the end of the day I had a little over 900 words. I anticipate the paper will run somewhere around 3,000 words, so this seemed like reasonable progress. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to finish the paper today, but I might get close.

The morning was full of meetings, site visits, and a little personal stuff. I got back to the paper around 1:30 p.m., ready to write the part about the hard data I collected and draw some conclusions out of it. I started writing, but when I got to the part where I should show what the data said, I realized I had never gone the next step and done a few calculations to see what the data actually said. Did it support my hope and anticipation that unit price contracting would result in less expensive erosion control measures that were equally effective as were those of a project that’s where the erosion control work is bid as a lump sum?

So I stopped writing and went back to the data. I quickly saw that I had too much data. I wasn’t going to be able to present all the data I had intended; it would overwhelm the paper. Including it in an appendix was a possibility, but for the moment I had to concentrate on what was in the paper.

I dug into it, and after an hour figured out what I had to do. I ran the calculations needed, from the data already in the spreadsheet, then ranked the projects according to which had the least expensive erosion control, then penciled in the type of bidding used (unit price, lump sum, mixed). To my great pleasure the five lowest cost projects (on a unit basis) for erosion control work were the five that were bid as unit prices! The most expensive three were the ones that trended most to lump sum, using fewer unit prices. My hope and expectation had been realized. On two projects I didn’t have enough data to do the full calculations and rank by unit cost.

I e-mailed the IECA education coordinator, telling her I wouldn’t have the paper in until Tuesday and hoped that would still be alright. I believe it will be. I printed the paper and have it here. I’ll work on it some, or maybe a lot, this weekend. Hopefully by Monday it will be written. All I’ll have to do is see if I can find the rest of the data for those two projects, and interview the field man to get his further opinion on the non-qualitative criteria.

I wish I had it done by the deadline, but I feel good about it. The end is in sight, and it will be a good paper.

Engineering, Writing

I’d Like Another Gig

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This time last year I was writing two columns per month at the e-zine Buildipedia.com. It was good work, $100 for a 500 word column, topics that flowed naturally from my work, minimal research. I received good feedback from the editors, and they rarely changed anything I turned in, not even a word.

But in May they cut it back to one column per month, and after June they stopped it all together. Not enough ad revenue to support it, or maybe not enough visitors to the pages; not sure which. $200 went to nothing real fast. That may not seem like a lot of money, but it really helped with the budget.

I sure would like to find something similar. On Wednesday I began the process of looking. I found an on-line blog-like magazine that was perfect for replacing Buildipedia. I started filling out the on-line application. Then I realized the last post was sometime last summer. It appears it’s no longer an active site.

I estimate there are about 50 other sites I need to check out. I’m not optimistic about finding something. But maybe, maybe.

Buildipedia, Engineering, Suite 101

2011 Writing in Review: Non-fiction Articles

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It’s Christmas morning, and not everyone is up yet. So I think I’ll try to dash off the next in my year in review posts, this time about non-fiction articles.

I started 2011 with a renewed interest in writing articles at Suite101.com. For the first six weeks I added at least one a week, and had a couple of others in the hopper. Then around February 22 a major change in the Google search algorithm went into effect. Called “Panda”, this algorithm change pretty much killed content sites such as Suite101. Page views and ad share income dropped to very low levels over night. A slight recovery occurred in August, but then another Panda update killed it again. As a consequence, I have not written another article for Suite, and don’t intend to for a while.

I was contacted in March or April by a transportation industry newsletter to write an article for them. This was my first time to have an editor solicit me for an article. She wanted an engineer for this article, not a freelancer,  had seen some of my engineering articles at Suite101, and so contacted me. The pay was good, and writing this article required me to do some interviewing. That was good experience.

I wrote about ten (maybe a few more) articles for Buildipedia.com. That started out strong early in the year, but by June it started to fade, as they were assigning only one of every six article ideas I pitched to them. But they had an editorial change in November, I pitched a column on construction administration to the new editor, and it was accepted on a trial basis. At the end of the year I have had two columns published, and contracts for two more columns.

So it was a good year for non-fiction articles. Almost all my writing income came from them. It’s something I plan to keep doing into 2012.

Engineering, Health, self-publishing, Suite 101

Things I Don’t Understand

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How my blood sugar can be 122 before a late supper, 127 at bedtime (3 hours after supper), take a higher Lantus dose as recommended by the doctor, do nothing for the next 5.75 hours but sleep and pee (not at the same time), and have my morning blood sugar 165. What’s going on? Do I have a very slowly acting metabolism? Did I have a stressful dream I don’t remember?

Why the note I just posted to Facebook shows up on my profile but not in my news feed.

Why Google chose to de-rate Suite101.com in their last algorithm update, so much so that I make almost nothing there now.

Why I procrastinated getting abstracts in for the Feb 2012 erosion control conference so that now I have only two days to get ’em done.

Why this company I work for (actually just the chairman) thinks I can write a bio paragraph for some project they are going after without knowing anything about the project or the form of the proposal.

Why my e-short story and e-book have each sold only three copies. Actually, I know the why to this one: the lack of promotion to make them stand out from the Kindle clutter.

Why I still have that desire to be published by a traditional publisher, knowing the odds of that ever happening.

Why almost no one in my family give a rat’s whisker about anything I write.

Why my rheumatoid arthritis seems to be getting worse as I lose weight.

Why my beta readers totally failed to do what they said they would do on Documenting America. I had zero beta reader response before I went to e-publish.

Why I can’t concentrate on engineering today.

Engineering, flood studies, Writing

Miscellaneous Friday

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This has been a killer week, emotionally and physically, but more so emotionally. Where shall I start?

The knowledge that my John Wesley small group study won’t be needed by my church for the foreseeable future was a gut-wrenching blow. I probably over-reacted, since I can still write it and see what else I can do with it. Still, it was an emotional setback.

Yesterday I was hoping to get my Bentonville flood study back out to FEMA, Revision 5. But the remapping after the remodeling after the remapping after the remodeling after the corrupt informal submission to FEMA was rejected after the formal Revision 4 submittal came back from FEMA with yet more comments showed that some additional remodeling was needed. Both I and the CADD tech lost time yesterday due to meetings and computer problems, so I didn’t get the latest map till 4:00 PM, which showed ten cross-sections still needing work to get the map and the model to match. I worked on that till 6:30 PM, thinking I had them all done except for one, which I was convinced was a map problem. This morning the CADD tech convince me it was a model problem. I had that corrected and she had the map corrected and the annotated flood map produced by 11:00 AM. The entire report is now ready to go; I only have to stuff the maps and CD in pockets bound in the report. So it goes out by FedEx this afternoon, making the Monday deadline. Just barely.

Not getting the re-mapping until 4 PM yesterday, with it showing still much work to do, about caused me to lose it. I did throw a notebook across my office, and pounded the desk a few times, so I guess I did lose it in a sense. But I pushed on through. Another deadline met. Now back onto the third floodplain project, thence to the fourth and fifth. Someday I hope to get back to my training tasks.

Actually, this afternoon I think I will. I like to use Friday afternoons for miscellaneous stuff, such as: getting caught up on daily timesheets; getting caught up on daily activity logs; cleaning the week’s accumulation of stuff off my desk; seeing what correspondence needs to be done. In some ways Friday afternoon is the most productive time of the week. This afternoon, I think I’ll write a new construction specification section. There’s a certain product for permanent erosion control that we use some, but for which we don’t have a decent construction spec. Yesterday I saw a competing product advertised in Erosion Control magazine. I think I can produce a pretty good spec section in that time. That would be writing. I like that.

Tonight I may just read. I should write, I know. I should decide what to do next. Documenting America needs some editing, and it would be nice to have that ready to go about the same time as the permanent cover comes in. That could be any day now. In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People needs to be finished. Lots of work there, and I’ve been thinking about it lately. Also of late I’ve had a desire to get back into my Harmony of the Gospels and finish the passage notes and the appendixes, as well as correct a few typos. That’s a non-commercial project, and so hard to justify from a career standpoint, but it’s enjoyable, so I may go in that direction for a while.

Also among miscellaneous tasks is the article I have under contract for Buildipedia. I’d like to get that mostly written this weekend, well ahead of the next Thursday deadline. And, abstracts for next year’s Environmental Connections conference in Vegas are due next Friday. I have three that need work.

So my writing and work lives are really both in miscellaneous states right now. At least it’s raining today. Glorious rain, that shuts down construction sites and prevents noon walks, that fills ditches and detention ponds and creates floodplains. How it always lifts my spirits. Now if it will just rain tomorrow and allow me to do something other than clean the gutter helmets.

critique group, Engineering, flood studies

A Calm Place in the Whirlwind

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Life is busy. At my engineering day job, it seems like no task gets closed, yet many more get open. I can’t quite get my current floodplain project to work. The lateral structure I entered, as a way to simulate an overflow pipe, needs to be revised, and I haven’t yet figured out how to revise it to make it correct. Or rather, I believe I know what needs to be done and how to do it, but time to do it hasn’t materialized. I figured it out at the end of the day yesterday, but today so far has been fully consumed in…

…teaching a class at my company, and preparing for it. I haven’t done a class in at least three months, due to busy-ness, and several people have been saying they needed professional development hours. So I decided to teach a class titled “Five Important Construction Items Often Overlooked During Design”. Creating the PowerPoint presentation to go with it took all morning—or all least all of the morning that I didn’t let myself get distracted with a couple of personal things. Even half my lunch hour went to that. I didn’t actually prepare what remarks I was going to say. I just talked an hour from the PowerPoint, using my many years of construction engineering experience. From the comments of attendees, I did pretty good. Add this to my list of classes for listing on a resume or on a website, if I ever get one built.

Back at my desk after teaching, I talked with my wife. It seems I am to go to the next town over after work and purchase a used jungle gym to give to our grandson Ephraim on is third birthday in two weeks. That’s if the one called ahead of her doesn’t take it. We are second in line. Hopefully we’ll get it. Sounds like a good bargain. But, it does take away time I could have used on something else.

My writing efforts right now are fully consumed with the John Wesley small group study. One chapter done, another half done, the outline finished—except today I realized I had left out a major part of his writings, the many hymns he wrote, and the many of his brother’s he published. How can I leave those out? I can’t, so I will have to insert another chapter (I think I’m up to 22 now), figuring out the best place for it to go. The pressure to have the study ready around September 1 is off, as I believe the church is going to do another all-church series. I might not need it finished until December or January. That would be nice. I might be able to work on volume 2 of Documenting America. I’m still inching toward e-self-publishing volume 1, maybe in less than a week. It looks as if I’ll have to do that without any beta reader comments, as no one has gotten back with me. I think I ran four or five of the chapters through my previous writing groups, though they were shorter at the time.

So where, you ask, is this calm place in the midst of life’s whirlwind? It was last night, from 6:00 to 7:30 PM at the Bentonville Public Library, as we held the second meeting of the BNC Writers group. The previous meeting was to organize; last night was for critique. The same four of us met. Four others who want to attend couldn’t because of illness or other unspecified reasons. About the time some would be traveling here the sky opened up with another round of rain, which probably contributed some to keeping people home.

But the four of us who met had a great time. Last meeting I had given them copies of my short story, “Mom’s Letter”, not for critique, but just as a sample of my writing. But they came back with some critique, and I will consider it. It’s already for sale on Kindle, but I can easily make changes and re-upload it if necessary. As group leader, I chose the order of presentation. The three ladies went first. Brenda shared a short story based on a dream she had. Joyce shared the first chapter of a novel she has just begun. Bessie shared a non-fiction story from her years on the mission field in Papua New Guinea. I know that was her first formal writing, and first time sharing writing in a critique group. I think it was also Joyce’s first time. She had been involved in the writing process before, helping writers through critique and editing, but I think she is just beginning her writing efforts.

We had a great time with the critiques. Our procedure is for each person to have copies enough to pass around, then for the author to read their work while the others follow along and make notes. We then discuss the work, making suggestions, asking questions. In the end we give the author the copy we have marked on. The author can respond to comments, sometimes indicating what their intent was, but always accepting critique with graciousness and thick skin.

Alas, we ran out of time, and I wasn’t able to present the Introduction and first chapter of Documenting America. Maybe next time. I did receive the crit on “Mom’s Letter”, so it’s not as if I was left out. We will meet again in two weeks, probably at the church this time, which will allow us a full two hours, not limited to the library’s allowed schedule for conference room use.

I left the group and went home, to evening storms (outside and inside), a checkbook that wouldn’t balance, a pile of mail to go through, and no time to write, very little to read. But that was okay. A momentary respite out of the whirlwind was sufficient for the day.

Engineering, flood studies

Stymied at Work on a Saturday

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This morning I had a busy time at the house, doing the usual Saturday chores/ maintenance/ operations. I had a lengthy to-do list, and I did a lot of it. Some remains for tonight, but that’s okay.

About 12:30 PM or so I headed to the office, a little later than I wanted. I had five things on my office to-do list, things that just never seem to get done during the work week. I had two letters to write documenting construction items that are either done or decided, from more than a month ago, which I reported verbally to the responsible party, but which I’d never documented in writing. That is now done, with the letters sitting on the admin assistant’s desk for Monday mailing. I created a form that will help a client receive reimbursement from the highway department for our water line relocation project. This is outside the contract scope, but the client seems to be as busy as I am, so I decided to help him out. That is done and sent via e-mail.

I have a nagging item to help a citizen fill out a form for a floodplain protest. I’m not in favor of the protest, but the City has asked me to help them fill out the form. I printed everything I need, but set it aside to do a larger item, getting back to the floodplain project in Rogers that I had to lay aside the last three weeks due to urgent items on other projects.

So I began my floodplain work, and discovered what I had a CAD tech do to help me with this is not really in the format I need. The data is probably correct, but I need her to 1) check the location of an improved city street within the cut cross-sections, and 2) adjust her ground point horizontal stations to what I already have in my computer model. Once she does that, I should be able to enter the data in the model with no problem. I have another item or two to do on this model, not related to the cut cross-sections, so maybe I’ll jump on those.

Or maybe I’ll just go home. I had a certain order in mind of what I wanted to do on the floodplain model. Entering data for those cross-sections was first. I’m not sure I want to do the other items before the cross-sections. Maybe I’m just out of pep. I’m feeling slightly under the weather today, weak and with a rumbly tummy, as Winnie would say. Maybe the best thing for me to do is head to the house, accepting what I was able to accomplish and not regretting what I couldn’t. I can take a few minutes to complete that form for Centerton, then be on my way.

I have much to write about on this blog, about three or four items. Let’s see what the next day and a half yields.

Engineering

Trying to do Things Right

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The siege has not lifted, nor has the whirlwind subsided. But today I actually see a little bit of light through it all. One major project hurdle is complete. A date is out there, probably predictable, at which my workload will return to normal. Hence, I take a late afternoon break to write a post here.

As I work on this drainage project in Rogers, Arkansas—a hurry-up project with future project consequences, I’m reminded of how important it is to do things right the first time. A former senior employee of ours, who came to us from a large developer for a transition job into retirement, had a sign in his office, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when are you going to have time to fix it.” So true.

As I rushed out the drainage report upon which the drainage additions are based, I made a mistake in my spreadsheet. The area of flow in a ditch was incorrect, resulting in the spreadsheet indicating a larger ditch was needed. Now, I proofed all my formulas; yet the drainage report went out the door with the error. The reviewer at the City caught it. The error was not large, but it was still an error. The smaller ditch will save some money while still functioning as required. Also in the drainage report were two other errors: one where a spreadsheet printout did not show all the information the City needed to make their review, and one where one of four handwritten flow rate on one of eight storm sewer profiles was not correct. These were presentation problems, not calculation errors, but they also made a less than optimum presentation to the City. Correcting these three items took time, time that kept me working an extra hour or two.

So, when I came to the point of preparing the project specifications, I had some decisions to make. The project includes a precast reinforced concrete box culvert. I dumped our guide construction specification section for these into the project file (along with 25 other guide specification sections). Eventually I opened the document and looked at it to see 1) was it suitable for our project, and 2) was it a good specification. The answer was no to both questions. It didn’t contain the right box culvert standard for the project, and the way the spec was written did not provide the kind of provisions we want to give to a contractor to get something built with the right materials in the right way.

Decision time. Simply changing “AASHTO M 273” to “AASHTO M 259” would give us the right product for the project. But that didn’t answer the six or so questions that the purchaser of these critters is supposed to answer. Is fiber reinforcing allowed? Are both deformed and smooth reinforcing bars allowed? Which design table within the manufacturing standard is to be used? What type of gaskets shall be used? And so on. Also, since that is a manufacturing standard but I’m writing a construction specification, what about the description of how installation of the box culvert segments is to take place? I decided that I did not want a half-baked (kind word substitution here) spec, so I took the hour or so to write a good spec, complete with research on the options.

But then, what do I do about the guide specification, still sitting there on the corporate intranet, waiting for the next person to download and use it, possibly a person who doesn’t know as much about it as I do and will use it without thinking or editing? To turn my project specification into a proper guide specification would take at least another hour, maybe two. Already working 7 AM to 7 PM, how could I justify the time it would take? I would do what I always do in these circumstances: Add the box culvert spec to the list of specs that need improvement, mark it urgent or non-urgent, and go back to my project work.

But I realized I never get to those guide spec to do lists. In fact I couldn’t even find in my office the last one I made out. So I decided to just do it. I worked an extra two hours, did a bit more research, wrote the spec to include the various options to be decided upon, wrote a great installation section, and added many “Note to Specifier” entries, providing those less experienced than me with some idea of what the decisions to be made are and how to make them. That was two days ago (I think; the days are running together). I have the revised guide spec printed out, on my desk, slightly buried under the urgent items of the last two days but with a corner still visible.

I think I will take that printout home tonight and do my proof-reading there, in my favorite reading chair, a cup of coffee at hand and slippers on my feet. Then tomorrow I’ll type any required edits and upload it to our guide spec database. Who knows when it will be used next or who will use it. It might be me, a year from now. It might be one of our engineers or designers tomorrow afternoon. But it will be available, and it will be done right. None of which furthers my writing career, other than the little bit of piece of mind it gives me, which should help everything in my life.

ETA: Something has gone haywire with my blogspot settings; the paragraphs didn’t display. I had the same problem with the bullets on the last post.

C.S. Lewis, Engineering

Exhausted after a long week; the end is not yet

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I was planning on writing a serious post tonight, but I haven’t the gray cells left to do so. I put in about 75 hours this week at the office. My timesheet says 72.5, but I didn’t count every hour. And the end is not yet. I spent a good chunk of my time there today finding out that what I did yesterday was only partly correct, and finding the way to make it fully correct. And writing the engineering report to demonstrate that it was correct. This is fixing a problem that occurred in one of our projects in 2002. This week I spent 20 hours on that, and the end is not yet. That’s 20 hours I didn’t get to spend finishing my Bentonville floodplain project or making a sizable dent in the work to do on my first of two Rogers floodplain projects.

I got home tonight about 9 PM, after eating supper with my mother-in-law. I read, or rather re-read, the C.S. Lewis essay “Christianity and Literature”. I posted before on a quote from this essay. I suppose it’s never a good thing to try to read C.S. Lewis when you’re brain dead. I finished the seven page essay (smallish font), but got little out of it. I shall have to read it again. Maybe several times for what he’s trying to say to sink in and properly edify.

I’m really tired. Years ago I posted about Emerson’s statement “There is time enough for all that I must do.” I’m starting to think Emerson was wrong. Until I can get over this hump at work, I know he’s wrong. Today I barely made any progress getting over the hump. And I drove home thinking of all those “piles of work not done,” and I remembered two or three e-mails I planned on sending today, but didn’t for concentrating on that 2002 project. I guess I’ll have to get started a little early on Monday, for the contractor needs one of those e-mails first thing Monday morning.

So what shall I quote to end this post? “The end is not yet,” or “There is time enough for all that I must do”? I suppose both could be true. Oh, wait, I’m supposed to teach adult Life Group tomorrow and I haven’t begun to prepare. Oh, and the announcement is going to be in the church bulliten tomorrow, about people contacting me if they are interested in a church writing group. Sigh.