Engineering Chaos

There is a trend I have noticed in the past year or two with certain employees in the county offices. For inexplicable reasons, they will suddenly, and often without consulting their supervisor or someone with engineering experience, make a personal review decision that, if obeyed, would put us in a physically, or legally perilous situation. Most often these decisions are made by county employees with minimal engineering experience (in many cases, no engineering experience) as a way to shoot down our carefully planned designs. A “power trip” in essence, a big “f*** you!” from a low-ranking county employee to a big engineering firm. The bad part about this is that they often require no justification whatsoever for their decision, and their supervisors often back them up 100%. One such incident has occurred frequently with a particular District Engineer in our county. He has frequently rejected plans with no justification or comments, and this finally reached a boiling point yesterday.

A little backstory: During a major shake-up last year, a number of engineers were fired at the county due to political wranglings, and several departments were merged into one, known as the “Department of Public Works”. This meant that many employees who used to be in different, rival departments were now working with and for each other, and it also means that many employees just look for opportunities to overrule or contradict the decisions made by other departments whenever they can … at our expense, and at the client’s expense. One particular District Engineer (who is not even an engineer, but rather an architect, according to a friend who used to work at DPW), head of the largest AND busiest district in the county, is especially infamous for this. He was employed by the county for only a brief time before taking the promotion, and immediately found himself swamped and unable to adequately address engineering plans that were out of his realm of knowledge. To fight back, he would simply go on “power trips”, reject plans with no justification, block his workplace email account, refuse to answer his phone, and keep his voicemail inbox full so that no messages could be left.

This employee, named George H., rejected a set of pond as-built plans recently because of a paragraph that appears on our certification. This paragraph is taken word-for-word from the Soil Conservation District – Pond Safety Reference Manual, and is required on all as-built plans.

He recently rejected our plans with the certification written exactly as it appears above, with the following comments (visible at the bottom of the Transmittal):

I followed up his comments with an email, stating that the certification wording was taken directly from the SCD manual (above), and was necessary to protect ourselves from placing additional, unnecessary liability for the pond construction on the engineer signing the plans:

I immediately received a phone call from George H., and during the conversation, the only reasoning he could justify his request to remove the paragraph was that he “didn’t like it.” However, he promised to call SCD and work out an agreement. Later in the day, I received a phone call from an employee at SCD, and she stated that while she fully disagrees with his request to remove the certification, her agency does not have the authority to overrule any decision made by George H. or the Department of Public Works. A summary of our conversations can be seen in this phone log:

Essentially, the entire situation boils down to this particular employee of DPW, making an engineering decision despite not having any engineering experience, issuing a demand with basis other than the fact he “doesn’t like it,” that nobody other than the director of DPW can change. Amidst all this, our client is furious with us because he is unable to receive any building permits until this plan is approved, and George H. continues to tell him that it is our fault the plans are not complete. [In an email today, George H. writes to our client: "The engineer will not comply with my review comments."] This paragraph following the certification is essential, because the certification states that the engineer is placing his word and his license on the line that the pond constructed “meets or exceeds” both the design requirements, AND what was originally approved by DPW. In the event of a pond collapse, the engineer is fully liable for all costs and damages associated with it. The paragraph clarifying the definition of “certify” places liability on the developer and contractor who constructed the pond as well as the engineer.

This is shaping up to be a very nasty dispute between the county, our engineers, our lawyers, and our client … all due to one single employee who decided to take a “power trip.”

As you can see from my blog on January 15, 2007 about the “sinking earthmover”, I decided to upload a copy of my phone log with Tom Turpin on January 12, 2007 (the date of Jan. 13 on the document is a typo … the 13th was a Saturday) to prove that I warned the client about performing earthwork in that area before constructing proper drainage devices.

Since I updated this thing, but my frustrations are growing beyond what I can contain within me. So, I’ll resume my blogging with a bit of a new format. Much like The Smoking Gun, I’ll begin to archive paperwork, conversations, emails and documents that cross my desk that people may find interesting. Unedited, as always, and hopefully should be able to provide some insight (and in case of the worst, evidence) into the things that frustrate me here.

My frequent complaints about one specific job may lead some of you to believe that I spend all of my time on just that one project. Far from it, actually. While Greenbelt Station may occupy the majority of my time (and headaches), I truly enjoy branching out to tackle jobs that are unusual and unique at times. One such job involves another large project I have been heavily involved in for some time: Waterford. Situated in Mitchelville, MD, the site is 250 acres with 107 homes proposed, expected to start at $1,200,000 each … and this is an inexpensive neighborhood for the area! Well, part of the requirements of this job is to install a “floodplain drain” (a 36′ wide, rectangular culvert made of reinforced concrete) beneath Woodmore Road, the 2-lane road that the Waterford subdivision faces. Right now, the flooplain overtops the road by a few feet, due to a small culvert that the stream is forced to squeeze through. This “floodplain drain” will lower the floodplain safely below the road where the traffic circle will be constructed. In order to build this “floodplain drain”, we must close the roadway while it is excavated. Unfortunately, this stream crossing is in a very bad location, with no possible detour near the work zone. Therefore, before the client can get their permits for this construction, we have to prepare a plan showing the entire detour route around the project … in this case, a half-circle of 5.0 miles to the south, and 8.6 miles to the north. In addition we have to show where each of the detour signs will be placed along the route, at each intersection and appropriate distances from intersections. This was my task the other day, and in about 10 hours’ work I produced this unique plan:

My roommate Larry C., who happens to be one of the party chiefs for our office, and the head surveyor for the Greenbelt Station project, came into the office today with a cell phone picture, and one helluva story.? I’m sharing it with you partly because it’s very interesting, and partly to keep track of a timeline of events in the event that any litigation might occur against our company (of which I’m fully confident that we are entirely not at fault).

Flash back to last Friday.? My favorite construction superintendant Tom T. called in to request stakeout of final grades on a portion of the Greenbelt Station project.? While the plan that shows the final grades for the entire site has not yet been approved by the county, staking out (setting guard stakes and points for eventual construction) something that is unapproved is not illegal.? Constructing something without a permit is illegal, however.? Therefore, when we stake something out that the client does not yet have a permit for, we are required to notify them that they do not yet have a permit, because there are instances where a stakeout it either helpful or necessary.? In this case, it was neither.? The area in which Tom T. requested that we stakeout the grades has a sediment basin proposed nearby, and a long, gently sloping ditch to capture nearly all the water running off the site, and direct it into the basin.? His requested final grades would have cut off the ditch and all the drainage to it, and possibly filled in the sediment basin.? I decided to take action and call him personally on Friday, at about 3:30, and warn him that his request was not only unnecessary, but would cause significant problems if he proceeded.? His response: “Just give it to us.? We’ll worry about it.”? So we did.

Today, Larry C. comes up to me with a picture on his cell phone.? It looks like a large metal table floating in a lake.? That large metal table is actually the top roof of an earthmover that sank in abut 5-6′ of water, and who knows how many feet of mud.? Apparently the earthmover drove into a spot where the ditch (that was never built) should have drained the water and mud into the basin.? Instead, they tried to grade around there based on the final grades, and sunk the earthmover.? The operator even had to swim out of his cab as it was sinking, and sit on top until he could be rescued by a cherrypicker.

As I’ve told everyone around the office numerous times, it’s obvious that Tom T. has no concept of, or respect for the construction “process,” and fails to understand even the most basic reasons of why the site is being designed the way it is.? Hopefully this will be the wakeup call the developer needs to replace him with a competent superintendent.

Those are the words from my boss Alex V. in regards to the pond issue I brought up yesterday. the issue I raised to him apparently was lost in his translation to the builders, who took it as a question of whether or not the pond “could” be filled in and have a parking garage built on top of it (correction from yesterday: the 17-story office building is going right next to it). They assured my boss that, yes, they “could” build overtop the existing pond, regardless of whether they “should” or not.

It looks as if it’s up to me to make sure this situation proceeds smoothly. If the preliminary site plans get approved without making any provisions for stormwater treatment, or replacing that pond IF we decide that removing it is our only option, then that will create a massive, multimillion dollar nightmare for us.

Sheesh, all my years of college education, and that’s the best title I could come up with? *rollseyes*

Anyway, a convesation earlier today reminds me of just how important foresight is in all fields of engineering and business, and how a failure to anticipate the consequences that a descision you make now will have on other departments in the future, can wreck havoc on the entire design process.

In our county, whenever new construction is proposed, the developer is required to “treat” the proposed site for “water quality.” In other words, developments that add roads, buildings, driveways, etc… also add pollution to the runoff. Instead of allowing that runoff to go directly into the adjacent streams or rivers, it must first be forced to settle somewhere the pollutants, trash, and silt can be isolated before ultimately going into a stream. This is computed as a volume of permanent, standing water, and is calculated by a formula incorporating the total property area (including areas that are undisturbed), and the total “impervious area” (any surface where water cannot be absorbed, including buildings, roads, sidewalks, and driveways) as a result of the new development. The easiest way to do this is to provide a pond, in which water will sit permanently at a specific volume, and satisfy this design requirement.

Long ago, while the Gaithersburg’s office project manager for the Greenbelt Station site was in my office, I happened to spot a preliminary layout of the proposed buildings. In particular, I saw that the layout had a 17-story office building directly overtop a large, existing pond. I questioned the project manager about this, let him know I was concerned about removing such a large pond, and he reassured me that it was only a suggestion by the developer and nothing more. Flash forward to today, and I hear that the layout is now nearing completion, and *surprise!* it still shows a 17-story office building overtop the large pond. Worst of all, nearly every square foot of potential buildable area now has either a road or a building proposed on it. In other words, no room for any new ponds or underground water treatment techniques. I warned the project manager about this, and this time he became concerned. I did a little research, and discovered that the pond he was proposing to fill in was not only treating the parking lot that exists on our site now, but also a large neighborhood on the other side of the rail road tracks that run noth-to-south along the western edge of our property. Removing that pond would remove the water quality treatment for an entire neighborhood! Armed with this new information, I promptly notified both the project manager in the Gaithersburg office (Kevin M.), and the project manager here (Alex V.), that disturbing the pond would likely create a situation that would be impossible to resolve. Fortunately, Alex V. was scheduled to attend a meeting with the developer this afternoon, so hopefully he heeds my warning.

Had I not noticed this problem beforehand, the planning department would have likely proceeded to design the site directly over the pond, without any foresight to the consequences that this would cause. Hopefully this will avert a disaster, and although the developer might be extremely upset about losing buildable space, the ultimate layout of the site could never be built without adequately providing stormwater treatment. Making this change now will save a lot of corrections in the long run.

Anyone who works in a client-oriented business has “the list.” “The list” is a group of clients whom, whenever you have to talk to them, meet with them, or basically acknowledge their existence, your eyes roll back and you let out a loud *groan* at the mere thought. The overbearing, demanding, prying, backstabbing, second-guessing, flip-flopping, or outright lying client. Unfortuantely, in the development business, our clients often have a lot of money. Some are worth well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. To me, all that means is that they’ve likely developed an ego far bigger than their brain can contain, and that excess usually comes streaming out in the form of ridiculous demands.

I’ve already chronicled the tale of the two aggrivating clients on my Greenbelt Station project, Sandi G. and Tom T. , but now let me entertain you with a few anecdotes from their boss, who is not only 1000x worse, but a convicted felon to boot. Once upon a time, a developer named Daniel C. found himself in a bit of a pickle. He had several contracts with the state of Maryland that he failed to uphold. He embezzled $29 million in state funds and hid them in overseas bank accounts. He was found guilty and sentenced to 3 years in prison. With his legal team, I doubt he actually spent much time behind white-collar bars, but nontheless, he is a convicted felon. He is also the developer behind my Greenbelt Station project, and a slew of other projects in our office including the Bevard developments (a masive residential development in southern Prince George’s County) and the Presidential Commercial Park (which will likely be my next big project to be in charge of). He frequently does not pay his invoices that we send him, and we have issued “stop work orders” within the company on numerous occasions. Yet, we continue to not only work for him, but bend over backwards to his demands largely because of one “yes man” project manager within our office (Alex V.) and our Vice President (Lou R.) who thinks the world of him.

One ongoing saga with Daniel C. involves the preparation of “record plats” for the Bevard project. With a site as large as the Bevards (in excess of 1,000 acres for all phases), nearly 100 individual record plats will have to be created to show all the subdivided property in sufficient detail. That takes time and significant suveying knowledge to complete. Unfortunately, we only have one employee in our office (a longtime friend of mine Shawn J.) capable of doing that work, and he is frequently distracted by other clients and coworkers. His frustration with Daniel C.’s demands reached a head recently when Daniel C. personally called him and demanded that he finish the work that day. Shawn J. essentially told him that it was impossible, and when Daniel C. became enraged at the news, he told him to “f*** off!” Nonetheless, this created a firestorm of angry calls from Daniel C.’s office, threatening to sue Shawn J. and everyone at the company for failing to meet an impossible agreement that Alex V. had verbally promised him: to have the record plats completed and approved by a certain date which is not even feasible. However, to make matters even more ridiculous, the record plats for this project cannot even be submitted for review until the Site Plan is approved by the state Park and Planning Commission. Guess who is responsible for delaying the Site Plan approval? That’s right, Daniel C. himself. He has refused to follow some of the state’s requests, and has instead spent time in negotiations with the very state that sent him to jail just a few years ago.

It’s a mad, mad merry-go-round we’re on, and I want to get off!

That is, if you happen to read this within the next 12 months.? Had a great weekend with my girlfriend, and got to see Notes on a Scandal in theaters (Judi Dench is uber-creepy as the obsessive spinster).? If not for the touchy subject matter, I think this flick could do very well with a wide release.? Also, I can’t wait to see Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth, the former of which I know is getting a release in one of my local theaters.? The latter, I can only hope so.

I had a conversation last Thursday at lunch with a friend of mine, who happens to be a county inspector for the Department of Public Works & Transportaiton (DPW&T), the agency that reviews engineering plans and issues building permits, and it made me realize just how fickle the review and permit process really is.? A county engineer can literally cost a developer millions of dollars by requiring design changes on a whim, and he can’t be held accountable for his requirements.? Theoretically he can, but according to my friend, nearly everyone in the county engineering office is so clueless and inept, that they are afraid that if they take the position to correct one of their own employees, it might reveal just how unknowledgeable the entire office is.

Reminds me of a story my boss Eric B. told me once.? One of our engineers was corrected on his design by a reviewer, who told him to do the opposite.? We firmly believed that our design was correct, and the reviewer was wrong.? Eventually, two of our senior engineers, Eric B. and Gurmeet S. had a meeting with the county’s district engineer, Tajendra S.? The district engineer eventually conceded that our design was correct … but told us to change it anyway, otherwise he wouldn’t issue the permit.? When our engineers asked him “why?”, he responded “I’m not comofrtable with it.”? “But, it is designed correctly, right?”? “I’m not comfortable with it, and until I decide to approve the plans, you’re not getting your permit.”? Our engineers turned to his superviser, who then reiterated that the decision was Tajendra S.’s, and not his.? So, we had to change the plans to create an additional, unnecessary, and entirely incorrect design for out client, and frankly, it’s nonsense like this that furiates me not only as an engineer, but as a man with common sense.

“Interesting project. So if these units aren’t on “undisturbed soil” everything must be zero lot line slab on grade?” – Hot Rod Otis

Interesting question, but the project is actually a lot more complicated than that. The 150+ acre site is an old gravel pit (+100 years old) and asphalt plant on the shore of a fairly large creek (Indian Creek) that runs north-to-south through the center of the property in the north, and through the eastern half of the property at the southern end . The gravel mining portion of the site has been inactive for at least a decade or two, but the asphalt plant is still active today (although set to be shut down in the next few months). For many years, there were large, shallow ponds covering the site to wash the gravel and remove all the fine dust and silt before it was used in the plant, and the buildup of these waste materials caused the site to develop the consistency and stability of watery peanut butter. Some areas were so unstable, they couldn’t even support the weight of a person walking across the muck.

So, under the direction of a geotechnical engineer, we devised a plan to fill these areas to a minimum depth of 6 1/2′ from the muck to the slab of any house with densely compacted soil, which should support the weight of the proposed buildings adequately. However, there was a catch to this plan: The areas with the townhomes and apartments would eventually exert more pressure on the soil, and the muck underneath, than the areas without them (streets, open areas, etc…), causing them to eventually settle and compact more than the surrounding areas. So, that means we also had to overconsolidate those areas where the buildings were proposed with an additional 4′ of fill, which would be removed immediately prior to the construction of the townhomes.

Now, if that were all, this project would still be fairly complicated. But, there’s more! A lot more.

The property itself is within the jurisdiction of the city of Greenbelt, Maryland. Greenbelt has it’s own planning and development committee that makes decisions regarding site layout, street design, building architecture, etc. They also have the final say in issuing permits, so if we don’t follow their instructions to the letter of the law, they won’t allow us to construct the site. The problem is that they don’t communicate with any other jurisdictions, agencies, or utility companies, so the custom site layout that they mandated for this project has made it nearly impossible to construct water, sewer, storm drain, electric, telephone, and other utilities based on the design criteria of those individual utilities. The water & sewer, in particular, is approved and permitted by WSSC (Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission), whom has extremely strict guidelines regarding the proximity of their utility lines with other utilities, the easements that they require, and the points at which the responsibility of the construction of the water & sewer changes hands from WSSC to the plumber for the individual townhouse units. For a project with public roads and standard construction, we rarely run into problems with these guidelines. For this project, which is full of narrow private streets and even more narrow alleys (often with storm drain running underneath them), there is literally no room to construct these utilities the way they are normally constructed.

To complicate things even further, the road directly adjacent to the property (Branchville Road) to the south is outside of the Greenbelt city limits, which means we also need a permit from the county to do work there. However, we aren’t simply constructing an intersection from Branchville Road to reach the site … we are building a bridge OVER Branchville Road! That’s because Greenbelt Road, a 6-lane, state-maintained road runs parallel to Branchville Road, with several businesses in the 100′ space between. It’s also about 20′ higher in elevation, because the road was constructed in the 1940′s to elevate over a set of railroad tracks (today used by AMTRAK and our local METRO) that runs parallel to the site along the full lengh of the property’s western edge. So, in order to provide a proper intersection for the thousands of new cars that will be flocking to these future townhomes (and eventually, retail stores and several 17+ story offices and apartments in the site’s second phase to the north, over an area currently being used as a parking lot), we are building an intersection along Greeneblt Road, and constructing a bridge over Branchville Road to reach the site, demolishing several old warehouses and offices in between. All this requires permits from the State Highway Administration, Prince George’s County, and Greenbelt, just to get a road into the property.

To make things even more interesting, when Greenbelt Road was constructed in the 1940′s, the state’s knowledge of storm hydrology was very limited compared to today. So, when they constructed a crossing over Indian Creek, they made the boxes in the culvert very small. Too small. As a result, the floodplain that results from this tailwater at the bridge engulfs much of the lower-half of the site, which required us to raise many of the buildings higher than the minimum elevation the muck. On Branchville Road, the depth of the floodplain is as high as 7′ above the roadway!

These are the site’s biggest complications, and there are incalculable smaller ones that we’ve encountered and found solutions to (including methane gas trapped in the soil, floodplain hydraulics, wetland mitigation, utility pole relocation, sewer line relocation, and buried concrete spoil piles) that all add up to make this project the most complicated development project our office has ever tackled.

[Edit]? To see the site, check out this link, and be sure to also check out the “Bird’s Eye View” feature:

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=39.005445~-76.912515&style=r&lvl=15&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=6491592