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by Michael Weeks, P.E.
There are few things more frustrating for a consulting engineer than
to have an owner spend money needlessly. Unfortunately, we do a miserable
job educating clients about what we can do to help save them money and
time in the long run. This month, we’re going to try to change
that by using another real-world project to illustrate how being penny
wise can lead to a pound of foolishness.
Often, we go through years of planning, design, and permitting, and then — in
the owner’s rush to get the project under way — making certain
that the product matches the plan is forgotten. The excitement of your
project coming to life and the "keep things moving during construction
mentality" causes many owners to make or accept major changes to
the original design without understanding what the effects could be.
An unsupervised contractor (or even a supervised one!) may not be following
the approved plans and details that you have hired him to build. Unless
you can read construction drawings, how will you know that you’re
getting what you are paying for?
A Real-World Project
Some time ago, we completed the design and permitting of a roadway construction
project. It involved setting the roadway geometry, pavement components,
grading, sedimentation and erosion control, and storm-water management.
Our contract with the owner ended with the township’s approval,
since he didn’t want to pay us to help him choose a contractor
or to check the work as it progressed. "After all," he reasoned, "the
township is requiring that the contractor provide as-built drawings,
so they’ll have to do it right." When we delivered all of
the permits and plans required to bid and build the project, he paid
his bill and left — and we heard nothing from him or about the
project for almost a year. In his opinion, how hard could it be to build
a 24-foot wide strip of pavement with 4-foot shoulders on either side?
As construction moved along, the contractor made some "minor changes." When
the owner was nearing the end of the project, he asked us to visit the
site and check the contractor’s "as-built" drawings.
As it turned out, the changes hadn’t been minor at all, and apparently
construction was much more complicated than he had thought.
On my first site visit, I saw immediately that the road had been constructed
without shoulders. Just beyond the edge of the pavement, the drainage
ditch dropped off several feet. Without shoulders, there would be no
place to stack plowed snow or to have a car parked with traffic getting
by. I looked at the plans. I looked at the road. Back to the plans and
then back to the road. Clearly, this wasn’t right — and this
was just the first of a number of issues which were plainly incorrect.
As I drove through the "completed" project, it became clear
that the high spots in the road were too high and the low spots were
too low. Normally, roads are built using special survey stakes set at
25-foot intervals along the project that show the contractor how high
the dirt and stone and asphalt should be. This ensures that the roads
are not too steep, there are no blind spots for drivers, and that everything
drains properly. In our case, it turns out that our owner had selected
a contractor who believed that he was good enough to do without those
guides and so had built the project "by eye." And while he
hadn’t done a very good job building by eye, it was easy to see
how wrong it was. Road slopes were eroding, sending runoff and earth
onto adjacent property. One culvert was set so low that the road would
flood. The incorrect vertical grade was caused by the contractor trying
to avoid moving dirt and by grading without stakes, which completely
changed the road profile from the design. While it made it much easier
to construct, we ended up with an unsafe and unstable final product,
which was encroaching on the neighbor’s property!
I wondered why the owner had me do a design at all.
I returned to the office and prepared a letter for the owner listing
all of the deficiencies that I could see. Although the contractor at
this point seemed very agreeable to resolving these issues and correcting
the road, it took four more tries, four more reviews and deficiency letters,
and two months to finally correct the problems.
Here’s a hypothetical question: Do you think that a site excavation
contractor, who has been in business for twenty years or more can read
a tape measure? Would you trust him to build according to the plan that
you paid for? While this may over simplify the issue, our contractor
was told, and was shown four times, that the roadway width was not in
accordance with the plan. Each time he acknowledged this and agreed to
make it right. But talk about déjà vu, every time I went
to the site it still wasn’t correct.
Many of these deficiencies may have very well been our (dumb, like a
fox) contractor trying to cut corners that would have otherwise saved
him a significant sum of money. However he had agreed to a contracted
price based on the plans, and certainly he was not offering the owner
a credit for these changes. In fact, the lawsuits that would have come
from the adjoining property owner would probably have cost far more than
the contractor was paid for the whole job.
In the end, our owner received a project which generally conformed to
the plans as had been agreed. Although our contractor appeared incompetent
at times, we were fortunate that he stayed on site to rectify the situation.
(Often times, contractors will get angry and abandon the site, holding
the owner hostage.) This could be attributed to two things — either
morally and ethically the contractor felt obligated to provide the owner
the contracted product, or the owner was smart and had yet to pay for
the completed work. I’ll bet you know what I think.
What Did We Learn?
Although my example is specific to a new road project, it can be easily
translated to any project, small or large, that you have going on at
camp. Let’s review some of the things that our owner did both right
and wrong that could have drastically changed the outcome.
- What if our owner had been willing to authorize the additional
expense of periodic construction observation? A single site review, weekly,
comprising of a couple of hours by his design professional could have
identified these problems before work had to be undone and redone, saving
our owner the delays at the end of the job, as well as reducing the waste
of the contractor’s time and materials.
- What if our owner hadn’t asked the design professional to
complete a final review of the finished product? Without this review,
he would not have known that the road slopes were extending onto the
neighboring property (before the neighbor’s lawyer filed suit)
or that the stream would flood the road (before it washed out).
- What if our owner had paid the contractor the majority of the
contract amount, because . . . "Well . . . It looks like it’s
done?" The owner probably would have never seen the contractor
again, and the owner would have been left with an incomplete project
and out a bunch of money.
- What if our owner had done some additional research on the contractor
he hired? This was not just a freak occurrence by one particular contractor
or a pattern? If the owner had not worked with this contractor before,
he should have insisted on the contractor securing bonds to be certain
that the project would be completed on time and in accordance with the
plans. (For refresher information on what bonds do or how they work,
read the Building Principles column, "Construction Contracting," in
the May/June 2002 Camping Magazine.)
How Does This Apply
to Camp?
Maybe you’re thinking, "So what? What does all of this have
to do with me and my camp?" Let’s put it all into a camp
context. What if this was your project that you brought back to us for
review on June 1, just before camp opens? Could you afford to stop all
traffic at the entrance to camp until August 1 because the road isn’t
built according to the plan?
There are several morals of this story that you can take to the bank
for camp:
- By engaging an engineer to prepare a design, you are purchasing
knowledge and skill of how all the project pieces work together.
- By keeping your engineer on the job to monitor construction on
your behalf, you can rest easier knowing that your contractor is building
what you’re paying to have built.
- With regular checks during construction, you will have the benefit
of being better able to gage how far the contractor has progressed,
how much he should be paid along the way, and whether the project is on schedule.
With all of the other responsibilities you manage preparing for,
during, and after camp, why not let the folks who prepared the design
help ensure that you get the project that goes with the design you
paid for?
Originally published in the 2005 January/February
issue of Camping Magazine.
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