My first f' up came today at 9am. I released a drawing for a rather large cabinet that had the wrong finishing material labeled.
The cabinet was built wrong in the first place [contractor's fault] with the correct material [Lacquer] - when we redrew the cabinet CORRECTLY, I accidently labeled it as veneer.
Now I know this may not sound like a huge f' up - it's not like all the steel for a building was cut 3' too short or anything, but this is a good $4 grand worth of cabinetry that my boss has to pay for...
Ok all egos aside who else has screwed up and how did you deal with it?
I ordered the tile for a backsplash for a freelance client. Tile installer got halfway trhough and realized there wasn't enough to finish, as the tile was installed on a 45d. angle we needed more overage than I had allowed (I think 10%).
So I ordered more tile - which the client paid for - and then credited the client the cost of the contractor having to come back a second day to finish the work. Thankfully he stopped soon enough that mixing in two separate batches of tile was able to done invisibly.
Lesson: Always let the contrator be the one to tell you how much material is needed.
large curtain wall system (15levels) of many different types of glasses (different colors, tints, sandblasted, tempered, spandrel), in a random order (no particular module); i was coorndinating all the glass-type legend information and matching the elevation tags; well, the drawings somehow ended up calling for the first 2 sheets of glass (up to about 8'0") above the floor level, adjacent to the entry (which were supposed to be clear) for green spandrel glass...
when the problem surfaced at the site (when the spandrel glass was installed), and the Principal and Project architect came to speak with me, I threw a fit about people changing my drawings, and pointed out 5 other "mistakes" within the random pattern someone else had made on my drawing;
since i am known for not making many mistakes, and being a perfectionist, they believed me and sent a note to the project team saying that all changes on the elevations needed to come through me first;
but i still remember putting the clear glass tags...i swear! so someone else must've done it!
my first real job was in an A/E firm. one day one of the engineers asked me to help him select a color for a large municipal water tank out in some rural native landscape. he showed me some pictures of the site; the general mix of plants & soil was very similar to what was outside of the our office. so i grabbed a paint fan deck, looked out the window, and picked a color to match the surroundings.
jump ahead a month and he comes by one day with some photos of the painted tank saying something like, "wow that color you picked out sure is bright, the tank really stands out in the landscape!". i looked at the pictures and did not recognize the color as the one i had selected. then it dawned on me that our building was clad in heavily tinited blue-green glass so whatever color i picked to blend into the landscape was HEAVILY color-shifted because of the filter i was looking through. i never fessed-up and played it off that it was the right color - the pictures just captured the tank in a strange light....
heh heh
HAHA - well I can't point the finger on anyone but myself. Although I did release like 25 SK's in one day. The number of Change Orders on this job keep piling up - I guess it's inevitable that there will be some mistakes.
how does the cabs look like?
done is beautiful ya know..sometimes mistakes are mo better than the original idea..yesterday i spotted three mistakes on a new house i am working on. two okay, one i am trying to get used to.
Jan 25, 06 11:35 am ·
·
4. Rosa
4. gardens of satire
4. saintly email bombs
4. mnemonics
4. all the errors that remain herein
--dedication of A Quondam Banquet of Virtual Sachlichkeit: Part II
[Thinking that others will actually get it might even be a perpetual mistake.]
The cabinets look beautiful - but all the other cabinetry on the floor is Lacquer. No post-production rational can be given to justify this change... I guess this means we get a new cabinet in the office.
I had a large timber frame home stained a particular color and then through a number of changes that the home owner and builder worked throughthe timber frame got moved to the inside of the wall ( kind of like the old style timber frame barns) and didn't review that stain olor on the inside was to be a light natural tone and the outside was a dark coffee color. The client had signed off on th ecolor and I had all the back up to prove it and the client didn't do a test patch for the client's sign off, which we had suggested. needless to say the color was all wroing the clients wife had a hairy scary attack. that was a $60,000.00 fuck up. But before I could explain that there were products that could remove the stain and then restain the timber they had scrapped the timber for pennies on the dollar, and paid for a new timber package. Terrible fuck-up that didn't need to happen and all of it could have been resolved with the architects involvement ( but they felt that they didn't need our services on site, oh and the client and contractor went to court as the contractor also tried to hose the client for about $300,000.00 things like the neighbors siding was paid for by my client. ( worst story I have ever heard regarding shady contractors.)
i bet you if the end users lived with it for a mounth, nobody would ever say wtf.
its just bugs the hell out of somebody bc everybody thinks perfection is good design..match this match that. where is vado with a gas can?
story and quote:
i asked my friend brian murphy to come with me to check out a small building i built in topanga. so, as we were looking at the structures, he noticed a miandering line on stucco where it should be straight and said "no charge?", in fact the mistake was beautiful and showed like a hand made indeginous mud covering on otherwise perfect 10x10x10 cube form. it looked great in that natural environment. when stuff like that happens i usually quote brian whose buildings are sure to put a good smile on your face.
most of the framing was done but a framed opening for the tub access was left out in the initial drawings...so we update our drawings and issue new sheets to the framers and the plumbing subcontractor...shit...i forgot to put the tub access in the plumber's drawings and they ended up running a gang of their pipes (gas & water) inside the wall where the tub access was suppose to be...(the framers were going to frame the hole at a later date)...luckily, we were able to move the cutout to the next bay of studs and still have room to access the whirlpool tub's motor...
otherwise, the plumbers had to re-route their pipes...
i wrote a wrong scale on some drawings so the estimation was 45% less than expected. Luckily they were'nt meant for construction.
Imagine a building nearly half its size!
The structure seemed to be pretty well executed considering the limitations of the technique.
It was eye-catching at first glance, yet boring within a few moments of being there.
As a first iteration for a big idea, i think it served the purpose.
P.S: Of course the may(a)rmature had no "systematicity" ...ahem.....that was the point!
some people can't stand him. we laugh a lot about architecture and design culture when we talk, once in a while.
he is a friend and had built a lot of buildings. he's got his fan club in hollywood lots and recording studios and shit.
and i really don't want to hear that he is a monster etc.
and yes there is this dolphin that is really his reencarnated dad. and his mom is lemon tree. and, one day him and i spend three hours rescueing a hatcling from a roof climbing three stories.
his work sometimes is plain silly, but people pay big bucks to him to do it that way.
I first heard of BAM through a story about a secret to financial success in architecture. I was told that Murphy started by manipulating readily available house designs that were already stamped to avoid the long process of getting a house design approved.
no fuckin' way..
not that kind. but such as,let say, finding a loophole in the local code and objectify it. in an occasion, santa monica had to revise its zoning code after a bam project resulting in a 8' wide 200' long library / corridor. some exciting residential projects for creative, young, wealthy and wacky clients.
no job to small.
i worked together with brian 3-4 years when there were only 4 of us in the beach adjacent but really small office. it was top heavy with old cats surfacing after the economic crises of 90's, when i too, took a sebatical from architecture/design for few years. it was a nice come back for all of us.
the day i showed in my muddy wall'y @ bam, i was coincidentally published in new york times sunday mag. for a pair of cabins that i built myself in the woods and picked by julie iovany and a project by bam was supposed to be in that issue but eliminated at the last minute. we laughed about it. brian is fuckin' published to vazoo. but that was a nice spring home design issue themed "essences of ease" with some writers and poets also included with literary views on the subject.
*by the way i got no new project out of it except a long lost friend called from ann arbor to congratulate me.
any way this was my project. where he found a stucco mistake and admired it, thus starting this little side bar about BAM
there is a link when you click on the name with some projects of mine.
thanks for the complements guys. i use 'my photo' album as my portfolio (i know it ain't minimalist web site but a plain amateurish solution), but, since i can add,subtract pictures with my own means, i am okay. my retired profs, hospital doctors, writers, high school teachers, and other middle class clients do like it and hire me. it is a huge improvement for me carrying 4x6 snapshots in a three ring plastic binder with some material stuffed inside pockets, i know you baads know what i mean..
i didn't know the mistakes thread would turn on me. ;). but what the hack i am a one man office and mainly do low budget projects with tons of tolerances and 4 page cd's. but i am very consistent with space,light and mistakes..
* screwed up a 1,200-door hardware schedule by mistaking RH for RHR and LH for LHR
* screwed up selfsame project's door schedule by not knowing the conversion between feet and mm -- lots of 3'-2" wide NOMINAL doors inside
* for both offenses withstood 2-hr lecture from supervisor (in locked conference room) before she said, "you know, ochona, you are good but just a little too cocky...now you see how badly one person can fuck up"
flew to the DC area (falls church & fairfax, VA) yesterday to survey 2 retail store restrooms for an ADA remodel. Completed both with no problems, flew home that night.
Plane ticket, rental car, food, and wages probably about $1500.
This morning at about 11:30 I realized that Fairfax, VA has 2 of this particular store. I, of course, went to the wrong one.
I will be flying back either tonight or sunday to survey the correct store. We are checking to see if our company can use any Delta 'points' to get a free flight so my bosses don't have to eat it on the second trip.
60%-owner boss was completely calm and was glad I 'did the right thing' in coming to them as soon as I found out rather than letting our clients figure it out when they received my drawings.
20%-owner boss and project manager was flustered and irritated but also reasonable in a matter-of-fact 'well shit' sort of way. He is the one that is liable to go off the handle at any moment, but more often does so to the women in the office.
I mostly have had that pit in stomach sick feeling since noon.
SuperHeavy, sorry about the error, but that seems like a reasonable mistake - one that everyone will be laughing about in a few weeks. $1500 isn't a huge loss, anyway.
Why do you work for a boss who is liable to go off the handle at any moment, but more often does so to the women in the office? You may have cost your firm $1500, but how much money have you made for your firm already? How much money do the women in the office make for him? Not enough to be treated equally?
myownpath, I work with SuperHeavy and am also female. Said boss is a bit of a maniac. He's very jokey and does the chummy thing with the guys in the office, and with me too sometimes, but because I laugh at his jokes. He swings back and forth between saying fairly insulting things, often spewed through emails aimed at the general population, to saying really rational, reasonable things, often in private conversation. It's the latter trait that makes the former trait managable.
A lot of people in my office have bad manners which the rest of us complain about.....this person plays both sides of that fence. It's nothing short of bizarre. Also, I make him PLENTY of money, as do most of us.
On a side note, this is a very theraputic thread. Somewhat masochistic though. It's like asking someone to talk about their most embarrassing elementary school moment. Here's to hoping we all learn something.
To err is ummm eh Human?
My first f' up came today at 9am. I released a drawing for a rather large cabinet that had the wrong finishing material labeled.
The cabinet was built wrong in the first place [contractor's fault] with the correct material [Lacquer] - when we redrew the cabinet CORRECTLY, I accidently labeled it as veneer.
Now I know this may not sound like a huge f' up - it's not like all the steel for a building was cut 3' too short or anything, but this is a good $4 grand worth of cabinetry that my boss has to pay for...
Ok all egos aside who else has screwed up and how did you deal with it?
I ordered the tile for a backsplash for a freelance client. Tile installer got halfway trhough and realized there wasn't enough to finish, as the tile was installed on a 45d. angle we needed more overage than I had allowed (I think 10%).
So I ordered more tile - which the client paid for - and then credited the client the cost of the contractor having to come back a second day to finish the work. Thankfully he stopped soon enough that mixing in two separate batches of tile was able to done invisibly.
Lesson: Always let the contrator be the one to tell you how much material is needed.
But it wasn't like you ordered the WRONG tile.. heh
large curtain wall system (15levels) of many different types of glasses (different colors, tints, sandblasted, tempered, spandrel), in a random order (no particular module); i was coorndinating all the glass-type legend information and matching the elevation tags; well, the drawings somehow ended up calling for the first 2 sheets of glass (up to about 8'0") above the floor level, adjacent to the entry (which were supposed to be clear) for green spandrel glass...
when the problem surfaced at the site (when the spandrel glass was installed), and the Principal and Project architect came to speak with me, I threw a fit about people changing my drawings, and pointed out 5 other "mistakes" within the random pattern someone else had made on my drawing;
since i am known for not making many mistakes, and being a perfectionist, they believed me and sent a note to the project team saying that all changes on the elevations needed to come through me first;
but i still remember putting the clear glass tags...i swear! so someone else must've done it!
my first real job was in an A/E firm. one day one of the engineers asked me to help him select a color for a large municipal water tank out in some rural native landscape. he showed me some pictures of the site; the general mix of plants & soil was very similar to what was outside of the our office. so i grabbed a paint fan deck, looked out the window, and picked a color to match the surroundings.
jump ahead a month and he comes by one day with some photos of the painted tank saying something like, "wow that color you picked out sure is bright, the tank really stands out in the landscape!". i looked at the pictures and did not recognize the color as the one i had selected. then it dawned on me that our building was clad in heavily tinited blue-green glass so whatever color i picked to blend into the landscape was HEAVILY color-shifted because of the filter i was looking through. i never fessed-up and played it off that it was the right color - the pictures just captured the tank in a strange light....
heh heh
el jeffe...why did u call me antoine ?
the name is el jeffe.
correct response from a seasoned pro. bravo.
my response was about the color challange. not about antoine.
nevermore - stop following me or he's gonna get it...
HAHA - well I can't point the finger on anyone but myself. Although I did release like 25 SK's in one day. The number of Change Orders on this job keep piling up - I guess it's inevitable that there will be some mistakes.
Well, like you said. "To err is... human" Me? I don't mess up...
(Yeah right)
Teddy Ruxpin still scares the crap out of me.
how does the cabs look like?
done is beautiful ya know..sometimes mistakes are mo better than the original idea..yesterday i spotted three mistakes on a new house i am working on. two okay, one i am trying to get used to.
4. Rosa
4. gardens of satire
4. saintly email bombs
4. mnemonics
4. all the errors that remain herein
--dedication of A Quondam Banquet of Virtual Sachlichkeit: Part II
[Thinking that others will actually get it might even be a perpetual mistake.]
el jeffe...im not stalking u ....but once again
why did u call me antoine ?
1) is it some one liner innuendo i missed ?
2) Do u have a friend called antoine to whom u loaned the DVD to ?
The cabinets look beautiful - but all the other cabinetry on the floor is Lacquer. No post-production rational can be given to justify this change... I guess this means we get a new cabinet in the office.
I had a large timber frame home stained a particular color and then through a number of changes that the home owner and builder worked throughthe timber frame got moved to the inside of the wall ( kind of like the old style timber frame barns) and didn't review that stain olor on the inside was to be a light natural tone and the outside was a dark coffee color. The client had signed off on th ecolor and I had all the back up to prove it and the client didn't do a test patch for the client's sign off, which we had suggested. needless to say the color was all wroing the clients wife had a hairy scary attack. that was a $60,000.00 fuck up. But before I could explain that there were products that could remove the stain and then restain the timber they had scrapped the timber for pennies on the dollar, and paid for a new timber package. Terrible fuck-up that didn't need to happen and all of it could have been resolved with the architects involvement ( but they felt that they didn't need our services on site, oh and the client and contractor went to court as the contractor also tried to hose the client for about $300,000.00 things like the neighbors siding was paid for by my client. ( worst story I have ever heard regarding shady contractors.)
i bet you if the end users lived with it for a mounth, nobody would ever say wtf.
its just bugs the hell out of somebody bc everybody thinks perfection is good design..match this match that. where is vado with a gas can?
story and quote:
i asked my friend brian murphy to come with me to check out a small building i built in topanga. so, as we were looking at the structures, he noticed a miandering line on stucco where it should be straight and said "no charge?", in fact the mistake was beautiful and showed like a hand made indeginous mud covering on otherwise perfect 10x10x10 cube form. it looked great in that natural environment. when stuff like that happens i usually quote brian whose buildings are sure to put a good smile on your face.
bam?
most of the framing was done but a framed opening for the tub access was left out in the initial drawings...so we update our drawings and issue new sheets to the framers and the plumbing subcontractor...shit...i forgot to put the tub access in the plumber's drawings and they ended up running a gang of their pipes (gas & water) inside the wall where the tub access was suppose to be...(the framers were going to frame the hole at a later date)...luckily, we were able to move the cutout to the next bay of studs and still have room to access the whirlpool tub's motor...
otherwise, the plumbers had to re-route their pipes...
Lesson: Pay attention
i wrote a wrong scale on some drawings so the estimation was 45% less than expected. Luckily they were'nt meant for construction.
Imagine a building nearly half its size!
ret, speaking of tiny architecture, how was the Dark Places show? The photos looked pretty damn cool.
The structure seemed to be pretty well executed considering the limitations of the technique.
It was eye-catching at first glance, yet boring within a few moments of being there.
As a first iteration for a big idea, i think it served the purpose.
P.S: Of course the may(a)rmature had no "systematicity" ...ahem.....that was the point!
The photos are better than the real thing..i think..
ret wrote: "The photos are better than the real thing..i think.."
So, the virtual is better than the real?
garpike,
yes, bam, but appearently there is another bam in east coast
there's a bam here in nyc..the brooklyn art museum...BAM
abra, I only know the bam in CA.
thats them.
He's living that creative dream.
and, he swims and surfs every morning and knows all the fish by name in santa monica bay.
"Hi Charles...Good morning, Mr. White, fins are looking sharp today...Mornin', Frank...How's the wife, Nemo?"
All this from a surfboard. Living the dream indeed.
Ha ha ha ha you guys paint a wonderful picture.
its interesting, i stumbled on the BAM website once and saw abra's pic on there, and ever since i thought abra was Brian Murphy...
some people can't stand him. we laugh a lot about architecture and design culture when we talk, once in a while.
he is a friend and had built a lot of buildings. he's got his fan club in hollywood lots and recording studios and shit.
and i really don't want to hear that he is a monster etc.
and yes there is this dolphin that is really his reencarnated dad. and his mom is lemon tree. and, one day him and i spend three hours rescueing a hatcling from a roof climbing three stories.
his work sometimes is plain silly, but people pay big bucks to him to do it that way.
thats our autocad class for older people, in his office.
and i took that picture of brian and his mom before she became a lemon tree.
i like his work, from what ive seen on their website...
I first heard of BAM through a story about a secret to financial success in architecture. I was told that Murphy started by manipulating readily available house designs that were already stamped to avoid the long process of getting a house design approved.
Interesting. Is it true?
no fuckin' way..
not that kind. but such as,let say, finding a loophole in the local code and objectify it. in an occasion, santa monica had to revise its zoning code after a bam project resulting in a 8' wide 200' long library / corridor. some exciting residential projects for creative, young, wealthy and wacky clients.
no job to small.
i worked together with brian 3-4 years when there were only 4 of us in the beach adjacent but really small office. it was top heavy with old cats surfacing after the economic crises of 90's, when i too, took a sebatical from architecture/design for few years. it was a nice come back for all of us.
the day i showed in my muddy wall'y @ bam, i was coincidentally published in new york times sunday mag. for a pair of cabins that i built myself in the woods and picked by julie iovany and a project by bam was supposed to be in that issue but eliminated at the last minute. we laughed about it. brian is fuckin' published to vazoo. but that was a nice spring home design issue themed "essences of ease" with some writers and poets also included with literary views on the subject.
*by the way i got no new project out of it except a long lost friend called from ann arbor to congratulate me.
any way this was my project. where he found a stucco mistake and admired it, thus starting this little side bar about BAM
abra, what I've seen of your work is totally wonderful. Tight and ethical. I love it.
props abra.
wow thats beautiful! wish there were some better pics!
Cool! Yeah, post more pics!
there is a link when you click on the name with some projects of mine.
thanks for the complements guys. i use 'my photo' album as my portfolio (i know it ain't minimalist web site but a plain amateurish solution), but, since i can add,subtract pictures with my own means, i am okay. my retired profs, hospital doctors, writers, high school teachers, and other middle class clients do like it and hire me. it is a huge improvement for me carrying 4x6 snapshots in a three ring plastic binder with some material stuffed inside pockets, i know you baads know what i mean..
i didn't know the mistakes thread would turn on me. ;). but what the hack i am a one man office and mainly do low budget projects with tons of tolerances and 4 page cd's. but i am very consistent with space,light and mistakes..
Great work, Orhan! May I suggest a new thread to show your work? It may go unnoticed in this thread.
there are the professional mistakes. and the personal mistakes.
and yes, antoine, both lists are substantial...
* screwed up a 1,200-door hardware schedule by mistaking RH for RHR and LH for LHR
* screwed up selfsame project's door schedule by not knowing the conversion between feet and mm -- lots of 3'-2" wide NOMINAL doors inside
* for both offenses withstood 2-hr lecture from supervisor (in locked conference room) before she said, "you know, ochona, you are good but just a little too cocky...now you see how badly one person can fuck up"
flew to the DC area (falls church & fairfax, VA) yesterday to survey 2 retail store restrooms for an ADA remodel. Completed both with no problems, flew home that night.
Plane ticket, rental car, food, and wages probably about $1500.
This morning at about 11:30 I realized that Fairfax, VA has 2 of this particular store. I, of course, went to the wrong one.
I will be flying back either tonight or sunday to survey the correct store. We are checking to see if our company can use any Delta 'points' to get a free flight so my bosses don't have to eat it on the second trip.
60%-owner boss was completely calm and was glad I 'did the right thing' in coming to them as soon as I found out rather than letting our clients figure it out when they received my drawings.
20%-owner boss and project manager was flustered and irritated but also reasonable in a matter-of-fact 'well shit' sort of way. He is the one that is liable to go off the handle at any moment, but more often does so to the women in the office.
I mostly have had that pit in stomach sick feeling since noon.
SuperHeavy, sorry about the error, but that seems like a reasonable mistake - one that everyone will be laughing about in a few weeks. $1500 isn't a huge loss, anyway.
Why do you work for a boss who is liable to go off the handle at any moment, but more often does so to the women in the office? You may have cost your firm $1500, but how much money have you made for your firm already? How much money do the women in the office make for him? Not enough to be treated equally?
myownpath, I work with SuperHeavy and am also female. Said boss is a bit of a maniac. He's very jokey and does the chummy thing with the guys in the office, and with me too sometimes, but because I laugh at his jokes. He swings back and forth between saying fairly insulting things, often spewed through emails aimed at the general population, to saying really rational, reasonable things, often in private conversation. It's the latter trait that makes the former trait managable.
A lot of people in my office have bad manners which the rest of us complain about.....this person plays both sides of that fence. It's nothing short of bizarre. Also, I make him PLENTY of money, as do most of us.
On a side note, this is a very theraputic thread. Somewhat masochistic though. It's like asking someone to talk about their most embarrassing elementary school moment. Here's to hoping we all learn something.
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