I learned NEVER purposefully burn a bridge. Some guy who ticked off a lot of people when he left a few months ago just got loaned back to us by his new firm because they didn't have enough work. He's not looking too comfortable these days...
Apparently contractors can now sue Architects directly, even though we have no contract with them.
"In the construction setting, this meant that a contractor was formerly barred from suing the owner’s architect and engineer unless the contractor had a contract with them. For example, an architect produces drawings or specifications which an owner then uses to solicit bids. A contractor then relies on those plans to submit a bid only to find out, once work has begun, that the design cannot be built as represented and instead more costly means and methods are needed. Prior to Bilt-Rite the contractor’s only avenue of recovery from the architect was to sue the owner for breach of contract, a claim that was tenuous at best, and barred by the plain language of the contract at worst. Now, the contractor is able to assert a claim for negligent misrepresentation against the architect."
This so pisses me off. A contractor should be responsible for means and methods - IT'S WHAT THEY DO. This more than anything else makes me not want to be an architect. It just got that much harder to design a decent building.
i learned (again) that in a contentious situation it's always better to listen and wait to see how things play out before you take a stand.
i had a contractor come to a meeting to resolve an issue which would require a good amount of remedial work on his part. he came with hackles up and promised that everything done was per the documents and that we couldn't show otherwise and that he would charge for any additional undocumented work that we required him to do, so there, what are you gonna do aboudit?
instead of taking an equal/opposite posture, i simply asked that we look at each situation with drawings in front of us. in the end, drilling holes in cmu to determine whether they were hollow or grouted solid answered each situation in question. they were hollow, he deflated, and agreed that he had to fix each situation. he was very embarrassed and said so later.
i should say that it wasn't his fault. he can't be everywhere on this job at all times. he DID, however, put a little too much faith in the word of his masonry sub.
DCA - this quote specifically concerns Pennsylvania, but my old boss just told me that it's enacted, or being enacted, in New York as well. His belief was that this was more or less nationwide - but I don't actually know for certain. I'll try and do some more research.
...Doing CA on a job where the designer had selected a fabric to wrap the acoustical wall panels as well as the tackable surfaces surrounding the desks.
The fabric was all ordered by the contractor (or maybe the acoustical wall panel manufacturer?) and luckily the fabric manufacturer called me to discuss. Apparently, only certain types of fabrics are appropriate for use on tackable wall panels. Some fabrics are designed to be used only for upholstery with a foam backing which absorbs the expansion and contraction of the fabric.
Upholstery fabrics are not designed to be stretched tightly over a hard backing such as that used for acoustical panels. If it is used in these applications than it will pucker or stretch under varying expansion and contracting situations. So I had to find a fabric, something preferably 100% polyseter which will "take" the expansion and contraction on it's own withouth the need for a soft backing..
I just learned that BEMA (the Bathroom Enclosure Manufacturer's Association) recoommends a glass fin width of 5-6" minimum to 10" maximum for hanging glass doors off of with glass-to-glass hinges. This may sound obscure but it totally vindicates our design that the contractor didn't want to do!!! Hooray!!!
Glass shower doors! With just clips to hold it all to the side walls and floor, and nothing at all overhead--no channels, nothing. It's gonna be a beauty. Can't wait.
Of course...shower doors. (There I go again, thinking in the commercial realm and scale - I honestly thought you were talking about stall partitions or the entry door to the public toilet rooms...)
Well the entry door has sandblasted glass in it. Very pretty. I keep wanting to post a pic to the jobsite thread, but it's not my house or my design so I'm wary.
That if you specify a gorgeous 10-foot-long modern sofa by Christian Liagre that has three legs across the front and place it in the living room of a 100 year old house with slightly uneven floors you may just end up witha teeter totter.
that no matter how hard I try to design something nice for my client's Italian resaurant, at the end of the day he calls the shots and the place is going to look like a damn Olive Garden
mdler.....hope your not working for a Greek Resturant owner....doing an Italian Resturant. Clue...if you are....well that is why it is looking like and Olive Garden.
reflective surfaces (or glossy enough to reflect) are a bad idea for a public restroom floor. unless you like to watch the person in the stall next to yours -- "Wow, what a great wiping technique, I think i'll try that!"
I learned the difference between horizontal-to-horiztonal and horizontal-to-vertical expansion joints. And that there are a bunch of types of expansion joints.
I learned that I'd really like to get drunk again. And be rich enough to resign. Just, you know, I'd like the option. I want my freedom back, big time.
I learned today - not in the office but in the shop - that if you are spray painting something you want super super slick with absolutely no dust particles on the finished surface - something like, say, a hotrod - you should place the object on a surface that has been sprayed down first with water. The water keeps down the dust that might be raised by the air from the sprayer.
never leave an office on the day of finishing a deadline, thinking it's a good time and way to end. ending on a bang is way too stressful. give yourself another week.
rushing to meet the fedex deadline, then trying to figure out why the drawings won't post to the FTP... and THEN packing up your desk and saying goodbye? not enough time.
uhm, that bosses know nothing of computers. that max is not as complex as i thought. that sometime knowing too much of something does not help u doing it.
but mostly that if a studio has the habit of making visualizations before design, the visualizers are going to get a lot of stress and a lot of extra work.
and that maybe the visualizers should find another job rather than working in said place full time.
upper management is more about politics and personal egos than architecture and design.
you can get threatened to be fired for writing an internal memo to the project manager asking him to resolve "code issues" and other items that he promised to take care of months ago.
freq, well me and a bunch of my colleaugues just learned getting let go is no fun either.
but I also learned how blessed I am to have a network of people that are willing to help me find something quickly.
I hope you take the time to talk to the remaining staff in the office. Seeing a bunch of good people let go has completely demoralized many of the staff and made them feel there is not much to work for if the company can let all of us go. Its weird, as one of the people laid off, I've become a cheerleader of sorts to try to help raise spirits and let people know that everything will work out fine.
Don't sit and chat with the f*ckers in the office that are sick and still come to work, they will only make you sick and have to be off from work - taking phonecalls when you should be resting asking silly stupid questions
I learned the difference between my "friends" at work and my "friends at work".
After being laid off it is funny to sit back and watch how people can't help but show their true colors.
My "friends" at work have gone out of their way to call people they know and reached out to anyone who they think would be a good fit for me. They've called me at home, discussed their situation and really had fruitful discussions about the nature of the company and how these things were handled. I've had more than a couple people come to me and asked me to help them plan their exit based solely on how this was handled by the company.
My "friends at work" have largely ignored me in a way they've never done before, taking extra special care not to associate themselves with any of the people that were laid off when the boss is around. Job security is the name of the game for them and even though we were cool, we're not cool enough for them to jeopordize their image in the eyes of the powers that be.
true that curtclay...when I put in my notice at my old I quickly found out where the line was. You also find out who the 'friends at work" are when you see them outside of the office and they act all wishy washy like they don't know you. Now I'm part of the office 'alumni' club.
65cent - best coffee in manhattan across street from my office.
..addictive - really man.
that i know alot more about construction than i thought. ha.
that with 7 yrs experience, i dont give a sh*t about efforts at gaining new "friends" at the new office. i have enough already. if it happens, it happens. so f+k off.
ah shucks, that you shouldnt be late to a meeting with the client if the client is a city agency - a beauracratic monkey machine that thrives off of punctuality of the meeting in lieu of the actual content of the meeting.
and finally - that my new office and my old office are on completely different levels and i probably wasted about a year of my architectural career there.
Today I learned more about the hundreds of precast concrete piles that will be driven on our site. I'd never heard of a Static Load Test before, but I gather that it is an exercise performed on a pile that has already been driven. They bring in special equipment to put as much force on the pile as possible and measure when the pile fails. Sources say that the test runs anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000. A less expensive test is called a PDA (Pile Driving Analyzer) that measures conditions on a pile as it's being driven.
(I know this thread has a sarcastic undertone to it, but I think it's good to share positive learning experiences once in a while.)
I learned that I should really learn a couple of other languages so that I can tell if the framers are saying anything bad about me.
I came to this realization after informing them that they have to install fireblocking in a curved two story wall after the sheathing is on the outside face and the wood studs are not evenly spaced.
liberty bell: I saw your wood veneer photos on another thread. (I can't remember where - so I decided to post my question here.) Do you know if the owner bought custom or premium services? I've heard there's a big difference in cost (and quality), and it shows.
...I learned that the girl that was president of the AIAS from my school (you know the one: impossible to work with, rude, foreign, on a power trip, knows nothing about architecture from design to construction) is making over 40K salary in her first job in architecture! In the Midwest, that's about 10K more than the average entry level intern is offered...
...I also learned that I can avoid a total breakdown (typically triggered by my PM telling me that the client wants to replace all exterior materials on my little school to EIFS, remove an entire floor, change the entire structural system from steel framing to SIP’s, and divide it up into 3 phases in order to save a few bucks) by hysterically laughing and then rocking quietly in my chair at my work station for 2, maybe 3 hours...
Isn't that the same one who was shagging her professor in school and now moved up to shagging her boss. Oh ya I forgot to isn't she the one you met when you first walked into the architecture school who was wearing a fish net top with not alot on underneath?
I guess you could call it all marketing.
DCA, I never responde to your query because I'm not sure what custom vs. permium means? They are custom cabinets from Neff, and I need to say that the quality is absolutely gorgeous, and the snafus we have had (some missing pieces, a grain match issue) are being fixed quickly without complaint or cost. I will definitely spec them again.
That's the one...the sad thing is, she's married to a really nice guy. I guess she needed her green card and took advantage of him. Now he's stuck paying for all her materials and school tuition...
So what did we learn at the office this week??
I learned NEVER purposefully burn a bridge. Some guy who ticked off a lot of people when he left a few months ago just got loaned back to us by his new firm because they didn't have enough work. He's not looking too comfortable these days...
Apparently contractors can now sue Architects directly, even though we have no contract with them.
"In the construction setting, this meant that a contractor was formerly barred from suing the owner’s architect and engineer unless the contractor had a contract with them. For example, an architect produces drawings or specifications which an owner then uses to solicit bids. A contractor then relies on those plans to submit a bid only to find out, once work has begun, that the design cannot be built as represented and instead more costly means and methods are needed. Prior to Bilt-Rite the contractor’s only avenue of recovery from the architect was to sue the owner for breach of contract, a claim that was tenuous at best, and barred by the plain language of the contract at worst. Now, the contractor is able to assert a claim for negligent misrepresentation against the architect."
This so pisses me off. A contractor should be responsible for means and methods - IT'S WHAT THEY DO. This more than anything else makes me not want to be an architect. It just got that much harder to design a decent building.
urbanspec: What is the source of your quote? Is this a concern of your local jurisdiction only?
i learned (again) that in a contentious situation it's always better to listen and wait to see how things play out before you take a stand.
i had a contractor come to a meeting to resolve an issue which would require a good amount of remedial work on his part. he came with hackles up and promised that everything done was per the documents and that we couldn't show otherwise and that he would charge for any additional undocumented work that we required him to do, so there, what are you gonna do aboudit?
instead of taking an equal/opposite posture, i simply asked that we look at each situation with drawings in front of us. in the end, drilling holes in cmu to determine whether they were hollow or grouted solid answered each situation in question. they were hollow, he deflated, and agreed that he had to fix each situation. he was very embarrassed and said so later.
so> keep quiet, wait, and see.
i should say that it wasn't his fault. he can't be everywhere on this job at all times. he DID, however, put a little too much faith in the word of his masonry sub.
DCA - this quote specifically concerns Pennsylvania, but my old boss just told me that it's enacted, or being enacted, in New York as well. His belief was that this was more or less nationwide - but I don't actually know for certain. I'll try and do some more research.
...Doing CA on a job where the designer had selected a fabric to wrap the acoustical wall panels as well as the tackable surfaces surrounding the desks.
The fabric was all ordered by the contractor (or maybe the acoustical wall panel manufacturer?) and luckily the fabric manufacturer called me to discuss. Apparently, only certain types of fabrics are appropriate for use on tackable wall panels. Some fabrics are designed to be used only for upholstery with a foam backing which absorbs the expansion and contraction of the fabric.
Upholstery fabrics are not designed to be stretched tightly over a hard backing such as that used for acoustical panels. If it is used in these applications than it will pucker or stretch under varying expansion and contracting situations. So I had to find a fabric, something preferably 100% polyseter which will "take" the expansion and contraction on it's own withouth the need for a soft backing..
i learned that i can in fact be productive on 5 hours of sleep since monday
I have learned that writing codes for a city..albeit form-based codes...is extremely boreing, time consumeing and mindnumbing.... its been great
I just learned that BEMA (the Bathroom Enclosure Manufacturer's Association) recoommends a glass fin width of 5-6" minimum to 10" maximum for hanging glass doors off of with glass-to-glass hinges. This may sound obscure but it totally vindicates our design that the contractor didn't want to do!!! Hooray!!!
Glass doors in a bathroom? I'm intrigued...
In theory there is a latex paint that can be applied in two coats onto 5/8†drywall that magically gives you a two hour fire rating instead of one.
http://www.contegointernational.com/U338test.pdf
I just hope that they get UL to sign off of on it.
Glass shower doors! With just clips to hold it all to the side walls and floor, and nothing at all overhead--no channels, nothing. It's gonna be a beauty. Can't wait.
Of course...shower doors. (There I go again, thinking in the commercial realm and scale - I honestly thought you were talking about stall partitions or the entry door to the public toilet rooms...)
Sounds great.
Well the entry door has sandblasted glass in it. Very pretty. I keep wanting to post a pic to the jobsite thread, but it's not my house or my design so I'm wary.
That if you specify a gorgeous 10-foot-long modern sofa by Christian Liagre that has three legs across the front and place it in the living room of a 100 year old house with slightly uneven floors you may just end up witha teeter totter.
that no matter how hard I try to design something nice for my client's Italian resaurant, at the end of the day he calls the shots and the place is going to look like a damn Olive Garden
mdler.....hope your not working for a Greek Resturant owner....doing an Italian Resturant. Clue...if you are....well that is why it is looking like and Olive Garden.
i just saw sandblasted glass as bathroom cubicle partitions
that hurricane warnings are the only thing that the county will extend our deadline for...
The joys and pains of xrefs.
How pluming actually freaking works in a building.
reflective surfaces (or glossy enough to reflect) are a bad idea for a public restroom floor. unless you like to watch the person in the stall next to yours -- "Wow, what a great wiping technique, I think i'll try that!"
that ACT! 2006 was harder to unistall than implement throught the office. - bad virus issues.
There's not much work to do, so I gathered some interesting facts:
Ninja don't sweat.
Bullets can't kill a ninja.
Ninja invented skateboarding
Only a ninja can kill a ninja. Regular humans are useless.
Ninja never wear headbands with the word "ninja" printed on them.
Ninja can breath underwater anytime they want.
Ninja can change clothes in less than 1 second.
Ninja don't smoke, but they do use smoke bombs.
Ninja always land on their feet. If they don't have feet they will land on their nubs.
Ninja invented the internet.
Ninja don't eat or drink very much, and they never have to go to the bathroom.
Ninja always move to America when making a new start as a non-assassin.
Ninja don't play sports. Unless killing is a sport.
Ninja can crush golfballs with 2 fingers, any two fingers.
Ninja have a bad temper when they lose at anything. They will usually cut off the winners head before they have time to gloat.
Ninja lie all the time. Even when the truth serves better, ninja will lie anyway.
Ninja swords are always straight with a square handle guard. Always. Curves are for girls.
Lack any personality
Wear headbands
Fight skillfully with any object
Can remove a spleen in one swift motion
Live in your house secretly for days
Can remove their shadow if needed
Hurl shurikens
Go anywhere they want instantly
Catch bullets in their teeth
Kill themselves if they make a noise
Can run 100 miles on their hands
Train 20 hours/day starting from age 2
Have cool words like Seppuku
Are masters of disguise
Can hover for hours
Flip out and kill everything
Are completely self-sufficient.
Split planks vertically with their nose
Can hide in incense smoke
Kill people.
Ninjas are the best guitar players. Ever.
Ninjas do NOT wear spandex.
A Samurai is NOT a ninja.
Dragon Ball Z characters are NOT ninjas.
If you see a ninja, he is NOT a ninja.
didn't you learn anything about chuck norris?
I learned the difference between horizontal-to-horiztonal and horizontal-to-vertical expansion joints. And that there are a bunch of types of expansion joints.
Balco
I learned that working a 14-hour day is bad for your health and interferes with your social life.
I learned that I'd really like to get drunk again. And be rich enough to resign. Just, you know, I'd like the option. I want my freedom back, big time.
I learned today - not in the office but in the shop - that if you are spray painting something you want super super slick with absolutely no dust particles on the finished surface - something like, say, a hotrod - you should place the object on a surface that has been sprayed down first with water. The water keeps down the dust that might be raised by the air from the sprayer.
never leave an office on the day of finishing a deadline, thinking it's a good time and way to end. ending on a bang is way too stressful. give yourself another week.
rushing to meet the fedex deadline, then trying to figure out why the drawings won't post to the FTP... and THEN packing up your desk and saying goodbye? not enough time.
uhm, that bosses know nothing of computers. that max is not as complex as i thought. that sometime knowing too much of something does not help u doing it.
but mostly that if a studio has the habit of making visualizations before design, the visualizers are going to get a lot of stress and a lot of extra work.
and that maybe the visualizers should find another job rather than working in said place full time.
i learned...
upper management is more about politics and personal egos than architecture and design.
you can get threatened to be fired for writing an internal memo to the project manager asking him to resolve "code issues" and other items that he promised to take care of months ago.
-to
i learned that letting someone go is no fun
for anyone
particularly if they are worth keeping
freq, well me and a bunch of my colleaugues just learned getting let go is no fun either.
but I also learned how blessed I am to have a network of people that are willing to help me find something quickly.
I hope you take the time to talk to the remaining staff in the office. Seeing a bunch of good people let go has completely demoralized many of the staff and made them feel there is not much to work for if the company can let all of us go. Its weird, as one of the people laid off, I've become a cheerleader of sorts to try to help raise spirits and let people know that everything will work out fine.
Don't sit and chat with the f*ckers in the office that are sick and still come to work, they will only make you sick and have to be off from work - taking phonecalls when you should be resting asking silly stupid questions
That I am totally ill prepared for a layoff as curtclay's awesome attitude indicates above. Hope you find something good soon.
I learned the difference between my "friends" at work and my "friends at work".
After being laid off it is funny to sit back and watch how people can't help but show their true colors.
My "friends" at work have gone out of their way to call people they know and reached out to anyone who they think would be a good fit for me. They've called me at home, discussed their situation and really had fruitful discussions about the nature of the company and how these things were handled. I've had more than a couple people come to me and asked me to help them plan their exit based solely on how this was handled by the company.
My "friends at work" have largely ignored me in a way they've never done before, taking extra special care not to associate themselves with any of the people that were laid off when the boss is around. Job security is the name of the game for them and even though we were cool, we're not cool enough for them to jeopordize their image in the eyes of the powers that be.
true that curtclay...when I put in my notice at my old I quickly found out where the line was. You also find out who the 'friends at work" are when you see them outside of the office and they act all wishy washy like they don't know you. Now I'm part of the office 'alumni' club.
hmm...
this week - although not over:
65cent - best coffee in manhattan across street from my office.
..addictive - really man.
that i know alot more about construction than i thought. ha.
that with 7 yrs experience, i dont give a sh*t about efforts at gaining new "friends" at the new office. i have enough already. if it happens, it happens. so f+k off.
ah shucks, that you shouldnt be late to a meeting with the client if the client is a city agency - a beauracratic monkey machine that thrives off of punctuality of the meeting in lieu of the actual content of the meeting.
and finally - that my new office and my old office are on completely different levels and i probably wasted about a year of my architectural career there.
Today I learned more about the hundreds of precast concrete piles that will be driven on our site. I'd never heard of a Static Load Test before, but I gather that it is an exercise performed on a pile that has already been driven. They bring in special equipment to put as much force on the pile as possible and measure when the pile fails. Sources say that the test runs anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000. A less expensive test is called a PDA (Pile Driving Analyzer) that measures conditions on a pile as it's being driven.
(I know this thread has a sarcastic undertone to it, but I think it's good to share positive learning experiences once in a while.)
I learned that using a strong horizontal-grained wood veneer on kitchen cabinets can be unbelievably challenging and time-consuming.
And simultaneoulsy learned (again) how priceless and important a really knowledgeable carpenter is!
I learned that I should really learn a couple of other languages so that I can tell if the framers are saying anything bad about me.
I came to this realization after informing them that they have to install fireblocking in a curved two story wall after the sheathing is on the outside face and the wood studs are not evenly spaced.
liberty bell: I saw your wood veneer photos on another thread. (I can't remember where - so I decided to post my question here.) Do you know if the owner bought custom or premium services? I've heard there's a big difference in cost (and quality), and it shows.
...I learned that the girl that was president of the AIAS from my school (you know the one: impossible to work with, rude, foreign, on a power trip, knows nothing about architecture from design to construction) is making over 40K salary in her first job in architecture! In the Midwest, that's about 10K more than the average entry level intern is offered...
...I also learned that I can avoid a total breakdown (typically triggered by my PM telling me that the client wants to replace all exterior materials on my little school to EIFS, remove an entire floor, change the entire structural system from steel framing to SIP’s, and divide it up into 3 phases in order to save a few bucks) by hysterically laughing and then rocking quietly in my chair at my work station for 2, maybe 3 hours...
Isn't that the same one who was shagging her professor in school and now moved up to shagging her boss. Oh ya I forgot to isn't she the one you met when you first walked into the architecture school who was wearing a fish net top with not alot on underneath?
I guess you could call it all marketing.
DCA, I never responde to your query because I'm not sure what custom vs. permium means? They are custom cabinets from Neff, and I need to say that the quality is absolutely gorgeous, and the snafus we have had (some missing pieces, a grain match issue) are being fixed quickly without complaint or cost. I will definitely spec them again.
if you're in danger of coming in over budget, make sure that you can take it when the project gets eviscerated. best if you don't care too much.
-snooker
That's the one...the sad thing is, she's married to a really nice guy. I guess she needed her green card and took advantage of him. Now he's stuck paying for all her materials and school tuition...
by the way mhopkins we are changing the brockway house to sips, eifs, and a standing seam metal gunnar roof.
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