I know that I should have been honoring the Lord’s Day by resting today, but I had a lot of chores to complete as we have some work being done around our house tomorrow. Not […]
Interesting development in the Illinois Senate as a proposed bill is making its way through the review process. Senate Bill SB2849 proposes to allow Illinois municipalities to write local legislation to “…adopt reasonable rules…” related […]
For the past several months, I’ve been working on a municipal improvement project. The project is located in a residential subdivision in a southwestern Chicago suburb and has required me to keep dozens of plates […]
One of the key attributes of a good construction engineer is the ability to keep track of what is going on. Open loops. Tasks needing attention. What problems need solving. Who is solving them. I’ve […]
If you’ve been around the surveying world for the past few decades, you can appreciate how far and how fast the industry’s adoption of technology has changed the way we work. The instruments, the data […]
You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects. Gary Keller, from “The One Thing” Mike Pertz captured this book excerpt from “The One Thing” by […]
I always enjoy reading articles that are just a bit outside of my day-to-day duties. I thought this article on rigging fit the bill. It’s good to hit the Refresh button occasionally, even if it’s […]
As I was debriefing this past week (and really, much of this past month…), it occurred to me that I ought to consider sharing my personal “Lessons Learned” with the crew, thinking & hoping that […]
If you’ve been paying attention to my book stacks (and OF COURSE you are….), you might have been able to detect a pattern in how I assemble what I’m choosing to read. I try to […]
In my previous article (CLICK HERE to read it), I described the maturation of a piling bearing capacity issue that we had on a recent railroad bridge project. Let’s dive into getting the issues resolved. [...]
“Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism. It can even stifle someone’s sense of self-preservation. Often, the most difficult ego to [...]
So in my previous post regarding on-site stormwater treatment challenges (CLICK HERE), I described the unsuccessful treatment strategy we implemented on our Arsenal Road Interchange project using a stormwater filtration system. It was a great [...]
If I’ve experienced any significant shift in the construction industry in the last 25 years, jobsite erosion control is on the top of the list. Mitigation of sediment-related issues has gone from what used to [...]
In this, Part 2 of my series on slope stability & erosion control failures, I want to dissect another jobsite failure that one of our projects suffered through a couple of years ago. The conditions, [...]
There are some people I know, when talking about their “college days,” who can recite chapters & verses of classes they took. They can remember class numbers, people in the class, problems they solved, the [...]
I wanted to write a post discussing a design issue that we encountered out here on our site. MicroStation, AutoCADD and the like are the daily tools of choice for almost all designers, and no [...]
So as I’ve developed in the last 2 posts, traffic control on a construction project exposes just about everyone involved in the process to RISK. A motorcycle accident in 2008 sent me through the legal [...]
As I developed in my last post, engineers in construction are often-times thrust into situations of RISK that, in many instances, are completely beyond their direct control. I’m going to take you on a tour [...]