As the Civil Engineering industry evolves, the Civil Engineer must evolve with the code and regulation changes.
We went to a new job site in Redondo Beach to discuss the lot for two new houses that will overlook the ocean. While talking to the developer we went over a few different stormwater mitigation measures that are starting to pop up in Los Angeles County. The South Bay beach cities are a bit different than Los Angeles City standards, but the general idea is the same. Infiltrate and clean stormwater when possible. Now that the new Los Angeles City codes (LID/SUSMP) are starting to trickle down into other cities I went to Redondo Beach Building and Safety to clarify what they would need for a grading plan or drainage plan.
After speaking with a Redondo Beach City Engineering, the Civil Engineering involved for handling stormwater depends on where the site is located. Turns out our site falls where we don’t need to do any stormwater cleaning or infiltration. That was great news. But what about another project that will be starting up in a month or so that is a commercial complex? I was given the new standards and these new standards basically follow the new Los Angeles City LID requirements. We must infiltrate when possible. If infiltration is not feasible, then there are some other methods to contain a certain volume of stormwater on site.
This new method of handling stormwater is not exactly new. But the cities in Los Angeles are starting to adopt the new measures. Even though this can make designing a site a little more tricky, this is good for the environment to help sustain Southern California just a little bit longer.
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I was looking through both my resume and my partner’s resume today and forgot how much knowledge we both have accrued over the years.
We get down to work when the time is needed and other times talk about the Laker’s going ons or whatever else is happening in the world. I have known Wilson since High School and we have always just of gelled together. The current partnership has been a very good one from the beginning, which shows as B+W Engineering and Design does have happy clients. And today I had to look over our resumes for some upcoming projects and forget just how talented engineers are. We come from this math background that is so ingrained in our heads that math is not even something we have to think about anymore. Though I still like to use a calculator to verify what I am doing. The problem solving that we go through starting from college up until our current day to day life has become so normal, that solving a problem now is solving multiples of multiple problems all at once.
This is where I get hit by reading a resume and forget just how much more we were taught, worked on, and don’t really mention ever again. Yet all that information is still somewhere in our heads. Such as I forgot that I had redesigned an 18 hole golf course to match into an existing 200 lot grading plan, which I then had to redesign the 200 lot grading plan to match into the newly designed golf course. How could I forget that the owner of the engineering company wanted me to drive my little sports car onto the job site, the company truck was being serviced at the time, to verify the contractors were grading everything to the plans. Funny how that wasn’t that long ago and I just thought about that golf course today.
And then I take a look at Wilson’s resume, his being similar to mine though his background is structural, and the previous experience is so much alike. We had to prepare plans, work on teams, adhere to different codes, and just keep solving problem after problem on big and small projects. None of this hit me until today, because I think we are too busy talking about the Lakers losing, Clippers winning and other important topics like that while we seamlessly are working on the current projects of the week.
I get this vibe from most of our clients as well. They are so easy going, until we get down to the business at hand and just go to town on a project together. We try to build a great relationship, which is why we do so much repeat business and are referred constantly. Some of this past experience has started to show lately as we try to work out the kinks to make everyone more happy and try to stay within their budgets, while still keeping our timelines. And today has been completely different than the day before, continually gaining crucial experience to build up B+W Engineering and Design.
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I mentioned in a previous blog post about the Demand for Engineers Increasing. And yet forecasts say the water infrastructure market is slowing.
Primary sources of funding for water projects include local user and connection fees, government bonds and State Revolving Funds. The Great Recession choked traditional funding sources for municipal water infrastructure. The housing meltdown decreased revenues from connection fees and curtailed new user fees. Tax revenues at all levels of government declined sharply and are still recovering. The bond market remains tight, and, as a result, municipalities struggle to tap this source of funding. What Lies Ahead in 2013 for the U.S. Water Infrastructure Market
Its not like the countries deteriorating infrastructure doesn’t have problems already. That has been pretty evident in the news over the last few years with water mains breaking constantly. Not to mention all of the new construction or rehab happening in older areas sometimes using more resources than what was originally built out. But we come to the problem of funding. Funding for engineers is like the chicken and the egg, only no one can afford either the chicken or egg, so what is an engineer to do? There is very little to do as the water utilities charge just enough for operating costs and rely on tax dollars for any major improvements.
The aging infrastructure has more issues than just water mains breaking. The EPA is stating that in a study in August 2004 that their are health concerns related to sewage seeping into surface water. There has also been an increase in the demand for water. The good news is that even though there is a slowdown in the market there are projections that the economy is doing better and will get better, and the market will start to slowly grow. The housing market is showing signs of picking up again leading to the sorely needed taxes to fund these water infrastructure projects.
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To a prosperous New Year to all of our past and future clients!
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I can’t remember the last time I worked during what is normally the Christmas break.
Christmas break is usually the time that most Engineering, Architect and City offices shut down for a much needed break. Everyone in this industry needs a forced break to relax and get the brain cells rejuvenated. In fact I don’t think I have ever worked during Christmas and New Years in all my years on the job. So this year came as a surprise as we were still getting projects submitted up until right before the week of Christmas before the cities take off as well. It seems like the rush to build is slowly but surely starting to ramp up once again.
Not only were we in rush mode for the holidays, but we were also bidding on multiple new, commercial and residential, projects the morning of the 26th. I told one of our clients that I thought that my email was purposely not sending emails immediately to force me on the break as well. Thankfully that wasn’t true and everything has been going pretty smoothly. We have also been travelling to job sites more frequently where reception is pretty bad, which is really common with the amount of beach and hillside work we do.
We are also looking to expand our business further out which we may have the opportunity to do shortly with a project up North in the Bay Area.
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As we have to say over the phone more frequently our email address to receive siteplans, surveys, etc. I have begun to wonder, can we have an easier email address to memorize?
Currently it makes sense that our main website is also what we use for our email. We even own bwcivilengineer.com and bwstructuralengineer.com so eventually we can differentiate that we do both types of work. We even dabbled into buying similar domains and extensions so others couldn’t use our current bwengr.com and piggyback off our company presence on the web. With all of this, is our email address too hard to remember. I think everyone likes something easy that makes sense. Everything will still continue to mail our @bwengr.com accounts, but eventually we may change to something shorter and much more simple to remember.
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ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) ramps are one of those necessary designs for new projects that sometimes make a new project that much more complicated to work.
These ADA ramps are meant for those who are disabled for easier access to their destination. ADA requirements are meant to help those in need and are important for those who would have trouble getting around. Design wise anything ADA related can be very tricky to work properly with every other requirement. For a Civil Engineering grading plan, we concentrate on how easy it is to walk around a project, drive around that project, and most importantly how stormwater is handled. We are given a siteplan most of the time with rough elevations that an Architect has come up with and must design to the exact existing topography to have a real world working project. We recently went back and forth on a current project with an Architect on how to handle a parking area. We came up with a 6″ curb in front of the building that would turn into a 0″ Curb Face as we transitioned the driveway slope down to street level. This design turned out to be more complicated.
As I keep walking to supermarkets and other larger box stores that have these huge slopes at random places because not enough thought was put into grading the parking lot. Not only do these parking lots look strange, but anything other than an SUV you can hear the suspension creaking on the funny grade breaks. A large part of some of these parking lots deep drops are caused by the design of ADA ramps at the parking stalls.
I took a couple of pictures while at some local stores to give an idea of how a properly designed ADA ramp looks. What I didn’t take pictures of are the very hard to drive parking lots, that are not striped with the steep grades or oddly placed speedbumps in mind. That is for another blog post.
Next time you drive around and park at your favorite store pay attention to the ADA spots as those have generally had the most design thought put into the grading plans. These spots tie the building pad elevation to the street in such a way that they can be considered a proof on how to properly design a development. You must be no more than 2% sloped in all directions in these ADA areas otherwise your building to parking lot to street connection will either not work or be very oddly warped.
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We had a rush submittal ready to go out today. The only problem it seemed like no one was working today. Though I did check the City’s website that we were submitting to and they were open.
How is that everyone else is closed, a half day for the developer, especially when we are being told the plans must submit ASAP?
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I decided to try to make the move to a company that sounded like they would be prepared to ride out the upcoming recession in May of 2008. After being let go from that company, I wasn’t sure what to do, especially since the company was supposed to have had the type of clients who would not be hit so hard by the down economy. I had always wanted to start my own company, however didn’t think I had enough experience at the time. I had also not known of any single-owner civil engineering firm that had been around for a substantial amount of time. After talking with a buddy who had a government job (public works) as well as other previous co-workers, I decided why not dip my feet into the craziness that is known as the building industry. I was able to get in contact with a civil engineer who by chance was about to close his shop because of unforeseeable events. The perfect storm brewed into what would be my first LLC.
The LLC did pretty well from the beginning as I had always kept in contact with everyone that mattered to me along the way. We had job referrals coming from all different directions as we built up our brand awareness. We even started gaining a great reputation with repeat clients. All of this, with a new company that was less than one year old during the “Great Housing Depression Part 2” in Southern California. Then the partnership began to become wobbly. A partner had some events happen where he had to leave the State and take care of his personal life.
With two partners left, the falling apart of the LLC began. Now there wasn’t that third opinion, that we originally had, on what we would charge or how we would approach projects. We decided to drop a couple of large Downtown Los Angeles projects, and then began to proposing prices that were too high for new work. This approach quickly reduced our income! This is where I learned that not all engineers make good business-people. We basically ran ourselves into the ground even though we had this great reputation and client base. Not to mention the Architects we were working with preferred us to competing civil engineering companies in the area.
After dissolving the LLC, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I was pretty depressed as I put my all into it. I spent almost 18 hours a day 6 days a week trying to do anything I could to find more business, work on plans, and make more money. Fast forward about four months later with some pretty dark times in between and no real direction, I decided why not go for my own company again. I told myself that the outcome couldn’t be any worse. Plus I had a good friend that has his own Mortgage Company, telling me that it takes multiple business tries before you are successful. I learned a lot, saw a lot, and wanted to make sure that I would not repeat the same mistakes from the original company. So here I am today, one civil engineering company dissolved that I started at the age of 29, starting a new venture at the age of 32, keeping very positive that my old mistakes will not be repeated.
I hope this story gives hope to all of those who have struggled so hard in this difficult environment.
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Last picture before leaving the country. Rite Aid is now open 24 hours.
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