23 September 2003a

Minneapolis. This is a really big deal, I believe. People blow up over there every day and it scares the wife. Sadly, her support organization is not well centered in this state. Hopefully, she can make do and improvise with the materials she has at hand. Mid-October plus six months is mid-April, so I’ll miss winter. Rather, I’ll be gone for winter. How will she deal with the cold and the solitude. We’ll see.

I may get shot, kidnapped, or damaged in some way. I may be wholly burned out at the end of this.

Then again, it might be a total rush.

We’ll see. Read More......

23 September 2003

PART I - RECONNAISSANCE

Minneapolis. Gosh and golly,

Weird Event Notice: I leave for Iraq in a couple of weeks. I should be back in half a year.

The Company is doing its share of war profiteering and I'm pleased to be a part of it. I will go with a score of other Companymen to Virginia for a few days of briefing, then on to Baghdad. The job is part of the $87,000,000,000.00 nation-building effort. My office will likely be in the fortified basement of Saddam's palace in the capital and I'll live on the palace grounds. I will wear my Civil hat for the site development aspects of the work, but I imagine that I'll wear my Construction Management and Project Management hats most all of the time.

I am well aware of the dangers involved and yes, I'll be careful.

The hours will be quite long. The work quite tough. The setting quite surreal. It should be an adventure to be sure, but I sort of like those. Besides, this will help me afford the new cycle that I need for my mid-life crisis.

Please call the wife at all hours, or drop her a note, or buy her lunch, or mail her a turnip (at your own risk), or stop by for a few days, or meet her for coffee, or take her fishing, or send her a snow blower, or.... whatever. It would be most appreciated.

I have no clear notion as to how international communications will be handled during this period, although I hear that internet access is swift. Presumable, either the Company address or the Yahoo! address will do the trick. I'll send a note when I discover the answer. Regardless, I'll tell you all about it when I return, or through various posts during the assignment.

Disclaimer: A wise old white guy once said, "No international assignment is assured until you land there." So don't count on any souvenirs just yet. Read More......

Who's Your Baghdaddy?

A few years later, and the internation work takes an interesting turn, this one mostly, mainly, Middle-East.

Also from the vaults, and with limited commercial interruption,....

Who's Your Baghdaddy? Read More......

Coda

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READERS BEWARE – Omniscience abounds within (as if).
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I have long believed that my principal professional responsibility is to the Health, Safety and Welfare of the Public. This demigodly accountability could explain why enrollments are down at most Civil Engineering Schools (or maybe it is because we are not exactly the best paid branch of the sciences). Regardless, public obligation in this instance tends to outweigh massive personal gain. There are fiscal success stories, to be sure, but I would surmise that the majority of us typically care more for the work than for the pecuniary rewards. So, as my influence with this project winds down (as with any past project, successful or no), I review it in light of these primary professional principles.

Improved public Safety is probably the easiest of the three to examine. For this project, I think safety is a slight positive. The new highway is wider and smoother than the old. We worked to eliminate blind corners and major roadside obstacles and to develop our facility to First World design standards. I fought to establish as much of a clear zone as possible, to develop traversable sideslopes, and protect the motorist from hazard (although the squatters are already moving in immediately adjacent to the roadway in some areas, and lack of funds may prohibit the completion of all of the foreslope grading in the eastern third).

Sadly, the minimal to non-existent enforcement of traffic laws results in no limits to the speed of the motorist (beyond the physical limitations of the conveyance), so the accidents that are becoming commonplace will trend far away from the death-defying end of the bedlam spectrum. This is evidenced by the half dozen fatalities in the past few weeks, all a result of loss of control while driving at excessive speed. Fortunately, only the idiot operators have been buried so far.

Improved public Health is marginally positive. In light of the above, the quality of the gene pool has been enhanced. For the cows, it is a definite improvement. Most of the project is fenced now, and if we can get gates constructed, and the entire length maintained, local livestock should remain in good health safely away from the road…. provided someone bothers to move the cattle back into the pastures before closing the gate.

Improved public Welfare is the tough one. The trip to Negril that previously took more than two hours can now be done in less than one. The tourist saves lots of time. For them, this is time better spent on the beach getting a second degree sunburn and buying trinkets. However, the construction cost of this facility is over one hundred million borrowed dollars, monies that could have been borrowed to build schools, or sewers, or goatherd training institutes.

During the extended construction period, labor surely benefited, especially since this two year job has taken five years to complete. In a land of high unemployment, any work is appreciated, especially long term, low skill positions. Elsewhere on the planet, the money spent on highway work is said to benefit the community three to six times over, as wages and material costs get spent and respent locally. This benefit will be much smaller here, due to the large volume of imported materials, but there will still be some residual advantage.

At the end of the day, improvements in Health, Safety, and Welfare boil down to a better Quality of Life.

The primary planned effect of this highway was increasingly safe and speedy travel for tourist traffic between Negril and Montego Bay. If this pleases the tourist, she may have less to complain about once she gets home, and may actually recommend Jamaica as an agreeable destination. If her friends are so convinced, they may decide to vacation here and spend some dollars, which might result in a few more jobs. The money from these jobs can be used to support local economic activity and maybe pay a tax or two. Should this continue, a stronger local economy will go far towards reducing poverty and crime, which can translate into further gains in the tourist sector.

Sadly, marginal gains in this sector can be easily wiped away by one successful terrorist plot, one journalist kidnapping, or one posse killing in the States. Any bad press at all shoves the tourist industry further away from success. Yet the government relies more and more heavily upon the success of the tourism product to save the entire island. Mining and agricultural sectors are hobbled by inefficiency and increased global competition, so they are little help. The only real and consistent local money maker is cocaine transshipment, but those profits appear to leave the island.

Certainly, saving Jamaica from herself can be a complex matter, but one that I can easily solve with a few bashes on this here laptop.

Education is critical to the success of this island. An educated population will be more attractive to outside investors, can be more self disciplined, and may refuse to put up with the antics of this government. Unfortunately, I fear that this establishment, like so many others, already knows these truths, and conspires to maintain current levels of illiteracy, ignorance, and ignominy.

Mon, if I were king of Jamaica,…

T’ings be different, fi sure. The hundred megabucks spent on this road could have built 1,000 rural schools, or could have paid annual salaries for 10,000 teachers, or could have purchased 100,000 hybrid uber-goats to advance the scattered herds and develop Jamaica into the Dairy State of the Greater Antilles.

Instead, Frat-boy Tommy and ten thousand of his drunken friends save some time on the bus ride to Negril and get two more hours to chug beer in the foam pit at Margaritaville.

In the few short hours that I would have as king (before the CIA took care of me shortly after lunch that first day), I would decree the bah-jesus out of this place. I would default on all foreign debt, thereby raising the funds required for the rest of my program. I would provide class space to every child to age sixteen, reconstruct and maintain every school and grounds, reduce class sizes, pay teachers more and demand results, expand the libraries, increase public information campaigns, increase skills training and adult education, and encourage literacy. I would make corruption by any government employee a treasonable (i.e hanging) offence and force them to be regularly audited by offshore entities. I would legalize marijuana. I would enforce a quality based national development standard, promote environmental issues and develop renewable energy resources. I would ban spear fishing. I would encourage sustainable development, family gardens, and the consumption of local produce. I would put a deposit on plastic bottles, ban Styrofoam lunch boxes and recycle the junked cars. I would give every voter JA $500 at the polls, distribute a plethora of free condoms, develop more public spaces, and enforce property rights. First thing, though, I would build a moat of jerk stands around the castle.

Immediately, everything would be better.

Well,… lunch would be better.

If the CIA (or JLP, by extension) were on their toes, and I only had the morning to rule, I would have to limit my decree-lations; default on the debt, educate the masses, legalize ganga and kill the corrupt.

BA and I used to play a little game in the food service line at Friley. We would identify the contemptible and sentence them to ten seconds on a tropical paradise, followed by instantaneous transport to the bottom of the sea - a benign and peaceful respite followed by a most heinous crushing (we never solved the instantaneous transport problem, so droves of the unworthy are still out there). From what I understand, transporters are still Beta devices, so I bet they have their share of bugs, plus a real high cost of operation. However, if used locally, the cost of this anti-corruption scheme would be halved, as the locally corrupt have already had their tropical paradise, lacking only the painful crushing. Yet, even those dollars are not available, so I can add this proposal to the overwhelming list of funding shortfalls.

Jamaica’s success is a poser to be sure - one I no longer have the time to figure out. You see, the road has achieved practical completion. I am going elsewhere. Someone else will have to be king.

Hell.

It would be nice if I could wrap up the past three years in some poignant paragraph. One that would make you all feel a little weepy-eyed about the hardships that will continue to face Jamaicans for a very long time to come.

Heck.

Maybe some sarcastic statement would do the trick. One you can write off with the rest of this saga. Just a wave of the hand and a, “well, that’s the Third World for ya.”

Hommina hommina.

I would probably prefer the wry comic closing. Maybe find that one little joke to express the bizarre delight that the gods must take in thrusting me into the world at large. “Okay. A lama, a mullah, and an engineer walk into a bar,…”

Hmmm.

All told, the bottom line is quality of life. As for mine, the commute that once took over an hour now takes but twenty-three minutes.

My work here is done. Read More......

Tree Likkle Birds

If you have been paying attention, you may have figured out that three major mistakes were made on this project (as well as the multitudes of small mistakes). The worst these was the first of these (and it’s sequel), although all three were tragic, at least to the longevity of the roadway.

Back in the day, shortly after the Koreans quit, we recommended that they be fired, sacked, let go,… made redundant. Instead, the Client’s Project Director opted to keep them on board.

So then, we were in a quandary. How do you build a job with a Contractor who does not want to work? In this case, the Client’s Project Director decided to split the project into vertically subcontracted portions, which resulted in a current and continuing blame game regarding completion dates and quality of the underlying works.
The worst mistake, however, was the decision by the Client’s Project Director to reduce the thickness of the pavement.

During the design process, the Company traversed the North Coast and ascertained the condition of the existing pavement. Using high technology methodologies like the “falling weight deflectometer” (where you drop a big hunk of something on the pavement and listen to the thump), and lower technology methodologies like “taking a good look”, combined with estimates as to projected traffic volumes over time, a design for the proposed pavement was developed.

In the more heavily traveled areas of this road, and in areas that would be reconstructed, the Company proposed a subgrade of well compacted marl, then 350 millimeters of select material, then 100 millimeters of crushed stone, then 150 millimeters of asphalt cement concrete. We reckoned (remember that we are an Midwestern Company, where reckoning is inbred) that this would provide for a twenty year functional lifespan, at which point the roadway could be milled and resurfaced and used for another twenty years.

For reasons unknown to me (although money in some form or another might have had something to do with it), the tender documents show the depth of the asphalt layer to be only 85 millimeters. Now, while each layer of the pavement structure adds to its strength, the asphalt layer adds more strength but with greater cost per unit depth. A good pavement design will balance the performance of the various layers with their varying costs to achieve the optimal roadway. In reducing the asphalt layer by 65 millimeters (43%), the projected life of the pavement was reduced by 75%, to only five years. Based upon the original Contract prices, this major loss saved less than 8% of the total Contract cost.

This was lunacy, and a lunacy soon to be repeated, for shortly after the decision was made to retender the works to the Nominated Subcontractors, the Client’s Project Director decided to make additional reductions to the depth of the asphalt layer, this time, down to 50 millimeters. The result is a reduction in serviceable pavement life to a mere two years, plus or minus. Based on the above, a cost savings of about 15% resulted in a 95% loss in pavement life.

Some savings, huh? In the States, the trend is to provide projected pavement lifespans of greater than twenty years. In fact, the most recent sales technique by the asphalt suppliers is that, with proper design and strategic maintenance, their new pavements can last about forever. Certainly, the savings in regular reconstruction costs from now until forever would more than offset a small increase in initial construction cost. But money has something to do with this decision as well.

The reduction in pavement thickness on this highway made the dailies headlines briefly, spurred by various rants from the head of one of the local Chambers of Commerce. The gist of these rants was that the pavement thickness would be reduced significantly. The ranter was too little informed to understand the drastic reduction in pavement life caused by this, and only surmised that strength would be reduced proportionally with the thickness of the asphalt surfacing. Furthermore, the Client never released the original report showing the 150 millimeter design (I keep the office copy of this report in a secret place), so the initial reduction is not widely distributed public knowledge.

This may be the most maddening aspect of this entire assignment. That no matter how we work to maintain quality materials and workmanship, our efforts are sabotaged.

And by the Client, no less.

Hank reminds me on occasion, “We are only installers.”

As such, our responsibility would end once we made recommendation to the Client that they were making another large mistake. After that, our job is to build the road as best as we can.

What accelerates the decline of the roadway even further is the lack of any sort of enforceable vehicle weight restrictions. Too often, I see Contractors haul trucks outfitted with “cheater boards” (wooden rails extended above the top of the dump body) and then filled to a point where the angle of repose of the hauled material defines the load limits. In this case, axle loads are probably twice what they should be, which causes considerably more than twice the damage to this now fragile pavement.

I used to bitch to the Contractors about this, basing my argument on the Contract clause that requires them to obey the law. I would accompany this with veiled threats of backcharging them for repairs based upon theoretical damage caused by their overloaded vehicles. Eventually, someone was kind enough to inform me that the load limit law has not been revised since the 1930’s, and that today’s dump truck, even when deadheading, weighs in excess of the legal limit.

Ah, well. I am reminded of yet another Wailer lyric, simply “don’ worry ‘bout a t’ing, cuz ev’ry likkle t’ing gonna be alright.” Read More......

Blockade

I was again reminded this morning why I should always be alert while behind the wheel. Barreling down the new asphalt, most of the way through my commute, spiraling through the only such curve on the project, fast approaching the bridge at Flint River, I came to see a line of stopped traffic not progressing as far as my corrected vision could discern. “Never take your hand off the shifter knob”, seemed a good topical mantra as I put the transmission through its paces.

Once done, I found myself at the ass end of that aforementioned line of cars, surveying the masses that had gathered just east of the bridge, wondering where the cops were, and asking myself, “who ran off the road this time?”

It is another weird thing about this place, the huge crowds that gather at every auto accident, fatal or no. I have seen crowds of less than a dozen in less traveled rural areas at the sight of a rollover, and I have seen crowds in the hundreds at fatalities along major sections of the road. Random citizens will stop to gasp. Taximen will stop to gawk. Minibuses will stop and disgorge their passengers to gape. School busses will stop, and all the little pickneys will pour out to gasp, gawk, and gape (trying to be so adult). And for them, this sure beats going to work or to school.

So what was it this time? I had for some time predicted that a speeding Lada would fail to slow as the spiral tightened to the left, and would be shaky as he was wrapped into the immediately reversing hard right, losing control and flying off of the embankment and into a very large guango tree which we tried to preserve in tact, but was instead well trimmed with the bucket of an excavator. The tree remained mostly adjacent to the shoulder, just past the clear zone.

As it turned out, the crowd, numbering over eight hundred on the ground by some media reports, was staging a demonstration to protest the condition of their local roads, located many kilometers inland from the North Coast Highway. In their defense, these local roads (their primary access to the highway) have been used by our various contractors for the last five years, poorly enduring thousands of cycles of trucks overloaded with crushed stone heading from quarry to project.

The cops were here as well, sort of directing traffic. Mostly, it seemed that they were there to keep things from getting ugly, just to keep the traffic sort of moving along. If the cops allow traffic to be slowed (as in – large snarling backup), the protestors might feel that they have succeeded. Of course, there is no money to fix their roads, especially in light of the islandwide damage caused to the road network by the incessant rains, which started the day after the last sere installment and have since to present to me a sunny day.

Driving through demonstrations over the condition of the road always makes me feel a bit uneasy. Not particularly unsafe, mind you, just uneasy. On those rare occasions where I am the specific (albeit temporary) target of mass protest, it is exceedingly difficult to explain how established engineering principles and the better established local bureaucracy do not always work towards the same end. Especially so when the target of the explanation is a score or two of people yelling at you. The dissatisfaction is evident in the protestors, and I am rarely in a position to solve their problems. This frustrates the engineer to no end, as unsolvable problems should not exist in a groovy world.

I am resigned then, that Jah-land is not on any groovy world as I envision it.

Question. Why put up with it?

The Company has offered me a position in the Twin Cities. If accepted, I would manage a staff of engineers and technicians in the development of State highway designs. Volume would be somewhere between a million or two in fees each year. They may add “Principle” to my business card. I would live in a cube farm next to the Interstate.

And it would snow.

Lots.

And when people blocked the roads, the Sheriff would waste no time in dragging them off to the big house. Truly, a refreshing change of pace.

The Company may also have a position for me in the Middle East. And by that, I do not mean Maryland. Some emir on the Persian Gulf bought a mess of F-somethings, and now he needs the requisite garage space. There is some fifteen million cubic meters of embankment (to start with) and an estimated construction cost of nearly four hundred million dollars for the whole shootin’ match (so to speak). I would have about the same technical duties as here, but on a much larger scale.

And when people blocked the roads, the leaders of the Jihad would waste no time in dragging them off to the amputation center. Truly, a refreshing change of pace.

When we left the Midwest, I opined that it would last any time from two years to forever. Looking back, the decision we made so very long ago was a simple comparison between what we knew intimately and what we had no clue towards. Then, there was no penalty in not deciding. The deadline would have passed, and we would have remained secure in our exurbane existence.

The gist is now as I forebode – is our overseas duration for two years or forever? Another three to five of this and I may not be any good as a design manager, having spent too much time afield. Another three to twenty five in a cube farm might leave me as a quivering lump under my modular furnishings. The decision is seminal, and fast, fast approaching.

Maybe a demonstration is in order. If only to briefly slow things down. Read More......

End Game

I have spent the last three or four weeks waiting for the rain.

The local meteorologists have yet to mention drought, but it shows in the hillsides, where brown grasses and sparse trees are the dominant vegetation. For the benefit of the folks living adjacent to this highway are actual paved surfaces, shocking in their recent appearance, which replace the marl surfaces, the dust of which had collected on everything within two hundred meters of the roadway. There is still a mess of dust, though, from the continuing shoulder works and unvegetated embankments.

Even in town, there is the aforementioned mess of marl dust, as well as the ash from the burning cane fields, which settles everywhere, leaving a black oily film from the soot. This is a dirty island sometimes, and seasonal rains are all that keeps it clean.

Over the last week, the relative humidity has risen noticeably. The air is muggy. The view out to sea is fuzzy towards the horizon. Any slight sprinkle whets the appetite for more, but instead leaves the air just a bit muggier and accentuates the dirt on my vehicle.

From a road construction point of view, rain is generally bad. It saturates the grades, leaves puddles to be dewatered, and slows down the work.

Rain would be a nice change, nonetheless, but one must be careful what is wished for.

[Dramatic pause]

Being more of a cricket fan, I rarely watch football. To me, there is something about huge scoring during the better part of a week that has appeal over a zero zero draw after ninety minute. Or ninety-two minutes. Or ninety-four minutes seventeen seconds. You never really knows with football. The game officials will extend the time limits of the game to account for play stoppages that occur during the course of the competition. It seems to me that this makes the strategy of the end game less than clear. In American Football terminology, how can you play an effective two minute offence when the last two minutes might last for ten? Or less than two, for all it matters.

And this is where I am today. The project should have been completed by now, but it lingers on due to various, sundry, and monstrously inexcusable delays that occurred during the process. The actual time extension caused by these delays is still unclear. Consequently, the total game time is an unknown.

As is my fate in the Tropics.

This cannot be nearly as bad for me as it is for our local staff. While some of our inspectors have and will transfer to the next segment of the North Coast Highway (from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios), half of them will not, and will find that their services here are no longer required. In the next week or so (we are not exactly sure), we will start to pull them in to make them redundant. Why we use the term “make redundant” instead of “lay off” is one further unknown to add to the stack. It is not the Company that makes them excessive, but the state of the Works. Regardless, what is known is that even one staffer sitting on his rass is redundant. So, once there is no advancing construction to inspect, the inspection staff will be superfluous, and will be let go, one by one.

In worse straits are the hundreds of local laborers, who earned far less than our technical staff, and may not see steady work again for years. Many of the contractors have already made large portions of their labor force redundant. As a result, the project looks mostly abandoned and predominantly incomplete, as there is a heap and a bunch of minor works remaining. It is the seemingly little stuff that remains, stuff not associated with mainline paving operations, so it can be stretched out indefinitely.

As this is no longer an engineering project, but a political project, the actual highway is perceived to be a thin mat of asphalt cement concrete two lanes wide. Anything beyond the limits of the driving surface is redundant, and definitely not a high priority to the Client.

The big question for me, then, is “how long will it take to complete the little stuff, if we do complete the little stuff?” Little stuff, of course, meaning guardrail, pavement marking, signage, erosion protection, clean up – general safety and environmental matters. Why, with the mainline pavement in place, what need is there for the other amenities?

I imagine that we will be fighting this question for the next few months, as the financially strapped Client looks for any way to save a buck or two. He will make some lame suggestion or another, that we delete the guardrail extruder terminals or soon to be ignored speed limit signs, and we will respond that they are a necessary safety feature, and this will happen a lot. Simultaneously, the Contractors will grouse about the need for them to clean up their messes, grade the ditches appropriately, and to perform all of the tasks on their punch lists. I have a feeling that one of our bastard children (as I am wont to call them) may even abandon his retainage instead of performing the balance of his work, but this adventure I will just have to wait out.

And wait I shall, performing my daily drudgery until such time as the final project documentation is complete, some eighteen months from now,… maybe. However, the Client may only want me to wait around until the bulk of the claims are processed, some eight months from now,… maybe. But then again, the Company may get sick and tired of incessantly bugging the Client and waiting for the promised payments that they owe and yank us tomorrow,… maybe.

The likely scenario is eight more months,… maybe. Read More......