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| You hit the nail directly on the head, Jon. Some engineers actually have some common sense (key words here are "some"); however, the bean counters value engineer everything to ease constructability and cut cost (and often rightfully so)
Back when I was in school (BSCE, Univ. of Alabama, 2001), I was really amazed with some of the exercises & formulas we learned in engineering. A very memorable class was an advanced foundation design class. The biggest two things I got out of that class were:
1. We studied countless failures of buildings & structures. So many in fact that I became paranoid walking around tall buildings because I kept looking at potential failure points. Even today, I get nervous when I get around silos...
2. The over-engineering required for foundations. We would spend two or three pages working out countless formulas & derivatives to then put a Factor of Safety of "3" and sometimes as much as "5." Was it really necessary to do all of that work to then shrink the allowable forces by 80%?
In construction (and a lot of other things in life), I think the statement below pretty well summarizes everything:
You can have it cheap, fast, or high quality. Pick which two of the three you want. | |
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Why do engineers (rant)
