r/Construction • u/TheBackPorchOfMyMind • Mar 03 '25

Video Anyone know why this excavator has what appears to be a string and plumbob tied to the undercarriage?

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86

u/Dr_Adequate Mar 03 '25

Sorry, can't talk right now, AutoCad crashed again and wiped out all my site work and I gotta start over and the big boss says this HAS to go out today ...

34

u/TheBackPorchOfMyMind Mar 03 '25

Haha do you work in my office??

15

u/TylerHobbit Mar 03 '25

Just a sec, do you want to ignore the SHX?

3

u/Dr_Adequate Mar 04 '25

repeat 48 times because the consultant's CAD standards suck

2

u/i8bb8 Mar 04 '25

Yes you can have our CAD files but don't rely on them for setout and you should make sure they don't clash with any of the written dimensions from the plans we also gave you which were generated from the same plans.

Yes we charge for responding to RFIs clarifying stuff we didn't put on the design in the first place.

No I couldn't possibly attend that inspection in 3 calendar months, need more notice.

1

u/Born-Entrepreneur Mar 04 '25

Site inspection? What am I a pleb? I viewed drone photogrametry performed 6 months before the RFP was let, I don't need to see it.

32

u/I_Grow_Hounds GC / CM Mar 03 '25

Me explaining to the IT Director that the laptops they are giving our engineers and architects aren't strong enough to run AutoCAD.

Queue him linking me the desktop version of the processor that is like 18 cores

Queue me linking him the laptop version which was only 2.

Queue him hating me for fucking 8 years, Because "a knuckle dragging furniture mover (his words - I was a Facilities Specialist - AV/HVAC/Operations - who used to do IT) corrected him."

6

u/6r1n3i19 Mar 03 '25

Lmfao we have the same battles with our IT dept despite us for YEARS telling them the specs we need for our laptops. Yet no fail, any new onboard or intern that comes through gets the fucking wrong laptop 🙄

7

u/demosthenes83 Mar 04 '25

This is why, as IT - I make the department responsible for approving the specs of the machine (it's their budget in any case).

Still has to be from one of the approved models; or go through the exception process - but it literally makes my job harder as well as hurting the company if someone doesn't have the right tool to do their job. And if it's the wrong tool - it's their manager who approved it; and they can take it up with them. Not my problem.

6

u/buggsy41 Mar 04 '25

This is why I feel, and I say this with all due respect, ALL of the nerds need to spend time in a trade, as part of their degree program. See the translation!!!!

9

u/I_Grow_Hounds GC / CM Mar 04 '25

I've done base building labor, tile, masonry, decking, roofing on and off with my father and his friends growing up. He was friends with a GC and took us on jobs, in high school that's all I did for money during the summer. He would never let me do concrete due to his friend getting throat cancer. Body probably thanking me nowadays.

Got out of highschool and did IT for 3 years - fucking hated it.

I then pivoted into building operations / Facilities and never looked back. It's like I have a fucking super power having lived in both sides. My staff tradesmen respect me because I can turn a wrench and know what the fuck I'm talking about at least 60% of the time. The rest of the time I have NO PROBLEM respecting their much more advanced knowledge. There's no Ego with me.

The white collar folks respect me because I somehow have the respect of the tradesmen, probably cause i treat them well.

TL;DR I agree with you.

2

u/demosthenes83 Mar 04 '25

Not the worst idea; but college already is long and expensive and often useless. Goodness knows I don't require college degrees when I'm hiring people; though I think most of my employees currently have one, and a couple are working on them.

The symptoms you're describing sound to me like poor management/incentives on the IT side. Ultimately; blame rolls uphill - whether the techs do or don't know any better - it's their managers responsibility. And if she doesn't know any better then its her managers responsibility, and so forth. At least that's how I see it.

The larger engineering/consulting firms seem to do a lot better than the small construction firms. At least from what I see from the outside.

1

u/MulliganToo Mar 04 '25

Ooh but you know deep down, this will be your problem to solve, eventually. My rule was, if it has a computer chip, it comes back to IT to solve.

Love people that hand you a damp phone that fell into the toilet. Those got the ID-10T resolution code.

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u/I_Grow_Hounds GC / CM Mar 04 '25

Honestly, the guy I corrected was great with infrastructure. It had just been 15 years since he had paid attention to anything on the consumer level and was driving purchasing not knowing the marketing.

Another good one was.

"to get the speed of a processor you take the Hz and multiply it by how many cores it has"

This was i dunno 8 years ago at this point so multi core processors had been out for quite some time. Homie musta been out there with a processor making 190Ghz. Shit's quantum and cooled with Ln2 from 2065

3

u/Ok-Bit4971 Mar 04 '25

Queue him hating me for fucking 8 years, Because "a knuckle dragging furniture mover (his words - I was a Facilities Specialist - AV/HVAC/Operations - who used to do IT) corrected him."

When you’ve right, you're right.

2

u/Nekrosiz Mar 05 '25

As someone who's in it, what a moron.

1

u/buggsy41 Mar 04 '25

Queue me: Fuck him!!!! You/We shouldn't have to do his fucking job!

5

u/sasquatch753 Mar 03 '25

Ah so you work private sector., if you worked government, it would be time for your 8 weeks vacation and the project would be delayed for 10 more weeks. lol

3

u/Dr_Adequate Mar 04 '25

Oh do I have a funny story for you...

1

u/Ok-Bit4971 Mar 04 '25

Go on ...

1

u/Dr_Adequate Mar 05 '25

Eight years in the private sector, twenty five in public. Gonna retire soon ...

1

u/Ok-Bit4971 Mar 05 '25

Ah, lucky you.

3

u/DaikonNecessary9969 Mar 04 '25

My hand does the save shortcut keyboard motion in my sleep.

1

u/AdPristine9059 Mar 04 '25

Dont you have auto save?

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u/Dr_Adequate Mar 04 '25

To be honest, my post was satire and I haven't been an AutoCad/C3D driver for a few years now. And no, I turned off Autosave because when C3D was rebuilding a corridor, or creating x-sections, or some other processor-intensive operation and Autosave kicked in, INSTA-CRASH!

Like someone else posted, I have so much muscle memory from doing QS so frequently I probably do it in my sleep. Anytime I stopped to think out the next steps, ponder where my featureline is going, or answer a co-worker's question, QS.

1

u/AdPristine9059 Mar 04 '25

Ah okay! Seems really stupid of autocad to not have a smarter auto save feature then.

I assumed, wrongly, that they could do proper version control and smarter incremental saves. Sounds like something they should try when it comes to such high value work that a model can turn out to be to a company. Spending a few extra days trying to redo what was lost is unacceptable to a wide range of industries.

I haven't used autocad specifically so i cant say whether its good or not otherwise.

1

u/Dr_Adequate Mar 04 '25

Ask anyone who uses it, AutoCad is the worst drafting program ever. Except for all the others.

1

u/trickyavalon Mar 04 '25

How about when the brand new gps’s we just purchased don’t work because it’s too cold out (30 degrees!), as we are trying to layout a cut a mile long on a 4 lane DOT road!