Ah, another day.
Still no Revit here (I thought it was the future???) but still watching other people trip over their dicks trying to model stuff (incorrectly) that has no reason to be modeled, and due to their ineptitude, causing projects to run over because they can't coordinate jack or shit on their drawings - because they are too busy doing 'coordination models'.
It's been ridiculously busy here - which is the way I like it. It makes the days go by quickly, and I never have to worry about having something to do. The problem is, whenever things do ramp up to this level, it's guaranteed that some dipshit will come stumbling drunkenly through the middle of it with their diseased micro-penis waving around to throw a wrench in things.
I've had an ongoing project (renovation of two 12 story tall towers with two more stories underneath and connecting them), and we finally got one of the towers completed (or at least the work for that phase) These idiots want to break down everything into 'packages' rather than just figure it all out at one time. I can understand why they do it for bidding, but there is literally zero reason for the design to be done like that.
Now I'm onto the second tower - plus stuff we didn't do in the first tower because of 'hey let's split this thing up into bits and pieces (see above). They've already reduced the scope - but since the engineering drawings I have to go off of haven't been updated, I don't actually know what is staying and what is going, so I'm just putting it all on there, and they can tell me to take it off later (easier to erase than to draw, I figure).
So the guy whose project it is has been AWOL for weeks, then shows up to tell me that the deadline that he had promised them (without making sure it was feasible for me to meet it) is (wait for it....) TODAY! (Not acutally 'today' - since I am writing this after the fact...), and they want to have it by the end of the work day. The problem being, I don't have shit, because dude refused to share any information with me, and kept assuming that I knew everything I needed to know (despite multiple e-mails and conversations where I told him that I did not - and despite him putting in multiple RFI's that went unanswered).
Well, after nearly smashing my keyboard and destroying my desk (literally - scaring the fuck out of dude), I finally got through to him that I (6'3" 245#) am not one to be fucked with. With his full attention, I proceeded to knock out floor plans for the entire project (fortunately some of the floors are the same, but there were extensive changes on the lowest and highest levels). I knew that this wouldn't be sufficient to get them off our ass permanently, but it was a good first step.
There was only one detail I couldn't wrap my head around - and neither could he, despite the fact that he had sold the project, but never bothered to figure it out - granted, some of it was the fact that the Electrical Engineering drawings sucked (and were obviously the work of a Revitard). Finally I decided to make a phone call to the Mechanical Engineer on the project - and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was a guy I used to work with at another firm (this guy is 7'+ tall, but exceedingly nice - a true 'gentle giant').
He was able to confirm what I had hoped was the case (because the alternative was going to mean redoing a lot of calculations and details), and we had a nice chat about the state of the project and the firm we both used to work for. It actually made my day, in the midst of all of that chaos, to find out that I wasn't the only one getting fucked repeatedly (although he's most likely getting paid more than I am to be fucked - but he also takes on a lot more liability, so....).
Once I had these drawings slapped together, I was able to get caught up on some other projects, and then just yesterday I gave them a complete and thorough massaging, including adding/updating some calculations, and adding details to show point to point connections on every single device we are adding (which will promptly be ignored when they go out and wire the building however the fuck they want to - which is what they did on the first tower).
This is guaranteed to get them off my ass for the short term - and possibly even enough to get them started building it, and then I can pick up the rest of the slack in the 'as-built' set (hey - a man can always hope, can't he?)
While I was trying to finish these changes, I get an e-mail asking about another project (a piece of a larger ongoing project, but what should've been a pretty easy one - cest la vie...). Apparently, whoever designed this fucking thing was hired to design a 'shell' building, and then also hired to do a finish-out (again, rather that just doing a fucking project, lets fuck it up as much as possible). When they did the finish out, instead of just blowing away everything in the open portion of theshell area (which hadn't actually been built yet), they tried to retain as much of it as possible.
This resulted in a shitty design, that I knew had multiple massive deficiencies, but that I went ahead and based my design off of. Of course, whoever reviews their drawings didn't bother looking at the design until we submitted our drawings based on that design, and only then did they start to realize what a shitty design it was. Somebody came up with a 'solution' for fixing it - that actually did take care of most of the massive deficiencies, but by no means did it solve all of the problems.
So then I get a marked up set of my *original* drawings, telling me to 'add this', 'move this', etc. etc. - not acknowledging that we had already issued revised drawings - which I promptly ignored because 'go fuck yourself' (and the salesman was told they wanted the cost of the changes reduced - which he will do - before adding additional charges for making additional changes (maybe make the net difference $300 less or so, just as a joke).
Oh - and in the interim, they realized that there were devices we needed to put on the drawings in the kitchen area, but that weren't on the original design - and which they claimed they shouldn't have to pay for, because they were 'in the design from the beginning of the project', despite, based on the drawings we were given to work off of, they abso-fucking-lutely weren't. The guy who was feeding me changes had to go find a copy of the kitchen equipment suppliers plan to even be able to show me where the fuck they were.
The salesman laughed that one off though, and said he's still going to charge them for those - then submitted an RFI to ask about whether or not they have gas in the kitchen (which, if they do - then I can guarantee nobody has thought of this) which will require additional equipment for monitoring and shutting it off (and which they will probably pretend was 'in the project from the beginning' so they shouldn't have to pay for it either).
Anyway, now I'm back to yet another project that won't fucking die - where they went out and installed whatever they fuck they wanted to, realized it wasn't going to work because they had overloaded circuits, so they went out and made changes, submitted markups to me, I fixed the drawings, re-ran the calculations, and guess what? They fixed the loading problems, but now they've got voltage drop issues! (Oh, and they miscalculated how many devices they had on each circuit - but the real numbers were actually an improvement).
After this will be markups on another project I issued a while back, but at least it's on it's first review, and I was expecting to have to do this (there are a few more floating around out there that will, no doubt, show up as well. Then it's on to a *NEW* project!!! (That I have zero information on, and don't expect to be given any until it's a fucking emergency). A few other new projects have been floating around, but I think other people will be handling those (they are happy to do so, because that means they don't have to do what I'm doing - which is almost all government work - thus the clusterfuck).
'Thus The Clusterfuck'.
-Skullfuck
Next Time: WTF?!?!?
