Order First! Design Afterward!!!

Holy Mother Of All Fucks Ya'll.

So I managed to put a bow on that goddamned piece of shit project and get it off my desk (where it is now hovering in mid-air, because we aren't sending them shit until they agree to paying us for the extra work that their incompetence generated).

I knocked out a few small items that had piled up - then dove into another project with GUSTO!!! only to find out that it required me to learn a completely different system than the one we normally install.  Fortunately I had another project using that same system to use as a 'go by' but unfortunately they didn't really resemble each other.  I managed to squeeze out something passable (I actually caught a few mistakes on the 'go by' so mine is at least an improvement over it).

Next I had to split a five-story apartment building in half because the dipshits who are building it want to build it in 'phases' and rather than just figure it out, they wanted those phases documented (and were willing to pay us to do it - so hey!)  At first they wanted to break it into four phases, which would've been... clusterfuck, but now that they just wanted two, I started looking at it closer, and damned if I hadn't already designed it almost perfectly to be broken in half.

The location of the main equipment looked a little stupid - being in a room on the opposite end of a parking garage, but that's where it was originally, and nobody told me to move it, so that's where it stayed.  Eventually, once they build Phase 2, it will look a little less silly.  After pondering a few different ways to issue it (including just circling one half and saying 'Phase 1' and the other half and saying 'Phase 2' - which I opted not to do because they had actually agreed to a fairly hefty sum of money to do the redesign), I decided to issue two sets of drawings.

The first set required me to delete the sections of the floor plan that wouldn't be built until the second phase, including removing some doors that were just going to open into nothing, and didn't take very long - until I got to the top floor and realized that I had circuits originating in panels located in rooms that weren't going to exist yet. This required me to add one extra panel (they can get over it) and actually ended up being a better overall design anyway (so they can get over it twice).

The second phase drawings I basically just lightly hatched the 'phase 1' portions and marked them as 'existing', and I'm pretty sure they can figure the rest out.  I addressed a small handful of other comments that had come back on the original drawings (including removing an entire secondary system), and I sent it out (hopefully to never come back - because it was already on its second go-around thanks to a dumbass engineer who dropped the ball (resulting in a change order for us - and thus more money, but also me having to revisit a job that I was sick and tired of already).

 THEN it was on to a complete system upgrade for a massive industrial plant and other associated buildings.  I thought I was ahead of the game on it, because I had (out of the goodness of my heart) already helped the salesman do a bid package showing all of the buildings, locations of devices/equipment, etc. (which was one of the factors that resulted in him being awarded the job), but then I remembered getting an e-mail from the guy who does our ordering asking about colors/markings on devices - despite the fact that I hadn't actually designed the project or put together a bill of materials to order from.

It turned out that the salesman had gotten a sales rep for the company whose equipment we spec to give it a look, put together a list of equipment - and then go ahead and fucking order it.

I wasn't too concerned, because the assumption would be that the rep should know their equipment and give a pretty accurate assessment of what would be necessary for the installation - but then I started looking into what had been ordered, and asking the salesman basic questions that he couldn't answer, so I started to be concerned about trying to shoehorn my design into a pile of equipment what was already (theoretically) on its way.

I made contact with the rep to ask him some simple questions, which he (very annoyingly) decided to turn into a 'teaching moment' which I was not in the fucking mood for.  Rather than *answer my goddamned questions* he decided to suggest that it would be better for me to learn how to figure it out for myself.  In the first e-mail I wrote (and deleted) I basically let him know that I am a motherfucking figuring it out MASTER with decades of experience figuring shit the fuck out - even when I am provided with incomplete/incorrect/misleading information, dealing with incompetents (and incompetence), and even where information is purposefully being withheld from me (or I am 'out of the loop' for one reason or another).

My second e-mail was a bit more on point, and I started off by thanking him for his frank response, telling him that I share his sentiment about figuring things out rather than expecting people to tell me how to do them.  I then proceeded to explain to him that the only reason I was asking for clarification was that our standard operating procedure of me going through the design process and ONLY THEN ordering goddamned equipment had been circumvented, so I basically just needed to know what the fuck he was thinking when he put this particular list of equipment together so I could make my design align with it.

I followed that up by gleefully pointing out two major fuckups that I found in the information he provided me - which ended up making his exhortation to me to 'learn to figure it out' goddamned prophetic, because I *figured out* that he had duplicated the name of a panel (answering my first question about why there wasn't enough room for equipment inside of the panels).  

 The second question I had was about how to derive circuits from the panels, and while he did point me in (sort of) the right direction on what piece of equipment would accomplish this, it required two more e-mails for him to raise a question, answer his own question, only for it to turn out that this piece of equipment was TOTALLY NOT GOING TO FUCKING DO WHAT I NEEDED IT TO DO.

 I thought it was strange that I had never heard of that particular piece of equipment, but it's because we don't fucking use them, because they are outdated, would require additional equipment to make them do what we need them to do, and COST MORE TO BEGIN WITH.  I'm not saying he was intentionally trying to unload this old shit on us, or bilk us for money - but by removing these pieces of equipment from the job (which the salesman can either cancel the orders for, or simply return them) we will save a couple grand (which can go towards fixing other fuckups in the order - such as the batteries for nearly every building in the project being undersized - and the correct size batteries requiring external cabinets (at a hundred bucks a pop).

Despite all of this dumbfuckery, the project itself is actually quite simple, and despite the fact that it is one of the first ones I'm designing using a new iteration of the systems we specify, I am actually already very close to completing it.  I had to rely a little bit on our install manager and some other guys that work here to hash out a few details about the fiber-optic network to connect all of the panels (in this new system) together (because I sure as fuck was done asking that dumbass rep for any more help).

In retrospect, I should've more or less ignored the list of equipment they had ordered, designed the system the way I normally would, and then let them fix the order (in a brief discussion with the owner of my company before lunch, he basically said as much).  I'm disinclined to do a complete redesign now though, so I'll keep shoehorning it in (with a few notable improvements).

After this, I've got one more change-order on a building to complete, and I'll actually be completely caught up (there are other projects that I'll be able to work on - but my backlog will officially be cleared).  Of course, that doesn't mean that one (or more.... or all) of the projects I've done won't come screaming back needing major fixes (or complete redo's).

 All in all it's been a crazy January - we usually start off the year slow, and struggling to find stuff to do while everyone else gets geared up, but this year it's been balls-to-the-wall.

 And anyone who gets in my way can get my balls-on-their-chin.

-SkullFuck

Next Time: Death From Avove!!!

I Know You Are Right, But I Want You To Do It Wrong Anyways.

So holy goddamned fuck ya'll.

I was actually making progress (against all odds) on the shithole piece of fucking shit project that will... not... end..., then the guy who took over the project from the one who originally sold it (and then left the company - leaving us to have to deal with it) decided to come back and throw a wrench in my design - after the fact.

I had managed to complete a relatively decent set of floor plans, and only needed to finish up some calculations and details - when he pointed out that plugging my design into a new spreadsheet resulted in most (damn near all) of the circuits being overloaded.... and I.. fucking snapped.

I punched every single door on the way back to my office while screaming 'FUCK' over and over - then chucked a chair across my office, before kicking the shit out of another chair.  While I'm sure a few people heard it, only 2-3 were actually in their offices (including the dipshit who set me off).

I wandered outside, and pondered just leaving for the day (if not permanently) but my keys were still in my office (along with my jacket, and it was fucking cold out) so I wandered back in again.  It was nearly lunch time, so I grabbed my shit and left - in no condition to be behind the wheel of a car, but I managed to get something to eat (only punching the fucking shit out of my steering wheel a few times), and came back to see what the fallout would be.

Fortunately nobody really gives a fuck how I act/talk at my office - and the guy who set me off had decided to go get lunch too, so he wasn't there.  I pulled another guy in (who also hates the guy who set me off) and we reviewed what it was that he was babbling about when he told me my circuits were overloaded.

That was when I remembered overhearing the guy talking to an engineer a few weeks prior on a project that we had completed and issued.  He was concerned about the way we did the circuit calculations, and was refusing to put his stamp on the drawings unless we did what he wanted.  What it basically came down to (without going into too much detail) is that he acknowledged that our (already conservative) calculations (related to battery sizing) were right - but he wanted to make them even more conservative.

The result would've been having to go back through the project and completely redo every single circuit in the building - BUT we were able to head it off by up-sizing the wire for the circuits (probably at our own cost).  I was given the updated spreadsheet that reflected this dumbass method of designing (basically ignoring the size of battery we are putting in... for... reasons?), but I had already been doing my layout based on our standard calculations.

 This isn't the first time this has happened - we had another (government) client who decided to start getting up in our shit, and the resulting calculations would've had us limited to putting a small handful of devices per circuit, and only being able to run very limited distances (the upshot of which would be having to add extra power supplies).

Upon finding out that we were being asked to do this (not just on that particular project - but every project we do - whether or not the client was a dumbass) we went back to doing it correctly - right up until this most recent clusterfuck.  After calming down a bit - I was able to convince the guy (who I hopefully scared - at least a little bit) that we just needed to submit my drawings as-is, and only make changes if the client (another government client) actually requested that we do so.

I went back to my office, but the stress meant the rest of my day was fucking shot due to not being able to concentrate on shit.  We revisited the discussion right before I left, and he was right back to trying to convince me that we needed to redo the vast majority of the project as if we had never talked (this guy is super-smart when it comes to electronics/electrical stuff, but is an abject moron when it comes to just about everything else).

This morning we discussed it briefly again, and I have hopefully convinced him that we're going to use the idiotic calculations, up-size the wire - and if the owner of our company balks at the extra cost, telling him that the other option would be to add more power supplies (in addition to spending even  more time re-designing this stupid fucking project) - so it's basically a wash.  

 I'm currently pondering whether or not to just pull the owner in now, and pit him up against dipshit - because I'm basically being asked to 'fix' a functional design based on new criteria that doesn't make any sense, basically allowing a different client to dictate how we design.  I acknowledged to dipshit that his decision to kowtow to that client (and attempt to sidestep any future bitching by this client) is due to him being exhausted with having to argue with idiots - but this is a hill I would absolutely be willing to die on.

Now I get to see if I can stay focused enough to finish the rest of the project (I'm going to need to bring dipshit in for one last thing, which I can guarantee is going to be like pulling teeth) and get it the fuck out - just so they can eat it the fuck alive, and fuck me in the ass so hard I want to drive to wherever they are and spoon feed them their own feces.

This whole 'lets try to appease them before the fact' attitude is a massive waste of time - because (as I discussed with dipshit) while it's possible that they may obsess over the same thing as the other client, chances are their obsession will lie elsewhere, on some other aspect of the design.  It's also not a good precedent to set - allowing the lowest common denominator to dictate how we (who have designed and installed countless fully-functional systems) do our work.

He did have one good suggestion - that we could go to the codes officials (since it is dumbasses quoting/misinterpreting code to us that is driving this problem), present our case, and request an official interpretation - so that we will have something to point future dumbasses to when they attempt to dumbass.

I doubt that's going to happen though, we'll just keep being beholden to dumbasses - many of whom are simply bored and want to run us through the wringer in order to justify their own bloated wages.

The thing that gets me, is that if it's not Revit (as it was with my last job - and tangentially at this one as I've been describing in my previous posts) - it's the same fucking mentality keeping me from being able to do my job.  Once I get this thing done, I've got several other projects lined up behind it, and to be brutally honest, I don't know what the fucking point is anymore.

I think the only thing that keeps me going is that I'm not going to allow dumbasses and dipshits to break me.

The problem is that I may very well end up breaking (at least a few) of them.

-SkullFuck

 <<<UPDATE: The owner ended up coming to me for a status update (mainly because he's concerned about other projects piling up behind this one).  I informed him of the dipshit throwing a wrench in it (dipshit heard us talking and came in to be part of the conversation) and long story short - the owner agreed that we don't let the engineer on one project dictate how we design a project they aren't involved in - so we're back doing it the way I planned all along, and fuck the dipshit.

Oh and on a side note, I might've mentioned it before, but dipshit is also unsurprisingly our resident Covid denying, Fauci hating, Anti-Vaxx Trumptard who somehow manages to make every single conversation, regardless of topic, into a rant about 'libtards', 'tree huggers', etc. as if it has any bearing on what the fuck we are doing at any given point in time.

He just ducked his head into my office a few minutes ago and the first thing I said to him was 'fuck you'.  He laughed and we had a brief conversation - I'm pretty sure he's blissfully unaware of (i.e. too stupid to understand) how close he comes to dying on a daily basis.>>>

(Next Time: 'Let's order the equipment first - THEN design the project')