By Discipline:

Civil [5]

More often, engineers at project sites keep themselves busy resolving man made problems than designing for the natural forces of nature using applied science and technology. But if everything works as per design, and people do not make mistakes, or management does not change opinion, an engineer’s life will be very uninteresting and unromantic. It is the intellectual challenges that springs up every day on projects out of nowhere that keep the project field engineers life interesting and engaging.

I have an old friend who is a civil engineer with a brilliant sense of humor. He told me this story about how an excellent example can cut across cultural, bureaucratic, hierarchical and personal barriers to convince something to someone. First I will try to give you a little feel of the background of how large projects get built, so that you can understand the simple but powerful essence of the story.

At times the problems look so difficult and complicated but solutions are simple if right stake holders are involved in resolving.

Gas turbine foundation is the most important concrete foundation of a combined cycle power plant. Starting right from design engineering to pouring of concrete, a group of specialist very carefully review and approve the every aspect of design including the details of concrete pouring methodology.

Through the sixth-floor office windows, I was looking at the heavy dark clouds and the rain pouring out of them. I knew from my previous experiences, the traffic in Gurgaon gets bad after evening showers. I started early for home, a distance of about 6.5 km. I drove about 4 km and near Signature Tower found myself driving into the road leading to the Huda City Center metro station with at least a foot of running water under my car. About a 100 meters further, I stopped in the middle of standstill traffic. In next two hours, I moved about 300 meters. It took another 30 minutes to negotiate a right turn and join absolute chaos and mayhem, now best known as - the "Gurujam"

There is a well-known saying “One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions”. And nowhere else it is more appropriate than at project sites, where every day, new problems surface and most problems are in the realm of physical interference, hard mismatch, slow movement or settlement.