DOT Story

July 29, 2005

I was driving down the project today and I stopped by the foreman for the concrete crew. They were setting up the forms for the concrete medians. I asked him if there were any problems. He said no not really, but he was wondering about this sign location. We walked to the end of the concrete median where the concrete ends and the grass part of the median begins. About a foot inside the mark for the end of the concrete was a mark for a sign. I couldn’t believe it. He asked why we don’t just move it a foot or two so it would be outside of the concrete. I said I know and wiped out the mark with my foot. Then I went back to the field office. I looked that signing plan that Nura had been using to lay out the signs. About two weeks earlier I told her that I was going to be putting her in charge of all the permanent signing. At that time I told her that we needed to locate the signs that would be going in the concrete medians. I looked at the plan and there was one sign for Junction with CTH Z. This is the same sign that the foreman and I had just been talking about. I told her at that time that we could move that sign two feet so that it wouldn’t fall in the concrete. This makes things easier for everyone since they don’t have to form around a hole for the sign. Plus leaving a formed out hole at the end of a concrete slab would increase the chance of the concrete cracking. Of course at that time I knew that Nura wouldn’t remember the conversation so I went on to her plan and made a note. So despite me verbally telling her and writing it down on her plan, she still marked it to be put in the concrete. When I asked her about it, she said, “Well I made a mistake.”