A really long DOT story, but worth the read

June 17, 2005

On Wednesday I spoke with Nura about what was going on the project. I told her that there was some EBS (Excavation Beyond Surface) going on hear the batch plant. And she replied with where is that. We are a month into a project and she doesn’t know where the batch plant is. For those of you who don’t know, other than Nura, a batch plant is where they produce the concrete for the job. The batch plant is rather large and stands 3 or 4 stories up I the air. It is pretty hard to miss. Apparently my staff doesn’t drive the job everyday. I don’t know how many times I have had to tell either of the idiots to drive the project at least once a day. Of all the things these two idiots that I worked with either did or did not do during the project, I think this is the most perplexing. Our job as DOT staff is to monitor the project. I understand that the project is about 4 miles long. If you don’t drive the project from end to end every day how do you know what is going on? But throughout the project I had to constantly remind both of them to do this. I don’t understand. Yesterday, around 1 in the afternoon, I asked my staff to go out to the northeast corner of the intersection of the Oconomowoc Bypass and CTH Z and make a mark on the water hydrant where it will intersect with the new shoulder / ditch slope. I checked in with them at around 2:00 as they were carrying back the surveying equipment and they said that they had everything under control. Although they told me that they had not yet made a mark on the hydrant. This task is a matter of setting up a level, shooting an elevation at the bench mark, then shooting an elevation at the hydrant, reading a plan to find out the design elevation of the ground where the hydrant is, performing a math and making a mark on the hydrant pipe. There is no way that this could take any longer than 10 minutes for two competent people to accomplish. But as you may have ascertained from my previous stories, we are not dealing with two competent people. At 3:00 I got a call from Nura, asking for help on getting the mark on the hydrant. I couldn’t believe that this could take so long. I told her I would meet her out there and we would set things up. I let her set up the tripod. I want to stop here for a second, it has been an hour and they don’t even have the tripod set up. What? Anyhow back to setting up the tripod, at first it appeared that she was setting it up for a midget. I told her if she wanted to bend over to look through the level, that was up to her. Personally, I like to set up the tripod and level so that the eye piece is well at eye level. Then I watched her level the level. That was entertaining. In case you might not know, the level sits a top the tripod and there are 3 leveling screws, and a bubble on top that you use to make sure that the level is level. She leveled it in one direction and said that was it. Are you kidding me? I have always been taught that you level it in one direction and then you swivel the level around 180 degrees and make sure it is level again. Normally you need to do this a number of times to fine tune it. Mind you that Nura had told me that she had done some survey work in the past. You could have fooled me. We finally got this take done. Then I took Nura and Sue on a little field trip because neither of them had driven the project yet that day. 3:30 in the afternoon and neither of them had any idea what work or what contractors were working on half of the project. As we were driving I asked them, what contractors are working today. Nura couldn’t tell me a single contractor, Sue got two. Hardy Geo Tech was one of the contractors who is doing the surveying. They were actually doing the surveying at CTH Z while Nura and I were shooting the pipe. She didn’t even know what they were doing. I told her those little pink flags (the flags are attached to spikes pounded in to the base coarse, and the flags have the elevation of the roadway written) don’t just grow up out of the ground. What work are they doing today? How far are they on the Lang Road excavation? I didn’t get a good answer out of either on either question. Obviously neither had been out on the project at all today. We drive down to the batch plant, because I honestly believe that neither has been to the borrow pit or by the batch plant. We stop at the end of the concrete pavement at the west end of the project. What station are we at? Nura said that she didn’t see any stake. I said that you shouldn’t need a stake, this is the beginning of the project, you should know where the project begins and ends, it is written on the front page of the plan in fairly large lettering. Sue did know this one. I showed them the borrow pit. I told them that when they are done with it, that I want it cross sectioned. And that they were going to do it. Sue wanted to know how they were going to get down there. I said walk. The slopes really aren’t that steep. Then we went over to East Lang road, where neither of them had been since Peterson started working in this area. They were working in the cut section. I drove up to the cut section, next to a lathe pounded in the shoulder that read “C 6.9”. “Nura, how big of a cut are they making here?” The “C” stands for cut, and the 6.9 stands for 6.9 feet. I.E. they have to lower the shoulder 6.9 feet. She had no idea. She is an engineer and no idea about anything on the project. A month into the project she has no clue. This is my help.