DOT Story

July 17, 2005
I was driving down the project one day and I happened to notice that there was a flume on the high end of one of the curb and gutters. I looked at the plan and sure enough, it wasn’t suppose to be there. So I went to my inspector Sue and I asked her "When you measure something up in the field, do you look at the plan to get the location?" Because when you post any item they ask for a location. She said "Yes, Why?" I said "Well I noticed that there is a flume that isn’t on the plan but it is on the project. I assume you measured it up, but why didn’t a red flag go off in your head and why didn’t you ask me why it was there but not in the plan." She said "I saw you talking to the contractor and I assumed that you told him to put it there." I said "Next time they place something and it isn’t in the plan please ask me." I told her that I would take care of taking that posting out of the system. Here is where it really gets good. I went to take the posting out of Field Manager and the Spreadsheets, and you know what, that flume wasn’t there. So I asked her about it. She just said "I must have missed it." I tried to explain to her that this is a big deal that we missed it, even though in this case we weren’t going to pay the contractor for putting in something that we don’t need. In this particular case it worked out but normally if it was something that was suppose to be there, we would have short changed the contractor about $500.