Faulconer Construction, UVa, W. M. Jordan - Ship of Fools?

Of the roughest days on the job perhaps the most brutal came courtesy of an engineer. As many of you perceive there was some real shady work going on. Honestly as messed up as it is at the end of the day any craft or tradesman wants to believe that they've done something helpful. Even if the sum of some days meant that chemistry students would have a potty to poo in - well, at least it's not in the street. This is my home, and my neighborhood, and I would rather see it go down a magical ferry ride to poo paradise where it may be meet its brethren.

So after digging 150 under four steam tunnels (yeah, the poorly shielded ones), experiencing several collapses, and watching gallons of raw sewage flood what is essentially my back yard, there was still that sparkle of redemption.... it was finished, and it needed to be done, and it wasn't perfect, but.... well whatever.

Along shows this engineer, and I just had to ask him - "Why did we have to replace the existing line, and install a new one 2/10's of an inch lower?"


To which he replied "Because that old terra cotta line really needed to be upgraded."

To which my colleague and I winced "WTF!!! Are you kidding?!?! That was a ductile iron line we just replaced with cheap PVC!?!" NB: for those tender readers not versed - ductile iron is a heck of a lot stronger than PVC plastic.

To which he replied "Oh."

So in other words that entire exercise could have been prevented had anyone just looked in the man hole to see what was there. Several $$$$$$ thousand+ with lives risked and it was entirely pointless. The complete and utter lack of effort on the part of everyone involved is astonishing. Facilities Management at UVa, could have poked there heads in there, someone at WM Jordan might have wondered about lowering a line that little, and anyone at Faulconer could have stepped up... c'est le pee - ship of fools for real.