written in a hurry
[unedited]:
| n'joy |

WHEN ENGINEER IS ACCUSED
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Here is one engineer last year in Uk who got into a contract to supervise a certain job and got into serious trouble. It was the contractor who had put the engineer in the mess and the client latched onto the engineer to pay for the errors because he was not on site when the contractor was making the errors. Ofcourse, the engineer could win the court case but the time and money to do all this was getting on his nerves plus the fact that he had other work on his plate that he wished not to be affected. Such was his weakness and he transferred it to the institution of structural engineers for solace. As I write now, he has probably done a few calculations and has probably accepted to take in the error, so that his works are not disturbed. Point is, how can the Institute of Structural Engineers in UK protect such and do they have a provision for such?


WHEN THE CLIENT ASKS FOR TOO MUCH!
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He asked, how much can such a roof truss cost?
The foreman said, about 75,000/-.
Ah!?, and 10trusses would cost 750,000/=?
No, said the foreman, but 300,000shs.
And that confused the client who wanted to know the exact price so that he doesnt
feel cheated by the foreman
The client wasnt convinced for he thought that in that case if
300,000/- is for 10trusses then for a single truss, that is 300,000/10 = 30,000.
"No sir", said the foreman, "it has to be atleast 70,000/=."
"You think I didnt study math?", said the furious client.
And the foreman humbly replied: sir I know you are one of these great
mathematicians but that is academics and this is our turf, in a real situation,
sir, making a single truss means a waste of my day's effort if you are to count
theoretically like that. Realistically, the whole day would be wasted.
Thus asking me to make one truss in a day is more expensive than making 10trusses.
And the client went to look for another foreman.
I only got to know when the client was narrating to me the whole ordeal
and I wondered how I would break the news to him, that you(the client) were the
wrong one instead.
This was one of the many times when clients prefer to handle the technicians
on their own. This is very problematic everywhere in the world you'd go to.
Nathaniel
feb'10

WHEN THE LABOUR PRICES GO UP
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Client: I want to pay you on a daily basis
Foreman: ok.
Client(C): so how much
Foreman(F): 95,000shs
C: (he is not amused):
F (notices it and explains): In a day, I would need two skilled ones and two porters
to do the building work.
Meaning that I get 50,000/=, every skilled man gets 20000/= and a porter gets 7500/=.
And the supervising engineer gets off 2000/= from my salary for sacred trust issues.

C: But last two year, I read that a foreman gets 35000, skilled=12000, porter=5000. You cheating?
Why the increase?
F: Because you have increased price of bread at your supermarket.
C: (not amused)
F: actually more sir, your transportation system was increased by 500/=, sugar increased by 300/=, food by 300/=, fruits by 400/=, you, the chairman of the board for our school increased the fees by 100,000/=.
In otherwords, sir, you've increased all the basic necessities, and that makes me unable to sustain my family unless when the salary increases by an extra dinaro!
C: ashamed, he now knew that "what goes around indeed comes around!"

He was wrong in thinking that those stinging decisions only affect the others minus him.
Little did he know that every decision he would make would eventually get back to him
through the interrelated network of activities that joins all people within the community.

He now embarked onto breaking this interrelated activities where the workers would be made to pay for more without the workers having sufficient reasons to ask for a wages increase! he dreamt on.

WHEN THE LABOURERS DID THE TRICK ON THE CLIENT
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As the client figured out ways of making more money, he thought of a way of breaking the inter-related activities so that the construction worker pays more for the necessities without the workers asking for more during the construction of his new supermarkets.
Huh! he continued dreaming on. The workers likewise were figuring out of making more money from the client.
They had kind of made it easier on them.
They had persuaded the client to pay them on a daily basis.
Meaning that a wall that would be constructed in a single day would take 1.5days.
It is that easy, even when the client is on site. The workers would be so busy yet
not finishing the works in the required time. This extra trick by the workers was
due to the fact that the client had refused to increase their daily package meaning that
- the foreman would get 35000/-
- the skilled worker 13000/-
- the porter 6000/-
- the supervising engineer taken out of the picture.
The client was particularly so confused as to why the supervising engineer(also called architect) would visit the site anyway and more to that get double the money, part from the foreman and part from the client himself.

THE CLIENT'S CONFUSION OF THE SUPERVISING ENGINEER'S ROLE
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Thus the client did the simple math.
Ideally, the supervisor would visit the site on mondays, wednesdays and saturday morning and would get
65,000/- from the client plus the sacred trust fee from the foreman.

So reasoned the client, sitting on his porch facing the lake waters. Pondered him that if the supervising engineer is taken out of the picture, him alone would save 65,000shs x3day=195000shs per week.

And this saved money would be used to buy an extra 1000bricks on site that would be able to build an extra 6m long wall on his supermarket.
Behold, the client had done his math up to this point and saw it was good. In order to fill the vacuum, he
did raised the level of the foreman to be a site engineer and according to him, all was good.

Problem was, he was breaking the sacred trust between the supervisor and the foreman who are the only ones
who can fully discuss technical issues in between them. Likewise, the lesser workers had seen it as an opportunity to pounce on any opportunity to trick the socalled witty client and the technician on material usage. The client has not any idea that these workers have a kind of psychology that sometimes surpasses a university-trained psychologist. These workers could would infiltrate the client's mind with such petty issues as to how they have built similar houses even without the need for those socalled professionals who call themselves architect, engineer, surveyor...etc! And the client had bought it just like so many clients do these days.
And thus the building started developing cracks. And the client recalled the supervisor telling him that it was your work to confirm that the drawings are correct. "THAT'S WHY I PAID YOU FOR THE DESIGN", shouted the Client.

WHEN LOCAL WORKERS'S PSYCHOLOGY RUIN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
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Who, for heavens sake would have believed that these people use their mind in the most cunning of ways?
Which later gets discovered by the general public?

WHEN THE LAZY ENGINEER GOES SELFISH
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The client reasoned out the engineer by telling a story of a friend who suffered at the selfishness of the engineer. He thus concluded:
It wont take you long to notice that so many engineers step out of the loop of their fellow engineers trying to look for a little extra more buck and by so doing steping out of the code of ethics boundaries that every engineer has to follow. It wont take you long to see that such engineers have stagnated to the extent that what used to apply some years back is already taken out of the picture.
And the client had been warned.
The client had been told that when chosing an engineer, seek to know their activity roles with other fellow professionals, professional societies, for such constant activity roles makes two or more people grow within the profession.
The client had to listen.

THE MAKING OF A QUACK ENGINEER
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Come on guy, what have you been doing in the village?
I've been building huts and i have seen that they do not fall.
I have a lot of experience big enough to build a skycraper.
And the client was savvy not for anything but he saw this one
would be cheaper.