2/07/10

Though it started as a boring day, eventually it ended up being one of my most exciting days at work yet! In the morning we were asked to check for the outer dimensions of the third slab of vijaya apartment. So Shiv n me ended up doing that. It didn’t take too long by the time we had finished it. We found errors(like the two of us, up till now, seem to be having a flair for doing!) and reported em to Baba sir. He came around 12pm and checked it out. We found out that this building started out with errors itself, so we couldn’t be all that proud of it. (there was an extension of upto 6 inches on an entire side of this building.) Anyways after that we were asked to check the inner dimensions of aadhee apartments(2nd floor…and aadhee and vijaya are opposite to each other, in case I’ve not already mentioned). We ended up finding mistakes on this floor too..but apparently those were not mistakes actually, after we checked with the supervisor of that building. Well there WAS one screw up of about 2inches. They take accuracy very seriously in the construction field. That much I’ve learned so far. And an eye for detail would be an added advantage, to work in this field, ie. if you had on. Anyway, this screw up pretty much made my day. The screw up was due to bad construction practice on the part of the previous contractor. Around 4 I had to leave for the office to show Sir the flaws that I had found out from some drawings that I had copied and pasted from submission plans to working plans(submission plans are those submitted to municipality for sanction and working plans are those used for the construction itself). Technically they are supposed to be the same, but this one obviously had problems. So right after sir checked this out, I was asked to show it to my boss at land trades. I was both excited and nervous. I had not faced my boss since the day I got the job, three weeks back! So I met him up and told him the mistakes I had found. Instead of holding on to it like Baba sir had told me he would do, he ended up asking me if I could tell the same to their structural and architect. I said I could. Now this is the fun part. He called up the structural consultant(who I later found out was just a graduate with a B.Tech degree!) and told him that their “engineer” was coming to tell him some problems with one of their projects. That felt really good! That was infact pretty exciting! Like I was finally part of something!(tho in a small way). Anyway, so I finally met up with the architect and the structural consultant. And it felt good. That’s it for today. 

1/07/10

I ended up working at the office today. not much major work. i had to draw the outline drawing of the sai grandeur apartments. and check it out with the submitted drawings. the submitted drawings were done by another firm. so the outline drawing was needed to be done in order to check for violoations. when there are violations, the owner ends up paying penalties.. i think its like 25% of the total area..when it exceeds that, the owner ends up paying a fine. the buildings i drew violated for sure, but not as much as 25 % so i suppose they were safe. thats about it..besides checking for positions of the columns. yesterday while checking for beam reinforcemens, i found out that the stirrups were not at constant lengths..its not really a problem.. but theres a reason why the structural designers design it that way.

29/06/10

today was both a great day and a tiring one!
day started at the office. visited a site at kuthar wher we had to check if the columns or pedestals(coz they'r below ground level) had reinforcements fixed all properly..usually ther are no problems but sometimes there could be changes in the placing of reinforcements,etc
then visited vijaya site and measured internal dimensions....found one major error after three hours of measuing..and we felt really good! mistake of about i fot in wall construction! they'll ahve to take down the entire wall and fix a new one up later!
then worked on cheking beam reinforcements on slab three... that was tiring... learned loads though....gets interesting by the day!
toodles!!

28/06/10

whew!
today was a back breaker!
its been ages since i worked this hard but i thoroghly enjoyed it! there is a new building coming up close to my office. twin apartments! they've got the plans for the raft beams all set up..adn today! boy! today, sir asked me to estimate the cement content of the raft foundation ...that took for ages...esecially coz the structural drawings had no dimensions...and i literally had to draw it all out again...!!!
that took pretty much the entire day! tehn finally calculatred

23/06/10

today was again just like yesterday..learnt how to do the plumbing drawings for kuthar apartment... towards the fag end..i found a small error in the placing of the columsn...that might mean fixing up the entire thing..now thats gonna create a whole lotta problems... anyways.. tomorrow 've been asked to go to the lobo lane site...aadhee apartments...completely looking forward to it :-)
later!

22/06/10

Not much happened today. I spent the entire day in front of a screen working on drawings. CAD drawings. Sure i learnt a bit on the drawing front, but nothing exciting to talk about. I worked on the slab layouts of six floors of the apartment at Kuthar. Besides that, I also finished up on the electrical drawings from yesterday. Tomorrow I'll most probably have to do the section of a staircase and the plumbing layout.

Ciao!

Day 6- 21/06/10

Today was a great day! Learnt a lot! It started off as usual. I went to the bendoorwell office. I was about 15 minutes early today as dad had dropped me and I ended up waiting there for awhile. Soon after sheela ma’am came over(the architectural assistant) and I got working on my cad file. I had a bit remaining on the electrical drawings of the “kuthar” apartment building, so I ended up working on that. Around 10.30 or so, Baba sir came and we visited a few sites. Kuthar included. It was very interesting to visit that site and to be able to work on the drawings at the same time. It felt like I was, in a small way, part of the entire process and it felt good.

Kuthar is pretty far from mangalore and the drive back was long. During this drive I got the chance to ask Baba sir a whole lotta doubts that I had. Like I found out that the markings done between pillars HAS to be exact. If not, the entire pillar has to be demolished and started again. Now the reason behind this, is that if the measurements are ignored, (ie, even if they are an increase of a quarter inch, they later add up. If the building is a ten storey building, a change in a quarter inch in the beginning, will lead to an increase of about upto a feet maybe by the tenth floor! Not only will this lead to a complete change in the measurements of the rooms up above, it’ll end up causing instability and might cause structural changes). Another thing I found out is that, during the construction of the building, if concreting is not done properly(without inspectin the measurements), it leads to an increase of upto an inch of concrete on the edges. Economy wise, this’ll suck! Besides this, plastering works that come later on will be in jeopardized ,and those areas will eventually be needed to be chipped off…that’s actually quite a lotta work!

I also found out that the cost of apartments within mangalore city come to around Rs 3250-3750 per square feet and to about Rs 1800 in the outskirts. (If anybody is reading this, you can start buying em flats ASAP!)

Right after this, we went to Hat hill Crest, another flat near lady hill junction. Here I got to meet Shivprakash. A diploma holder in civil engg and somebody around my age. The guy works overtime. He works as a civil engg in the morning and as a front office assistant from 6pm to 9am….my eyes almost shut when I heard that part!! Now thats craziness!! Anyway he started the same day that I did. It has been a week since I joined this company now! At hat hill crest we measured the distances of the reinforcements. The spacing between the reinforcements,etc. Measuring it was good. It was the heat that sucked!!

While measuring we found out that at certain places, the steel bars were extended by a couple inches and at two slabs, they were lesser by 3 inches. Now if its longer than the specified value, its okay. But if its shorter, then we have a problem. The slabs which had the reinforcements were the parking lots slabs and are supposed to hold a lotta weight(weight of the cars,etc) so it makes sense in not having a reduced length for the bars. The strength of the slab reduces.

After this checking I got back to the office and worked on the baseline drawing that sir had given me to work on from the kuthar site. This was quite easy to do. After finishing this I got back home. Whew! It took me like an hour to complete this entry. Guess I’ll be more to the point tomorrow onwards.

Ciao!

blah!

teting testing