This is why architects drink.

I think I've had this conversation before with an owner.

If you can't have me, you don't want nobody bay-beh...

A general rule of the workplace (or the market) is that when you're good, you're in demand.  Over the past few weeks that I've been working on the FCH Master Plan, I've been having to wrap up a couple of small projects that I started working on before I got on FCH.  Thing is, I've been underemployed for so long that folks have gotten accustomed to me being available to sketch something up/make a phone call to the state health department/do a code study for them.  So, even though I'm heavily and gainfully employed on FCH, I'm still being bombarded with requests from Sven, Prudence, and Howie.  Last week when I sat down to review some plans with Bosley, I described my predicament to him.  I was afraid to say "no" to any request because I wanted to be able to have something to work on while he was gone to Frontier County here and there, but I wanted to do FCH justice.  Each interruption may take anywhere from five minutes to six hours, but regardless of length it keeps pulling me away from what I was doing on the master plan, and I don't want to short Bosley's project.

"There's enough to do on Frontier County to keep you busy even when I'm gone, at this point," Bosley said.  "I need you completely on this.  If anyone asks you to do anything, tell them to come to me."

"Thank you," I sighed.  It was good to know Bosley had my back.

I've been helping Howie with a little outbuilding project we were doing for Wheatlands for free.  We revamped an earlier-issued PR of a small outdoor enclosure for the hospital to be smaller and unheated.  I was hoping I had wrapped up this work for him last week, so I emailed him the final drawings for it as a PDF and told him they were ready to go.  I had also been helping him and Prudence do some code reasearch on a small pharmacy that was a part of a tenant finish project she was doing.  I had called the state health department regarding a technical question on the pharmacy, and they called me back just this morning to tell me I'd been given a wrong number, and here's the right number and guy to call.  Fine.  

But I know that a phone call to the state isn't "just a phone call," especially when Howie's involved.  When the state finally calls me back, it's about a ten-minute phone call.  It's another five to fifteen minutes to write out a clear and complete email describing what I've found out from the state health guy or gal.  Then Howie reads the email and asks me a bunch more questions for five to ten minutes, then I gotta call the state health guy or gal back, and whenever they call me back it's another ten minutes, then another five- to ten-minute email or conversation....  You get the picture.

So this morning, Howie emails me that he looked at the PDFs and has these four changes.  I should add that he still wants me to continue chasing the code question for Prudence, and on top of these two tasks he sent Gregg and his team to me to help them with a state code question because for whatever reason I have a good relationship with the state health folks and they call me back whenever I call them.  So now I'm making phone calls for two other people and doing redlines on a project we're not getting paid for...and Howie wants me to interrupt a project with a tight deadline to do these things.

Mmhmm.

So I emailed Howie back to relate the situation to him and asked him to please make sure all these extra-project activities are good with Bosley.  Y'all, Howie actually pushed back: "So, I should ask him about everything but Wheatlands?  But, you're just making a few phone calls!  Do you need more help on Frontier County?"  I pushed back on his pushback: "You should ask him about all of it--we're on a really tight deadline between now and Monday.  It's that the phonecalls take longer than one would think, and I have to keep getting distracted by them and can't concentrate on the project I'm supposed to be working on.  Frontier County is just the right size for Intern Kimmy and me--extra help wouldn't really help."  For some reason my brain had frozen up and I couldn't find the right words that I think Howie needed to hear: We're working on a master plan, and I'm doing space planning--it's all in my head and extra help wouldn't actually help.  But most of all, I think I was just getting frustrated and perhaps even offended that Howie evidently simply could not accept my own assessment and assertion of my abilities over a seven-day span.  I cannot help you properly and help my project properly in the next week.

As I searched for the words to fend Howie off, I realized there was a dark, shadowy figure in my peripheral vision.  I turned: Jesus, Mary, and Calatrava, it was Bosley.  I turned to Bosely and attempted to explain the situation: "Some teams want me to call the health department on some technical questions because I'm one of the few people they'll call back.  However, I don't want Frontier County to suffer."

Bosley made a polite facial expression of understanding.  I honestly think what he understood was that I was trying to push back against Howie, and Howie can be really pushy.  I don't know if he overheard the conversation starting and decided to step in and stop it or if he just happened to be walking by; either way, it was great timing.  As Howie began to ask Bosley if the Frontier County project needed help, Bosley raised one finger and cut him off: "She needs to be left alone until Tuesday morning so she can keep her head in the project."

Howie started to ask again, and Bosley cut him off yet again, gesturing to me as he spoke.  "Pixie needs to be left to work on the master plan--she's doing space planning and all the work is in her head.  Everytime she gets pulled away by a phone call or a code study, she can't keep her head focused on the master plan and get things done."

Howie responded with a tinge of resignation.  "So the answer is no, no extra help would allow her to work on this."

"No."  Bosley's voice was brilliantly final.

He then walked around to Howie's desk, and I could just overhear him explaining to Howie how he loaned me to Prudence for two days while he was gone to Frontier County, and that was all he could afford for me--if she didn't use me those two days while he was gone, then she lost her window.  He loaned me to Sven for one day and if Sven didn't use me on that day, then too bad so sad.  I smiled and turned up my headphones and started jamming as I worked out FCH's emergency department remodel.  I knew whatever Bosley was saying, even if it included anything about me having Shiny Object System (which I do have occasionally), it was ultimately in my defense and giving me the room I needed to get. stuff. done.

ADAAG: Not just a good idea, it's the law

This past Saturday, I witnessed a scene that simultaneously aroused both wonderment and a combination of anger and annoyance. I was sitting in a metropolitan installation of a major coffee/pastry/bread chain, drinking my coffee, eating a bagel, and flipping through the comics section when I noticed a woman in a wheelchair paying for her breakfast at the cash register. She took a paper coffee cup that the cashier handed her and rolled over to the countertop across the room where one could self-serve and doctor and decorate one's coffee. The woman poured her coffee from the large dispenser tap-thingy, rolled a few feet over along the bar and added creamer and sugar...and was stopped cold by the cup lids.

Now, the countertop was low enough to be compliant with ADAAG. I could tell without measuring; if it's at a height that I don't have to strain or struggle with to use, then it has to be less than 36" high. However, it occurred to me as I saw her reaching across the countertop to the plastic cup lid holder/dispenser mounted to the wall that the counter was too deep. ADAAG mandates that to be accessible, a countertop must be no higher than 34" and no deepr than 24" in order to provide an obstructed side reach of 48", which is 4/5 my height, by the way, meaning that the average wheelchair-bound person may not be able to punch me in the face but will most likely have unobstructed reach to poke me in the throat. Not that I get in that many fights with mobility-disabled people. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. So, this woman tried reaching acouple of times to get a cup from the wall-mounted rack that help the cup lids, as if to confirm, yes indeed, I cannot reach this damn thing.

So she pauses, looks around on the counter. Now, bear in mind, I'm not talking about a little old lady in a wheelchair, which is our stereotypical wheelchair-bound person. Nay, prithee. This woman might have been in her mid-thirties, had brown shoulder length hair with dark blond highlights, stunning eyes with very well groomed eyebrows (what? look, I've started noticing eyebrows since I've had mine done), and wore a white sleeveless polo shirt and light blue pants and white sneakers. She was in one of those really lightweight wheelchairs with the wheels that angle in a little bit for better maneuverability. So, for being in a chair, this gal was really able. And here she was, foiled at getting a lid for her hot cup of coffee. And why shouldn't she have one? She's a gal on the go in that chair! Oughtta have had a cup holder on it! (If I was in a wheelchair, fuckin'-A I'd have a cupholder.)

But she does the coolest thing: she pulls a couple of wooden coffee stirrers out of their container (that she can easily reach), leans across the counter, and lodges the other ends of the stirrers under the edge of the top lid. With a one-two-three, she lifts the top lid up and flips! it out of its plastic, wall-mounted prison onto the counter within her reach. She takes the lid, snuggles it down onto her cup of joe, and rollrollrollrolls out the door, bagel in lap and coffee in hand.

I watched this unfold, not sure if I should get up and help (would that be insulting?) or just stay put (would that be rude?). I have to say that I marvelled at her improvised ingenuity and practically grinned as she left. But my delight darkened a bit when I remembered that necessity is the mother of invention, and this is likely not the first time she's had to do this sort of thing. Sure, the big stuff is taken care of: she can roll in and out of buildings and move from floor to floor, use the bathroom, wash her hands, maneuver through doors, and so on. But I gotta say that it's the little things that can fuck up your day. I'm only five feet tall, which is short but not abnormally so, and I often find myself frustrated in the world by being unable to see over something, reach to get something, etc. And I'm standing up with full use of all my limbs when I get five shades of pissed off. What's life like for this gal?

When I got up to leave, I went to the counter, leaned across it and measured with my arm. Sure enough, the counter was 30" deep, which is illegal by 5". I sighed and stepped into the Denver summer heat.

Speaking of pharmaceuticals, I could use some myself...

...because I've been piddling around with my pharmacy at Wheatlands all day.

There is a primary set of regulations that dictate how pharmacies should be run and how chemicals in them should be processed called USP 797. There are three levels of pharmacies, classified depending on the hazardousness or the specialness of the chemicals that get mixed in them: low-risk CSP, medium-risk CSP, and high-risk CSP. For this entire project, we've been designing Wheatlands' pharmacy as a low-risk CSP pharmacy. They mix pretty tame stuff and only use it in-house (it's not a pharmacy like the ones at which you fill your prescriptions, like a CVS or Walgreens). The head of nursing showed the floor plan of the pharmacy to a pharmacist in a nearby larger town and had him review it with his understanding of USP 797. He said it looked good to him.

Well, some guy who's supplying the fume hood for the chemotherapy chemical mixing room mentioned USP 797 again and told the head of nursing about a few things she better make sure she had in the pharmacy, such as seamless flooring and HEPA filters. The design team leaps into the air and shouts, "What?! We thought we did that already!" So, I call this guy and he sends me to a website where I get the 100+ page PDF of USP 797 (which I've been trying to find for this whole project). I ask him about flooring and light fixtures, and he says:

"Oh, I don't really do much with the building. I'm more concerned with the processes in the pharmacy, like where and how they handle the chemicals."

Well, thanks, Scooter Bob. Why the fuck did you mention finishes if you don't actually look at them? Anyway, the design reviews the standards, clarified a few of our finishes, confirmed that we had all the right filters and fixtures, and went on our way. As I was wrapping up this issue, I emailed the hospital and informed them that all was well, we comply with the USP 797 regulations for a low-risk CSP pharmacy.

We do have a low-risk pharmacy, right?

The head of nursing confirmed this for us.

Then I got an email on Friday. The head of nursing had been idly talking to her pharmacist in the other town over and mentioned that she was mixing a "banana bag" (an IV bag that includes vitamins and electrolytes, often given to severely dehydrated patients or alcoholics in the ED), and the pharmacist suddenly says, "Oh, banana bags? Those make you have a medium-risk CSP pharmacy."

Fuck.

The design team goes into another tailspin. Everyone tears open their copies of the USP 797 again to discover that we now need an extra sink in the ante area/buffer room, which means we have to sawcut the slab (with the seamless flooring already installed) to install another waste line. Worse, my mechanical engineer found fishy language in USP 797 saying that the buffer room "should" provide 40 feet per minute airflow in that room. This room is only 140 square feet total--40 fpm is going to turn that room into a wind tunnel. "Pixie, they'll get so annoyed with their papers and gowns blowing around in that room that they'll just shut off the equipment and never use it!" my engineer nearly wept into the phone.

I call the head of nursing and get a name and phone number for the state pharmacy board. I call and talk to a guy who's trying to be helpful, but God help him he works for the government and can only say so much because he only knows so much. "So what about this 40 fpm airflow in this buffer room?" I asked him. "We're already supplying more air than required for a low-risk CSP, but that's gonna turn that room into a wind tunnel. Do we have to do it? The code says 'should', not 'shall', which would be more definitive." And he says:

"We really don't so much with the building, ma'am. We're more concerned with the processes in the pharmacy, like wher and how they handle the chemicals."

Wow. Deja poo: I feel like I've heard this shit before.

So, he says for the purposes of the Kansas state pharmacy board, he says that as long as the airflow in the room is the same as what this one clinical requirement says on this one page of the USP 797, they're fine. So, I call my engineer back, who stil feels weird about the whole thing, so I give him the pharmacy board guy's name and number.

Later this evening at home, Guy asks me how was my day. Now, comedian Chris Rock says that the question "How was your day?" is a 45-minute conversation for a woman. This is also true for me. I'm venting about the pharmacy and how we've gotta design to this ridiculous and unclear code and how this pharmacy guy said that they hadn't even adopted USP 797 yet but would be later this year--

"Bullshit!" crowed Guy. "When I did the addition to Sunflower Medical Center out there three years ago, the state board said they were gonna pass USP 797 'later that year.' They still haven't! It's fucking impossible for state agencies to adopt new codes and regs because the state legislature has to pass the law for them and they're too busy arguing over funding education and banning gay marriage!"

I put down the spoon I was using to stir my pasta alfredo and called my engineer from home. "Jerry, have you called the pharmacy board guy yet?"
He sighed. "No, it's on my list."
"When you call, dude, don't push him too hard on the 40 fpm thing. They've been saying they were gonna pass USP 797 for over three years now, so we don't wanna back this guy into a corner and make him tell us to follow the letter of the code."
"Which will just back us into a corner."
"Right."
"No sweat, Pixie. I'll poke him with a very dull stick tomorrow."
"Thank you sir."
"I hear something sizzling."
"Shit! My pasta!"
I"m hanging up now, Pix."

Designing for Disaster

Wandering Author asked in the last round of comments:

"It was your mention of fireproofing to keep the columns from deforming in a fire that got me thinking. I'm sure you've heard some of the questions surrounding the three building collapses on 9/11. Do you have an opinion you don't mind airing?"

Well, WA, I have some knowledge to drop here indeed. First, I will acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy theory that the World Trade Center Towers were "helped" down with strategically-placed detonation charges placed the weekend before 9/11 by a demolition crew partially owned by a member of the Bush family so that the U.S. could attck the Middle East. However, since good intel on this is unavailable to me and the rest of the world, I can only comment on the evidence we do have, which is that the Towers fell due to physics.


Now, let me begin with commentary provided by WAD's resident aviation expert, former Army helicopter mechanic and almost-chopper pilot, Sgt. J.P. Sarge, now CAD Manager at Design Associates:

At the time the buildings were erected, no one conceived of a situation where anyone would *intentionally* fly an airplane into the building, let alone with the sole purpose of destroying the building. They *were* designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, the largest passenger jet of the time, but they hadn't considered the resultant events that would follow. An impact, in and of itself, is relatively insignificant. Nevertheless, they hadn't planned on someone *intentionally* flying into the building.

Accidents are accidents, but this was no accident. But how would an intentional strike differ in terms of physics from an accident? The hijackers purposely picked the largest planes they could get their hands on, and ensured they were *fully* loaded with fuel for a trans-continental flight. In an accident, the plane, *more than likely* is *not* aimed at the center of the building.

The likelihood of the mass of the aircraft reaching the core is less significant in an accident. Also, by the alignment of the air traffic control routes among the three major airports in the area, it's highly unlikely a plane would intentionally cross Manhattan Island. Controllers would notify the pilot to alter course to avoid the buildings. So, in an accident, it is far more likely for the plane to clip the building, rather than plow into it. In such a case, the structure of the buildings was more than sufficient to withstand the impact and resulting fire.

What doomed the buildings was the huge amounts of burning jet fuel streaming down the elevator shafts. In an accident, a collision with the building would be most likely to occur when the plane was landing, not taking off or during transitional flight, so the quantity of fuel on board would be significantly less than what these planes had available. The interesting thing is that in a building of similar height built today, that core would almost certainly be super-high-strength concrete. Enough of the plane's inertia would've been lost during transition though the shell that anything that reached the core wouldn't have penetrated the core. So a lot less of the plane would've made it to the core than with the twin towers.

If you were to compare the destruction of the building using, say, a cruise missile, although much smaller
in size, the missile is designed to penetrate the shell, and then detonate in the core. The terrorists didn't have such technology available, so they had to choose something of sufficient mass to penetrate the shell *and* core, and since they had no explosives available, they had to choose something with a sufficient quantity of flammable materials to generate the intended result. A Boeing 767, fully loaded for a trans-continental flight (obviously)met those requirements. The plane itself never acutally detonated, it disintegrated, in the process, releasing highly flammable liquids, which were ignited by heat generated by the engines, the friction of the impact with the building, and the severed electrical systems within the building. And much of the fuel was atomized on impact, creating a highly explosive mist within the building envelope. What didn't atomize ran down through the core, spreading the "accellerant" through enough floors to affect the structural integrity.

Now then, now that we have the physics of things that burn, let's talk about some other factors that I believe contributed to the fall of Towers 1 and 2. Let's talk about building codes, shall we? In general, building codes are a pretty recent development in the construction industry. (So is the Americans With Disabilities Act, but that's another post.)

Building codes came about in earnest in the U.S. after the massive fire in the MGM Grand Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, NV in 1980. Of all of the fatalities, the vast majority of them were in the hotel tower due to smoke inhalation, not from actually being burned to death (though it was a spectacular fireball indeed--it cleared a distance of two football fields in less than eight seconds and burned gamblers to a perfect crisp with their hands still clutching the levers on their slot machines). The mechanical and elevator shafts in the hotel tower channeled the smoke right up to each floor, thereby asphyxiating the hotel's guests on floors that the fireball never touched. Since then, the primary goal of building codes is to first save lives and allow people to safely exit the building; second, to save the structure so that the non-loadbearing elements can be rebuilt; and third, to save contents and possessions if possible. Sprinkler systems help do this, but it's a secondary line of defense. Structural integrity and egress (exit) paths are the first line of defense.

The World Trade Center was built in 1971-1972, eight years before building codes were in wide implementation and enforcement. Hence, I don't know that any spray-on fireproofing (an image of which is forthcoming in tomorrow's Detail of the Week) was applied to the structure. Without fireproofing, the immense heat of the fire could very easily have deformed the columns and allowed the building to collapse. Also, much of the Twin Towers' structure was along the exterior skin in order to free up the inside of the building for office space. When the exterior skin was ruptured by the plane, the building lost a great deal of its structural integrity. The main innards of the Towers, called the "core", which consists of the elevators, the stairs, toilets, and the mechanical and electrical shafts and rooms, take up the very center. See the photo below. (I know it's not easy to see, but I've marked where the stairs are in the plan.)

The WTC's tenants used these stairs as regular circulation instead of taking the elevators one or two floors. Given that due to the size of each floor, as many as 300 people could work on each floor at the same time, that's a lot of people to try to funnel down the stairs. Imagine trying to funnel 300 people per floor times dozens of floors down the stairs...while fully loaded firefighters were coming up the stairs. Then imagine some of the people coming down the stairs having to carry some of their fellow coworkers because the person gives out 30 floors down and still has another 20 or 30 to go to get to the street. Two normal people need at least 5'-0" of width to pass each other going in opposite directions, but let's add that one person is carrying a person while the person going in the opposite direction is wearing a full jacket, a 60-lb pack, an axe, and a breathing apparatus.

Need a little more width than 5'-0", don't you?

Also, elevators often shut down when there's a fire. They go to the bottom of their shafts and pop their doors open to show the firefighters that no one is trapped inside. However, in tall hospitals (like Pomme de Terre), at least one elevator will be operable in a fire so that staff can evacuate incapacitated patients if they're on the floor where the fire is located. It sounds like the Twin Towers could have used a few emergency-operating elevators. These same elevators can be used by firefighters to get up to the floor where the fire is burning. Perhaps the fighters couldn't use them though, because the planes had severed the power supply and shorted them out. I'm guessing about this part, don't know for sure.

Furthermore, human nature played a part in the disaster. Some tenants reported being told to go back in the building after the planes had been burning for a while because "everything was okay and the fire was under control". Many of us--surely all of us--were so shocked to see what was happening that a part of us just couldn't fathom it, couldn't accept it, and wanted everything to be okay. Let's face it, none of us were prepared for the immensity of 9/11, and we really had no plan to deal with it. So the tragedy of 9/11 was due to the condition of a purposeful air strike, an absence of code and fire safety compliance at the time of construction, and a lack of a plan to handle the humans leaving the building.

The design of the Twin Towers, plus the luck of the planes colliding so high up on the buildings (in the top quarter of the tower), allowed the floor slabs to pancake on top of each other and fall fairly cleanly onto each other. Imagine how much worse it could have been if they'd toppled over from the middle and dropped floors 55 through 110 onto neighboring buildings. Still frightening though, is that what fireproofing that was in the building was acheived through the use of asbestos, a carcinogen so potent that I was told as an intern if I so much as peeked into an asbestos-clad ceiling they'd have to evacuate the building. I've heard some reports that they did asbestos abatement on the towers in the 90s, but I have to wonder if some tiny friable fibers of 220 stories of asbestos are still floating around Lower Manhattan.

Okay, I acknowledge that this was a lot of info, and I'm sure other WAD readers out there will have something to add, contribute, or dispute. But Wandering Author asked me for an opinion, and given my extent of knowledge, that's what I have to say.