Meanwhile, back in Architectureland...

...the board of directors for TCMC have approved a couple extra hundred grand to allow for an addition as well as the renovation of their existing surgery suite. Bosley and Howie went to the meeting and presented the pros and cons, the contractors were there to answer some questions about those pros and cons and give their two cents' worth, and Akira from Avanta was there for...some reason, I'm not sure what. Wes evidently couldn't be bothered to go, or maybe he figured there was no reason to show up if increasing the budget was a foregone conclusion. Apparently, during the two weeks between our last meeting with TCMC and their board meeting, there had been more talk amongst the hospital staff and the community, and more support had been garnered for approving the extra cabbage roll if it was at all available.

I'm surprised, but I guess I shouldn't be, really. I'm surprised because it's rare that architecture projects in general and healthcare projects in particular can get extra funds approved, especially here lately in the Land of Ever-Decreasing Funding that is construction finance. However, I've noticed that if a project involves a department that makes money--like imaging or surgery, or in some facilities OB/GYN or physical therapy--boards and CFOs are more likely to go digging through the sofa cushions for change if the project needs more to make it right. No one wants to underfund the improvements of a service line that actually pads the coffers of the facility. (I've heard mixed reviews on renovations of EDs [emergency departments], as they frequently lose money but you can't not have them, or if you do have them they have to be good or you could get sued if someone dies in your ED.) So, in that light, it makes sense that TCMC's surgery suite would get the extra cashola to rock-n-rolla.

Meanwhile, Intern Kimmy and I just sent out the SDs for FCH's surgery and ICU renovations, and it actually kinda exhausted me. It was a normal workweek, no overtime involved, but Bosley had been out of the office for six straight workdays and suddenly had to put his hands on the drawings. It was nothing too big, just some exterior roof system details, but it was just enough to frustrate me. Here's the deal: SD, or schematic design, is usually a pretty thin set of drawings. I do a few plans and exterior elevations, and then the engineers do a narrative or two that explain what's going on in the project and what will need to be done, and then the contractor (if you have one on board) will use those few documents to do some early cost-per-square-foot pricing. Peeps, I'm here to tell you that Kimmy and I put out a 28-page SD set. Seriously, it was ridiculous. The architect from the firm-of-record that will inherit our drawings in a month called me all surprised, but for the opposite reason that I thought. "Pixie," he said almost breathlessly, "I just heard that the engineers aren't doing any drawings...?"

"No," I responded. "SD is usually a couple of plans and exterior elevations, maybe a schematic spec to help the contractor understand what systems and finishes I'm using, and the engineers do the same thing, but with narratives." I saw Kimmy's shocked and slightly-offended face pop up over the cubicle partition in my direction. We made eye contact and I continued. "To be fair, we did the SD plan for this project during the master planning effort for FCH, so these drawings are really ahead of what we usually do."

After I hung up with the architect, Kimmy said, "Pix! He just called me and asked me that very question about the engineers not doing drawings! Did he think I was lying or something?!"

I shook my head. "I don't think he does a lot of hospitals, and maybe SD is different for the kinds of projects he usually does. Go figure."

After all, Akira is using a couple of floor plans from DA as well as the engineers' pricing/scope narratives that we did three weeks ago to take to the Avanta headquarters in California to get SD approval from the bigwigs. If a couple of plans are good enough for healthcare management poobahs, it ought to be good enough for everyone else.

Something to ADD to the discussion, Part III

If the past two blogs sound like I'm angry, it's because I have been for a long time. I'm angry that my sister's mental and even physical health were left to languish for so long, that therapist after therapist after doctor didn't see this. I'm not angry at my sister, per se, or even my mom. Mom was barely allowed to see us every other weekend, and she had to fight like hell to get that--might she have noticed, with enough exposure to Kitty? Maybe, maybe not. Kitty's condition made her act the way she did, and my brain and consciousness made me act the way I did (being super-productive, super-compliant, and super-capable) as a reaction to that. I'm not writing these posts to air my sister's dirty laundry or my mom's perceived shortcomings, I just don't know how else to describe to you what it's like to live with someone who is constantly surrounded by drama and can't function because they can barely focus with all the noise in their head unless I actually tell you some of the things that happened. We are what we are--all of us--because of where we've been and what we've been through; there's no point in feeling guilty about any of it because it doesn't help.

Also, bear in mind that Kitty wasn't some helpless walking shambles, which our family would have led you to believe. She completed her thesis and got a Master's degree, she got a good job teaching college English, won two teaching awards...but even before that, she would eventually figure out a way to make things work. She would eventually decide, like she did after Dad died and she and I had a tearful conversation or two, that she needed to go back to therapy and get some support. She daintzed for a couple of years to get the money she needed to pay off some debts and get back on solid footing again. She's able to solve her problems, eventually; it just seemed like it was so hard for her to get there each time.

It was finally a couple of week ago when Kitty realized that she was quite possibly about to flunk her linguistics class that I had had it. I've had it before, mind you--and when that happens, I usually just don't call or talk to Kitty for a few days (bear in mind that we talk nearly every day in some form) and let her chaos settle. In the past year or so, I've finally begun to back off now and then when Kitty seems to have a new intractable problem, as the lesson of not really being able to help Kitty was finally sinking in. On that morning, we conversed briefly by IM as I was getting ready to go to a meeting at TCMC. Kitty's IMs to me bemoaned her flunking grade, there was nothing she could do, she'll never go to grad school, why did she even think she could do this job, and so on. Nothing I could IM back appeared to cut through the misery and self-loathing: go to the teacher and ask about extra credit, will they offer the class again, but you emailed the teacher once and she acknowledged how hard this material is so maybe she'll go easy on you or help you catch your grade up, and so on. Nothing got through, nothing helped, nothing I could say could or would make anything better...

...and I was done. I IM'd that I wished I could help more but we had to leave for the meeting in a few minutes and signed off. From there, I went to the ladies' room at DA, sat down on the can, and leaned over my knees and fumed. Jesus God, Kitty, I thought. I'm supposed to go to a meeting in less than half an hour and look happy and professional and explain to these people why they need to spend another half-million bucks on their surgery suite than they'd planned to, and you're tapping a big keg of drama over a class that you frankly didn't seem to be focusing that hard on. You actually skipped a class to grade papers for a class you were teaching. You're 35, Kitty; fix it.

Am I my sister's keeper? The thought weighed heavily on me. I can't turn away from her; she's done nothing wrong. She's kind to stray animals and confused students, and she just has problems keeping up with grading, who's to say we all wouldn't do the same if we had six freshman comp classes? But at the same time, at what point does my sister keep herself? Right after Kitty's linguistics meltdown, Mom came to visit for a week and shared her insights on Kitty's condition as well, noting that she seemed to sleep a lot the weekend that she was supposed to be studying for the linguistics midterm. Mom and I both wondered what the hell would make her sleep so much on such an important weekend. I know that I sometimes feel sleepy when I have a major detail to figure out or an annoying phone call to make at work, but I just go ahead and do it and tell myself that I can rest a little afterwards. And of course, i never rest, but that's a different story.

During the week Mom was here and the week after, Kitty kept asking both Mom and me about her behavior: did she used to do this, act like that, always seem like so? I responded as best I could, wondering what sort of introspection she was undertaking and what might be up her sleeve. Kitty eventually emailed us that she really thought she may have ADD and emailed us the results from an online test she took. A subsequent phone call had her saying the same thing, only a little more convinced. She gave me some of the symptoms, talked about some of the books she read, and I responded that her idea certainly had merit and that she should discuss it with her therapist at their next session. After I hung up, I told Guy that Kitty believed that she had adult ADD. "Do you think she does?" asked Guy. I sighed wearily. "I don't care if she's bipolar with a side order of Tourette's and thinks she's supposed to be a man. I just want her to fix it--enough's enough."

Enough was indeed enough. But the more I thought about the symptoms she described, the more I realized that it really did seem a lot like her. Despite the fact that I know so much about my sister, I never knew that her mind sounded like a bunch of radio stations all playing at once. The constant sleeping would make sense--how else would a tired, distracted brain filter out so much input? Difficulty organizing? Hell to the yes, that was Kitty. Occasional hyperfocus? Actually, yeah. Every now and then, Kitty would find something so engrossing that she could read it or do it until 3am, but it had to really really interest her. The pieces began to fall into place. What else could explain how she wasn't getting anything done?

In the past year or so, Kitty had begun expressing to me how exhausting it was to live the way she did, but she didn't know how to change. Getting more productive, at least to a functional point, will still involve a lot of cognitive and behavioral work, but at least now she has a chance of being able to do it. The medication may finally make it possible for my incredibly talented and generous sister to do basic mental and physical tasks that we rarely give a second thought to. After a week on her meds, Kitty told me over IM that she cleaned her office that day, and it only took her 45 minutes. What did it used to take? I IM'd. Her response: Five hours. Five hours. Five hours that you could be doing anything else. I can set up, note, and dimension two to three pages of interior elevations in Revit in five hours. What if it took me that long to clean up my office cubicle, which is almost the same size as Kitty's office? I'd go apeshit, that's what. No wonder she was so frustrated and worn out--it took everything she had to concentrate and make the world make sense through her lack of filters.

I breathe deeply with a sigh of thankfullness and relief when I think of Kitty these days. Relief that she has found a real solution--no matter how much more work it will take her--to settle her chaos, and thankful that she has never given and gone under into the depression it can bring.

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

--Aristotle

Something to ADD to the discussion, Part II

(Part I of this discussion is here.)

Up until her ADD diagnosis, life with Kitty was pleasant with a chance of chaos. I had begun to resign myself to the fact that she was just going to be messy...and a mess. Every now and then, I'd offer to come help her clean her house, and Mom and I even occasionally half-joked about getting her out of the house while the other would just wholesale clean out a room or two, but I knew from experience that we couldn't just dump an entire room's contents into a haul-away. I knew that a) I'd end up dumping something important that she really did need and b) in order for it to really stick, she had to be involved. She had to do it (or participate in it) herself. I would see glimpses of her capabilities in little moments: one weekend when I was visiting, I went through a stack of papers that I had collected from all around the kitchen/dining alcove floor. I could hold each one up to Kitty, and she could within three seconds tell me if it belonged on her desk or in the trash. It appeared that if someone were around to help her, to focus her attention on the task at hand, to point the way towards organization and even sanity, she could totally do it. But neither I nor Mom could be around to do this all the time. While it was tempting to take a week off, fly to Georgia, and help Kitty clean her house in this methodical manner, it just didn't seem right. It was me, saving her again. When was she going to save herself?

After Dad died, I mused to my therapist that of the five family members left behind at my house (sister, stepmother, two stepsiblings, and me), I was the only one in therapy. Apparently, it had become my job to go get the therapy, then bring it home for everyone else. It was my job to be Dad for my stepfamily, who were bowled over by the immensity of his death. For Kitty and me, Dad's murder was one more crappy thing to happen in a long line of crappy things, so while it was tragic, we were rather accustomed to the constantly-unfolding tragedy. However, it was yet again down to me, time after time, to make decisions and take action: to decide whether we were to bury Dad and my uncle, his murderer, in the same ceremony (I'm 21 and all the aunts and relatives eyes are on me yet again, waiting for the Final Answer), to stand up yet again to my aunts who "just couldn't wait" for Kitty to get back from her honeymoon to talk about what to do with our inheritance funds, to pick everyone up and dust them off, over and over and over. There I am in my dorm room on East Campus of Georgia Tech, trying to talk Kitty out of possibly offing herself because she felt like no one cared about what happened to us, about us in general. I wish that was the first time I had ever had to have that conversation, but it wasn't. (Interestingly, Kitty had a pattern of expressing the wish to off herself, then telling me to go get her a knife. I figured she wasn't ever really serious if she wanted me to run errands for her. So when I come back from the kitchen with the knife, should I bring you a popsicle too? Maybe the ADD was saving her from her depression, inadvertently--"Oh God, I wish I could just di--ooh! Popsicle!")

On Kitty's blog, Woolywoman commented about why no one ever thought of taking Kitty to a therapist and having her checked out and good. A couple of reasons come to mind, the first and foremost being that ADD was still kind of a new ailment back in the 1980s, and it wasn't diagnosed that often in girls. Most folks just thought Kitty was spacey, not "hyper", which is what ADD is, isn't it? Not so much, it seems. She wasn't hyper, just easily distracted. Dad took us to family counseling more than once, which was pretty noble and open-minded of him as a Southern man, but sometimes we got the impression that he was hauling us in so the therapist could "fix" us, not really work things through as a family. So while there was a chance that someone could have found this in Kitty, all the pieces didn't fall together just right to make that happen. I believe there was also a cultural component. The South has a long history of holding up the Good Southern Martyr as an acceptable and even noble figure in society. Lawd, Kitty's a mess, but look how well her sister does. And you know Pixie gets them both ready in the morning? Mm-mm-mm, ain't that a shame. How sweet of her to do that, though. She's so sweet and kind and helpful, always minding, behaving. I'm only mildly surprised that it never occurred to someone to have this checked out to help me as well as Kitty. After all, if it's acceptable for someone to take care of another peer in a constant manner, why should anyone possibly try to help me? And it didn't help that just as Kitty moved off to college, my stepsiblings, whom I barely knew, moved into the house, and I now had to get two people ready in the morning other than myself. Didn't anyone think that I might be ready for a fucking break?

Funny thing about growing up with someone who needs constant help staying focused and organized and balanced--if you rise to the challenge, it makes you extremely capable. When someone gives me a goal to accomplish, almost immedately I can see the start point, the end point, and all the steps in between that I'll need to hit as I go from A to B. I rarely shake hands with everybody's friend, Mr. Procrastination. When I tell "typical" people that, their mouths drop open and ask how I do it. My response is, "It's like instinct, like a flash--I just see what has to be done." I took and passed the ARE in ten months while working 60 hours a week for eight of those months. It was a gauntlet of seven-day workweeks and two to three hours of studying a night and then arising at 6am to swim for 50 minutes in the pool or lift weights or run. Even now, I'm up before 8 even on weekends, unable to sleep in, unable to nap, unable to sit down and read a magazine because there's clutter to clean up or books or posts to write or floors to Swiff or laundry to do or cat boxes to scoop or I could even go for a walk because I had that brownie last night and I might as well burn it off now but I'm sleepy but you can't nap because there are things to do and no one likes a lazy bones sleeping in and not cleaning their room remember what they said about Kitty remember what they said about Kitty remember what they said about Kitty.

So, for nearly thirty years, I've cleaned and listened and wept and prayed and sighed and wondered and seethed and cleaned some more and wondered when Kitty would decide to pull herself out of the fog of her chaos, because I wanted to help, I thought I could help, I just knew I could help, but I couldn't help. So when?

Wrap-up on Friday.

Something to ADD to the discussion, Part I

Those of you who have been keeping up with my sister's blog have likely also been following the saga of her discovering that she has adult ADD. It's been a whirlwind of a month--well, a life, really--for her, and I'm glad she's discovered what's been going on in her head this whole time. She's suffered long enough with this, and it's time she got to live a more typical life (I won't say "normal" because who the hell knows what that means.) What this discovery has done for Kitty is immeasurable, and to say that I'm glad for her is an understatement. It's not just that I'm glad for her--I'm glad for all of us.

If you've dealt with mental illness, whether it was chemical or emotional or both in nature, you know that it takes a terrible toll on the person. What we sometimes forget is what it does to everyone else around that person. It's not just Kitty dealing with the effects of her ADD, it's all of us. While she's been struggling with it for around thirty years, I've been right there with her. I've tried to be supportive, but even the patience of a sister and twin soul can be tried. So, after talking with Kitty about it, I'm doing a couple of posts on what it's like to be sitting next to Kitty and dealing with her ADD while she's dealing with it too. I believe her posts on her struggle were incredibly brave, heartfelt, and educational, and they were also well-written. Here's hoping some of that well-spokenness rubs off on my tripe of a blog.

I can't even remember when it started. I just know that for the vast majority of my life, I've been standing in between Kitty and the rest of the family, counseling her, offering advice, and sometimes just flat out picking her up off the floor or talking her down off of a ledge. It's flashbulb memories of Kitty trying to pick which candy bar to get in the Superette in Booger County, finally deciding with a hand snapping out impulsively to grab a 3 Musketeers and snatch it off the shelf as if the entire display were about to disappear. (She paid for it, mind you, it was just odd to watch her make decisions, hovering, looking, hand floating above the bars, or food at a buffet, or anything involving a choice.) It's witnessing a shrieking fit when Dad states that we're going to Aunt G____'s for Fourth of July, and Kitty "will be damned" if she's going (she's about 14). At family gatherings, she hides off in a room and reads magazines or finds someplace to take a nap. She tries to make conversation with Dad's siblings and their spouses, but it always seems a little forced to me.

"What's wrong with Kitty? Why won't she mind?" I'm ten years old, sitting at the dining room table at my grandmother's with my dad. My grandmother has just asked me--a ten-year-old--what's "wrong" with my older sister. The proper response of course is "How the hell should I know?! You two are the parental figures, YOU figure it out!" but I'm so terrified of the backlash that Kitty's resistance to authority has received that I begin to come up with reasons, explanations, excuses. My ten-year-old brain is a master at making sense of the unexplainable. Kitty's teacher Mr. J____gives them mounds of homework, it's so exhausting, so she sleeps a lot. Kitty's just a night person, I'm a morning person. I know Kitty's room looks a mess, but she knows where every single thing is in that room. (And this is the truth--I could walk into her FEMA Disaster Area of a room and ask "Where's the Victoria's Secret catalog with the black poet's blouse that's on sale?" and she could immediately plunge her hand into a pile of stuff and fish it out in 2.3 seconds and say "it's a little more than halfway through, right past the Second Skin Satin bras." She might have been messy, but that photographic memory had loads of film.) I learned to keep my room immaculate, to make tons of conversation and be cute and witty and entertaining to Dad's family. Just don't yell at me, don't talk bad about me behind my back, I'll be good, I'll be good, I'll be so good that I'll never ask for anything in life ever again.

I take the same classes Kitty takes with the same teachers. (That's what happens in a small school; siblings and cousins cycle through with the same teachers.) The classes Kitty struggled with and barely squeaked by in--or took summer school to make up--barely registered on my radar. My report card was full of 99s, only because they couldn't give 100 as a grade. (We didn't have letter grades at my school in the 1990s.) "What's wrong with Kitty?" yet another relative would ask when Kitty was hiding out somewhere else, reading magazines and flipping through pictures of her teen idols (which happened to be the 1986 Celtics team, who were way better role models than the freakin' New Kids on the Block--spare me). Dad would ask, "Should we take her pictures and magazines away? Would she get better grades in Algebra then, Pixie?" My response is, "If you clamp down on her, she'll just act even worse. Just get her a tutor." Did I mention I was 14? I'm 14, and I'm having to defend my sister from the entire family's scrutiny and tongue-clucking.

Kitty slept long, hard nights, sometimes up to twelve hours during the summer. Her room was a wreck. She liked to experiment with clothes and makeup and was interested in boys. I didn't realize it until I was almost out of grad school, but in many respects my sister was actually the normal one. I was the abnormal teenager, keeping my room spotless and getting my homework done as soon as I got home from school, in bed by nine and up at six. Part of that was a defense mechanism, and part of it was just necessary because every morning, I got two people ready for school. My alarm went off at six am, and I got out of bed and immediately went to my sister's room to wake he up for the first time. Then I took a shower and got dressed. Then I went back to Kitty's room and woke her up a second time (yes, she had an alarm, but you know how easy it is to slap the snooze button). Then I went back to the bathroom and did my hair and makeup and ate breakfast. Then I went back to Kitty's room to finally get her out of bed. While she showered, she would call out directions from the bathroom: "Get some undies and socks out of my lingerie drawer, and get that bra with the five hooks up the front that's beige! My Michigan sweatshirt and the Levi's jeans! I think my Algebra folder is still in the living room!" As she showered, I gathered up clothes for her to wear that day, gathered up her folders and books from various rooms in the house and put them by the front door, and I made her sandwich for the day to go in her lunch bag with the chips and snack. On the drive to school, I brought along a granola bar for her breakfast, which I would break into pieces and hand to her to eat while she drove us to school. After we both could drive, I would occasionally just get fed up and leave without her. But for the most part, morning after morning, I would do this routine, getting two people out the door.

Genesis 4:9: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain was being a smartass to God when he asked that, but we all knew the truth. We are all our brother's--and sister's--keepers, and we are all accountable for how we treat one another. I was Kitty's de facto keeper as we grew up, and I knew it. It was my job to keep her going, keep her organized, keep her spirits up, because for whatever reason it seemed that everyone else had abdicated the responsibility or desire to keep her. So I kept her. I kept her as well as I could. But we all grow up, leave home, start new lives. Kitty's messy room became a messy apartment, except that the kitchen and bathroom were failry clean and safe. After grad school, even those rooms went. The rooms of her house were traversed only by narrow paths. I would visit her house and find nine-month-old milk in the fridge, unopened mail postmarked to last year, litter boxes that hadn't been scooped in weeks, and shopping bags simply sitting where she had dropped them last week. My entire life, I had given her suggestions on things she could do to make things easier: sort your mail over the garbage can; put it in a box and write the year on it, and if you haven't opened it in a year, throw it out; touch every piece of paper only once; sort through your closet once a year, say around your birthday. None of it ever seemed to stick, seemed to sink in. I offered to come visit and help her clean, but the thought even made me weary and even resentful. Great idea, Pixie, you go clean her house. Go take care of her...again.

What's her payoff for not doing these things, I always wondered. Why wouldn't she do things that would so obviously help her? When Dad's relatives would sniff about her lack of organization or her distraction over boys or a lack of interest in hanging out with the rest of the family at a gathering, Kitty's comeback was that everyone was trying to control her. While I think Dad's relatives probably had some of that in mind, it blew my mind that Kitty woiuld toss aside basic, commonsense suggestions for living well. There must be some reason she's not doing it, some payoff for not doing it. What's going on?! I had no idea until she blogged about it that she truly couldn't get enough peace in her head to remember to open her mail over the trash can; the couple thousand radio stations playing in her head at the same time made it nigh on impossible to focus.

I would IM Kitty while at work and talk her through yet another crisis. I'm gonna go lay down, back in a bit, she'd IM, but three hours later when I was logging off to go home, she would still be asleep. Daily three-hour naps, constantly surrounded by the chaos of her clutter...how did she get anything done? It was getting done--she stil had a teaching job and even won two awards--but how? This can't be a good way for her to live, and she can't be happy living like this. What gives?

Part II on Wednesday.

A Few Good Engineers

Small Town sent me this to put in the comments, but I think it needs a post of its own.

A FEW GOOD ARCHITECTS

CAST:
MEP Engineer: Jack Nicholson
Architect: Tom Cruise

MEP Engineer: You want answers?

Architect: I think I'm entitled to them.

MEP Engineer: You want answers?!

Architect: I want the truth!

MEP Engineer: You can't HANDLE the truth!!

Son, we live in a world that has CHILLERS, BOILERS AND SWITCHGEAR. And those PIECES OF EQUIPMENT have to be LOCATED IN ROOMS. Who's gonna DESIGN THEM? You? You, MR. ARCHITECT?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for LOST PARKING SPACES and you curse the SIZE OF MY GENERATOR. You have that luxury.

You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that THOSE MEP SYSTEMS, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth.

Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that DESIGN TEAM. You need me on that DESIGN TEAM.

We use words like DESIGN, CODE, ANALYSIS...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent PROVIDING OWNER COMFORT AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY. You use'em as a punch line.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain my DESIGN to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very ENVIRONMENT I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a DUCTOLATOR and DESIGN a BUILDING SYSTEM. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!

Architect : Did you OVERSIZE THE MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL ROOMS?

MEP Engineer : (quietly) I did the job you HIRED me to do.

Architect : Did you OVERSIZE THE MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL ROOMS?!!

MEP Engineer : You're goddamn right I did!!

If you a engineer, thow yo hands up

I talk a lot about the projects I work on, but it's rare that I discuss the other people in my neighborhood: the engineers. We call them consultants, but most of them are engineers. (I guess we call them consultants because they don't drive trains or wear striped bib overalls.) They occasionally make architects drink, but overall they're good people who have lives that are just as hard as the architects do.

Your main engineers on a project are:

• Civil: makes the building site run water away from the building, runs utilities up to the building (within 5 feet), and works with the landscape architect to get the sidewalks and parking lots in place (sometimes).
• Structural: makes the building stand up and hold up under all the loads put on the building (live, dead, wind, snow, seismic, etc.).
• Mechanical: figures out how to get hot and cold air in the building and specifies the units and systems that put that air in the building.
• Plumbing: frequently the same as the mechanical engineer, runs water and gas pipes in the building, specifies plumbing fixtures, and runs waste lines out of the building and roof drain lines off of the roof.
• Electrical: specifies the lights and figures out the power systems in the building and powers all the equipment that the architect and some other engineers put in the building.

One would imagine that engineers would be a stodgy, cranky bunch, always trying to shoot holes in the architect's divine vision and taking a metaphorical poo on every cool-looking aesthetic idea we have. My response is that engineers are like any other group of people--some winners and some losers, but the vast majority of them are just doing the best they can with what they have. Having spent the better part of nine years with them, however, I have the following stereotypes based on my experiences, and I'd love to hear from any engineers that read this blog for a reality check. (I'd also LOVE to know what makes engineers drink, especially about architects. I know we're a bunch of merlot-slurping pains in the butt.)

The few civil engineers I've worked with have been anything but that. I get my drawings late and/or incomplete, and it seems like they're completely misunderstanding the scope of the project or what they're actually required to do. They seem the least comfortable around other people, which is odd because they seem to do the least amount of calculus. Having gone to Georgia Tech and spent four years around nothing but engineers, it always seemed to me that an engineer's social skills and social comfort were in inverse proportion to their familiarity with and frequency of performing calculus. Also odd is that the women civil engineers I've worked with were the opposite--they kept in frequent contact with me, got me their stuff on time (or called when it was going to be late), and had their stuff generally right. I know I have a new or semi-new reader who is a civil engineer out in D.C--what am I missing, dawg? Have I just been burned by a couple of bad apples? Holla!

Structural engineers are the guys most responsible for the building not falling down, yet most of the ones I've met are the ones most likely to grab a keg if a building does indeed fall down. As the building shreds itself under the weight of gravity and its own mass, they're the ones recording it for YouTube and hitting each other on the arm and yelling "Ohhhman! You gotta watch this, dude, no seriously put the shots down, it's worth it!" I think they're super-friendly because you kinda have to do what they say--you move and fold around them, whereas most other fields have to move and bend around the architects. Because they know they run dis beeyotch, they're buying you liquor to ease the pain of knowing that you're just going to have a column in that hall, unless you redesign your clinic space. Sigh. Have another shot, dude, it's worth it.

Mechanical/plumbing engineers are hit and miss. One that I've worked with on and off for about six years is super-good at what he does and is pretty easy to get along with. He knows when to push back, and he knows when to back down, and I like that in an engineer in general. He and I heckle each other in a way that almost sounds like we went to high school together; he almost sounds like a structural engineer. However, I've met a few mechanical engineers that won't do their job and won't call me back. Dammit, I'm a Southern lady, and if you don't call me back, there will sweating-in-Valdosta-in-the-summer hell to pay.

Electrical engineers are generally pretty easygoing, and I tend to do very well with them for the opposite reason of the structural engineers. Most of what electrical is running through the building can fit in less that 1 1/2" of conduit, and it can bend around just about anything, so as long as you give them a 10' x 12' room near where the utilities come into the site, they're happy. They also tend to be most likely to work weekends, because their work depends on everyone else's work being done. They need to know where I'm putting the exam rooms and which walls are getting the computers and where the CT scanner is going and what mechanical unit is going on the roof and are we actually putting a chiller in the project and where are you locating the CRAC unit and so on. Furthermore, they tend to have the most esoteric senses of humor and are the most likely to send me hilarious construction-related and nerd-related email forwards or recipes. Electrical engineers like to cook, for whatever reason. I should mention that of the three women electrical engineers I've worked with, one was fantastically awesome, one acted like a shy mechanical engineer, and one seemed to have utter disdain for my very existence. Turns out though that she treated all women this way on a project, so I didn't feel so bad. (And she was my age, too! WTF?)

Here's the thing, though: I have a special place in my heart for engineers. To keep my job, I need one to three projects going on at once, but in order to keep their jobs, engineers need like eight to twelve. I might be exaggerating, but they need more projects than we do because their part of the project is smaller. I also know that they're all depending on me to have my shit together so they can do their jobs, and that just makes me feel sorry for them. You're depending on me? Well, good luck to ya, pal. Engineers know a lot about a couple of things, while architects know a couple of things about a lot. We know just enough to be dangerous, and that's why we hire engineers--they keep us from being too dangerous.

Engineers, I raise my crystal Tiffany wine goblet full of Riesling to you. You make me drink, but overall, it's in a good way.

The agony of the fee

Recently, Bosley asked me how things were going on FCH, and he mentioned that we should try to get things wrapped up sooner rather than later because we were starting to run out of fee on that project. His comment made me realize that I didn't actually know how much fee I had left on each of my projects, and maybe I should find out. Turns out that access to that information isn't restricted, just kinda hidden in our project files. Because no one says, "here it is, here's how it works" unless you ask, then no one knows where it is and how it works.

But I did ask Howie on Friday what was the deal with fee. Where do we keep track of it and how do we know how much we have left? Howie showed me two ways of keeping track. One was kept for every project on the same office-wide software that our timesheets are done on, and the other is a record in an Excel spreadsheet that Howie does on all his projects. He showed me how each person bills against the project, how many hours they worked per week, and how much is still left. He puts the overall budget, broken up by phase, into the spreadsheet, and as Howie puts in how many hours each team member works on it, the spreadsheet shows him how much is left for that phase. It was eye-opening to see that we had already spent our fee for the planning phase on TCMC, for example. Howie pointed that out to me, and then he mentioned that we could look for ways to save fee as the project goes along. For example, we might roll SD into DD, since the floor plan is pretty much worked out at this point.

The concern I return to again and again is fee versus product and service. If we're running low on fee for a project (that is, we've nearly spent up and billed for all the cash we asked the client for in the first place), how do we assure that we still give the contractor (and thereby the owner) the good product that was paid for? What happens when you've spent the money wisely--no one was wasting time on the project and everyone who billed to it was really and truly doing something useful on it--and you're still not done? How do you schedule your time? My initial thought is to remove myself as much as possible from the project and step in as needed. We bill TCMC and FCH only $60/hr for Intern Timmy and Intern Kimmy, respectively, but we bill those clients $100/hr for me, $160/hr for Howie, and $185/hr for Bosley. The partner I used to do a lot of work for, Alex, rarely got involved on his own projects and therefore rarely billed to them. Bosely, however, works on his projects and bills to them, which on the plus side means that a client gets high-level attention but on the minus side he eats the fee. This is kind of annoying to me as a worker bee because Bosley, as a partner, will get a bigger chunk of the profits when the project is over than I will, and because he's salary he doesn't actually have to bill the time at all. I'm hourly so I do have to bill each hour I work (or travel to a meeting or work session) or I don't get paid. Furthermore, this hoses all the interns, and you know how I love my interns. Do not hose the little people who actually do the work, I always say. It's a little something I learned from Fight Club. That and do not talk about Fight Club.

So, I'm learning about a new part of my job responsibilities as a job captain and grownup-in-training. I have to watch out for getting the building built, keeping everyone organized and busy, and making sure we still have the cash left to finish the project. I almost feel cool.