You can have your design done cheap, quick, or correct

I mean cheapest design. At least on roads. That's why so many go broke. And with roads you have state standards, industry standards, federal standards, environmental standards, etc.

There's a half-built 10+ mile section of I-20 that sat for a year because a contractor went broke, and another is having to come in and finish it. 2nd time this has happened around Columbia. My BIL is getting ready to start the fourth interstate widening around Columbia. Told him not to go broke like 2 of the last three. He laughs.

Then you have 5 projects to fix malfunction junction going to 5 different companies. They have a TEN YEAR staggered construction plan for that. TEN freaking years. Odds are 3 out of the 5 who won those bids will go belly up too, and that 10 year plan will become 15 and maybe 20. No one wanted to bid on the project as a single project. That should tell you something.

All this could be done in months with proper motivation and reduction in red tape.

Tiggity®

Oculus Spirit [97716]

TigerPulse: 100%

Posts: 64855

Joined: 7/13/02

Cheep budgets, cheap labor, cheap work.

Nov 26, 2019, 9:18 AM

Just a hunch, but...

My experience is mainly in truss collapses during construction. I'm no engineer, but I know the problem. Most truss collapses happen in large residential or commercial buildings. And it's easy to prevent if done properly. In every single case the workers spoke little to no English, had little experience laying a large number of trusses, etc.

The almost universal story is that the workers lay and anchor trusses, then attach horizontal bracing. Then go to the next truss. Anchor it, attach more HORIZONTAL bracing. Then repeat. Once you get 5 to 10 trusses up in this manner, you're asking for disaster. The rule is no more than three to four trusses, then add DIAGONAL bracing. Any more than 4 trusses with ONLY horizontal bracing and you're asking for disaster. One jobsite had 22 up, with no diagonal bracing. Trusses folded like dominoes, then rotated downward. That puts outward pressure on the exterior walls, which then fail, and all the trusses fall to the ground killing whoever is under them. I've literally seen this SAME THING happen over and over and over again.

I can only imagine the problems that happen on larger commercial buildings.

And OSHA does nothing to prevent stuff like this from happening. The subs are illegal, with illegal workers, and the sub always folds and disappears by the time OSHA investigates and gets around to issuing fines. Usually the GC gets stuck with the fines, even though the GC hired Pedro and Company to do the framing and had nothing to do with the accident.

Electricians are even more worrying. Plumbers too. The quality of construction in the US is in decline, even though it's increasing in quantity. Just across the board really. Two of the three contractors hired by DOT to add lanes coming into and out of Columbia have gone broke. From stupid stuff. One didn't crown the asphalt correctly for drainage per regulations. Had to repave the whole project over to fix it, caused them to go bankrupt. Several houses in my neighborhood have had tens of thousands of dollars in damage due to crappy plumbing. I got lucky. Still, main water line to my house is half as thick as code, and is buried only 6 inches deep, also against code. I've had three leaks in it. My water is ICE cold in winter.