Weirdness abounds.
I designed buildings for a suburban development several years, ago, 8 family condominiums in a squiggly road suburban silliness, but still I did what I could to make them better than the average.
And then 2008 happened, so the developer let the sites lay fallow. And since then, he (and I ) have moved on to larger, different projects that do not depend so much on the largesse of bankers, and the remaining sites have been allowed to be sold off to people on a piecemeal basis. And since I am the Architect of Record and the official holder of Copyright, some of them contact me….
This is not a difficult thing, but neither is it straightforward. The original permits, which included all the buildings in the development, were obtained in 2004. And admittedly, we used previous plans as a starting point, but we altered them to include basements and changed the elevation to make them look a fuck of a lot better.
These were developed as condominiums, intended for young singles and couples and being relatively inexpensive and fitting into the suburban sprawl. And the Bush Debacle killed them all off.
So I have been contacted by a developer who wants to take a couple of these on, and I wish him the best. He is going to develop them as rentals, until he can sell them, WTF. So I am engaged to update the plans and obtain new State approvals.
Here’s the thing. in the intervening 14 years (!) we have adopted a couple of iterations of new building codes. As I am going through those old, old plans, we had designed a couple of different elevations and a couple of color schemes.
And today I was trying to update the plans for sections and plans, particularly roof plans.
And I discovered the roof plans as recorded were not accurate. And the drawing essentials, like elevation references, were not properly referenced, as well as all kinds of goofy computer drawing weirdness.
This is the thing that CAD is supposed to allow us to avoid.
I recognize that the setup of these drawings was done before the modern drafting systems. But they were still confused and not simple.
So I spent a few hours making the roof plans make sense, and correspond to the elevations we have.
I have no anger toward the architects who helped me draw these up in the first place. The probably did not understand the the way CAD could be referenced and layered, and not the way drafting actually made input to drawings. And the Software we use, has changed-a lot!- over the intervening time. And it is hardly not inconceivable that I was spending my time on some other issues and did not review it in the amount of detail it should have been….
Which is always the aspect i have struggled with. I am way more concerned with the specifics and details of the construction and specifics of the buildings I design. And frankly, I spend WAY more time on design issues than I should on a day to day basis, especially on these smaller scale projects. I have always been very hands on, until I am not, and then I trust people who are maybe not ready for it. I never claimed to be the best project manager, all I am is the best project manager I can be.
So I have been spending a fair number of hours, straightening these drawings and making them conform to the standards that I now use. I will not, of course, bill the clients for these; hardly their responsibility. But it makes me way aware of the importance of seeing the abilities of the CAD software we use, and how to be aware of how to use it on a daily basis as well as use it on our older documents.
It is simultaneously annoying in the extreme and amusing to work through these issues. And it informs me in a visceral way with how I will interact as a supervisor in the future.
If I ever do again.
Empire Of The Senseless 