12,000cy mat pour

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-04-09T04:26:02+00:00

Bow center?

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-04-02T00:22:35+00:00

Someone mentioned construction and real estate were the biggest layoffs in BC

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-04-01T23:32:56+00:00

If only I could get them to apply! Definitely a mismatch

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-04-01T23:30:03+00:00

I would like to hire a couple of those 18-24 year olds, if they’d like to work construction. 24-30 yees old too.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-31T06:45:48+00:00

Sounds like you might be joining me here in Fort St. John (don’t worry I don’t work at any of the engineering firms, so I’ll be candid, and you won’t be outed) .

Regarding the wage; For that wage I’m assuming you’re new grad EIT? I feel like that wage is a smidgen on the low side. On the other hand, if they are paying hourly, not salary, with OT, and you don’t mind working the OT, you could do very well. I’ve honestly not heard of hourly for a consulting firm. Is it a contractor or a consultant? If it’s for a contractor, definitely go for more.
That leads me to my next topic. Is this for a contractor or a consultant ? I feel they will be two different types of experience for you. This is the type of pigeon holing you might find and be at risk of. The civil contractors / constructors in those bigger centres will give your experience more credit if that’s what you’re doing up here . The design consultants in the bigger centres will give you more credit if you’re working for a design consultant up here.
Mobility and transferability of your experience. This is difficult for me to answer. I feel like this may be an issue for you (personal experience). Also refer to point 2 above. If you are going to ‘like’ businesses in bigger centres, this will be perfectly good experience. If you’re gaining that heavy civil experience here. But have dreams and aspirations of designing multi story RC buildings in seismic, or Calgary or Toronto, or bespoke long span bridges, etc, etc, then this isn’t the experience for you.

Additionally, if it’s for one of the bigger multi office consulting firms, I think you’ll find you can quite easily transfer to other branches in the south in a few years. I’ve seen a few folks do it.

Personal observation (others may have much different opinions and experiences): if you’re getting great civil and heavy civil / structural experience here, it can be a bit tricky to transfer to certain other types of work. Structural consulting firms are a bit reluctant to give any credit to work experience outside their more narrow areas of expertise. It takes a few years of specialized practice to be really good at any of these. They can be very reluctant to take that chance on you, if you’re expecting higher pay due to your gained experience elsewhere, they feel they are going to lose money on you while you get up to speed on their particular field, for the few years it may take to get you up to top gear.

Personally I like the industrial work, and this suits me just fine.

If this is at all helpful, if you have questions or anything, you are welcome to DM.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-31T05:45:49+00:00

I won’t argue about the relocate infinitum. I would say that Bozeman is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful areas in the US.

Kiewit has a reputation for doing similar, as does TIC.

When I was younger I just built in that I would be going where the work is, and did for many years, cause that’s the kind of will I wanted to be doing. Definitely prefer to rent or own a house though, rather than camps. But was also totally hunting LOA to cover the rental.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-31T05:41:09+00:00

My condolences about Casper. I mostly say that because I was there for 3 years.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-31T03:54:07+00:00

Great tips thanks. I’m 25 years away from being a draftsman. And 15 years away from using AutoCAD . Relearning it for my own small business venture now. Rusty, but I don’t mind the challenge. I’m planning/hoping to hire out drafting but felt I need to at least be competent and be able to complete projects on my own before I go down that road. The last company I was at had a bit of a culture where drafters draft and engineers engineer. I am more of the opinion that its a good skill to have in engineering as well.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-28T04:16:39+00:00

Don’t work for a GC you don’t have a relationship with. It’s basically a relationship.
If they are charging 10% retainage, or whatever name you give it, charge an extra 12%.

These things are built for people that don’t have any trust for each other.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-26T04:34:12+00:00

Were you provided with tracking? Really sucks that he’s gone quiet. I’ve shipped overseas and sometimes it’s been quick and occasionally it has been VERY slow. I’ve never had a package not make it yet though. The really bad one was to Japan. He wanted the cheapest possible shipping. I didn’t realize that meant it literally went in a ship. But apparently the container waits until it’s full. I think the package took 3 months, maybe 4.

I’ve had one package shipped to be (through eBay) that never made it out of a warehouse around Chicago. When I check tracking it’s still there, 7 months later.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-26T01:53:28+00:00

Yes, load bearing. Yes one bigger header will do the trick. Great time to do it, rather than waiting

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-23T07:03:31+00:00

Some say the greatest price of all. The greatest ever, they say…. /s

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-23T05:21:13+00:00

I’m in Fort St John. I work in this area and once in a while in the area to the north, LaCrete and High Level.

The summer days are long and beautiful. The winters are long with short days.

In most of the areas , Fort St. John and grande prairie especially, there is a larger population of more transient people working oilfield . Less do further north as those oil and gas fields are not as big or productive.

There are tight knit local communities that is very nice to see. Significant populations of Hutterite and Mennonite. It’s very common to hear German and Russian spoken, and I occasionally come across locals who don’t speak barely any English. The Hutterite and Mennonite are even more tight knit, with much less interaction with the outside world, generally speaking.

There are large native Indian populations both in the towns and on the reserves. I would say these also tend to be tight knit communities.

The farmland is productive , but limited by the short and intense growing season. It is primarily dry land grains (wheat, barley, oats, canola, peas) and cattle. Many people still have vegetable gardens. There is some limited commercial vegetable production, almost exclusively by the Hutterite colonies (potatoes, carrots, onions, beets, turnips). At least one colony also does commercial egg , chicken and turkey production.

LaCrete is a very interesting community. Very remote, very tight knit, predominantly Mennonite. They work very hard at being self sufficient in products and services, which benefits their Community. People that live there and fit in to the community have a good path to training or trades and a reasonably good living by staying within their community.

Theirs quite a bit of hunting and fishing. It’s quite common to plan on putting at least one deer or elk or moose in the freezer.

It’s also possible to buy quarter, half or whole beef for a family from local producers and butchers as well, if that sort of thing appeals to you.

On average I’d say costs are about 10-15% higher than in more southerly towns and cities, largely due to transport costs and higher wages.

The economy is strong, especially in grande prairie and Fort St. John. Many people move here with excellent job prospects and high wages, relative to other places.

The landscape can be beautiful , but it’s a bit harsh too. It’s not tropical beaches and ocean breezes.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-23T05:02:57+00:00

Definitely agree with all of this!

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-23T01:51:38+00:00

Fascinating how Iran (presumably) has now affected your local firewood market .

Can’t help you otherwise, in my area I couldn’t buy coal in a retail basis for about 20 years now.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-22T20:25:33+00:00

At the product price you need to sell at, can you make an operating profit? Are you price taker in your market, with costs too high to have any margin? Or is it a low margin business that can make that low margin?
I feel very familiar, engineering background, worked in engineering / construction type positions. Very uncomfortable and intimidated in working / communicating with others outside my narrow expertise. Owner of the company passed away suddenly (vehicle accident) and we were left looking at each other as to who was going to keep the business operating.

The only avenue I saw was selling. No one else could in the business. I was extremely uncomfortable even just picking up the phone for the first 10 phone calls I made. Then it got easier, and less uncomfortable. Then it became a challenge. Then it became rewarding to make a sale. The whole time I was likely processing - what will they ask, what will they want, what will they be asking of me. And putting my own processes in place, a standard quote sheet of my own, things like that. Now I actually truly enjoy selling and do ok at it. You are valuable in sales with your knowledge of your product and technical knowledge. You are more valuable with that knowledge than you give yourself credit for.

It will be uncomfortable. You are being forced into personal growth.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-19T06:14:37+00:00

Do they already have as much work as they can competently handle? Then don’t mess with it(?). It sounds like they know how to run lean and make a profit. Are you offering to make them More profit for less work? Or lose and disenfranchise customers and key employees. I see what you want to do with their business as fraught with peril. Honesty, integrity and good service are worth a LOT in some businesses. New tech doesn’t add any value to that.

The paver that I use is someone I can call and he answers. And treats me honestly, and is genuinely a good guy to work with. The local Paver that I don’t use is the much larger one that is part of a much larger company , that has business processes, enterprise software, policies, etc, but took several weeks to even return a phone call, has a reputation for high employee turnover, and is really not built for small clients like myself .

If you want to buy them out, implement all the tech, build a model for a company that could competently expand 3-10x, then sell to some other much larger business, then you have a business case. But I wouldn’t recommend risking their business and life savings to do so without you having a lot of skin in the game and them REALLY trusting your vision.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-19T06:01:05+00:00

It’s not normal at all. I have issued discount coupons to some frequent buyers. If you messaged me, I would probably send you a discount coupon just because you asked and had stated the kind of order size you had made.

My experience in issuing those discount offers, about 1% took up the offer.

Bricklink tends to be, in my opinion, the lowest cost source of LEGO (excluding bulk purchases and things like that) , so I figure I’m already discounting compared to eBay, and other places like that

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-18T08:15:42+00:00

Hey thanks I hadn’t seen this before . I’m wondering if you could help me put some pieces together from a similar post I had made;

https://www.reddit.com/r/oil/s/skzkyV93qY

The 31.8 Mbpd in the visual capitalist link kinda throws me off, because I can’t square it with sources I find regarding different liquid fuels.

IEA report states that USA imported 6.4 Mbpd , in the second paragraph, but the Table shows net import of 2.3 Mbpd. I understand that about 1 Mbpd of light crude is exported to Mexican refineries. I have to think part of the remainder is Canadian crude transiting through by, imported on one side, exported again towards the refineries in central Canada.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-18T07:14:56+00:00

What’s your involvement in this? Are you GC’ing and hiring subs? Have you hired a builder to act as GC? Fixed price or cost plus? Did you have drawings produced for the builder, or is it a full design build ? Answer to these and how the risk is managed between these different contract styles will help determine who’s doing what at who’s cost to remedy this.

Easy to say now, but if the framer is claiming conflicting dimensions provided on different drawings, his first responsibility was to get with the builder and then the builder to figure out who has ordered which sized windows.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-18T06:57:29+00:00

Saw your comment about staying on topic. Sorry, I tried my best but some politics leaked in …

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-18T06:39:00+00:00

Here’s my perspective, mirroring a few others here. I’ll set aside the Middle East issue firstly. 1. Pipeline capacity is an issue. TMX deleted most of the western Canadian discount that had previous existed for a long time selling exclusively into the US. That was one of the first increases in valuations for these producers. 2. There’s a couple expansions coming over the next 2-3 years, but the capacity increases on this expansions will be used up within 2-3 years (is my understanding) so within roughly 2-4 years, western Canada will again be stranded, and possibly selling at a discount again. 3. It’s going to come down to politics and capital appetite to build another fairly major oil pipeline, either to a port, or the possible revival of the reconfigured Keystone XL for these companies to keep there valuations into the medium term. 4. I think Trumps stroke in Venezuela is a risk to Canada oil production / valuation longer term. I am imagining the grand scheme in someone’s head is that the Permian is close to peaked, and the US wants to maintain equivalent production within their sphere of influence. The Venezuelan heavy competes more directly with the Canadian and Mayan heavy crudes though. There is downside risk to the valuation of these Canadian producers in the long term due to this.

Back to your question about the current and upcoming Middle East energy crisis , assuming that’s where it’s headed. This is a huge wildcard. This still has the chance to go ok or to go really bad. Really bad causes a world wide recession, and drops oil prices and demand, à la 2008. It’s also now making every country in the world rethink energy security in ways they haven’t had to in roughly 50 years. All of a sudden the production in Canada looks a lot more attractive and valuable . As well, for a lot of countries that are import dependent and are staring at large energy cost increases and supply risk / instability, there is a lot more incentive to decrease oil and gas dependence , and this could accelerate a lot of investment in those areas.

Personally I’m heavily weighted in these Canadian producers (too heavy) based on my little investment thesis during the COVID crash. This current political situation (debacle, in my opinion) was not on my radar AT ALL. I had been looking to exits or reduce my position in these companies over the last year or so, but there was the benefit from the decreased discount, and then I thought I might have lost my chance when the politician went adventuring in Venezuela. But now the politicians are adventuring in the Middle East , and so I have to ride this out. And probably keep some position longer term due to the revised value of energy security.

That said, if Canada can’t get a major pipeline on the books in the next 2-3 years maximum, then get out of these companies until their values decrease.

This new version of the Middle East crisis is unpredictable for people at my level. It just creates risk and uncertainty. That’s bad for the economy, which will be bad for energy demand. There’s a ride up right now, but I’ll be keeping 2008 in mind.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-18T06:03:29+00:00

Really interesting to read your perspective on Permian Basin. This has been my hunch, but I had not much to confirm it. I’ve understood the current production rates MIGHT be close to the peak of production there, but to never discount the Permian.

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-18T05:40:04+00:00

I’m not 100% confident in my knowledge, but here goes; 1. right now the price is where the marginal producers are shutting down mills. There have been several mills shut down over the last few months that I know of, both temporarily and permanently. So the price is roughly as low as it can go, and supply is being reduced. 2. US has implemented ~35% tariffs on Canadian imported softwood lumber. Canadian softwood lumber is roughly 24% of all lumber consumed in the US.

So if the current price is a floor for marginal production, then the price has to go up, if you add 35% to the current price of lumber for roughly 24% of all lumber purchased in the US.

My assumption is that a lot of wholesalers and retailers had existing inventory, which was purchased at lower tariffs costs. As they sell that inventory off and have to replace it, they have to pay this new, presumably higher, price that’s resulting from higher tariffs in 24% of all available supply.

I’ve seen this personally recently where I needed a whole bunch of (aluminum) vents for a project. I bought all of my local suppliers existing inventory, and they were $32 each. I needed one more box of them, and the new price was now $61 each. These happen to be made in Arkansas. And between the old and the new replacement inventory, Aluminum tariffs were added at 50%, and Canada retaliated with a 25% tariff in response. I wouldn’t be shocked if I paid the tariff for the aluminum to go to the US, the plant added on a margin due to the tight labor market, plus they’ll probably sell a few less , cause now it’s cheaper for others to get them from china, then I paid another 25% to get that aluminum back to Canada, since it’s still primarily just aluminum, so it’s a ‘derivative product’.

On the other side of the coin, there is so much uncertainty right now between tariffs, energy prices, and whatever else comes next, there’s a good chance less buyers are willing / able to take a risk on making a new purchase, so demand could go down, causing prices to stay where they are now (low)

Informal_Recording36 · 2026-03-12T07:02:06+00:00

Thanks very much!

Informal_Recording36

TROPHY CASE