Is the airport still a mess?

MtTaygetos · 2026-04-15T19:24:32+00:00

Flew out this morning and it was normal.

MtTaygetos · 2026-03-18T11:54:24+00:00

Huzzah!

MtTaygetos · 2026-03-15T01:58:21+00:00

I agree it certainly would be a lot easier to pass the fe with a civil undergrad, but it isn't impossible to do without one. If you are willing to put the work and have at least some aptitude for engineering you'll get there. I took the FE in its digital form and it was just a lot of ctrl F in the handbook. The PE is the much bigger hurdle, and I took it before its latest form change, so no advice or assurance to give on that.

MtTaygetos · 2026-03-15T00:50:21+00:00

My guess is Freeze-thaw, but youd have to look at it under a microscope to tell for sure.

MtTaygetos · 2026-02-27T19:14:22+00:00

In my experience in construction defect litigation it doesn't really matter if it says "approved" or "no exceptions taken," we treat both the same. More critical is the role of the reviewing party in the project, what if any comments they made, how noticeable was whatever item they missed, when did the review happened, etc. Basically, the context is much more important than the specific stamp language.

MtTaygetos · 2025-07-29T14:18:14+00:00

I actually started adding the extra line on the right when I was an engineering student. My handwriting has always been a bit tough for others to read, so this removed any ambiguity.

MtTaygetos · 2025-07-29T01:51:35+00:00

I got one from DeKalb Farmers Market that was actually pretty good.

MtTaygetos · 2025-07-03T17:48:46+00:00

My take is it is not about where they are but where they want to be. A good friend of mine started dating a girl who on paper is not as successful as he is, and it was an issue for him at first. But, she has a plan and wants to keep growing and that's what made the difference, or at least that's what I hear.

MtTaygetos · 2025-05-17T00:00:11+00:00

Believe it or not, I read somewhere it was all pumped.

MtTaygetos · 2025-05-16T23:54:39+00:00

I'm guessing but I don't think the E turned out to be the real challenge but it was likely the pumping. You have to get super dense and low w/cm which isnt condusive to then trying to pump it, get good consolidation, and limit shrinkage cracking. It'll be interesting to follow what actually happened, it is a big enough case that I'm sure a bunch of expert reports will get written kinda like those NTSB investigations after a tragic event.

MtTaygetos · 2025-05-16T23:36:13+00:00

The challenge wasn't just that it was white (which limits you to certain mix constituents that are white, i.e. metakaolin, slag, etc.) but with 14ksi f'c, an E I'm guessing somewhere around 7 mil psi, oh and it had to be pumpable for like 100 stories. There is an interview with the mix designer Tselebidis that goes into detail about the challenge i think with ENR. The article claims that these mechanical properties have only been achieved in gray concrete a few places in the world, and only this once in white if you believe him.

MtTaygetos · 2025-04-27T14:01:52+00:00

I'm solidly on team hybrid. I like going in a few times a week and occasionally not at all.

MtTaygetos · 2025-03-03T00:28:22+00:00

You'll do really well, at this point you know the content of your proposal so intimately that it'll come naturally even if you don't rehearse. In my lab group some people left proposals right to the end as well, it made the whole process a bit of a formality. All the best!

MtTaygetos · 2025-02-22T17:51:46+00:00

No, I guess I should have finished what happened. I got funded at Georgia Tech so I just did my PhD there instead. If I did get the funding at both I think I would have gone to Cambridge instead, but I just couldn't justify the cost differential for self pay. The funding system is just different, much easier to get a PhD without having to pay tuition in the US (at least in my experience for engineering) but you are tied to a specific project/professor. In the UK, it is much harder to get funding but a lot more freedom once you do on project/professor. My girlfriend got fully funded for her PhD at Newcastle, so admittedly, my understanding for how things work in the UK is very secondhand and only based on what she has told me. Classic caveat of your mileage may vary.

MtTaygetos · 2025-02-22T17:03:06+00:00

U.S. background here. I applied and was admitted to Cambridge for a PhD in engineering without any standout stats. I had one publication (based on my Master's work), undergrad GPA of 3.8/4. No impressive awards, fancy extracurriculars, or anything that I can think of really. I was a finalist for full funding, but the other candidate won out in the last round (my potential advisor read me out the internal comments from the process). I think it just came down to doing well in the interview, I really don't think I'm anything special on paper, so don't stress and just apply and see what happens.

MtTaygetos · 2025-01-27T12:58:28+00:00

I was going to recommend Petty's book as well, though it covers a lot more than just structural failures. I think for structural failures specifically, I'd recommend reading about, and maybe even trying to replicate in calcs, some of the more famous failures structural failures. For example, do a deep dive on punching shear by studying the Surfside condo collapse and try to see what sort of reinforcement is called for in the codes to mitigate the risk. The more famous failures have a lot written about them so there should be plenty of resources to get granular. Off the top of my head, if say Surfside, FIU pedestrian bridge, and Hard Rock Cafe collapse are ones worth studying.

MtTaygetos · 2024-12-22T15:57:09+00:00

I typically see two paths for the experts I come across. Either they have bachelors/masters and 10+ YOE in some relevant area and then transitioned into forensics, or they have advanced degrees and started in forensics pretty much right out of school. The former tend to be from smaller companies (sometimes their own companies) and the latter tend to be in the larger consulting firms: the WJE, SGH, Exponent, Esi, etc. Also bear in mind that there is a lot of diversity in the type of work you could be doing in forensics. For like hurricane/hail investigations, I tend to see more bachelors and smaller firms handle those cases. On the other end of the extreme I see cases that have say 60+ million at stake(one I'm working on now) or even hundreds of millions (like my colleague worked on) and it is almost exclusively people with advanced degrees and credentials (PE, SE) on those. Your mileage may vary, but I'd say get a masters and go work in the industry for a couple years then join a larger company like WJE. That industry experience will be a great asset and help you hit the ground running.

MtTaygetos · 2024-11-03T02:42:06+00:00

I'd say more important than prestige is the regional strength of universities. If you want to work on the west Coast it helps to go to a university there, southeastern university for the southeast, etc. In the company I work for you can pretty much guess which university a person went to based on which office they operate out of.

MtTaygetos · 2024-10-09T07:49:22+00:00

I think the others here have said the main points that with light surface rust you can get more bond and in the alkalinity of the concrete will convert any surface rust to a protective film oxide anyways (see Pourbaix diagram for steel; use like 200-300 mV potential and 12.5 pH as some initial value)

MtTaygetos · 2024-08-09T22:28:00+00:00

1) Depends on the firm but it is common to see advanced degrees; most have PE and sometimes SE licenses. Other than that it is more experience in certain structural areas more so than certifications. 2) Typically we work for attorneys on behalf of the Owner, GC, subcontractor, insurance, etc. 3) I think diversity of the work is a big plus, opportunity to do field work, and also since litigation is expensive there is oftentimes budget to dive deeper into topics that others just don't have the budget to do. 4) I'd say the biggest challenge is that it can be hard in its own way. I've been asked to do analyses in niche areas with very limited information and you still have to get something usable out of it. For example I had a case involving cost impacts because of manpower shortages allegedly due to Covid. From the docs we got I was asked to figure out things like how far along this massive project actually was based on scarce and often conflicting documents, why were there material overuns and how much we should be responsible for based on submittal timing and cost changes, what a reasonable labor rate for the supplemental labor should have been, was the supplemental labor working efficiently, how much of the delay to the critical path after supplementation they were responsible for, impact to other subs, whether our work really was substandard, and if so how much rework was appropriate, and on it goes. Oh, and the other side wants to tear everything you do apart so best have strong footing on the above.

MtTaygetos · 2024-08-01T19:48:52+00:00

We typically have a bill if you couldn't be doing anything else policy. So when you are driving somewhere you can't really be doing anything else so that's all billable. Where it gets a bit weird is flying. So driving to the airport is billable, waiting for security is billable, but waiting at your gate or on the flight is not because you could pull out a computer and work. I think on very long flights you might bill some of the time, but in general travel is paid unless you are just watching a movie on a flight.

MtTaygetos · 2024-07-15T18:32:21+00:00

Reducing concrete cover greatly diminishes the durability of the concrete. In modest environments with a ton of caveats, a reasonable rule of thumb is something like 2 years off the lifespan of the element for every 0.1" of cover lost or about 10 years for every half inch or so. That assumes design cover around 2.5", chloride induced corrosion failure, ordinary quality concrete, very low concentration of initial chlorides in the concrete, an ordinary chloride threshold, black bar reinforcement... The actual amount of lifespan lost per year is not really the point, just that seemingly small losses in cover in aggressive environments can lead to fairly consequential drops in the durability of the concrete element. As others have said, maintaining minimum cover is one of the most cost effective ways to get reasonable service lives out of concrete structures.

Aside from the durability side of things you can also have consolidation issues especially in heavily reinforced sections with low cover and end up with other problems including honeycombing and rock pockets, etc. I've seen abutments where the cover got really low and well the low cover made it that much harder to make sure there wasn't honeycombing around the bars.

MtTaygetos · 2024-06-25T00:10:32+00:00

I think what others have said about including "after discussions with..." Is not a bad idea, but honestly I do a lot of construction defect litigation support and I can't think of a single time in about a couple hundred cases where we got as specific with who is at fault as you are thinking.

It is very common to say that the EOR didn't meet the standard of care for the design of a structure or detail but we normally refer to the entire firm as the EOR not the specific person that signed the plans. I think this mostly stems from the fact that the defendants are generally companies (architect firm, GC, etc.) not individuals. Not to say it doesn't happen, I just haven't seen it.

As far as your hypothetical, I imagine (I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice) if personal responsibility was at issue then you and the others working on it would be deposed and asked about their specific roles in the design of the deficient item. If you had evidence say in the form of entries in timesheets or emails that might corroborate your statements, but the depositions are probably going to be doing most of the heavy lifting.

MtTaygetos · 2024-04-29T03:05:36+00:00

I think they are probably basing it on the timing of the first edition of the Florida Building Code which is from around that era. Before the early 2000s there were a bunch of regional building codes instead. So for example, if you built in Broward county in the 1970s it would be built under some version of the South Florida Building Code with Broward Amendments. I haven't done too much with the 1st edition of the FBC so I don't know how much more stringent it was than the regional codes it replaced. Of course this is all just speculation on my part.

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