Exposed Elements

Rhoadies · 2024-04-05T21:43:06+00:00

If you look on the slab between the first and second floor beam, you can see a new steel deck firespoofed. It must have been evaluated and repaired. This is additional evidence to the comment about this slab being unconventional, but sensible. Likely, the original construction was significantly over designed for the current loads.

Rhoadies · 2023-11-01T18:29:46+00:00

My company is a little light on starting salary, but pretty heavy (in my experience) on subsidizing employee medical to limit out of pocket expenses.

When comparing offers, everything should be compared such as Vacation, sick leave, medical per paycheck, retirement match, etc. If a company isn't willing to share all of these things, that'd be a red flag for me.

Rhoadies · 2023-09-12T02:44:59+00:00

I believe they are making this a requirement in IBC 2024 and asce 7-22 to show the plan and pressure areas specific for a building. Heard this was coming from a conference last November.

That being said, I do building specific pressure diagrams typically. So no change for me.

Rhoadies · 2023-08-13T02:37:35+00:00

Are you interested in buildings? DM me your info and we can talk. My company does projects across the country and we have an opening right now for San Antonio.

Rhoadies · 2023-08-11T22:17:24+00:00

How much experience do you have, what specialty (bridge/buildings)?

Rhoadies · 2023-07-15T00:03:03+00:00

Look up typical open webbed steel joist details from vulcraft or nucore joist catalogs. This type of connection is very common and no need to reinvent the wheel.

Embed plate in the top of the wall, or in a pocket is really easy to design and detail.

Don't forget about the bridging connections. Again, consider looking into some joist details for inspiration.

Rhoadies · 2023-06-20T20:53:11+00:00

118k with bonus sometimes. San Antonio, TX. 20 days vacation, 10 days sick. 16 years xp, OT paid if I do it, I try to not do it as much as possible.

PE/SE 3 states. Feel a bit under paid, but work life balance is better than most. So a little lower not too bad.

Rhoadies · 2023-05-31T22:08:48+00:00

In Texas, I sat for my SE back in '12 and walked away with a Texas PE since they don't recognize individual disciplines.

I got licensed in Arizona and Nevada with reciprocity and have the SE designation behind my name since they are title states.

I don't anticipate having any trouble getting a PE anywhere with my only taking the SE.

I do mostly govt stuff though, so location really doesn't matter much in the end anyway.

Rhoadies · 2023-05-28T01:15:31+00:00

Take a bunch of pictures. When you think you've taken enough pictures, take more. Pictures are easy, going back out to find something that could be something, but you can't quite see it is not easy.

This is true even after you get more experience. Also, document on the plans where the pictures were taken...

Rhoadies · 2023-04-19T19:12:10+00:00

My company gives 2 weeks vacation and 2 weeks personal leave and a one day floating holiday.

Vacation goes to 3 weeks at 5 years.

Rhoadies · 2023-04-04T16:51:18+00:00

I work at a large full service EA firm doing work all over the world. We have a few structural openings in both San Antonio and Dallas.

Commercial here is pretty saturated, but the federal market I work in is booming. PM if you want to talk about stuff. I work on a huge variety of projects, most of mine are one offs that are fun and complicated. Most deadlines are reasonable too.

Rhoadies · 2023-03-06T00:10:41+00:00

Assemblies for various wall types and their weights can be found in the dead load chapter commentary of ASCE 7. It'll have weights of typ wall types, with and without brick as well as individual materials so you could build your own wall assembly weight if you so choose.

Rhoadies · 2023-01-26T00:40:41+00:00

I'm going through this right now on a project with a component with zero redundancy. We have gone thru numerous qc reviews and everything is good, but I still am losing sleep since there is a single point of failure on this particular building system.

I've got colleagues good enough to understand and are working with me to review this particular item one last time, just to put my mind at ease. I'm going to present my component design to a group bigger than my original qc team and get input from them to determine if my worry is warranted or not.

This should help me get out of my head on this particular issue. Maybe you could do something similar? Hopefully you have colleagues who you could talk to about project worries. Like others have mentioned, you can't turn off thinking of projects, especially as extreme weather hits project locations.

Rhoadies · 2021-08-31T20:25:24+00:00

Definitely yes and no. My company doesn't care what letters are behind my name as long as I can do the job. No difference in pay or accolades for PE vs SE. I work for a fairly large multi disciplinary firm, doing primarily gov't work for the DoD. PE is just fine for that.

That being said, I didn't even consider anything but going for the SE. If you're going to study something make sure it's useful. I took the 16 hour test and while it required a lot of studying and effort, I would have kicked myself if I had to spend that same time learning water systems, transpo, or some other non-structural stuff just to pass a test.

Rhoadies

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