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A project manager in Boise told me 'just pour the slab, the prints are a suggestion'
He said it while we were standing over the foundation forms for a new retail center. How do you even respond to that?
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alex_taylor101mo ago
Ever have a client ask you to skip the oil change and just top it off? What do you even say to that?
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wendy_ross711mo ago
Honestly, I'm gonna play devil's advocate here because sometimes those prints ARE overkill. I've seen architects spec out a 6-inch slab for a storage shed when 4 inches would work just fine, and they put in rebar where wire mesh would do the job. The PM might be seeing a situation where the engineer got conservative, and he knows the local soil and weather patterns well enough to say "we can back off this a bit." Plus, sometimes the prints come late or have mistakes, and the PM is just trying to keep the crew moving instead of standing around for a week waiting for a revision. Ngl, I've seen crews waste half a day digging a footing to spec when the inspector would have passed something shallower anyway.
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hugo_hayes1mo ago
Wow, that's a scary thing to hear. I used to think being flexible on-site was just part of the job, you know? But I saw a crew take a "suggestion" on a footer depth once. Two years later, the whole porch was sinking and cracking. The prints are there because someone already did the math. Treating them like a rough draft is just asking for a call-back, or worse.
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