Where the Rubber Meets the Road

 

Photo courtesy of AdamB@SilverScreenMarine.com



    After months of intense preparation, my engineer-dive team kicked off field operations in support of a long-awaited New York City harbour project that began stirring prior to my previous departure from the NYC scene.  The project includes nearly every type of underwater waterfront repair currently in use in order to rehabilitate an immense pre-war structure built by the now-defunct Department of Docks.  The diving work is some of the harbour's most challenging, crawling through mud in low to zero visibility, tight quarters, current and no direct access to the water surface.  With the vast majority of work on the project located below the low tide elevation, the client is depending on our team of divers and topside inspectors to ensure that quality work is performed according to strict specifications.  With multiple construction operations and a multitude of divers operating from various locations on a barge flotilla longer than a football field, we are keeping very busy.  With new equipment to vet and operations to master, the dive team members are bringing their full skill set to the table every day to support the mission and get the job done, from database management and software programming to dive gear and audio-visual system maintenance.  Each crew member has developed unique skills and contributions to meet new demands and have begun to coalesce into a tightly-knit and highly effective team .

    Although I had acquired some experience with resident engineering and construction management in the waterfront sector over the years, engineer-divers industry-wide are typically more focused on the condition assessment side of things and lighter on the construction inspection experience.  While the basic premise of donning dive gear to take an engineer's trained eye to the structure and communicate observations may be the same, this project has reminded me that construction inspection is an entirely different animal from conditions assessments or routine underwater investigations, traditionally the bread and butter of my line of work.

    Typical waterfront condition assessment projects might entail an investigation and accompanying report for a structure on a one-time basis, or repeatedly over some multi-year cycle developed to monitor deterioration.  The maintenance or repair recommendations and cost estimates provided to clients may or may not be acted upon, now or ever.  Observations are a mere snapshot in time, and may be given only cursory consideration by different consultants that might follow.  Life expectancies may be estimated, but possibly not revisited in a consistent and effective way to prove useful.   Taken to the extreme, the machine that is our nation's biennial bridge inspections process involves a staggering amount of repetitive inspecting , reporting and monitoring that can easily carry maintenance recommendations through several engineers over dozens of cycles and many years of visits, sometimes with no apparent repair actions for all that effort.  

    Contrast the almost gauzy quality of the routine condition assessment to the cold, hard precision necessary in a construction inspection project.  The contractor's dock builders, divers and crane operators are working in concert with the inspection divers and design engineers to actually build something.  The measurements taken by the dive inspector directly and immediately impact the price paid, observations help determine the repair made, and reports lead to the decisions rendered and direction taken, possibly that same day.  If the inspector makes a bad call, there could be repercussions to the work and they may be significant and immediate.  In the routine bridge inventory world, where one lead inspector may filter through the information, write the report and hand it off to the client to be filed away until the next cycle, the observations of a construction inspection are typically analyzed and discussed at length by the entire inspection team as well as the contractor, and then reviewed with the design engineer, contractor and/or client to develop imminent actions.  Condition assessments, routine investigations and cyclical structural inventories are inarguably important to maintaining our waterfront infrastructure and assets; however, construction inspection is simply put 'where the rubber meets the road'. 

*Opinions and observations expressed in this blog are solely the author's, and are in no way attributable to any business associate, colleague or client.