17 October 2013

It worked last time! The perils of recycling specifications

Clovis' Taufe, by Meister des Heiligen Ägidius
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
For many years, I was one of the instructors for my CSI chapter's certification classes. In addition to explaining what CSI's practice manuals say, I liked to include horror stories - real-world examples of the ways people found to really mess up a project. One of my favorite stories came from a public sector waste treatment agency. The project was a relatively simple addition to an existing building at one of the waste treatment facilities, to provide shower and locker rooms for the employees.

The agency had hired an architecture/engineering firm to design the addition, and to prepare bidding documents. As the bid opening date approached, the owner began getting calls from mechanical subcontractors, who asked, "Did you want to use fresh water or effluent to serve the baptismal font?"