April - 2023CONSTRUCTIONTECHREVIEW.COM8By Greg Patch, Vice President Site and International Groups, LJA Engineering, Inc.THE MOST EFFECTIVE CIVIL SITE SOLUTIONSIn my 50 years of development, contracting, and engineer-ing, finding effective civil site solutions still remains a challenge despite our technol-ogies, programs and construc-tion seminars. The old saying that many of the problems we face are overly obvious and the solutions are embarrassingly simple still holds true today. Early in my career I worked in the development arm of a restaurant chain which was opening a store a day and with that came all the issues of managing the devel-opment of the construction process. In one instance the foundation plans used in California for seismic activity ended up in the building plans for a restaurant in upper New York where seismic design was not required or needed. During construction, no one questioned the apparent overuse of steel reinforce-ment. I think all of us have seen the picture of a residential development where a home was built four feet above the street with no means of access into the garage and they even poured the driveway. Over time we all come to realize that common sense, in many instances is not that common. So, what do we do? First and foremost, you must recognize critical moments in the development and construction process that requires your undivided attention, and these are long before you set foot at the job site. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates both stated that you must provide blocks of time to do your planning and critical thinking, and this is true to have the most effective site solutions. We have all heard the expression there is never enough time to do it right but there is always enough time to do it over. Creating those blocks of time for critical thinking and review is a time saver. The more time you dedicate at the right moments, the more you will save hours, problems and money at the site. If you are always putting out fires, you are not spending your efforts at those critical junctures. So, what are some of the critical moments? Having spent years in the design build construction and development arena it always started with site familiarity and taking time to walk the site with the construction documents. This is that first critical moment and what might surprise you is sadly many architects and engineers have never been to the site. So, IN MY OPINION
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