Working within the bones of buildings

One never really knows what you might find in the bowels of a structure. Some buildings are added on, refurbished, altered and repurposed over and over again.

This means that when you are sent in somewhere to do a job, you are sent with a drawing that is the architect or engineer's best guess based on the most recent survey and/or last works concluded in the building.

When you actually get stuck into the bones of the building, you may find that it is very different. Obstacles, fossils and hazards. Sometimes the findings are good but more likely the finding will be that there was an obstacle that was not factored in when the Engineer was making the design.

It is very easy to draw lines on paper and it is much more difficult to turn those lines into something physical that also usually needs some sort of supporting framework to keep it up in the air.

Along the way, inside the ceilings and shafts of a building there are at least a half-dozen or so services that the find in every single building without fail and a few more that are common for most modern buildings.

Electrical power supply, Lighting, Water supply, Sewerage, Air-conditioning, extraction, Fire Sprinklers, Data cables and so on.

When you get there, you make a plan with what you find and then update your drawing accordingly to an "as-built" version for final records. After 12 years of doing this, there has not been a single building that I have had to do any sort of significant amount of ducting work where we did it exactly the same as the drawing says.

Every building is an adventure and a puzzle.

We have managed to resolve most of the problematic issues with the floors that we are working on.

Thank you for reading this post and have a good working day!

Cheers!
@zakludick

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