That Dirty Old Pipe-Sniffing Job
It's amazing the crap you do in your mid-twenties when trying to impress your much more seasoned team members. In the mid-90's, I was the second youngest designer on our consulting engineering team at a well known AEC firm. I took great satisfaction in getting tasks done quickly in the most efficient manner I could muster up.
I'd also be the first to volunteer for site investigations where others would shy away. For me (as a very visual person), going out in the field was great experience - a few hours of seeing mechanical systems in action translated into much more clever design solutions back at the office. Oh, the wonders hidden within some dingy mechanical room are beyond anything you could learn in a classroom. Some systems were perfectly designed, others seemed like something you might see in a Dr. Seuss book - but most offered something unique.
Some trips, however, provide you with absolutely nothing; somehow, those are the trips I remember the most. One particularly cold winter day in Michigan, my boss approached me with a job we needed to do for one of our clients - a major pharmaceutical manufacturer.
"Uh, Chuck", he said a bit sheepishly, "we need to go up on a roof and identify a few things". What was missing from that statement was "we" meant "me" and a "few" meant over 50 vents and many roof top air handling units. I happily accepted since I had never done a roof investigation and I was too young to know any better.
The only existing information we had on this *huge* roof was a full size blueprint that was about 25 years old. It fell somewhere in between "worthless" and "a hindrance", it was just too difficult to decide which of those two words was a best fit. With me also was a tape measure, a notepad, a few colored pens and a checklist of systems I needed to identify: exhaust fans, rooftop units, and vent pipes.
Once on the roof, I still remember my initial glance looking over what was in store - it was like a post-apocalyptic war zone, a sea of mechanical monsters with plumes of condensate jetting out from everywhere on the roof (the sub-zero temperatures played well into that scenario).
And so the process began. I found out (through some very frustrating trial and error discoveries) that the print I was using was almost entirely inaccurate. That process alone chewed through a ton of rework. The only solution to record the data I needed was to sketch the footprint of each unit on a notepad, then meticulously measure the unit size and relative location. This was awful in the freezing weather; it was nearly impossible sketching with gloves on, so my right hand was constantly exposed to the elements. What I ended up with was many pages of mess with measurements everywhere - in the end it took two days to translate and convert these drawings into AutoCAD.
For the vent pipes, I needed to find out how close they were to each rooftop unit and what type of vent it was... and this is where a bad dream becomes a nightmare. I assumed that there must be an identifier on each pipe - but no, nothing but flashing and tar and filth. That's when I knew - for the first time, the olfactory system needed to play a role in a site investigation.
"But it was very obvious which vent was poop and which was dope - you just needed to straddle that pipe, close your eyes.... and SNIFF."
Now, I'm still not sure what left a bigger trauma footprint on my brain over those three days - the lingering smell of virgin sewer gas or the paisley-inducing notes of many unknown chemicals. But it was very obvious which vent was poop and which was dope - you just needed to straddle that pipe, close your eyes and....... SNIFF.
Twenty years later - I'm still around - what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, they say. But I know this - there are factories still out there, there's plenty of old roof plans that need to be documented and, yes, there are vent pipes waiting for a friend.
I've been doing a lot of interviews lately with professionals in the consulting engineering industry and I was surprised to find out that site investigations like this are still being conducted in mostly the same manner. Sure, there are a few handy new tools like digital cameras and digital .PDF viewers, but most people are still taking physical prints, notepads and pens. The existing digital tools available have some very important gaps - they have no real-time measuring capabilities, are limited in their zoom level or have too many complicated options; and none have provisions for simple, precise sketching. As a result, most people are still using their trusty, outdated pen.
"[With ArcSense] I could have finished the job in less than a day compared to a whole week."
I'm proud to say that ArcSense can solve almost all of these problems and finally bring site investigations into the 21st century. For a roof investigation, you can use your iPad to find and capture a satellite image of your job site, seamlessly import the image into ArcSense and scale it to true dimensions with the swipe of our calibration tool. The power of an active satellite image map would have been invaluable to me for that old job. I could have just walked around the roof, sketched the footprint of every air handling unit and exhaust fan I saw and typed in any pertinent data (or used the microphone). Depending on the clarity and size of the image, I may have been able to trace each vent, too. Regardless, I could have finished the job in less than a day compared to a whole week. Making a few spot checks with my tape measure would be all it takes to have confidence in the scale of my active map.
ArcSense is the only digital .PDF editor / design package that recognizes and corrects any type of freehand input as measured, vector geometries in real-time. And one of the best parts - the sketches you create are automatically digitized. Your CAD drawing is almost done - ArcSense .DXF files can be directly imported into AutoCAD and even sent to the office directly from the field.
And it is easier and faster than using pen and paper. Entities and text can be copied, rotated, scaled, and grouped - a remarkably efficient system that will minimize your time in the field.
We learned so much from our private beta test (wrapping up this week) - but we are eager to get our software in the hands of designers everywhere so we can learn much more from a larger, national audience. Our public beta test starts at the end of March; we invite anyone in the engineering industry with an iPad to try ArcSense themselves! You keep our free software at the end of the test. Spots are limited, so signup below today.
Oh, about identifying chemical vents vs. sanitary sewer vents; ArcSense can't really solve that problem yet. You may have to give us a few years on that front. In the meantime - happy sniffing!
You early tech adopters out there with identified problems you face in the field; I hope to see you in our program - your input is crucial during this beta stage.
Charles Nivison / Product Manager / www.arctuition.com