you say you got alotta whips, well I got a LOT.

Christine and I have pretty much been using song lyrics for our titles for the past 100 or so blog posts. Haha. If you guys can guess correctly which song the lyric is from than props to you. Drop your guesses in the comments.

Anyway yesterday I was out of the office cause we had a job walk out in Oakley. Yeah the city of Oakley, but I don't think they are the founders of the sunglasses, they just have the same name. One of our projects is going out to bid soon, it's the one I'm currently working on right now the Fish Screen. Basically they are implementing a fish screen in a canal before one of our pump intakes so we don't end up killing a mass population of fishies. And for the job walk, potential contractors come out and we explain to them the project and let them tour the site (preconstruction) so that they wont be completely confused and know exactly to expect when they bid for the job and do construction out there. Construction projects typically operate by bidding, meaning that the contractor with the lowest bid will get to work on the project, of course they have to ensure that the work will be properly done according to plans and specs and they are other stipulations they must pass such as having a high credit surety. Anyway back to the point, there were about 25 contractors or so that came so we got a bus for the short tour, so the site wouldn’t have like 50 million cars on it (the owner would have been hella pissed) but the whole time, watching everyone get on and off the bus with their cameras it felt like a high school field trip for grown men. Haha. I was in a separate SUV with my boss cause there wasn't enough space but seriously it was kinda funny cause the guy who was heading the trip, one of the associate engineers here, kept yelling "alrightt everyone into the bus, we're heading to the other part of the jobsite" and then every like 10 minutes of walking we would stop for them to explain something from the plans. Haha. Yep high school field trip for grown men. [I say men cause all the contractors are men, haha everyone in Construction so far has been male--more posts on this topic later]

So the project is basically on the some owner's farm land and basically she hates the fact that we are doing a project on her land but it’s a public project so sucks to be her. I don't think she will get compensated unless she can find evidence that she will lose money while we are doing construction. Out there she has a bunch of cows, at first they were all there sitting lazily in the field mooing to each other randomly. About like 15 minutes into the tour, one of the cows started mooing and then got up and started walking into a grassy patch area (I'm guessing to eat grass), and then all of the sudden all other ones got up and started walking in the same direction. It was like a parade of cows flocking together to go eat. It's strange to me how cows communicate cause seriously, all their moos sound the same.

The project is worth 40 million dollars. Yeah that’s ALOT of money to move some earth and implement a fish screen. And it's all government stimulus money. My supervisor said that if I could design and install it for 20 million, that they'd give me the rest of the 20 million to pocket. So 20 million to go into it and 20 million for me. So… where my crew of engineers at? This could be our time to shine, one hit wonder - never have to work again. Hit me back if you are interested, drop a comment or something. I'll need some geotechs as well, and if you are not an engineer and want to work for me well you can do the construction --haha. And for the record I'll compensate you about 5k more than this article suggests:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/highest_starting_salaries/index.htm?postversion=2009072404

Maybe more if you are good at negotiations. But really....
WHERE MY ENGINEERS AT?