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Reflective Journal Connor

Clarke
Week One
I started working for a company called EMCON, a Structural Engineering
Consultancy company employed as a draftsman for an engineer named Eddy
Masuga.
The first Week of working for Eddy mainly consisted of understanding Structural
Drawings how they work and whats important to draw to convey the proper
message to the workers on site.
Eddy and I went through some older jobs hes done in the past and showed me
different elements which make up structural drafting. This was similar to what I
was doing in (CEA204 and CEA207) with Don, but on projects which have been
constructed around Brisbane.
I learnt a lot about the importance of line styles and weights which was taught to
an extent in CEA103 but not specifically for structural drafting.

Week Two
The second week of working with Eddy Masuga and EMCON found me actually
starting to prepare the drawings. I was charged with the first steps of preparing
architectural drawings and making them into drawing outlines which a structural
engineer could use to mark up the elements required. These would then be used
by Eddy to mark out the Columns, Beams, Footings ect that Id drawing using
AutoCAD.
Using what Id learned in CEA103 and CEA204 and CEA207 I was able to
produce a basic set of structural plans with Steel Schedules and general Notes
which I was able to created using General Notes pages from previous jobs and
BCC website.

Week Three
On the third week of working for EMCON, Eddy received the soil report for the
site. He sent me a copy of the report to read and extracted the important
information which I then added to the drawings on the General Notes Page and
the Foundation Plan. The soil report was similar to one I saw at the hands on day
in our Geoscience class CEA201.
With the report finished Eddy had to make sure the foundations hed chosen
were applicable. In most cases his assumptions correct/efficient. There were a
couple of changes where in curtain areas of the site the Ground Baring Pressure
was less than expected and so the Footing Details for those areas had to be
changed.
I made the changed he specified and sent the updated drawings to him.

Week Four
There Eddy had finished with the Piers and reduced slab which needed to be
placed Brisbane City Council pipes which ran through the site. The design of
piers running either side of pipes is to alleviate pressure bearing down from the
building around the pipe instead of on top.
The design of the piers wasnt able to be finished without the Soil report. Once
the soil report was received the week before Eddy finished the piers and sent
them to me to add to the drawings and make details. The importance of types of
ground soils and the GBP they have was taught in Geoscience CEA201.
Once Id finished these I sent them back to him for final checks before he sent
them to the certifier.
Later on that week Eddy received some problems from the certifier which had to
be changed before he could allow them to pass on to construction. These
included a footing change which into a pad footing, and some of the piers were
closer than the Australian Standard allowed.

Week Five
With the problems Eddy needed to design a new counter lever footing system in
addition to changing the piers. Eddy did tell me the plans, if theyd gone through
a BCC certifier would have probably been allowed because the closeness of the
piers was due to the wall being designed on the construction boundary, which is
why he put the piers closer in the first place.
However since the Client went through a private certifier they had to adhere to
the Australian Standards or they could be held liable. Liability and standards
were covered in CEA104 Workplace Practices.
The New design was sent to me that week and I worked on the drawings until the
beginning of the following week.

Week Six
On the six week of working for EMCON I finished the drawings from the previous
week and Eddy sent me the architectural drawings of a new project to start on.
Finishing up the last drawings for the first project was a longer process than Id
first thought it would be. There were a lot of little cleaning up things on the
drawings which needed to be fixed. Making sure the Drawings were named and
ordered correctly (I changed the names to begin with numbers so when they
were downloaded the files would always be in order of the drawing numbers) and
the Annotative texts were giving me some difficulties with sizing correctly so I
had to go back and use normal texts edited to different scales.
This process was a long one and resulted in multiple iterations of drawings
before they were ready to be sent to the client as final construction drawings.
Whilst doing this also I was starting a new project at the first stages. Learning
how to handle multiple projects at once was difficult in a sense at first but I
quickly learnt how to manage my time and finished the first project and got the
preliminary plans and details done in one week, what previously took me two
and a half.

Final Comments
Though Ive not finished working for EMCON I believe in the almost two months
Ive worked here so far Ive learnt a lot about how real engineering businesses
are run.
Engineering consulting and drafting, though can be difficult, came down to a
process of working in elements and, as Eddy would tell me, there arent many
elements to Structural Engineering when working in unit blocks which were his
main business) working from the bottom up there are; Piers, foundations, walls,
columns, beams, bracing and roofing. With the occasional addition of extra
elements.
My favourite element to work on I found were the Stairs. This was because
instead of being told what to drawing by eddy I had to look at the architectural
drawings myself and figure out what they wanted and draw it. This, though it
wasnt design work, did feel like I was working on the build itself not just the
drawing.
This experience has left me with invaluable knowledge and I can really see the
importance of the compulsory work experience section of the course.

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