Nice Spillway

Kinda makes a person get the impression that nature really doesn't care what we say or do let alone thinks we have any control over it.

But the authorities there keep telling everyone it's all under control

"But the authorities there keep telling everyone it's all under control"

Reminds me of Kevin Bacon's "Remain calm! All is well!" from Animal House

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro

That has to be the failed spillway for the Oroville CA. dam. I'm not a bit surprised that once the concrete of the spillway failed that the water gouged out all of that soil. What concerns me is do they know at all why the concrete failed in the first place? That might become a critical piece of how to permanently fix this.

Unstable soils are a hallmark of California geology.

http://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/geologic_hazards/landslides

It is very likely that the soil under the spillway slipped, weakening the structure, and then the heavy flow initiated the crack/hole that grew until the entire width of the spillway was damaged. Whatta mess.

A whole bunch of this clip seems to be from a week ago.

Click on the youtube on the bottom right, this takes you to youtube, click on show more under the video and it has the update on the inflow and outflow and water level by the hour....

No, not a very nice spillway.

However, one man's trash (poorly constructed/maintained spillway) is another man's treasure (lucrative rebuild contract).

I'll guess the reconstruction will be 50 to 100X more expensive than it should be.

Very nice for the 'heroes' involved (the word hero is used way too loosely these days).

Really makes you wonder what happened in life when a person just doing his job the way he is supposed to makes them a hero now?

As for the cost of the repairs, I would love to see the actual billing and where the money really goes behind it.

I would almost bet that less than 20% of it actually goes into the materials and labor costs and the other 80+% just magically disappears into never to be defined or released 'administrative' related something or others.

You notice none of the pics coming out have Moonbeam in them. But you can bet he'll be at the billion dollar ribbon cutting ceremonies in a year.

Why do you think that everyone that does business with the government is crooked? Have you ever bid government jobs?

http://www.bidnet.com/supplier-solutions/government-contracts

Where did I ever say or imply anything as such?

And to be fair aren't government contracts typically at the top of the list for being noted for their total wastes of good money with the least accountability for their where, how and why of expenditures behind them?

And what does your link have to show or prove counter to any of it?

Here's a contract...

http://app.ocp.dc.gov/pdf/rftop_dcto-2009-t-0132_att.pdf

This one has more detail...

http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/3dcarfp201203_Attachment2AppendicesA-D.pdf

AFAIK the estimate that is bid, is the money set aside for the services agreed to....as the services are performed the contractor submits bills in accordance with the agreement...They don't just send you the total.....and you better not be caught lying, if they suspect something they will check....So what you're saying doesn't seem to be the whole picture, maybe there was more employees working than you knew about, maybe they never reached the total, who knows...but if you think you can defraud the government so easily, you are mistaken....

"AFAIK the estimate that is bid, is the money set aside for the services agreed to....as the services are performed the contractor submits bills in accordance with the agreement...They don't just send you the total.....and you better not be caught lying,

I disagree. As a example, I have a family member who is the administrator for a local school systems that just built a new school.

For the last year he and the school board plus other involved members of the community have been having a continual battle with the contractors who did and are still working on the job continually turning bloated exaggerated or outrightly false bills for work,rework that was never done or for work that is clearly not up to code or spec.

The problem is that, unlike the vast majority of schools and such, this one has administrative people that actually do have applied knowledge and experience in the very aspects of the work being done and can easily spot when shoddy work and false billing is being done and they will not sign off on it like the majority of administrative people would who have zero understandings or knowledge of such work or the actual codes that go with it.

So given that what exactly does your links to some contract with underlined values have or say about anything? Every single number and value of anything listed on that paperwork can easily be falsified and pass if the person who signs off on it has no understanding of the what said items are really worth.

You tell me some project is worth X amount of dollars and sing a contract with me to do it and I will do everything I can to make sure that my work bills for that even if every single aspect of it wasn't worth nor cost a fraction of it.

Simply put,You agreed to pay up to that much therefore I have to make you think it's worth that even if it isn't.

It's like with that school project. An item like a door gets billed for $3000 even though it only cost $300 and then when questioned the contractor says that there was $2700 in additional cost involved.

Then it gets questioned in detail what that extra $2700 was for and it is reviewed that that the guy who installed the door made $25 an hour and took two hours to get it from a local supplier and 2 more to install it totalling $100 in labor and related charges.

Then when the next $2600 is questioned 'service fees' relating to the vehicle that went an got it are added in like saying the worn out 1/2 ton service van he drive cost $10 a mile and the trip to get the door was 10 mile round trip )despite maps say it was half that).

Then the remaining $2500 charge is questioned regarding what that about and it's revealed that the guy put the damn door in backwards and spent 12 hours taking it out and had to replace it with a new one again because he damaged the first one taking it out so the whole previous $500 expenses plus another 8 hours and $200 in labor are re added to the bill bringing the invested cost to $1200.

Now that remaining $1800 bill is questioned as to where that comes from and its reviewed that the door that was installed did not have a window like the contrast and architectural plans show so it got torn out and redone again costing $400 for that door plus all the second rework related runaround bringing the bill to $2200.

Then when the last $800 is questioned it's revealed that the door they put in last time did not meet fire code so they replaced it with one that did that cost $700 and claim they ate the labor and only charged $100 extra for the last rework thus bringing the bill to $3000 for what should have been a $800 door job to begin with.

Now multiply that runaround on having some high priced job work or items questioned by 100's and then consider how many administrative or executive people will just pay the bill Vs spend weeks or months of their life and an uncountable amount of company resources and money fighting that stuff or just write the check and walk away from it, being it was never their money they were spending anyway, and just paying the bloated bill is probably cheaper than fighting it.

That's what I know about how a government or such contract for a certain job or work gets billed for magnitudes of order more than it's actual 'as it had been done correctly the first time value' is worth. It's very common knowledge and near standard practice in the service industry as a whole.

This thread is just another political rant disguised as an engineering topic.

hmm an irrelevant old man disguised as a member actually contributing to the conversation.

Just because we gripe about the numbers and 'upper management' doesn't make it off topic.

Ive worked plenty of government contracts and the cards are always stacked in their favor.

I've only ever worked for one place that did a government contract and that was as a copier service tech back in 1998 - 1999.

The contract was for $250,000 for one years service and the customer (air base) paid 100% of the consumables and parts behind it leaving the full $250,000 to the company I worked for to cover the labor related costs.

I alone was that labor cost. I made $8.41 an hour and drove a Ford Escort (~30 MPG and $14k new 3- 4 years and near 100K miles before I started work there.) as a service vehicle. 10 - 15 hours a week and less than 100 miles a week was my service costs to the company.

Anyone wanna do the rough estimates on what my take of the $250,000 was that year and what remaining went to company 'administrative work'?

I'll round up to $6,500.00?

To be generous let's double that for employee expenses such as Workman's comp etc.

.. thanks for making that point!

Yea those on the 'administrative side/ get rather pissy about discussions of waste and where the majority of the money in government contracts actually go.

Even leads to some outrageous excuse stories to try and justify it if you're lucky enough to corner someone from the 'administrative side' bad enough.

My former boss was dealing with stopping his village idiot sons wife from divorced him so that where the majority of that contracts 'administrative costs' went to.

To be honest, when they picked up that contract I got a 13 cent raise for having my weekly workload nearly doubled. So that tells you exactly how much of that money really went to me.

Your $6500 estimate was pretty generous compared to the reality of what really went the working guy making sure that contract was upheld.

Could you have opened your own copy machine service and bid $240,000 on the next year's contract?

I have worked for some firms that had government contracts, but nothing so lucrative as that (and not even especially profitable). But then, some people seem to have inside tracks.

"This thread is just another political rant disguised as an engineering topic." Perhaps an ethical rant. Ethical considerations are part of engineering, aren't they? Otherwise, it becomes an empty claim when civil engineers claim to be working for the safety of the public.

????

i was wondering too.. hidden in plane flight.

My word, this was a dirty-fix spillway to start with... ill designed or a man-made-nature-wrecked aftermath.