My Manifesto: The Incoherent Ramblings of a Madman

Tilt-up Panels

Designing tilt-up panels will be the death of me as an engineer. There's a million different guides on how to do them, including: recommended practices, guidelines, standards, superseded standards, construction practices, etc etc.

The major problem is that all of these guidelines and such all refer to each other --> it reminds me of when I was younger and checked the dictionary to see the definition of "dude" it said: "a fine and dandy gentleman" so that led me onto my next conundrum, what the hell did dandy mean? it said: " a cool dude" and an 8 year old Adam was left none the wiser.

Now I find myself, 22 years old, going from one tilt-up panel guide to another to find how to do something, and being told to check the guide I was just in for clarification, and again, ending up none the wiser.

Whichever cruel, cruel bastard let engineers write books needs to be shot on that fact alone.

To top it all off I have quotes from university lecturers flowing through my mind:

"we don't teach you how to do tilt-up panel designs because they're a fundamentally flawed concept, and are dangerous"

" you will get a lot of pressure put on you to design tilt-up panels because they're cheap and fast to erect - but just remember, like most cheap things they're nasty and can come back to bite you. Avoid them for as long as you can."

And now I find out that the slang term for craning tilt-up panels into place is a freakin' "suicide lift" because when shit hits the fan - people die! I'm sending some fucker into build something that if there is a small mishap he's going to die!

--> just imagine how high our insurance will be then!