I was tasked to talk to our Technical Information team downstairs. They work alongside the Engineers in the company. I needed to get ground levels of our sites. It was part of an exercise to determine the resilience of our assets and scale of disaster needed to cripple one of London's most vulnerable utility services. It was an extremely challenging but interesting exercise. But not until I spoke to the TI team.
**(Due to the highly sensitive nature of the subject, I apologise for the broad-brush explanation)**
A lot of what I practiced in Malaysia were based on the British system. So reading technical drawings was not an issue. However, I found it strange this time when I had to reconnect with the technical people here for some simple jargons. I wouldn't even call them jargons. They were acronyms!
The controller, Jack, spreaded the drawing on the table. "Right, let's see what we have here..."
"I'm looking for the ground levels. O here they are..." I pointed my finger to the tiny fontsize-1 numbers.
Jack stared at the drawing and then murmured, "Wait...what's this...FGL? I don't think that's...rrrright"
"FGL..that's finished ground level, isn't it? That's what I'm after" I explained.
"Ah! These guys are just being clever, aren't they!" Jack exclaimed sarcastically.
"Eh? But I thought that's universal engineering term?"
Jack was concentrating hard and looked on to the next acronym, "See here! These guys can't make up their mind. They put FGL for that, and EGL for this! That's confusing!"
"No, Jack. EGL's Existing Ground Level. It was intentional and not a mistake."
"AOD?" Jack asked.
"Above Ordinance Datum" I answered.
"Where did you learn all this?" Jack asked curiously.
"From the British!"
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Eng, ine, eri, ng?
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3 comments:
Though the HK system was based on the UK system as well, I found that there are significant differences between the HK and UK system. For instance, we use mPD and mCD instead of AOD. Moreover, in HK, we don't use old-fashioned units such as gallons and acres!!!
Haha..that was hilarious. However, I salute Jack, someone trained in accounting to even dare to attempt reading plans. Even engineers can have a hard time understanding them at times.
In the US, there are legends that will describe all the abbreviations used. This is because if someone misunderstood and had mistakenly assumed and made a mistake on site (costing additional money or caused engineering failures), there will be lawsuits. Starbucks was sued because the coffee they served was too hot. Now you see all coffee cups have a disclaimer. You can sue over everything...an easier windfall than winning a lottery.
tw
i have to agree with anonymous 8:01PM - the americans are way too paranoid when it comes to engineering documentation. that lawsuit mentality of theirs must have at least something to do with it. which made working with the likes of bechtel a real pain in the behind.
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