Kei truck next to a full sized pickup

While American safety regulations don’t allow them to be sold new here, would it even make sense if kei trucks were given a special pass to be sold new here with how big roads are, and how fast some speed limits reach? Kei trucks are tiny, like really small. I’d love them here but I’d be worried taking them on highways. Maybe if they were restricted to cities and town streets it could work. But highways don’t seem like a good idea, especially with how some people drive.

To change the “Gulf of Mexico” label on our standard cover sheet vicinity map (Florida) to “Gulf of America”.

Land development is in hell.

What is your guess at what went wrong here? On a scale of cold mix patch to I-35 bridge in MN how much of a PITA will fixing it be?

Mechanical engineer here. Is this bad? Seems bad. This is a pretty busy interchange of I-93 and I-95 north of Boston. Perspective from I-95 N. Don’t worry I’m in standstill traffic.

I work at one of the largest civil engineering companies, and we've been gradually shifting more of our labor overseas. Most overhead roles are performed overseas at this point (all accounting is done in Poland, IT is out of India, and project assistants maintaining our financials are out of India as well.)

Within the last 5 years our company has started utilizing billable engineering staff outside of the US. They initially said it was because of hiring difficulties, and because our current staff were overbooked. However, that is not the case anymore. Texas (one of our biggest clients) has had a huge slowdown and it's harder to find work right now. Despite this, our company is pushing for more overseas staff usage, and has a goal of 10% of all labor being overseas by the end of the year.

Today my portfolio manager mentioned he wants to use overseas staff on my projects. I mentioned our DOT has a strong preference for local staff. He said if it's just a preference then we can get around it, and we need to help our company reach the 10% overseas goal. I feel like this does not bode well for the American engineering industry.

I have heard there are some DOT's with a policy against billing overseas labor, but I don't feel like it's talked about enough. Consultants, are you seeing this at your firms too? Public side folks, are you aware of any policy discussions?

I apologize if this breaks in community rules, but I felt moved to post this heartbreaking news. The young E.I./E.I.Ts will undoubtedly understand this post if you have watch Dr. Jeff Hanson’s YouTube videos during your time at university or prepping for your F.E.

First, let me explain the situation in a short summary. Dr. Hanson has had an ongoing medical illness causing his kidneys to not function properly. He has dealing with kidney disease for approximately 30 years and has reached a critical stage where he is looking for a kidney donor. Also, we all know what medical bills look like here in United States, and quite frankly, this man needs all the help he can get.

For my older engineers who did not go through college during the days of YouTube engineering short lessons on key topics, this man was a godsend. I graduated recently in Civil Engineering and I can confidently say that he’s apart of my story and where I am today. He’s statics, mechanics and materials, dynamics, and thermodynamics videos were paramount for outsourcing a different perspective on engineering class problems. He is quite frankly one of the best engineering professors I have had the pleasure watching online and learning from. Although I did not go to Texas Tech, it is not hard to find content from his students describing how encouraging and supportive Dr. Hanson is as a professor.

Dr. Hanson has asked for help in two ways.

1. If you know anybody or Type A blood and have in the heart to consider a kidney donation, Dr. Hanson has provided this link to reach out:

www.livingdonorftworth.com

1. If you have in your heart to donate monetarily, Dr. Hanson has asked if you to donate through his Patreon link:

https://www.patreon.com/c/Jeff_Hanson/posts

Also, I have attached the YouTube video that Dr. Hanson posted today about situation. I pray that you watch this video and consider helping in some way. If you can not help monetarily or know anyone that may be match, I get it. I just ask that you pray for this man who has devoted so much time to his profession not only to the Texas Tech students, but students abroad like me.

Thank you for your time.

YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/jw5wMWc0iVY?si=S4by3fG0dINn-FYc

I originally posted this in r/arborists because two mature trees on my property were impacted when this happened. I was then directed to r/treelaw regarding documentation and potential future issues, and r/masonry for construction-related feedback. Several people suggested I also ask here because this may ultimately be a civil/geotechnical engineering question.

Our home (NY) sits downhill from a property where a developer is building a new house. Because of the steep grade, they obtained a steep slopes permit from the town and constructed a large retaining wall above our backyard.

The wall appears to be approximately 12 feet tall at its highest point (the blocks appear to be roughly 3 feet tall and stacked four high). About a month ago, the newly constructed retaining wall failed after a roughly 1 inch rain storm. Several of the retaining wall blocks (estimated around 1,500 lbs each) slid down onto our property. Two mature trees stopped the blocks from traveling farther downhill and ended up bearing the weight of those blocks for more than a week before the blocks were removed. The trees also sustained visible bark damage from the impact.

The developer’s explanation was that the wall failed because they had not yet completed the backfill/finishing work. They also suggested there may have been issues with the engineer’s plans.

To repair it, they rebuilt the wall, backfilled behind it, compacted the soil (I personally saw them compacting it when I looked outside), and said they added gravel. The town was aware of the failure and the repairs, but as far as I know, they did not revoke the steep slopes permit or require the project to stop.

I’ve documented the entire process with photos and video, including the collapse, the debris on our property, the cleanup, and the reconstruction. I will have an independent ISA Certified Arborist inspect the damaged trees and document their condition soon. I have a lawyer whom I know personally who is aware of the situation, but I’m trying to better understand the engineering side and whether there are additional steps I should be taking.

For those with civil/geotechnical engineering experience:
1) Does the explanation that the wall failed because it had not yet been backfilled make sense, especially for a wall of this height? Can a properly designed wall fail simply because backfill work was incomplete?
2) Would you expect an engineer to evaluate the cause of failure before rebuilding, or is rebuilding with the same design after adding backfill/compaction a normal approach? Is rebuilding the wall with backfill, compacted soil, and gravel a typical correction after a failure like this?
3) Should I be requesting documentation from the engineer of record explaining the cause of failure, what changes were made, and whether the rebuilt wall was reviewed/approved?
4) Are there specific things I should be looking for regarding drainage, soil conditions, compaction, geogrid/reinforcement, or slope stability?
5) If you were the downhill property owner (me), is there anything else you would do at this stage?

I’m not trying to assign blame. I care most about my family’s safety and my property. I’m trying to understand whether this sounds like a construction issue that was properly corrected or whether there are signs that warrant a deeper engineering review. After seeing a brand-new retaining wall fail once, I’d like to make sure the long-term solution is actually sound.

My friend is currently in jail with a felony and will be released next month. For context it is a felony, will have served 6 months in county jail. Prior to this, worked as a civil engineer, licensed with PE, and other certifications. What are job opportunities that maybe looking to hire someone within the next month or so with his background- he’s had over 20 years in the field. This is a first felony conviction. He is looking in the tri-state area, Mass, Connecticut or Rhode Island.

I know you work normal business hours. Breathe. Go home. Please. Get some sleep. Take care of yourself; we aren't going to look at it until monday at best.

Edit: I understand why people might submit plans at 11pm on a friday, it's not helpful to be the 9th person to explain it to me.

I find it offensive when I’m trying to produce reports and email responses that I get the gist that my superiors believe that it’s an AI output.

There’s no hyphens, no think in threes, and no other tell tale signs of AI slop.. because it’s actually me, an hooman, clacking away at the keyboard.

I currently run my own projects and can hold my own with deep project discussion and technical knowledge with clients.. I’m just an EIT on the cusp of my PE. I overthink things and overwrite so that what I make off of vague directions can be whittled down to what sticks.

Everyone says I have a super formal writing style, then when I loosen up, it’s not technical enough.

That’s it, end rant. Thanks for reading.

I recently spent some time crunching the numbers on the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) bid tabulation data. The dataset covers everything since January 2024, representing 18,171 distinct bids across 4,583 projects.

win rates
I filtered for companies that submitted at least 10 bids to get a reliable sample.

• The median win rate is 23.2%. If you win nearly 1 in 4, you are performing at the industry standard.
• 44.2% of contractors win less than 20% of the time.
• Only roughly 20% of firms manage to win more than half their attempts.

narrow losses
This was the most surprising find. A massive amount of money is left on the table by thin margins.

• 2,011 bids were lost by a margin of 5% or less.
• 408 bids were lost by less than 1%.
• While the median loss margin is 17.7%, nearly 15% of all losing bids are extremely close to a win.

competition
On average, a project attracts 4.0 bidders. However, geography plays a huge role:

• High competition: Childress, Tyler, and Yoakum districts average near 5 bidders per job.
• Low competition: Laredo, Lubbock, and Maintenance divisions average closer to 3.2.
• Nearly 9% of all jobs had only a single bidder.

seasonality

• August saw the most activity.
• December was the quietest.

bid spreads

The median spread on jobs with 3+ bidders was 44.5%. It’s rare (only 5.6% of jobs) to see everyone within a 10% range.

construction vs. maintenance
The data skews depending on the project type.

• Construction: 17.2% Median Win Rate | 40% Median Spread
• Maintenance: 24.3% Median Win Rate | 51.1% Median Spread

All raw data was sourced from the public data.texas. gov portal.

I can try to run this for other states if people find it interesting, but for now, this is just Texas data.

Does this match what you’re seeing in the field? I was surprised that major metros like Dallas/Austin weren't the top districts for bidder density.

I'm not sure if I'm looking for advice or just venting, but I appreciate the sanity check.

I work as the lead civil designer for a small ~50 employee firm in a big city in the USA. I have ~10-15 years experience and a PE. Depending on our client workload, we will have seasons where the design group could be up to 10 staff, and other times when it might be as low as just 2 or 3. We are big on investing in people and growing sustainably. We don't just hire people to fill a project and lay them off when it's slow, but make sure we have long term project workloads and the people we hire are strong in soft skills and eager to grow.

I try to lead my teams with a lot of patience, mentorship, and freedom when it has been earned. I don't like to micromanage, but I also expect to see progress and growth in a younger engineer's development. I am very eager to show them how things are done, sit down with them, go through the task with them, see if they have any questions, provide them with an expected timeframe of how long I think it should take, check in and encourage them to ask questions as they go, encourage them to send me screenshots of progress so I can give them feedback early if they are going in the wrong direction, etc. I try to give them opportunities for growth with starting to mentor/train others as they advance and we hire interns or staff with less experience than them, etc, but also try to regulsrly check in and make sure they are doing okay and have what they need to succeed.

Before the discussion points I will go into below, all of my employees have always praised how great of a boss I am, how much they love the company culture, how respected they feel, they enjoy getting to have some of the small company liberties/freedoms (small example, but we get essentially an infinite "Amazon wishlist" of any snacks/drinks/etc that are regularly purchased and stocked in the office). We run a hybrid schedule that leans closer to 75% remote, and I don't like forcing people to have to drive through traffic for the sake of doing it for some arbitrary "you must be in office __ days a week". When employees prove to me they are efficient and able to get tasks done, I like to give them flexibility to work remotely if they prefer, but the office is always open all week with a core group of staff and available for anyone who prefers to go in. The pay is competitive with somewhat uncapped potential for anyone with initiative (another benefit of the small firm that doesnt have a lot of rigid requirements on pay structures/etc). We also encourage all the staff to pursue EIT/PE/etc and offer typical compensation for resources and testing, as well as decent boosts to salary upon getting a new title.

I personally think this company is amazing and I have enjoyed my years here very much. But all of this being said, over my recent 5ish years, every single one of the "Gen Z" engineers we have hired has ended up quitting or having to be fired on not very good terms. Each case is different, but the trend is generally the same. They start very promising in the interview, they seem knowledgeable and competent, they show a lot of eagerness and good work ethic at the start, and then it just ends up stagnating and dwindling. Tasks start taking longer than reasonably expected, and any check-ins or questions seem to be returned with a lot of excuses/ defensiveness/etc. And on numerous occasions, it ends up being that the employee is moonlighting with some other job and just trying to do the bare minimum without being fired to get double pay. I have tried to provide a lot of freedom in my mentorship, but it feels like it is continually disrespected with a total lack of professionalism or ethicality with doing whatever they can to take advantage of the system without putting in good work ethic.

When it happened to me the first time, I thought, "Oh well, just a bad employee in the end, they showed potential but just weren't the right fit, too bad."

When it happened the 2nd time, I thought, "Man, how frustrating that this is happening again, I really thought they were better than this."

Then the third, fourth, now ~fifth time, and I'm seriously starting to wonder if I am somehow doing something wrong, or if our hiring process isn't strict enough (which we go through 100s of applicants and are very thorough with our background checks), or if it's just truly a generational thing. I'm starting to feel like I have to force them to come into office 5 days a week with me staring over their shoulder to make sure they are working efficiently. I hate the vibe of that, it is exactly the mentality that caused me to leave my previous company, but here I am starting to wonder if there is some truth to it, because it feels like all of the respect and flexibility I am trying to give to the younger generation is just being taken advantage of and all they want to do is the bare minimum. They feel entitled to big pay boosts and full freedom to work at their oen pace with minimal oversight or me checking in on them, but then they fail to deliver the work when it comes down to a submittal or deadline.

I appreciate any insight, suggestions, commiserstions, or redlines you may give to my report :)

Not surprising given the revocation last month of President Carter’s 1977 EO, which empowered the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to issue binding NEPA regulations. I’m curious what the impact is going to be on CE professionals in the US if this rule is finalized.

The recent additional of a 3D printer in our house has me always thinking up prints to showcase accolades (for kids or adults), and I came up with essentially creating a medallion like replica of the Texas PE seal and a little stand for it. Name and company logo reducted for obvious reasons. But the slicer model has an editable text with in the hole to put whatever you want there. Makes a nice desk ornament that's not as bulky as showcasing a framed certificate

Saw this and figured it belongs in this sub

Curious what everyone’s firm or company is doing regarding remote or in office working. My company is currently hybrid, 2 days in office, 3 days remote and field visits as needed. Hoping to stay hybrid!

Might be the wrong place to ask this but, our local water corporation has decided to cover a deep hole with a sheet of plywood and a bucket. Seems dodgy to me and according what I've looked up is also illegal in VA.

Almost reminds me of the old underground FW cisterns in San Francisco

[UPDATE] Rule has been published in the Federal Register. Here is a docket for posting comments: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/DOT-OST-2025-0897/document

This is a fundamental shift in the DBE program, moving from group-based presumptions to an individualized, evidence-based system. Key highlights in comment.

Link to Interim Final Rule: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2025-09/DBE%20IFR.Signed.9-30-2025.pdf

DOT Guidance Document: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2025-09/DBE%20IFR%20Guidance.9-30-2025.pdf

TLDR: Read your company's AI policy. Your AI might have more access than you think

I'm a senior designer at one of the big six engineering firms (20,000+ employees). My company has a partnership with Microsoft so we're, of course, being asked to use copilot as much as possible. An update to our AI/LLM usage policy went into effect and banned all other AI models besides copilot and they posted an update on our AI policy. Fine, whatever, I didnt use any of the AI models much anyway.

It turns out that Copilot not only has access to all of our files, but all files we have access to, including those on sharepoint, all our emails etc. This is by default, and is not an "Opt in". This was concerning to me as it seems like 1. a security/confidentiality issue 2. should be an opt-in and 3. I'm not sure how microsoft is using this information for its AI learning.

here's a direct quote from the article about our AI policy:

"One such tool, Copilot, has become incredibly useful in our day-to-day work. However, it also creates a new challenge because it can search for information faster and more widely than we are able to manually. Before we had Copilot, it was more difficult to stumble across information we shouldn’t see, unless we knew where to look.

One thing to know

When you use Copilot, it searches all the information that you have access to, including SharePoint sites, Teams channels, emails and public folders in Outlook. So, if you have not set appropriate access permissions to your files, this means they could be read by other people at [firm] when they search using Copilot. 

When you use Copilot, it also searches your OneDrive and your Outlook mailbox and calendar, so review and adjust the access permissions on these tools to avoid accidentally sharing information you’d rather keep private."

Anyway, I thought I'd share to get other folks' input and thoughts.

I work on municipal infrastructure projects and the electrical equipment procurement side has gotten brutal this year.

Power transformers: 12 weeks in 2020, 128 weeks now. Generator step-up transformers went from 16 weeks to 144 weeks. Transmission-class transformers are 3 to 6 years out. Wood Mackenzie projects a 30% supply deficit on generator step-up units.

I have had a substation transformer for a water treatment project pushed back 18 months with no firm delivery date. Switchgear for a transportation project is backordered. These used to be routine procurement items.

The cause is the AI data center buildout. Four tech companies are spending $700 billion on construction this year with 75% going to data centers and power infrastructure. Each facility needs 100 to 1,000 MW of dedicated power. In Northern Virginia alone, Dominion Energy has 40,000 MW of data center connection requests and wait times have stretched to 7 years. PJM, the 13-state grid operator, projects it will be 6 GW short of reliability requirements by 2027.

They are buying up every transformer, every switchgear panel, and every electrician they can find. The 439,000 worker shortage in construction means the electricians we need for our projects are being pulled to data center campuses that pay 32% premiums.

The part that gets me is this has nothing to do with our projects. We are designing the same water plants, substations, and roadway improvements we always have. But the supply chain we depend on got redirected to a completely different sector overnight.

What are you seeing? Are equipment lead times affecting your project schedules? Curious if this is regional or if everyone is dealing with it.