I know Ft. Stewaqrt fairly well. RS&H, for whom I plowed 31.33-years, had a project to build an 8' wide concrete trench down the "main sidewalk", which would carry most of the active utilities, especially steam.
I had just left RS&H after all of the proposal effort to win the Ft. Stewart project and 13.5 years as Lead Civil Engineer designing RS&H federal projects, to work for a competitor, which turned into the worst 6-months of my adult and professional life. The hiring manager of the competitor, my new boss, turned out to be a WHOPPING BIG LIAR. NOTHING he promised me to jump ship to his company came true.
There was no pronouncement in a local business rag of my move. No major announcement in the new company of my hire or what my immediate duties were to be, No information whatsoever about what I was supposed to do starting day 1. And the worst insult was, as 2nd in command in that office, my negotiated sallary was REDUCED as it "might upset" the Mechanical Engineer already there. THAT was for me a non-negotiable, non-starter, of which I did not learn until the third week on the job after the first paycheck was received. The interim work I was given to do was unlike any I had done before, at least through his competing firm's production department.
With no introduction to the new company, they had no idea who I was, I elected on short notice to prepare the design drawings myself, something I had done for their client many times while at RS&H. That went poorly as this competitor had "a way" of promising a little and producing a lot, to the "Wow factor" of their clients. My design, had the right stuff in it, but it was not polished as if it was FINAL, because it was only a contract negotiated 45% design submittal. Just more fuel for the eventual fire when parting is not "such sweet sorrow."
The structural element at Ft. Stewart was easy. Miles and miles of concrete box trench, side wall recesses for banded recticuline galvanized metal grating, and periodic access slots with galvanized stair bar embeds in the wall below.
The utility coordination and redesign was not easy at all. I thought I had hired a "competent" design engineer to replace me at RS&H, whom I had known professionally for a decade. I never would have thought it, never suspected it, and did not catch it that the GROWN MAN never learned how to read...he was a functional illiterate.
He spent days of overtime, getting paid, looking up pictures of similar situations on the Net, which he copied, added to his designs, and had HIS WIFE, a school teacher, review it all for clarity and objectivity. I caught it when his emailautocorrect broke bad on an Air Force project manager's (client's) last name (unintentionally, but avoidably to those who can read, the client's last name "Rexrode" became "Rebreed" - not even close).
That client called to rightly complain to our RS&H boss who called me to review everything the "new hire" was about to send to any of our clients. Ah ha! The goose was cooked after that. He could no longer hide. I watched him struggle for almost a week until he came out and admitted it to me. We got along better after that and he learned to read. Go figure. He had it in him to read the whole time but no one had forced him to face it.
At 6-months into the new job, salary corrected to more than promised, every associate familiar with me now, and guilt by association with my boss who learned his engineering "bedside manner" at a boot to the helmet from his high school football coach. Wherever I went in the main office (another city), walking paths opened in corrodors, conversations quieted, eyes darted. Was my boss in the house?
Yes, my boss was an ass! I had no problem telling him to his face that he was a shart-head, because he was, and he and I had duked it out (figuratively speaking) when I learned he lied or I would have bailed, but I liked the money. We worked together for exactly 6-months before the wheels fell off.
There is some "funny timeline stuff" going on in the stories above. Parts that happened before I left RS&H. Parts that happened after I left. And parts that happened after I came back to RS&H from the competitor's firm. No matter.
When I got back to RS&H, Ft. Stewart design was in fulll swing, but Civil Utility redesign was lagging badly (and now you know why). I took over again as Lead Civil Engineer, corrected the path of the concrete trench to less conflicted areas, not a popular way forward, just the right one, and we brought the design in to the client's delight, on time and under budget.
