Civil Development in Los Angeles

Driveways?

blee — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:48:57 +0000

Driveway aprons have been bugging me a lot recently. I run about 6 miles a day and like to look at different parts of houses on my runs. The one thing I don’t understand is why certain driveway aprons exist. There are multiple choices to pick. So why do so many driveways differ? If someone can come out with a book about the famous staircases, I think I will attempt to photograph these driveway entrances with and without a car on them.

KB Homes buying Land Again?

blee — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:39:00 +0000

KB Home inks deal to buy 664 SoCal land parcels.

What seems to add to some of what I am hearing, this is definitely good news. Another contractor I talked to who was on his own, is getting hired back to his original job at another big Southern California builder. I don’t think there will be a crazy boom, but good projects in the right areas sound about right this go around.

Building Slowly Coming Back?

blee — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:31:25 +0000

As of sometime last week it feels like building is slowly making it’s comeback. A couple of jobs put on hold are slowly coming off of hold. And we are hearing about some new good projects every few days. As I still think building front runs the US economy by at least a year, this is great news. I feel as though we will be in a good position as we are still making it through what seems to be the worst building recession the country has seen.

Green Roofs?

blee — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:14:55 +0000

I was thinking about Green Roofs this morning. We have a project where this would be the best possible design for LA City SUSMP requirements. But the expense is just so much that the idea was thrown out as soon as it was mentioned. With this being such a great design it’s too bad that the City or State doesn’t help subsidize certain designs to help green developments.

Plan Checks for the Sake of Plan Checking

blee — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 04:15:26 +0000

Plan checks for the sake of plan checking. I can’t figure this out, but it makes sense. Lately I have noticed that plan checks are starting to ask for corrections that already exist on the plans. I have talked to multiple architects and they are saying the same thing. This does seem to be a way to justify the plan checkers job. But this, at the expense of slowing down building during a pretty bad economy. I am hopeful this does not become the norm as this only seems recent during the past 6 months. For any developers I would give you a heads up that this will delay your build for at least 3-4 months. For any Engineers or Architects I would say to throw some obvious errors onto the plan so real errors can be marked up.

Photos from a Job Site

blee — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:35:33 +0000

Visited a job site yesterday in Palos Verdes and the house is coming along nicely. Talk about some tall walls!

A Green Parking Lot for the Downtown Los Angeles Youth & Cultural Center

blee — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:48:14 +0000

Just got an email about one of the more interesting projects going on in Downtown LA. DLANC Sustainability Committee

The Downtown Los Angeles Youth & Cultural Center needs to build a parking lot on the blank lot adjacent to its center at 132 S. Beaudry Avenue – right next to the 110 Freeway to generate the necessary revenue to maintain their lease. Green Pockets Project
Wouldn’t it be great to see a permeable parking lot with plants and maybe even a water feature instead of the standard asphalt surface?

The DLANC Sustainability Committee is looking into how we can provide the Center with resources and partners to help it build a smarter, more sustainable parking surface. We hope to collaborate with other Neighborhood Council committees on this project and would like to invite you to a kick-off meeting to discuss next steps.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at the Downtown Los Angeles Youth & Cultural Center (132 S. Beaudry Ave.), starting at 6:30pm

Razer Naga Mouse

blee — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:01:33 +0000

If we could have a device to save us time through the day would we buy it? I have my 2 24″ Monitors telling me yes. How nice is it that I can sit here with my drawing open while looking at an Architects site plan on the other screen. Kind of like a 21st Century huge drafting table. Now imagine you could have all the most used functions in your favorite drafting software at the tip of your fingers on the mouse instead of using the keyboard. I have found one of the most time saving devices recently. The Razer Naga Mouse is not only a comfortable mouse, but it has 12 buttons that can be programmed with Macros. This mouse was originally designed for gaming, but I was curious if they would allow programmable macros for any software. And yes it will allow that. It’s easy, you just assign a macro profile to your software and then tell button 1 to be your line command. Or button 3 to be your perpendicular command. Even button 12 can be a save command. Maybe make button 11 be an audit/purge 3 times combo command. I was looking for something to save me even more time to crank out work even faster and this has been a very nice find.

LEED in Los Angeles

blee — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:40:18 +0000

So we had our Green Charette meeting and was that ever so interesting. I was told beforehand from an Architect buddy’s friend that this meeting is what all the consultants must go through. As LEED is still pretty new and most people don’t know what is going on we were lead through a powerpoint presentation. From what I saw the Mechanical Engineers and Architect have the most say in obtaining LEED points. Us, as Civils, basically meet the LA City SUSMP requirements to meet our LEED points. Just like I thought we don’t have any say in what goes on. I will update this slowly as I think about the meeting more.

We are doing a LEED for New Construction application for this project. I learned a lot at this meeting and have a ton of notes to pilfer through before posting more.

Las Vegas Harmon Woes

blee — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:18:52 +0000

I know I know, this blog is about Los Angeles. The only problem is besides my favorite building ever located in Las Vegas, the controversy regarding the Harmon in Las Vegas has kept my ears open for any news. So now it seems that part of City Center is dead in the water for who knows how long. For anyone not familiar with the story, everyone missed the fact that the rebar was missing on a certain floor(s) and was found out after building about 10 more floors. This eventually caused the building to be redesigned with many less stories than originally planned. Now the outfall is happening.

http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/articles/2010/04/12/news/iq_35241001.txt