Posted By Randy Gray on 11/18/2008 at 8:33 PM

I was asked to create a machine control file for a site job that has a couple of large building pads, a 5 acre parking lot, a ~800 ft. long entrance road to the parking lot, and a 2800' road relocation. I got a set of plans and a cd. Alignment given for the road was coordinates for the PIs and the curve data. Stationing doesn't work. No profile, just 2 ft. contours, but they obviously had a profile, the contours looked too perfect. However, the typical for the road showed a variable slope from the shoulder to the ditch, and a variable depth ditch. Entrance road to parking lot has curb and gutter. No alignment information, no profile, just more 2 ft. contours, which indicate some normal crown, some superelevation, and a vertical curve. Various other mistakes and omissions.

So I called the designer with about 14 questions written down. After about #6 he said "Man, you are really picking these apart". I said, yeah, that's what you do when you try to use a set of plans to build one of these. So I emailed him the list about a week ago. I asked for correct alignments on both roads with profiles and cross sections.

Finally got a profile for the road today and some of the other answers. They changed some of the alignment info, but it's still wrong. They said I'd have to calculate the road ditches from the typical (variable width, variable slope?). Their answer on the entrance road was "The entrance road is like an entrance to a parking lot, no profile, alignment, or cross sections."

Here's my response. If you can't provide cross sections for the road, I'm going to do it like this (scaled the contours and created a typical ditch with standard ditch and slope). Please verify that is what you want. As for the entrance road, I can create an alignment, profile, and cross section to match as close as possible to your drawings. However, this will only be provided to the dirt contractor. Somebody else will be laying the rock and pouring the curb, and I would bet they are going to ask for the same thing. They probably will not match what I get. Please verify that is what you want.

No telling what they got paid for the design. It will probably take about a day to prepare the file. It's taken a week so far just to get part of the info that should have been on the plans in the first place.