William Merunka

Featured Guest Blogger: William Merunka

Follow me on my journey to become a great engineer.

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/williammerunka

As time passes, new methods are developed and tasks that used to take up valuable time or would be tedious have become fast and simple.  One such item is the internet.  While it may have caught on slow, the internet is a necessity in almost everybody’s life.  Whether it is communicating with clients through email, research for a project, ordering gifts, or even ordering lunch for the office staff, we all use the internet.

While the internet is a useful tool, it has its flaws.  One of the bigger problems is that it does not come with a lie detector.  Whenever we have a question to answer and none of our friends or colleagues know the answer, or can convince us that their solution is correct, we Google it.  Instantly, we have multiple, sometimes hundreds of websites with information related to our research topic.  How do you use this information?  Do you trust it is 100% or do you do further research to validate it?

It is important to realize that anybody can create a website and put whatever information they want to on it.  Of course there is certain content that is illegal, but for the most part you can write anything you want to.  If you wanted to, you could say that the New York Yankees are the best football team in the world.  While a sports fan would know that this is obviously wrong, other people won’t know and may believe it and spread this false information.   In a short matter of time, there will be multiple websites containing this false invitation, and numerous amounts of people believing it and spreading false information to their friends.

By now you are probably wondering what this has to do with your career. In fact, this has a lot to do with it, you work hard to earn your reputation and get your various licenses, certificates, etc.  The last thing you want is to lose it all due to lack of correct information.  You also don’t want to be in a position where you are presenting information to colleagues and look like a fool because somebody in the audience is actually knowledgeable in the topic area and calls you out for not knowing your information.

If possible, consult with other people or credible websites to confirm the information that you find.  There are plenty of good websites out there, but you can’t just believe the information because it appeared on a single website.  Do your due diligence and research it more.  Try to check out professional journals and publications, which go through technical reviews before being published.

Another thing to be cautious of is computer software.  It seems like there is software to do just about anything, including solving engineering problems and tedious calculations.  While this may appear to make your job easier, you are also risking your name, reputation, and professional licenses. While there are laws that control who can sign off on engineering design drawings, there is no regulations on who can publish computer programs.  It is possible for a non-certified individual to research an engineering topic online, and then create a program to solve problems related to this area.

Do you know who wrote the programs that you use?  Are you willing to risk your reputation for these individuals? Yes, there are some strong programs out there that are reliable, but there are also faulty programs out there.  While the programmer may not have created a bad program on purpose, if they do not have the proper training and education, they may not realize they are making mistakes.  A good example is a project that I had to do in my senior year of college for my Modeling and Simulation class.  The task was to use Scientific Notebook to write a program where the user would input any truss and the program would solve for the resulting forces.  I wrote the program and tested several trusses in the program and it seemed to work as it was designed to work.  When it was time to demonstrate the program for the teacher, the program failed to spit out the correct solution.

There is no doubt that technology is important and a valuable asset.  However, there are a lot of risks that go along with the benefits.  Technology should be used as an aid and not as the sole problem solver.  When using technology, make sure you know what you are doing and can fully explain and back up the results of what your programs may spit out.  After all, when your design fails to perform as designed, people are going to come after you.  They don’t care what websites you got information from, or what computer programs you used on the design.  What they will care about is the faulty design you produced and going after you to recover the loss of money and property as a result of the faulty design.

With all of this new technology, it is important that you do not let technology kill your career.  Don’t assume that just because something is supposed to perform a specific way that it will actually work that way.

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robertmote

This can attack at any time in your professional life. It is a cultural disease and fairly contagious without treatment. Even if it is successfully treated it there is a chance of relapse. It is not just the peril of students life.

The symptoms are identifiable:

• Boredom

• Stressed

• Impatience

• Agreeing without checking

• Cutting corners

• Not asking questions

• Working alone

• Repetitive work, turning the wheel

• On cruise control

• Lacking challenge

The treatment usually requires one or more of the following therapy:

• Set a goal for the future

• Go the extra mile

• Exercise

• Share the issues with a buddy

• Focus on what interests you

• Identify the crux of the problem

• Specialize your passion

• Socialize

• Ask curious questions

• Develop a parallel personal project

• Use a diary, record your days, hopes and dreams

We are all affected by our environment, colleagues, relationships and responsibilities. They consume our awareness totally leaving little room for little else. My old buddy aptly described apathy as “sigh…tired of moving forward.” The greatest antidote to apathy is a dream, a belief in the future. So regardless of the daily demands on our mental resources and physical stamina, keep a candle burning brightly, to hope. Affirm it daily. Even so, I believe apathy precedes a period of great change and I have the experience of that, more than once.

Even after more than twenty years in the business, I know well, apathy can strike hard. Today, my brain is shutting down and I don’t know what to blog about. The site job is going very well but I am going through a quiet patch, we are settling into summer mode as the holiday season approaches and I find myself falling asleep during the day. Should I see a doctor? I haven’t felt this way for years! When, I return to camp and my room, I am bored. I don’t know what to do with myself. And still I am tired. This is unheard of in my usually busy schedule but I know I have fallen into apathy.

I remember the last time I felt this way too well. It was nine years ago and I was in limbo land, between projects and not knowing which way to turn. I was waiting for something to happen. Jobs were hard to find and there was no ‘freedom’ to leave the company; my wife pregnant with twins on the way and the mortgage on the new house were compelling reasons to stay. That was Holland at the time of 9/11. The politics of the terrorist strike in New York had an immediate domino effect on the workload in Holland. Project after projects, based in the Middle East were shelved, delayed or suspended, overnight. For a period of nine months, there was a sense of not knowing what to do and I was trapped by responsibilities so I became apathetic, frozen in the headlight glare of the future. I had spent the last few years developing electronic-style calculations and developing technical expertise in dynamic structures but now we were waiting for something to happen, twiddling thumbs. I wanted to stay so as not to rock the boat of my current obligations but I was ready to move on and didn’t know how to.

After nine months and five remarkable years, the company had to let me go so I had to find the tools for change. This was a start of an incredible period of my professional career. I was looking for new challenges in the UK nuclear field and about to sign up until I was encouraged to continue in the Oil and Gas field, on my terms. Some of my terms were that my civil/structural team would do electronic-style calculations, engineers would get computer training in Microsoft Office and I would get to lead a project.

We relocated to the UK and I was now lead engineer on a lump-sum joint-venture project with South Koreans in Kuwait. I applied everything I knew and the project completed under budget and on schedule. I traveled to Los Angeles, Seoul, Kuwait, Rome and had a small team aligned and performing to my standards. After the project completion and finishing a fantastic parallel study into an innovative pipeline anchorage design for a Kazakhstan project (saved for another post), I resettled to Calgary and got involved in workshare coordination.

Against a wall of cynicism and apathy in the Canadian office, I applied again all the tricks of the trade regards Microsoft Office and taught the workshare team in New Delhi. We achieved the impossible deadline. I traveled to New Delhi and showed them what I was looking for and how to do it. After six months, we completed the project goals. I was delighted by the success. This was the time I thought to write my books about electronic-style calculations.

Another project beckoned and I agreed to take on bigger workshare teams based in Edmonton, Charleston and Mumbai. I repeated the same process. On a megaproject, we had completed the calculations and checked them within budget and prior to approved drawings. The success of the main piperack design with the Mumbai team (over 300 modules) had no rework or revisions. All piperack stick-built steel and modules were installed as per schedule. I got my confirmation, it wasn’t a “one-trick”  pony.

Now, I work on site mopping up the details and I see the huge gaps between design and reality. To tackle the apathy spiral, I have created a parallel study that is gaining a lot of interest. My latest idea is building the awareness of how quality engineering work can make a fundamental impact on project execution, costs and schedules.

I have survived an Alberta Oilsands megaproject from concept to turnover. I have seen every step of the way from the blank paper to field erection. I have followed a line on the drawing through fabrication, to the module yard, through transportation to field installation. I have interacted with every single participant at every level. We listened, optimized and improved their productivity and incorporated it into the design. I have seen what contractors actually do in the field and the engineer in the design office doesn’t know it. I have seen how the roles of the construction and project managements created a unique culture in the Oilsands; so different to the rest of the world. It has been one helluva ride!

It is more than ‘Lessons Learned’. It is more than a list of two hundred issues and 500 photos. It is a team-building alignment session so that the next structural team does not sleep through the next design but become active participants in the quest for improved designs that will impact project performance. It is knowledge that can profoundly affect the way engineers can work in Alberta. The engineering profession, the engineering houses, the clients and Alberta reputation for innovation can benefit. The knowledge reaches far beyond the current project, it is applicable to every megaproject in Alberta.

Unfortunately, Alberta has the greatest propensity for apathy within the engineering profession. The ‘iron ring’ culture cannot fix it. The engineering profession has found itself in a backseat, subordinate role to construction and project management teams. I am wrestling with those issues. The truth is I am apathetic now. The luxury to say it is not trivial but critical to the treatment. It has a vicious downward spiral most people would recognise.

I have been on the same project five years now and feel compelled to take what I have learned to the next level. But the apathy of my colleagues and managers is overwhelming me. Where the idea of “ignorance is bliss” served me well nine years ago, I cannot say that now. Does anybody believe me, really? I could disappear tomorrow and it won’t make a blind bit of difference to my employers. Oh dear, that is not positive thinking! It is a pity that they do not understand my message. I am an engineer, they are managers. Is that a touch of inferiority complex? The cultural rush of the last decade to put project management in pole position and engineering in support role needs to change. Engineering must win back the crown and we can do that by collaboration.

The financial crisis of 2009 forced many clients in the Oilsands to consider Lump-sum contract approaches. Returning to the lump-sum culture will be positive for engineers and enable them the opportunity to reclaim the role of construction coordinators and managers. The ascendancy of “project” management of the last twenty years has peaked and they have not performed too well, against a century and a half of engineering. Management is about global, speed and profit and driving for the lowest denominator. Sadly, engineers are begging to become project engineers losing the opportunity to develop their technical expertise.

At the heart of it, I know the civil/structural engineering profession can have a profound effect in addressing the staggering cost overruns of megaprojects in Alberta but we have to step up to the plate. A contracts manger explained to me about the cost multipliers. He said if the design change is done at the time of engineering design then it is 1 dollar. A design change during fabrication is 4 dollars, during module assembly is seven dollars or on site is 10 dollars. I spent three years during design phase being told not to waste time and pass the problems to site, site will sort it out. Now I see the consequences every day on site. The design is so cheap now but the site costs have other hidden and horrendous multipliers due to scaffolding, delay in information, inexperience and poor alignment.

Many people said my ideas about electronic-style calculations would never catch on but I persisted and I know now that it will happen. This idea of quality in calculations and professional responsibility was my ‘baby’ nine years ago and I can let it go now. I broke the apathy spiral. Along the way I got involved with how engineers could become “dynamic” and break the “transactional” culture of the last fifteen years. I want my next mission to stand and deliver in Alberta to a wider audience, prove that civil/structural engineering holds the key to innovation, project performance and excellence.

I will light the candle to my biggest hope yet.

I missed one from the list, kill the apathy with a holiday! Enjoy yours.

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robertmote

One of the interesting habits I’ve seen along the way through my career is the abnormal attachment some structural engineers have for MathCAD. I understand some of the reasons, it may be something learned at university and the interest kept alive. It might be that it adds value intrinsically to the experience, the engineers enjoys using it because it is supported by many examples. The MathCAD software library is loaded with engineering examples so it seems a natural extension of oneself as an engineer.

As an engineer, I have used MathCAD in pursuit of research, calculating free-convective heat transfer properties or the Boussinesq Bulb of Pressure. I must admit I would never use it to calculate the theoretical wind load to be applied to a piperack in StaadPro. If truth be told, in a profession where the only mathematical excitement may be an occasional square root; as a practicing engineer, I haven’t yet found a power use for MathCAD.

There’s two kinds of engineers, the scientist and the plumber. A scientist engineer focuses on accuracy, details, formulae and precision between reality and calculations. A plumber engineer approximates, uses experience, is practical and reasonable. When I see the calculation I want to see the numbers at play that reassures me more than seeing the formula. Seeing the numbers I can check the units, the order of magnitude, and the relevance of the parameters. That is only true if one knows how to use Excel to do just that; use the concatenate formula. A long word for something many engineers overlook but need to know in Excel!

I am the ‘plumber’ engineer. I do not need accuracy but sometimes I will revert to the scientist approach for the sticky bits, however I still prefer Excel over MathCAD any day. I can cut fourteen pages of MathCAD to one page in Excel. Checking MathCAD reports are dull and time-consuming and formulaic-driven. I see a term used in an equation and I cannot find its definition, or value, without flipping back through pages and searching……sigh….and I don’t know what the value is, is it critical I will ask? The engineer shrugs.

Using MathCAD, an engineer calculates the wind load on a beam is 0.854 kN/m and 0.923 kN/m on a column; I might just apply 1 kN/m everywhere, is that wrong? We have onerous load factors as well because we are so uncertain! I have seen engineers spend a few days developing the little routines to calculate the wind load precisely….when it can be figured in two minutes. These stories abound and always will but I believe MathCAD is a poor choice as a power tool for most plumber engineers. It is like using chainsaw to cut butter when a knife will do. In a culture that welcomes 3D and complex analyses, MathCAD can add to the pending confusion of the structural engineer’s role.

Excel is my recommendation, as a power tool for engineers. It is a pity that Microsoft did not work hard enough to make it ‘engineer’ friendly but I am working on it. With only 10 percent of Excel, it is incredible what is achievable in producing engineering standard calculations. MathCAD is highly ‘user-aware’ and that is a credit. In the drawing office though, nine times out of ten, the formula is basic A + B = C so using MathCAD like an abacus leaves me scratching my head.

The key is to understand the defaults, control the defaults, use visuals and show the numbers. If you can do that, many more engineers will be coming to your desk to ask you about your Excel experience, your spreadsheets and your opinions. Whatever side of the line you find yourself, ask yourself is this the best tool for you, the checker, the reader or the project. Look far into your future and ask yourself, does this help me? In using Excel though, there is a way to design an engineering standard spreadsheet/tool that will far exceed MathCAD, your reader’s expectations and improve the productivity on the project. Your future as an engineer is not in MathCAD, but is in accumulating your design experience, replicating it, in managing, leading and inspiring the team. Excel will give you those skill sets.

 You can try a 7-days free trial ebook and learn how to apply Excel to achieve engineering standard spreadsheets. see http://www.motagg.com/ebooks

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robertmote

A graduate engineer has been working for two years in the drawing office and has reached breaking point. Comes to you and ask for advice, should I stay or should I go?

What would you say?

This happened to me when I was a graduate engineer going into my first drawing office role. I had been looking for work for eight months and snapped up this job as the first opportunity. It was an engineer-in-training arrangement which seemed to be another excuse not to pay me a fair wage. There was no mentoring or training, only the sense of being dumped in the deep end. I did not mind the deep end part, that was refreshing and stimulating but I did have a problem in that I didn’t understand the engineering business; the business did not reflect anything of what I was taught in university.

Also, I lacked the vision to believe it could become so different in time as everyone I worked with said they had been doing what they were doing forever. Forever? That hit my panic button!  I really didn’t want to find I would be doing the same thing forever too! I had a choice right? I felt like a square peg in a round hole. Technically, I enjoyed the challenge of understanding the seismic design and specializing in seismic connections but the environment was stacked against me. I was put to work in the Quality Assurance section, required to check unit conversions and eventually the theory of seismic design principles in everybody’s calculations. The reality was, I was too young to have the respect of my elders (who did not understand the code properly anyway) and they seemed to shrug their shoulders all the time. The engineers would look at their watch and say, give it another five years maybe, laugh and say patience lad, patience…..Everyone puffed on a pipe in those days.

There were the enlightened ones, Gordon, Harry and Danny, who taught me, but indeed they inspired me to look for bigger prizes and bigger questions. I appreciate they took time to listen and think on my situation without labels. Should I stay or should I go?

After two years of begging the question, I finally planned to go back to university. Four months before the course was due to start, I had a fight with the Company director over trivialities in my expenses. A case of the straw breaking the camel’s back, so I quit.

I was offered freelance work, immediately and locally. My pay was doubled. I worked for a small consultancy and they quickly recognized I really understood the seismic connections issue so I was put into the frontline to liaise with the fabricators and check the engineer’s designs. What a great job! And they doubled my pay again! I wished I had discovered this opportunity sooner. Here I was now, in a role that I enjoyed and surely only came once in a lifetime, and now I was facing another change I didn’t want now. The company was offering a longer assignment. Should I stay or should I go?  

I was committed to my post-graduate course but I never forgot it could be so different. This was the reason I came back into the civil/structural profession after my post-graduate degrees and I am glad I did. I discovered I love the teamwork, the technical challenges, the constant learning and sharing of knowledge, the opportunity to travel and the next surprise in the road.

I often hear the question from the graduates I mentor and young engineers I have worked with. If you ever are in the position of asking should I stay or should I go? I generally counsel to go. From whatever position you are asking that question, change is always positive. If you have to ask the question, you are looking for change.

Usually the biggest desire for change is disillusionment, over-zealous managers, lack of corporate training, lack of respect, isolation and boredom. I realised that was me, 25 years ago. But for the Gordon, Harry and Danny’s of this world, I wonder where I’d been?

I wonder though, there are people who still manage to work for the same company for twenty five years or more, and as much that a part of me envies their stability, in this day and age, I can only think wow! Did they ever ask themselves should I stay or should I go?

Whatever your role is as an engineer, team-building, communication and collaboration are critical components for building a great career. It doesn’t really matter who you work for, so long as you have a soul nearby that can inspire you. Do your part and reach out, raise your hand, break the silence, get outside the cubicle. I counsel, the opportunity to master your calculations and find your pride is the greatest gift you can give yourself in your career. And the willingness to change.

The future does not promise stability for many of us so you need to know you can demonstrate your skills, in a heartbeat. I do that with my calculations when I go for the interviews. They see works of art, a variety of visually based calculations and I watch their jaw drop as they try to mask their surprise. It really opens doors.

When graduates ask me, should I stay or should I go? I also suggest they look within. The answer lies there. No-one can make your career go, except you. On the road I have travelled, I have seen the incredible diversity of cultures, the full spectrum of boredom to enthusiasm, the appalling legacy of academia on a generation of graduates  trying to overcome the culture shock of a dying drawing office tradition. The common denominator is your calculation. You own that.

Think like someone learning karate, it does not come overnight but with sweat, effort and commitment. Like your first belt in karate. This is only a stepping stone. You finally pass but never stop practicing and improving. You feel the calm, the confidence and the clarity of your work is a real thing. The next belt is spreadsheets. This opens up new moves, new ideas which fuses with your calculations. You feel the enthusiasm, the excitement and the energy of knowing your ability is becoming a skill. You are a part of the team, learning and talking and swapping.  The next belt is VBA. This opens up extraordinary opportunities to accelerate your calculations, and double the productivity of your work. You feel the power, the passion and the potential for the future from your knowledge. You are becoming an engineering leader.  You can lead the team, understand how to switch on critical thinking to and challenge and look for opportunities to beat client expectations. The next belt is databases. You feel the strength, the surge and the serenity of your vision. You are an innovator. This is where you lead the team and inspire them in their development as you try to help them achieve their first or second belt. And you can see the impact of your databases, programming, spreadsheets and calculations on the project with the opportunity to reach out to more stakeholders.

Is that too idealistic for you? Every situation in reality, it seems, conspires to thwart you in your ambitions. Should I stay or should I go?

It has taken me fifteen years of the “should I stay or should I go” question to know this. Create the tools to help you on your way. Learn, focus on the humble calculations and ask yourself can I do better? You will find your passion. If your supervisor or your mentor discourages you, then find someone who does not, but don’t give up.

I am now in a position of being on the same project for nearly five years and it has been a blast. I have the opportunity to work autonomously and create my own role. On the one hand, I am hoping I can lead the future design team to improve on what we did and fuse engineering back into construction. I know I can do this spectacularly. Exciting possibility. On the other hand, I am going into a joint venture with two other project engineers, who see the potential to put engineering back on the map in Alberta. We are flying blind but nothing beats the adrenaline of a great idea. Should I stay or should I go?  

 Answer the question with a smile and follow your passion.

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robertmote

The path I have taken through my career stems from the power of great calculations and making sure I achieve that on every job. It has become a habit. A great calculation is far better than the drawing.  It has the power to show confidence, clarity  and communicate across disciplines and task-specific roles.  It has a greater role to educate. To educate the graduates, the client and the average person. I am aware many clients, project managers and engineers have never seen such possibilities or will ever believe the attributes of great calculations will be necessary in their project.

A question I often surprise engineers with is, do you like doing calculations? How would you answer? How much power and impact do your calculations create?

I want to take you through a snapshot of some of the real megaprojects that have benefitted from the power of great calculations.

Case Study 1: Eighty Piperacks in six Months with Workshare teams
Case Study 2: Prolific Compressor Foundations Design
Case Study 3: Material Database Development and +200 piperacks

Case Study 1: Design of eighty piperack in six months with workshare teams.
Project: Horizon Project
Client CNRL, Alberta

For a major project in Northern Alberta, I coordinated a workshare team of ten engineers and eight designers, based in New Delhi. The target was engineering and design for eighty piperacks in six months, including foundation, steel and concrete.

The clients were skeptical it was achievable. This strategy was as much an economical decision as well as political (share the blame) and the head office in Calgary had no extra people to do the work. I volunteered for the suicide mission. I was invited to New Delhi for six months but I felt it would be on their terms not mine. I insisted on only two weeks to meet, learn, teach and align the workshare team.

Within the two weeks, they learned to improve their productivity. The engineers re-focused their attention on the calculations, the procedure, the checking and the teamwork effort driven by the new method. I will explore in another post the ingredients for a successful workshare.

The typical piperack calculation that was originally over two hundred pages became less than forty. The calculations for the piperack foundation designs now took two weeks. The engineering team were aligned and conceptualized the design, rationalizing it across all the piperacks in their scope. This exercise reduced the basic requirements to twelve standard designs and two specials. One team handled the concept layout, assumptions, piperack foundations and the basic load cases; the structural model was then passed to another team to generate the steel design and connection forces. They swapped roles for QA roles, the concreters checking steelers and steelers checking foundations. Either team checked connections and final pipe stress information.

The designers were able to use the calculations actively and mark changes as required and the final checking and the QA/QC review was a considerably easier process. The calculations were consistent with the modeling and the drawings. The team was transformed by the experience. Where they were stressed and concerned how to meet the ambitious targets now they were energized, enthusiastic and ready to do it again.

The team was taught the MS Word and Excel elements of the Mote Method.

The cost-savings was in excess of 3 million USD, no rework and completion on time.

Case Study 2: Prolific Compressor Foundation Designs
Project: PO11 Project,
Client: Lyondell , Rotterdam

On a major project in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, many compressor foundations were becoming due for completion in design milestones but there were no consulting engineers available to complete the task as we were heading into the holiday season. We were looking at a six week delay for each of the eight foundations. The civil team re-focused and looked in-house for the solution.

While working on another project, I was invited to complete the design in my spare time. I used previously developed, and approved, spreadsheets for analyzing compressor foundation designs. The spreadsheets were reconfigured for the new soil properties and vendor information. Each compressor foundation took eight hours to program and generate the final calculations. In the one month of August, all eight major foundations were designed, completed, reviewed and approved.

This was a significant improvement for the project progress during a notoriously difficult holiday phase where productivity was expected to be lower than normal.

The cost-savings were in excess of 800,000 USD, the designs were peer-reviewed and approved. The schedule recovery effort was recognised by the client. 

This prolific effort based on experience involved MS Word, Excel and VBA and is the very heart of the Mote Method.

Project: SGI/SGP Project
Client: TengizChevroil, Kazakhstan 
Some years later, I repeated this exercise on a project in Kazakhstan (TCO SGI/SGP project), which involved over thirty pumps/compressors and major reciprocators.

The calculation format was user-friendly for translation work so state approval was obtained in record time. The Mote Method was a significant advantage over hand produced calculations, in translation work. The largest compressor in Kazakhstan was also designed and peer-reviewed using the Mote Method.

The cost-savings were in excess of 2 million USD.

Case Study 3: Material Take off Database Development and Piperack Designs.
Project: Firebag 3+ Project
Client: Suncor Energy

While building the Estimate Design (EDS) database in Excel, I was also training an Indian workshare team to produce piperack design calculations for the early works package. This involved over two hundred piperacks and the design period was one year.  I reprised what I learned from Case Study 1 but now with a bigger team in Mumbai.

Back in Calgary,the EDS database was a plot plan view of the project with hyperlinks to quantities on worksheet for specific packages of work. The project was split into five different areas, each with their own team and each team was taught how to populate the database with specific rules. The teams were being trained in the Excel component. The EDS database concept was a stunning success and a great tool. It was designed to give material breakdown by engineering work packages so that it would track the variation of planned and actual quantities between initial estimates and final design. The Civil/Structural team met every target for submitting data, quantities and uniformity. The act of checking, auditing and reviewing were regular scheduled events. All the engineers were now trained and aligned on Excel and the project expectations for calculations, which helped them as they moved into the design phase.

In the meantime, the Indian workshare team were coming to grips with the new ideas and reducing the typical design from over three hundred pages to forty. I joined them in Mumbai, for two weeks and trained a group of thirty engineers and designers. They were taught Word, Excel and VBA.

The early works program for the piperack designs was initiated and over a period of one year, every calculation and drawing was issued on time with no rework. All connection forces were annotated onto general arrangement drawings in the calculations for the connection design by fabricators. All calculations were formally filed and collected within two weeks of drawing approval. They set the benchmark for the rest of the engineering teams in Calgary, Charleston and Edmonton.

The structural design was so consistent, the fabricators looked for ways to streamline the steel delivery schedule from sixteen weeks to twelve weeks. The schedule compression resulted from the fantastic effort of the engineering teams to produce prolific calculations.

The project was so successful that structural engineers wanted to join because of the on-the- job training and the excitement that existed within the structural team. It is not uncommon that large projects often suffer in image due to the scale, time and inertia involved so much so that the engineer perceives boredom. The truth is large projects have the best opportunity for delivering productivity, as a small budget in training engineers, can go such a long way over the lifetime of the project, not only for the productivity in the project but also the engineer’s professional development.

Next time you do a calculation, think about the power you have and the real impact you can make. I love it.

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robertmote

In my last post, I demonstrated how calculations are prepared using MS Word 2003. I get many engineers saying they would prefer to learn with Word 2007 or claim it is a better product. I am astounded to hear that they believe this but I also understand why they think that. I have gone through the process of learning to achieve the same result with Word 2007 and I would never claim Word 2007 is a better product. It is more problematic with graphic handling, the defaults are worse and there is more clicking action of the mouse button. Do not believe the hype.

Anyone who has gone through the computer age from the mid-1990’s is aware of the endless cycle of MS Office upgrading. It is looking stale now. We can expect a future of it too. The constant revision of MS Office products has strained credibility. Succeeding generations of engineers have given up on MS Word with each upgrade. “Upgrade” is not equal to “improved” or “better”. Upgrading to 2007 is fundamentally different to anything you have used before. Do you think you will get training from your company? I doubt it. Do you think it will be intuitive enough to learn on your own? Good luck!

Let’s rewind the clock and consider the selfish perspective of an engineering user, stuck in a time warp.

I am a Civil/Structural engineer in the drawing office of a large engineering house in the Oil and Gas business. I am in a business that still prides itself on being a pen and paper tradition. Rightly or wrongly, this is what we’re teaching the incoming graduates to respect. To make life really interesting there is always the spectre of the boss looking over your shoulder, worried you were wasting time on unproductive tools like MS Word.

My story begins back in 1997; I worked on a major refinery project for an overseas client where the client Lead Engineer insisted that the calculations were clear, presentable, visually driven, numbered, consistent and checkable. He wanted total confidence in our work. I tried to find a way to achieve this using Word 95. I grew up on Word 95 and found a way for it to work spectacularly in preparing my calculations. And it was intuitive. From the earlier age of WordStar word-processing, this was a stellar improvement.

I was effectively using Word 95 as a desktop tool. We planned the headings, preparing much of it in advance; we reduced the burden of inputs, moved bulky information to appendices and focused on summarizing and collecting the salient points of the analysis, whether it was from Excel, MathCAD, STAADpro or other third-party applications. We used the calculation as the starting point for the designers and built-in checklist for multi-disciplinary issues and for the checker. The most important feature of the calculation was to be visually driven so we could transcend the language barrier; we minimized the writing and the calculations looked like a natural extension of the traditional calcualtions I knew. You could flip through the pages and all you would see were diagrams, numbers and a logical flow. It was all commonsense, practical, educational and prolific.

This so impressed the client engineer that the method was rolled out across the project and I was training many engineers how to do what I was doing. At the end of the project, we concluded it was faster, more productive and engineers enjoyed the new method. The checking exercise was easier and the confidence level and interaction within the team was high. We had engineers wanting to join the large project just to have the chance to learn. It was the way to go.

The project finished and everyone went their separate ways to new projects, new offices armed with new skills. MS Office  ‘upgraded’ Word 95 to Word 97. The defaults were changed and different routines were incorporated for embedding graphics, indexing and so on. The engineers, who had barely learned a new methodology, fell at the first hurdle and didn’t recognize how to do what they had learned to do before. In their new project environment, surrounded by new skeptics, they shrugged their shoulders and gave up and reverted to the old ways.

By the time Word 2003 came along, it took me nearly eighteen months to find my way back to what I was doing before. In my opinion, Word 2003 is in no way better than Word 95. So why did MS Office bother to upgrade?

The truth is, people and businesses buy the technology and the software supply is all wrapped up in the hardware deal, even if they don’t know how to use the software and only use it if they have to. Isn’t there something wrong with that picture? Yes, the MS Office developers are aware of this so they did another brain-storm session. Something is clearly wrong with the old ways, even the programmers hate the old Word packages and no one wants to be a plumber on an old package; hardly the stuff of legends is it? They asked themselves, is it possible to create a MS Office product that people want to use?  Word 2007 was born.

The advertising, the hype, the rave reviews and the excitement in the wake of Word 2007 did not work for the engineers. Just another day in the bizarre world of yet more change for the sake of change and professional pride. So can you imagine taking what you know in earlier Word versions and going into Word 2007 with enthusiasm?

The defaults in Word 2007 are worse than Word 2003, which are in turn worse than Word 95. I am about to shrug my shoulders and give up using MS Word altogether.

In truth, I have found a way, but I am shaking my head in profound sadness. The MS Office team is doing nothing to advance the opportunity to achieve a minimum of computer literacy (computeracy) within our profession. We are more than twenty years into the desktop computer age and engineers do not know how to use Word. The constant upgrade challenges people to change and most will resist at the best of times. Many say I am in a losing battle with the proposition that we can transition our pen and paper tradition to better ways with a strategic method using Word XXXX.

Computer literacy cannot be inspired overnight with a new package. I am going to take the opportunity to create a new term ‘computeracy’. Computeracy is about knowing how use software to express yourself. Just as you learn to read and write through your formative years, we need to know how to use Word and Excel proficiently. It takes years of constant use and then a few more years to find the courage to share your ideas with your colleagues and then a few more years to agree the best practices and a sustainable path to a common standard for all engineers to follow.

So what can I recommend? If I could have ten minutes with the MS Office team what would I tell them? Nowadays, MS Office are into exciting new tools like Project but they are overlooking the fact that Word 2007 is not going to change anything except to get ready to frustrate the current generation of Word 2007 users with whatever they plan for Word 2010. It complicates unnecessarily.

I want to continue to use Word 95. There was nothing wrong with it.

Dating a product implies Word 2007 is better than Word 2003 is better than Word 95. So the user will go out and buy the upgrade. The wheels of business must keep turning. MS Office would be horrified if nobody advanced beyond Word 95.  Using the same product for fifteen years is not the way for MS Office to make money. The Microsoft team is focused on profit and market segments, not whether people actually use their product. They could turn a leaf and learn something Apple understood a long time ago, find the user, listen and learn from them; don’t invent it out of the head of the programmer.

When I tell engineers I can teach them how to use Word 2003 to produce calculations prolifically; many will say, ‘I know Word 2003. I want to know how to use Word 2007.’ They know how to use Word 2003? And now they cheerfully want to use Word 2007? I should call their bluff on Word 2003 because Word 2007 is so far off the radar screen in terms of practicality, defaults and usability! You have to retrain. And in my business, companies do not train to use MS Office so it is another end of the line and resetting the computer literacy clock to zero when they ‘upgrade’. There is no shortcut to quality, it is always hard work to learn, retrain and practice.

Many engineers will try to discover Word 2007 but how many engineers have bought the reference manuals and it sits at home gathering dust?

If MS Office should ever listen to a structural engineer, they would hear this: rebrand Word 95 and call it WordEng. Let the engineers, as users, design the product over time towards the ideal desktop application we need. We would be able to integrate more drawing functions and improve equation features. There are so many little ways MS Office team could improve Word 95 and we would have a product that could grow deep roots. I bet a product like this would be popular outside the engineering profession as it would be methodical, simplified and intuitive.

As I type happily away in my Word 2003 and hear the chime of incoming email, there nothing is more aggravating than to get a Word 2007 attachment file that cannot be opened because I don’t have Word 2007. So I upgrade, right?  Sigh….

That was Word 2007; don’t get me started on Excel 2007.

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

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The engineering analysis is always a hot topic, in any drawing office, on any project. Applying national standards, to the letter, and increasing levels of sophistication into the analysis to prove the design is adequate, is often revisited and debated throughout the project life. However, the process of preparing the engineering calculations is an unspoken subject almost anywhere in the world. Proving your design, on paper, to the same degree as the analysis, is  often in the way and a matter of faith. The engineer is only concerned with proving to themselves, rather than the reader, that the design is fit-for-purpose.

Engineers doing conventional calculations, often have to number the pages themselves, add titles, collect and arrange different software outputs.  These reports are often long on quantity, time-consuming to handle and short on quality.

‘Hand’ or conventional calculation is a mixture of the software output used, and cobbled together into a ring-binder file (or two).  It has a variety of titles, headings, and footings from a range of software applications used by the engineer with the different default settings. It may include hand-written and/or scanned notes.  MS Excel is used in a limited sense, to create the headings and footings template for the calculations and simple tabulations. An electronic version of this conventional masterpiece would not become available until such time the collated hard-copy output is scanned, to become a single file. MS Word may, or not be, used in this spaghetti arrangement. Incredibly, most engineers express little or no knowledge of MS Word.

Generally, the reports are not only ‘heavy’ in terms of the quantity and also of the ‘pre-processing’ information (inputs) but light in terms of quality and the ‘post-processing’ (outputs).  Typically 70 to 80% of the calculation is devoted to the pre-processing information and only the corresponding 20 to 30% for the results due to the deadline pressure and the effort to complete the detailed design and print this finalized state.

The alternative is this.

The electronic-style calculation is a single document (in MS Word format), capturing all the relevant information using graphic-capturing procedures such as:

Please go to http://www.motagg.com/resources/ to download an example file: “BRDPF in Word.pdf” or http://tiny.cc/VsN5O.

This calculation is 39 pages. There are so many rules and ideas in there. I will explain these over the forthcoming blogs. When I did this calculation conventionally with MathCAD, I ended up with hundreds of pages and I did not want to repeat that, so I challenged myself.

MS Word 2003 is the power tool, although other software and desktop facilities would easily suffice.  MS Word creates the template for the calculations with a fixed heading and footing for all pages.  The calculation is a static report, graphically capturing all the components required for an effective and planned report.

The report is not dynamically updated by changes in MS Excel. This is one of the more common dead ends. I recommend you do not try to work with links.  If the Word file, with these links, is stored in a different place, then all links have to be repaired.

For an effective work-flow method, this report is started early as the design progresses.  The pre-processing phase is tackled earlier, and is minimized in pages, leaving more time for the post-processing stage of the work.  The calculation pages are numbered automatically and the word document is available immediately at any stage of development for anyone on the project.

Pressing the print screen key captures the window view to the clipboard; paste this image into a MS Word document, and crop to suit.  This is very simple and works well without a graphic capture software application like Snagit.

When working between MS Excel and MS Word, the default ‘paste’ button in the main toolbar has probably upset more engineers than any other difficulty in trying to make MS Word the central goal of the calculations.

The first secret is out now, you want to use edit >  paste special > picture.  This should be the real default paste button on your standard toolbar and not the standard clipboard button many try to use which  result in profanity and time-wasting struggles.

If you also download the Excel version (http://tiny.cc/Uycwg) you can try the following.

1) Highlight a range of cells, including drawn images and right-click to copy.

2) Go to any word document and go to Edit > Paste Special > Picture (enhanced metafile).

You may see a different option to this enhanced metafile, so long as it says “picture” it should work. If you haven’t changed any defaults in Word then you will probably see a black frame around the picture.

3) Right-click on picture to get a drop down menu and select layout.

4)  Change the layout to behind text. This will enable you to move your image around.

This method means you have a scalable and movable image.  It is so simple and stress-free, it is the number one golden rule for engineers. It never fails.

The implied strategy is to maximize the use of MS Excel as your calculation pad. The Word template is developed for the report heading, titles and page numbering is available so that time is not wasted in formatting MS Excel worksheets with fixed headings and footings (see The Engineer’s Word).

Use MS Excel as an electronic extension of the calculation pad (see The Engineer’s Tables), complete with macros (see The Engineer’s Basic, forthcoming), for checking imported data, spreadsheets and graphics. All or some select few of these components are transferred to the Word document.

The Excel work is the driving force for checking the adequacy of the design, reporting the numbers and results in good formats.  Excel is a powerful application for which the design is controlled and the impact on presentation maximized.  This is the core recommendation of this blog.  Generally, all software outputs, (the source files), is captured, and is a snapshot into the Word document, most often through MS Excel.  You will learn how fast and effective reports are generated by this method.

It is time to try it. Don’t be conventional!

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robertmote

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I work in the Oil and Gas industry and I know there will be many exceptions and variations on what I write but I can only write about what I know and what I have learned. Please take the time to add comments where you feel the exceptions and variations may apply, or if you agree. My views are indeed a narrow slice of the broad spectrum.

Before we look at the building blocks to our calculations, we need to look in the mirror first. How has the engineering profession stood the test of time of the last fifteen years? That is not a long period of time is it?

We will look at transformation, traditions, technology, talent drainage and toxic habits.

The transformation of the workplace has been profound. The smoky, burly, bustling and noisy hive of activity of the old design halls has given way to a clinically, sanitary, brooding and silent vista of cubicles. Gone are the pipe-smokers, the pin-ups, the lunch time boozers and all the paraphernalia of the trade, like t-squares, rotring pens, steam tables, pattern templates, tracing paper, rubber shields, etc. Engineers sat at desks, shrouded by a forest of upright design boards. I don’t miss the environment, but it is certainly another world to the one I occupy today. I do miss the people and the team-building spirit, they taught me everything I know.

The traditions of the old drawing office included tea-boy duties, practicing block letter printing, hand sketches, geometric drawings and a whole other level of details, disciplines and duties that were learned on the job and these formed the lore of the engineering traditions. Many engineers lament the loss of the apprenticeship culture. We have not supplanted the old traditions with new ones, we’ve simply lost them.

I believe the “drawing office” engineering is a business of hands-on learning as a mentor relationship. When I came into the profession, the civil engineers were THE leaders and draughtsman followed and the craft-modelers were behind them. Projects went at the speed of the engineer’s experience and direction but the civil engineers were the leaders. Nowadays, the leaders are project managers and the civil/structural engineer role is relegated to support their objectives.

The technology of desktop computers was a big challenge to the mainframe culture. Remember, engineers were not uncomfortable with computers; after all, the mainframes and many programs of the pre-desktop age were managed, designed and built by engineers. Engineers put man on the moon, analyzed nuclear plants to seismic forces and designed for extraordinary results in the age of slide rules. However, the new technology of the desktop computers created a paradigm for engineers that we have still not resolved today. It is widely assumed by the majority that engineers are fully competent in Word and Excel, so their needs are met and yet the truth is so different. Microsoft created their products for profit, not user awareness (unless you are a secretary or an accountant) or loyalty. The constant cycle of revisions and ‘improvements’ in the generic products created confusion and frustrations for many engineers. This fueled hermetic habits and many engineers still perform only hand calculations. Engineers for the most part appear to have become analysts and specialists, isolated and absorbed in the sophistry of 3D structural analysis packages.

Today’s engineering houses invest in the technology and training for designers and modelers. In the corporate budget, to drive costs down, engineers get zero training, unless they want to become managers.  The incredible capital costs of supporting the technology to drive productivity became the killing ground of competence. In an age where engineers sought to optimize material selection with structural performance, it became irrelevant in the face of speed and convenience. The reliance on previous designs became the wholesale justification for faster schedules and economies and the engineers are not keeping up with expected productivity so they are pushed further down the chain to support the designers and verify the design will work; regardless of whether the design is the best design.

Talent drainage is also a significant effect of the new technology. The new technology created new professional opportunities requiring the same talents that engineering normally attracted; only they paid more. I saw so many engineers of my age leave the profession to become computer specialists because salaries were better and it was perceived to be more exciting. Back in the 1990’s, I was offered such opportunities and was often tempted. It seemed also to happen one day the lords of the drawing boards retired en masse and the experience died with them. We had crossed a chasm without the continuity of new blood for the civil engineering profession. For the engineering graduate coming into the drawing office, it can take up to five years before they have overcome the culture shock. Many graduates will leave or ask to be transferred because they are not being taught the ropes, do not enjoy their role or wonder what they have signed up for. Civil and structural engineering societies everywhere are continuing to wrestle with these issues.

I have saved toxic habits for last. This is probably the biggest cancer within our profession and is the driving force behind my mission. This is the supervising engineer who says you cannot do calculations using Excel because it is wasting time. If you used Word to prepare your calculations, you could expect a disciplinary hearing. Yet they will permit you to do 3D detailed models. This supervising engineer is not acting as an inspirational engineering leader but a management leader and the habits they present are crucial.

Corporations abound with go-by examples, with proliferating numbers of pages, and say this is what you need to produce. It takes a special kind of engineer to go against the grain and argue differently. Engineers are not expected to challenge, only perform. In workshare arrangement, these go-by examples are copied faithfully and often get expanded. The toxic habits are the defaulting habits we accumulated over the last fifteen years from not knowing how use the desktop computer to our strategic advantage. I have seen simple structures take three months, 242 load combinations and 240 pages where one day, three load combinations and 4 pages would suffice. Everyone has their favorite horror story.

All of these factors and more, affect the way you do your calculations.

Let’s step back from the mirror now. That was a tough assessment but I want you to recognize that the profound changes within the profession and our roles cannot be understated.

The mind boggles that in fifteen years, we do not have an agreed on engineering standard for spreadsheets or calculations.

So just how can it be different?

I have always had a passion for calculations. Without immediately realizing the benefits of creating visual, compact and electronic style calculations that looked like an extension of the traditional calculations, I discovered that it improved my competency to an extraordinary degree, not just on the computer but also as an engineer. Checkers enjoyed checking my calculations, clients were impressed and I was training engineers who said they could not do it and sure enough they were doing it.

Overcoming their initial resistance, their enthusiasm was infectious. Suddenly, as a team, they were talking to each other, competing, swapping techniques and within weeks they were producing amazing standard calculations prolifically. We were using Word, Excel and VBA and beating deadlines for projects. All great news if we’re on a lump sum project but a skill that is becoming more necessary now.

There is a difference between becoming an engineering leader and a management leader. An engineering leader will spend a lifetime with engineering calculations and will be able to demonstrate their prowess and their knowledge; s/he will know how to inspire the team to follow their example and encourage new work practices to be developed. The humble calculations can become our greatest asset and we learn to look beyond the analysis to the bigger picture and the bigger role we should play in projects.

I use the calculations to plan the design, agree to the concepts amongst all the discipline and to collect all critical information for fabrication, construction, estimates and future projects. The basic blueprint for the calculations is agreed amongst the engineering and design team, QA and the client approval.

In the next installment, I will show you the building blocks to great calculations.

Featured Guest Blogger: Robert Mote

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robertmote

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If you are like me, an engineer with some years’ experience working in a drawing office, then you know the value of what you do is often tied in the calculations. Many of us say how we specialize in certain types of designs but can you show it? How do you prove it?

Calculations are the cornerstone of your credentials as an engineer. From the very first time, I walked into a drawing office to start my career as a graduate Structural engineer, I realized I knew nothing about calculations, my mind was a blank. I knew only what I had submitted in my tutorials at university. I knew nothing about the considerations and preparation I should undertake in my professional role.  I had my eighth edition Steel Designer’s Manual (1978) as my preferred model. I was put straight to work checking calculations in the QA department for seismic designs; calculations that streamed in from over forty engineers. Remember, this was in the days before desktop computers. I saw a variety of styles of the pen-and-paper tradition. My first two years in QA checking was an interesting experience that I can appreciate now. As much as there are differences in people’s character, so is there in their calculations.

I felt I was often chasing their personalities and the simple questions became confrontational at times. We had the lazy, the scruffy, the clean, the detailer, the late ones, the incomplete ones, the defensive, the nonchalant and the brilliant. Clearly, there was no one rule to follow. I was drawn to one particular engineer’s work for his excellence, his brevity and ability to educate me in what he was doing, on paper. I asked him to teach me how I should prepare calculations in such a fashion. He gave me analytical tasks to do and I learned how to use design tables, apply Hardy Cross method, sub-frame analysis and wall-plate bracket designs and the idea was to learn how to present it, to his satisfaction. What he taught me are still the same principles I follow today when I prepare calculations. As my confidence grew I thought everybody would be striving for the same goals too.

More than twenty five years on, the situation has not improved. My concern is what will we expect in another 25 years’ time? What do engineers believe about calculations, their roles and responsibilities to the future?

Engineers do not even talk about calculations. In over 25 years experience working across the globe, from UK to S. Korea and USA to Middle East, it is an embarrassment of silence. It is a taboo subject, likely political, personal and highly selective. It is something that divides the generations rather than unites. Calculations are intimate to the way we work, the way we think and the way we present ourselves to our peers. How do we pass the baton to the newer generation? What can we do to inspire a future generation to a profession in engineering?

When I broach the subject of calculations, I am not talking about the analysis, the theory or the structural analysis packages, I am referring to the work practice in the preparation of it. The introduction of desktop computers has transformed the power to analyze complex and simple problems to an extraordinary degree but unfortunately we have not agreed to a methodology that evolves from the pen-and-paper traditions acceptably. So while designers and managers have accelerated their productivity with the power of computers, the engineers have been blinded by the opportunity to over-analyze and under-deliver the calculations. Engineers are becoming analysts rather than potential leaders of projects.

Consider the following scenario:

A typical calculation designs the concrete and steel components of a modularized piperack design. It is a ring binder of filed results, say 400 pages enclosed. These endless streams of pages are printed from a variety of applications used in the analysis. The engineer has worked, in isolation, for a period of three months and has finally gotten around to preparing his work for checking although pages are not signed or initialed. The narrative is missing, and 75% is focused on the inputs. The checker performs a 10% check, so as to meet the deadline that gets missed.

Is there anything wrong with that picture? The initial good intentions of completing calculations on time are gone. What was the value of the calculation to the team?

I recently asked a group of engineers a series of simple questions and the results was astonishing. It seems 80% of engineers who spend 80% of their time doing calculations, say they hate it! Can you imagine when I told them I loved it? I told them that in the above example of the modularized piperack design, this could be completed in two weeks and 40 pages, into a single document in MS Word. How or why would anyone want to do that?

A calculation completed in two weeks and 40 pages, into a single document in MS Word? Just reading that last sentence will throw up many defenses. It is not intended as a criticism, it is an opportunity to share knowledge and find a common path missing in our current work practices.

Many will argue they do not intend, or feel compelled, to change their methods. Change is not required for the individual, it is required for the future of the engineering profession and our obligation to future generations. Change is hard but often easier than you think too. We exist in comfort zones and experience little challenges to an evolved defaulting method of working. Change does not require all of us all to change but that only enough of us do evolve then the rest will follow.

We are a highly mobile workforce, getting moved from project to project with difference faces, different expectations and different team cultures. Engineers should have a portfolio of design examples for presentation to the new team, new clients, or a prospective employer.

Over the next few months, I will show you the simple building blocks to building concise calculations by collaboration, commonsense and consensus. What you learn about calculations will take you beyond into spreadsheet designs, macros and database developments. Then you will be on your way to becoming an engineering leader.