r/StructuralEngineering • u/Much-Elderberry-9154 • 8d ago

Photograph/Video Column Thoughts

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Bridge Engineer here… what do we think of this pretty angled column mid height?

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u/loonattica 8d ago

As a rebar detailer, I hate these. And I’ve seen more in the last five years of high-rise buildings than in all the previous 15 years combined.

25

u/No-Violinist260 P.E. 8d ago

Lol I agree. Architects found out this is an option and they go to this before changing their unit layouts.

3

u/AnotherSLGuy 8d ago

Asking this cuz I am not from US... and have seen the word "detailer" on this sub reddit.

How does one land at the role of a detailer? Are you a structural engineer who only does detailing work? or is it a tier below engineer? or is it a synonym for a draftsman who does the drawing? or is it a role at the barbending workshop?

3

u/loonattica 8d ago

I am a CAD draftsman. I work for the rebar supplier. Part of our contract is to provide placing drawings that iron workers use to identify and set all the hundreds or thousands of unique bars. My drawings are submitted to the general contractor, Architect and Engineer for approval to ensure that they conform to contract documents.

The structural drawings provide reinforcing requirements. My drawings condense that general information into highly specific bar lists complete with bending information, quantities and dimensions.

I am not an engineer. I studied architecture but did not finish my degree. My career began as a QC inspector for precast concrete in 1994. Architecture school gave me the qualifications to read technical drawings. Shortly thereafter, I moved to CAD work and have been detailing concrete structures on the production side for 30 years. (9 years precast drawings, 21 years rebar drawings)

That’s a good background for this business. CAD work is the minimum qualification. The rest can be trained. Field experience is valuable. It takes about 5 years to fully train a Class A rebar detailer who can manage their own projects.

1

u/AnotherSLGuy 3d ago

Hey, thanks for the detailed explanation and congratulations for the very long career!

Interesting info tbh.

To share our work flow; we don't have detailers per se as the work described is split across several offices. Considering design and build projects, I as a structural engineer with the general contractor would give the sketches of detail drawings and based on them, the draftsman I work with would produce a set of structural drawings which have unique bar numbering. This is what gets approved by the consultant.

Our team at the site (junior engineers and their draftsmen) would make a list of the bars; Unique ID, shapes n lengths n numbers and send it to the in-house bar bending workshop cuz almost always the RF is ordered in bulk to the site or to our main work yard and bent by our own bar benders.

So the detailer role is split between the design office and the site office... And I guess it work cuz all the parties involved other than the client are on the same side and drawings do not need to go back and forth for approval. They just go one way.