Speaker 1: You know, when you look at a set of architectural blueprints,
Speaker 1: there is this expectation of well, absolute, uncompromising perfection.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it really creates a false sense of security.
Speaker 1: Right because you see these crisp straight lines on the paper,
Speaker 1: mathematically flawless right angles, exact measurements, and it all just
Speaker 1: looks so resolved, so clean.
Speaker 2: Because the blueprint assumes a vacuum, It assumes a perfect world.
Speaker 1: Exactly perfect on paper. But then you step out onto
Speaker 1: an actual muddy construction site. Suddenly that perfect geometry is
Speaker 1: at the mercy of the real world. I mean you
Speaker 1: are digging into uneven, unpredictable dirt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're pouring wet concrete that you know expands
Speaker 2: and shifts and.
Speaker 1: Cures based on the weather. And you quickly realize that
Speaker 1: a tiny millimeter sized miscalculation on page one can amplify
Speaker 1: into thousands of dollars down the drain by day.
Speaker 2: Ten, Which is really the underlying thing of what we
Speaker 2: are looking at today. It is the cascading cost of error.
Speaker 2: I mean, a miscalculation in civil engineering isn't just a
Speaker 2: red mark on a test.
Speaker 1: No, definitely not.
Speaker 2: It is the literal difference between a structure standing tall
Speaker 2: for a century, or becoming an incredibly dangerous sinking financial disaster.
Speaker 1: So welcome to the deep dive. Today, we are turning
Speaker 1: a critical high to construction mathematics, a foundational text by Syrenderverdy,
Speaker 1: Roy Baker and Neurinder Kawerverity. And Okay, let's unpack this
Speaker 1: because we are not just going to recite a dry
Speaker 1: academic math textbook, right, nobody wants that. Think of this
Speaker 1: as a survival guide for translating that perfect geometry into
Speaker 1: wet concrete. Whether you are an engineering student prepping for
Speaker 1: the site, a young professional trying to manage a budget,
Speaker 1: or just someone who looks at a suspension bridge and
Speaker 1: wonders like, how on earth did they account for the
Speaker 1: curvature of the earth In that this is for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are going to trace the life cycle of
Speaker 2: a construction project purely through the math that makes it possible.
Speaker 2: So we will start with the raw two D layout
Speaker 2: and the physics of moving into three D space.
Speaker 1: The fun stuff, right.
Speaker 2: Then we will tackle the geometry of irregular landscapes and
Speaker 2: finally look at how statistical variance dictates whether a building
Speaker 2: is actually safe to occupy because you know, math in
Speaker 2: this field dictates every physical movement.
Speaker 1: On a site, and before you can build a skyscraper,
Speaker 1: you obviously need a solid foundation, both literally and mathematically,
Speaker 1: which brings us to the history of numbers. I was
Speaker 1: actually amazed by the context the book provides on this.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating, right, Yeah, Like they talk about Roman numerals.
Speaker 1: Imagine trying to calculate structural loads using Roman numerals like
Speaker 1: MCMXV eight for nineteen ninety eight is so inefficient because
Speaker 1: they lacked a zero.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they lacked a zero and they lacked place value.
Speaker 2: The Indian Arab numeral system, which is what we use today,
Speaker 2: completely revolutionize global trade and engineering because of that concept
Speaker 2: of zero, which by the way, was initially just a dot.
Speaker 1: Wait really just a dot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a dot. But having a placeholder for nothing
Speaker 2: allowed for scaling numbers infinitely. It made complex calculations possible.
Speaker 1: That makes total sense. And speaking of calculations, the book
Speaker 1: emphasizes bawdymas road right out of the gate, brackets of division, multiplication, addition, subtraction,
Speaker 1: the universal law of calculation absolutely essential.
Speaker 2: But you know what really struck me in the early
Speaker 2: chapters was the focus on manual estimation.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, I wanted to ask you about this. For
Speaker 1: a field that relies on incredibly sophisticated CAD software and
Speaker 1: digital surveying tools, there is a massive emphasis on standard
Speaker 1: form significant figures and doing mental math. And honestly, my
Speaker 1: first instinct was to push back on that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we all have software that calculates structural loads to the
Speaker 1: sixth decimal point. Relying on manual mental estimation feels a
Speaker 1: bit like I don't know, driving a crane blindfolded and
Speaker 1: trusting a spotter.
Speaker 2: Entirely, I get why you'd think that, but that analogy
Speaker 2: actually highlights the danger of the software, not the manual math.
Speaker 2: The software is the blind spotter. Oh interesting, Yeah, it
Speaker 2: only knows the inputs you give it. Let's paint a
Speaker 2: picture of site reality. You are standing in the freezing rain,
Speaker 2: you're sleep deprived, A supply is yelling on the phone,
Speaker 2: and you are typing a volume calculation into a tablet.
Speaker 2: Your thumb slips on a decimal point.
Speaker 1: A very very easy mistake.
Speaker 2: To make, incredibly easy, and suddenly your tablet tells you
Speaker 2: to order forty five hundred concrete blocks instead of four
Speaker 2: to fifty yikes, and the software won't flag that, it
Speaker 2: just processes the data. But if you have trained your
Speaker 2: brain in manual estimation using standard form to scale numbers
Speaker 2: up and down by powers of ten, or just rounding
Speaker 2: to one significant figure for a quick mental check, that
Speaker 2: acts as your instinctual safety net.
Speaker 1: So you look at the forty five hundred on the
Speaker 1: screen and your brain immediately flags a discrepancy in the scale.
Speaker 2: Exactly, you have to be smarter than the tool you
Speaker 2: were holding. You need the intuition to catch the digital hallucination.
Speaker 1: Basically, Okay, that makes perfect sense. So let's take that
Speaker 1: intuition to move from the page to the dirt. We
Speaker 1: have a two D plan. The process of physically drawing
Speaker 1: the building's footprint on the ground is known as setting out. Right.
Speaker 2: Setting out is where the theoretical meets the physical. Surveyors
Speaker 2: use specific unmoving rec frience points on the site called stations,
Speaker 2: and they use a system of coordinates and intersecting arcs
Speaker 2: to pinpoint where the critical nodes of a building should be.
Speaker 1: Now, the text focus is heavily on verifying that the
Speaker 1: corners of a foundation are perfectly square. Now, if i
Speaker 1: am laying out a foundation for a small commercial build,
Speaker 1: my instinct is to just grab a physical Builder square,
Speaker 1: line it up with the string lines at the corner,
Speaker 1: and you establish my ninety degree angle that way. It
Speaker 1: seems fast and practical.
Speaker 2: Fast, yes, practical no, And that exact failure point is
Speaker 2: why surveyors rely on diagonals instead. What's fascinating here is
Speaker 2: that if you use a physical Builders square, you are
Speaker 2: measuring a very small, localized area. Let's say there is
Speaker 2: a tiny bump of dirt against the square, or the
Speaker 2: metal is slightly worked by temperature. That introduces, say a
Speaker 2: one millimeter error at the corner.
Speaker 1: I mean one milimeter feels completely negligible.
Speaker 2: It does at the corner, but lines project as that
Speaker 2: wall extends out ten, twenty or thirty meters, that one
Speaker 2: millimeter angular error amplifies. By the time you reach the
Speaker 2: end of the foundation, your wall is centimeters off its mark.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, your.
Speaker 2: Building is essentially a trapezoid now, not a rectangle. Prefabricated
Speaker 2: steel beams won't fit, floor joists will fall short. The
Speaker 2: cascading cost of that one millimeter is astronomical.
Speaker 1: Ah, So you use the longest possible measurement across the
Speaker 1: entire footprint to walk in the accuracy, which brings us
Speaker 1: to Pythagoras.
Speaker 2: The ultimate site manager's tool. Pythagoras's theorem A squared plus
Speaker 2: B squared equals C.
Speaker 1: Squared flashbacks to high school mask right.
Speaker 2: But to guarantee a perfect rectangle on a site, you
Speaker 2: measure the two diagonals crossing through the center of the
Speaker 2: building footprint.
Speaker 1: So let's say my foundation is ten meters by six meters,
Speaker 1: I calculate the hypot newse. The math dictates the diagonal
Speaker 1: must be exactly eleven point sixty sixty two meters exactly.
Speaker 2: And if you pull a steel tape measure across both
Speaker 2: physical diagonals on the site and they both read exactly
Speaker 2: eleven point sixty six two meters, you know with absolute
Speaker 2: certainty that your corners are perfect ninety degree angles. No
Speaker 2: small scale builder square can provide that level of holistic accuracy.
Speaker 1: That is brilliant, and this two D geometry scales into
Speaker 1: logistics very quickly. The sources outline how to calculate the
Speaker 1: square meterage of cavity walls to determine the exact number
Speaker 1: of facing bricks and aerated blocks you need.
Speaker 2: To order, but you don't just order the mathematical exactness right,
Speaker 2: because of wastage.
Speaker 1: You factor in a standard five to ten percent wastage
Speaker 1: rate because the math has to account for reality. Bricks
Speaker 1: get dropped, blocks shattered during cutting.
Speaker 2: And design complexity adds to that wastage. Modern architecture isn't
Speaker 2: just flat boxes anymore.
Speaker 1: Good point. The text delves into setting out complex two
Speaker 1: D shapes like elliptical arches over large entry ways. And
Speaker 1: you can't just stick a pin in the center and
Speaker 1: swing a piece of string to draw on a lips
Speaker 1: like you would a circle.
Speaker 2: Now you have to calculate ordinate lengths, which means you
Speaker 2: are generating an x y grid of highly specific vertical
Speaker 2: and horizontal measurements.
Speaker 1: Right, So the brick layers can follow a struck tually sound.
Speaker 2: Perfect curve exactly because if they freehand a load bearing arch,
Speaker 2: the weight of the structure above it won't distribute into
Speaker 2: the columns correctly. The actual fail. But you know all
Speaker 2: of this perimeters, diagonals, elliptical grids is just manipulating flat space.
Speaker 2: Construction is fundamentally volumemetric.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting. Moving from two
Speaker 1: D area into the third dimension, because when you start
Speaker 1: digging trenches and pouring foundations, the physics of the materials
Speaker 1: actively fight your calculations. I was frankly completely surprised by
Speaker 1: the mechanics of earthworks, specifically this concept of bulking. Oh, bulking.
Speaker 2: Bulking is the silent budget killer for inexperienced contractors.
Speaker 1: The best way I can conceptualize it as well, packing
Speaker 1: for a trip. You have a hard shell suitcase and
Speaker 1: all your clothes are vacuum sealed or tightly rolled inside.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly dense. Okay, I like this analogy right For
Speaker 1: the second you take those clothes out and throw them
Speaker 1: on the hotel bed, they expand, the air gets between
Speaker 1: the fibers, and when it is time to leave you
Speaker 1: you can never just shove them back in perfectly. They
Speaker 1: take up significantly more volume.
Speaker 2: That is actually a highly accurate representation of soil mechanics.
Speaker 2: Undisturbed Earth has been compacted by thousands of years of
Speaker 2: geological pressure, rainfall, and gravity.
Speaker 1: So it's dense.
Speaker 2: Very the particles are locked together with zero void space.
Speaker 2: But the moment an excavator bucket rips into that earth,
Speaker 2: it fractures the structural matrix, oxygen and air pockets are
Speaker 2: introduced between the soil particles. The mass remains the same,
Speaker 2: but the volume expands dramatically.
Speaker 1: So how does a civil engineer mitigate that mathematically? Because
Speaker 1: you have to move.
Speaker 2: That dirt by applying specific bulking factors based on geotechnical
Speaker 2: soil reports. Let's look at the financial implications. You calculate
Speaker 2: the three D volume of a massive foundation trench length
Speaker 2: times width times depth. The math says you need to
Speaker 2: remove exactly five two hundred cubic meters of solid earth. Okay,
Speaker 2: a novice contractor budgets for enough dump trucks to haul
Speaker 2: away exactly five thousan two hundred cubic meters.
Speaker 1: The the soil doesn't stay solid exactly.
Speaker 2: If the geotechnical report states that specific clay heavy soil
Speaker 2: has a bulking factor of fifteen percent, the actual volume
Speaker 2: of loose aerated soil sitting on your site is now
Speaker 2: five nine hundred and eighty cubic meters.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is almost eight hundred extra cubic meters of
Speaker 1: dirt that practically materialize.
Speaker 2: Out of thin air, literally out of thin air, which
Speaker 2: requires dozens of extra dump trucks, extra fuel, extra labor hours,
Speaker 2: and extra landfill fees. If you didn't run the bulking equation,
Speaker 2: your profit margin on the excavation phase is instantly wiped out.
Speaker 2: You have to cost out the material as it will be,
Speaker 2: not just as it sits.
Speaker 1: In the ground man, and that transformation of materials applies
Speaker 1: just as heavily to pouring the concrete back into those trenches.
Speaker 1: The sources break down nominal concrete mixes, and it highlights
Speaker 1: that concrete isn't just dirt and water. It is a
Speaker 1: highly specific chemical reaction hydration.
Speaker 2: Concrete doesn't dry, It cures through an exothermic chemical reaction
Speaker 2: between cement and water, and the structural integrity of that
Speaker 2: cure is dictated by strict volumetric ratios.
Speaker 1: The text details a standard one to two to four mix,
Speaker 1: so that is one part cement, two parts fine aggregate
Speaker 1: which is usually sand, and four parts course aggregate like
Speaker 1: crushed gravel.
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the physical mechanism of why those
Speaker 2: specific ratios exist. It is an interlocking puzzle of void management.
Speaker 1: Let's unpack that void management.
Speaker 2: Yeah, think about a bucket full of large gravel. There
Speaker 2: is a lot of empty space voids between the stones.
Speaker 2: The two parts of fine sand are calculated to perfectly
Speaker 2: fill those specific voids between the gravel. But now you
Speaker 2: have microscopic voids between the grains of sand h and.
Speaker 1: The one part of cement powder fills the voids.
Speaker 2: In the sand precisely. It creates a completely solid matrix.
Speaker 2: And if you need a different structural application, say a
Speaker 2: massive gravity retaining wall that relies on sheer weight rather
Speaker 2: than a high compressive strength, you might shift the math
Speaker 2: to a one to three to six mix, so.
Speaker 1: More gravel, less cement. It's cheaper but handles different loads.
Speaker 1: And the water to cement ratio is heavily stressed in
Speaker 1: the text, usually setting around fifty to sixty percent of
Speaker 1: the cement volume. Why is that ratio so fragile? If
Speaker 1: the mix is too stiff, shouldn't you just add more
Speaker 1: water to make it easier to pour? I mean, I
Speaker 1: see guys doing that all the time on driveways.
Speaker 2: That is a massive temptation on every site, and it
Speaker 2: is structurally catastrophic. Really, Yes, if you exceed the calculated
Speaker 2: water to cement ratio, that excess water doesn't participate in
Speaker 2: the chemical hydration process. It just sits trapped in the concrete.
Speaker 2: When it eventually evaporates over months or years, it leaves
Speaker 2: behind microscopic capillary tunnels throughout the structure.
Speaker 1: Oh, which weakens the entire block.
Speaker 2: It creates a porous, brittle matrix that is incredibly susceptible
Speaker 2: to cracking and frost damage. The math dictates the chemistry,
Speaker 2: and the chemistry dictates the strength.
Speaker 1: So assuming we have our concrete volumes perfectly calculated for
Speaker 1: a flat rectangular driveway, the math is straightforward length times
Speaker 1: with times depth. But real construction is rarely a perfect
Speaker 1: rectangular prism. I mean civil engineers are dealing with pitched roofs,
Speaker 1: undulating hills, and highly irregular terrain.
Speaker 2: Which requires abandoning simple arithmetic and stepping up to advanced
Speaker 2: trigonometry and the rules of approximation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the text dedicates significant space to roof geometry because
Speaker 1: a roof isn't a flat lid. It is a complex
Speaker 1: system of intersecting planes right.
Speaker 2: To find the true length of common rafters and hip rafters,
Speaker 2: you know, the structural beams that shape a pitched roof.
Speaker 2: You can't pull a measurement off a flat two D
Speaker 2: floor plan. The lines are angled upward in three D space,
Speaker 2: you have to use sign, cosign and tangent to calculate
Speaker 2: the true physical length based on the pitch.
Speaker 1: Angle, and the same trigonometry applies to staircases. To meet
Speaker 1: strict building regulations. You are calculating the rise, the vertical
Speaker 1: height of each step, and the going the horizontal depth,
Speaker 1: because if the tangent of that angle results in a
Speaker 1: staircase that is too steep, it is a daily physical
Speaker 1: hazard to the life of the building.
Speaker 2: Geometry literally dictates human safety. But when we transition from
Speaker 2: engineered lumber to the raw earth, even trigonometry isn't enough.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about that. Digging a trench across an
Speaker 1: undulating rolling hill for a pipeline, or building a dirt
Speaker 1: embankment for a curved highway off ramp, the shape is
Speaker 1: entirely irregular. I imagine for an uneven hill you just
Speaker 1: calculate the cross sectional area of the hill at the
Speaker 1: start of your site, take the cross sectional area at
Speaker 1: the very end, average them out, and multiply by the
Speaker 1: length right that assumes the linear world. Though if you
Speaker 1: do that, you will likely end up thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: short on materials or hauling fees. A rolling hill isn't
Speaker 1: a straight line connecting point A to point B. It
Speaker 1: is a curve. If you average the start and the end,
Speaker 1: you completely ignore the massive belly the hill in the middle.
Speaker 2: Which is an enormous amount of uncalculated dirt.
Speaker 1: Exactly. This is why civil engineers use rules of approximation
Speaker 1: to slice irregular shapes into mathematical pieces. The text outlines
Speaker 1: three methods for this, the mid ordinate rule, the trapezoil,
Speaker 1: and Simpson's rule, which calculates area using parabolic arches. But
Speaker 1: if we connect this to the bigger picture of three
Speaker 1: D earthworks, the most powerful tool is the prismoidal rule.
Speaker 2: Okay, how does the prismodal rule account for that belly
Speaker 2: of the hill. The geometry of the prismodal formula requires
Speaker 2: you to calculate three cross sections, not two. You calculate
Speaker 2: the area at the start, you calculate the area at
Speaker 2: the end, But critically, you must calculate the cross sectional
Speaker 2: area at the exact midpoint of the excavation.
Speaker 1: So you capture the peak of the curve.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the formula weights that middle section heavily. It
Speaker 2: takes the start, adds the end adds four times the
Speaker 2: mid section and divides the whole thing by six, multiplying
Speaker 2: by the total length. By forcing the math to acknowledge
Speaker 2: the midpoint, it effectively maps a parabolic curve over the terrain,
Speaker 2: generating an incredibly accurate volume estimation for complex undulating land It.
Speaker 1: Is essentially throwing a high resolution mathematical net over an
Speaker 1: unpredictable landscape that is brilliant so we know how to
Speaker 1: secure the perimeter, We understand the chemistry of the materials,
Speaker 1: and we can map the irregular earth. But the ultimate
Speaker 1: test of a civil engineer is synthesizing all of this
Speaker 1: data to actually pay for.
Speaker 2: It the business end. A structure only gets built if
Speaker 2: the economics hold up.
Speaker 1: The text provides granular case studies on costing out projects,
Speaker 1: and it emphasizes that you are never just calculating material volume.
Speaker 1: You're calculating time.
Speaker 2: Labor is the most volatile variable on any site.
Speaker 1: For sure, there is a detailed breakdown of costing a
Speaker 1: one to three to six concrete strip foundation. You have
Speaker 1: to synthesize multiple streams of math. First, you calculate the
Speaker 1: total concrete volume, convert that into the exact number of
Speaker 1: twenty five kilogram cement bags and eight hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: kilogram jumbo bags of aggregate. Then you calculate the unit
Speaker 1: cost of each. But then you must factor in the
Speaker 1: labor rate, say fifteen pounds an hour, multiplied by the
Speaker 1: gang size, multiplied by the estimated hours the poor will take.
Speaker 2: And this is where the cascading cost of error is realized.
Speaker 2: If your initial two D trench at is off by
Speaker 2: a few centimeters, your three D volume calculation is short.
Speaker 2: You run out of concrete halfway through the poor.
Speaker 1: Oh man, the.
Speaker 2: Labor gang is still on the clock at fifteen pounds
Speaker 2: an hour per man, just standing around waiting for another truck.
Speaker 2: Your budget is hemorrhaging money because of a centimeter error
Speaker 2: on day one.
Speaker 1: The math is entirely interconnected, and it isn't just financial tracking,
Speaker 1: it is statistical tracking. The text heavily emphasizes understanding statistics,
Speaker 1: mean mode, median, and specifically the intercordal range. Why is
Speaker 1: a civil engineer tracking the intercordal range of materials risk management?
Speaker 2: Let's look at concrete strength testing. When a batch plant
Speaker 2: delivers trucks of concrete to a site, you pour test
Speaker 2: cubes and crush them in a lab to find their
Speaker 2: failure point in Newton's per square millimeter.
Speaker 1: So you are making sure the concrete is actually strong
Speaker 1: enough to hold the building.
Speaker 2: Up exactly, but you aren't just looking for the mean
Speaker 2: the average strength. The average is a deceptive number. Let's
Speaker 2: say you test ten samples. Five are incredibly strong and
Speaker 2: five dangerously weak. The mathematical average might look perfectly acceptable
Speaker 2: on paper.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, but half the building is brittle exactly.
Speaker 2: This is why you must calculate the intercortile range, which
Speaker 2: measures the statistical spread or variance of the middle fifty
Speaker 2: percent of your data. If your intercortile range is massive,
Speaker 2: it tells you that the manufacturing process is wildly inconsistent.
Speaker 2: The average is fine, but the high variance means you
Speaker 2: cannot trust the material. One load bearing pillar poured from
Speaker 2: a weak batch could cause a localized collapse.
Speaker 1: Statistics as a physical safety protocol. Now, the book is
Speaker 1: rigorous about teaching manual transposition to these equations, you know,
Speaker 1: forcing the reader to algebraically rearrange formulas by hand. But
Speaker 1: it also acknowledges the digital reality highlighting software like Microsoft
Speaker 1: Excel as a core industry tool.
Speaker 2: Well manual transposition is non negotiable for understanding the relationship
Speaker 2: between variables. If you don't know how to isolate a
Speaker 2: variable on paper, you don't understand the physics of what
Speaker 2: you are building. So once you have that mastery, Excel
Speaker 2: becomes your amplifier.
Speaker 1: Right Because you aren't calculating the materials for a three
Speaker 1: hundred room hotel by hand, you establish a formula and
Speaker 1: Excel like equals B four times Z four times D
Speaker 1: four for volume. You lock that formula across thousands of cells,
Speaker 1: input the raw blueprint dimensions, and the software instantly cascades
Speaker 1: the required cubic meters of concrete or square meters of
Speaker 1: drywall for the entire skyscraper.
Speaker 2: It allows massive scale, but again, the computer is blind.
Speaker 2: It only scales what you tell it to scale. If
Speaker 2: your manual transposition of the initial formula was flawed, Excel
Speaker 2: will just rapidly multiply your error across three hundred hotel rooms.
Speaker 2: The engineer provides the vision, the software just provides the speed.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We've journeyed from the
Speaker 1: raw intuition of mental estimation to the parabolic curves of
Speaker 1: the prismoidal rule and down to the statistical variants of
Speaker 1: crushed concrete cubes. What Surrenderverting the co authors really show
Speaker 1: us is that mathematics isn't just an abstract requirement. It
Speaker 1: is the hidden struck language of the physical world. It
Speaker 1: dictates whether a foundation is square, whether a trench bankrupts
Speaker 1: a company, and whether a roof actually stays over our heads.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate bridge between human imagination and physical reality.
Speaker 2: And since our goal today was to ensure you walk
Speaker 2: away with a practical toolkit, before you go, we have
Speaker 2: a short review exercise to test your site readiness.
Speaker 1: A deep dive pop quiz. Love it, I am ready?
Speaker 2: Okay. Imagine you are the site engineer. You are excavating
Speaker 2: a standard rectangular trench for a pipeline. The trench is
Speaker 2: ten meters long, two meters wide, and one meter deep.
Speaker 2: I want you to calculate the initial solid volume of
Speaker 2: the earth. Then, assuming the geotechnical report indicates a soil
Speaker 2: bulking factor of ten percent, calculate the final volume of
Speaker 2: loose aerated soil you will actually need to pay to
Speaker 2: haul away.
Speaker 1: Okay, Giving you or myself a second to run, the
Speaker 1: mental math volume is length times with times depth factor
Speaker 1: in the ten percent expansion right.
Speaker 2: Breaking it down, the initial solid volume is ten times
Speaker 2: two times one, giving you twenty cubic meters of undisturbed earth.
Speaker 2: But when the excavator digs it up, that twenty cubic
Speaker 2: meters expands by ten percent, which is an additional two
Speaker 2: cubic meters of void space it. Therefore, the final loose
Speaker 2: volume you must account for logistics and costing is twenty
Speaker 2: two cubic meters.
Speaker 1: And if you factored in that extra two cubic meters,
Speaker 1: you just save your theoretical construction firm from a very
Speaker 1: real budget overrun.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and this raises an important question for you to
Speaker 2: consider moving forward. As the industry accelerates toward an era
Speaker 2: of artificial intelligence, autonomous drone surveying, and automated three D
Speaker 2: printed buildings, will the civil engineer of the future be
Speaker 2: expected to calculate these volumetric equations manually or will a
Speaker 2: deep foundational understanding of why the geometry behaves the way
Speaker 2: it does become more crucial than ever, Simply so the
Speaker 2: human mind has the intuition to catch the machine's inevitable
Speaker 2: physical mistakes.
Speaker 1: Something to mull over the next time you see a
Speaker 1: crane swing oversight. Thank you for joining us on this
Speaker 1: deep dive into construction mathematics. Keep questioning the blue PRIs
Speaker 1: rents and we will catch you next time.