Tosh K

They do work in cash a lot over there – get it in dollars or euros and you should be ok.  Until it becomes a burdensome amount, it seems reasonable.

Any number of private consulting firms offer leed prep courses (most hover around $100); for phase 1, the GA exam you only need to know the basics (but statistics as they publish it) as published in their own LEED guide.  Phase 2 are the subject specialty tests which you’ll want to study for (right now ND and NB+C probably makes most sense for…[Read more]

Landform: Rhino (precision and fine surface modeling)
Massing sketches: SketchUp / Rhino / Vectorworks
Documentation: AutoCAD (Landf/x) / Vectorworks / MicroStation
Diagramming: Illustrator / Photoshop
Renderings: any render engine on SketchUp/Rhino + Photoshop
Animation: 3DMax / Maya
High level of competency is recommended to use these as real…[Read more]

well, and academia wants their students to get checks, so they get endowment checks and so on.

Very true, though in my experience the restoration firms tended to be heavy on ecologists (is the science not there? or the methods of analysis?).  
I would also point out the reverse is true as well – they published recommendations for green infrastructure that sorely lacks systemic understanding of hydraulic engineering and campus design.

123rf.com search “isolated trees”  they are really nice – around $3~$4/image
I’d cut out the ones you want though.

We looked at a lot of plants in the region when we worked out there.  The palette is limited, but there’s stuff that works in that climate (hot and somewhat humid).

Weren’t the mounds rebuilt?  They looked great the last few times I’ve been out there.  Something about the soil mix on foam was the problem as I recall – that Mpls project did have a very low budget.

I’m biased, but I loved UVA – good balance of technology and hand work, and a good distribution of coursework that is well taught and thought out.  They have a clear pedagogy and the faculty within the school (including planners, architects and historians) is well knit and very friendly.  
pm me if you have specific questions

It is always odd that there are so many licensed surveyors that too poor a job at providing good surveys. That being said, a good surveyor is critical in minimizing cost overruns on a project – we worked with one in VA that located any oddities and followed up via deeds, etc (above and beyond the contractual obligation).  The surveyor saved our…[Read more]

1. LAs need to be more insistent on being recognized by clients especially in the public sector for the work they do.  They also need to understand that marketing is valuable to the firm as well as the profession and should be amply budgeted.
2. There are plenty of scheduling software packages out there.  Meeting minutes is a good measure to k…[Read more]

In the US it depends on the firm.  I’ve worked at places with 12hr work days almost exclusively on design (upper tier), some larger firms where 50/wk is normal but spread out from design through construction admin -site visits, submittals, RFIs (upper tier)- though the work type was more specialized (each person had a role) , smaller firms with…[Read more]

I didn’t (don’t) like Civil3D – it’s great for developments/roads but awful difficult to get smooth terrain and not particularly helpful in doing walls with variation in cross-sections, etc.  The software uses lines and sections to do quantities and such so it is a bit clunky.  It was useful to verify grades, but not as useful as Revit is to a…[Read more]

ran across this recently:
http://davisla.wordpress.com/plant-zones/
maybe there’s a way to code in these maps?

As others mentioned this is very common – we work two ways:
1. using our standards to produce drawings then hand over after translating the layers.  It can be a bit tricky and you have to make sure the lineweights allow for the drawing to be read.  The thought in our case was that we wanted a larger range of lineweights than the template p…[Read more]

Rather old fashioned city beautiful concept.  Recently several cities in the US ran out of maintenance budget and let the grass grow – it actually looked pretty good.  Downside was the increase in wildlife and therefore dead animals by the road.

Your advantage in having past experience in understanding lineweights, drawing layout and the application of drawings in the field should set you higher than recent grads (they may know some aspects better, but generally aren’t versed in office-use of CAD).
As others mentioned CC courses and  working for a CM/engineer/surveyor/fabricator (doing…[Read more]

Depends on how it’s shipped: one project the supplier had the product shipped to them for quality control before shipping to project site (quality/consistency of finish was not great), another we had directly shipped from port to project site (good finish).  note that shipping times can vary depending on weather/season/port availability.  If a s…[Read more]

Well put Andrew.

Omar – it seems you have skill sets that are valuable in the profession both computing and (presumably) broader conception of ‘sustainability.’  Many LA graduate programs (at least in the US) are geared toward those of us who studied something else.  For example, my classmates had undergraduate degrees in art, english, art h…[Read more]

Robert – it wasn’t meant as a slur, just there is a different perception of TX in its conservative slant (I myself grew up in CO, MN, MO and VA).  I do agree with you in the concerns I have for degrees in ‘sustainability’  (the local elite university here spits kids out with all kinds of degrees in sustainability with many ‘interested’ in green i…[Read more]