Brand new graduate - the wonder years

So the first steps on my journey to Here.

The newly minted civil engineering graduate turns up for work expert in concrete design, ok in hydraulics, a bit shaky in soil mechanics and still wondering how he passed geology.

Into the planning directorate of the Department of Water Affairs and my first task.  The Limpopo River is in an area of drought and the farmers are suffering how many storage weirs must we put on it to augment the existing water storage on the farms.  End of briefing.

I will now take you through the steps to deliver this task

1. Panic - this definitely wasn't covered in my course.
   

2. Ask advice and discover all farms are given an abstraction licence based on the area of the farm which details how much water they can have

3. Discover all correspondence and records of above are in Afrikaans

4. Buy an Afrikaans/English dictionary and book language lessons

5. List the farms, their area and allowed water abstraction/storage

6. Find out what a Morgen is.  This was difficult as there was no official conversion factor.  However a brief glance at google recently (not available in the dark ages) has shown that the process has been simplified by the lawyers as follows (n.b. pasted from google via wikipedia hence may not be correct!):
   

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CONVERSION OF AREAS TO METRIC

The Surveyor-General has ruled that in future the “Blue Book” need no longer be used for the conversion of areas from imperial units to metric, particularly when preparing consolidated diagrams by compilation. This is good news as it has long been recognized that the results from the blue book are incorrect in that the conversions are merely truncated and not rounded off.

This gives rise to differences of 1 square metre, particularly when the original units include roods and perches.

This ruling should simplify the conversion process particularly for those practitioners who do not have a Blue Book.

There are, however, two points about which the practitioner needs to be aware.

1. Regulation 1 prescribes the factors to be used for the conversion of distances and of areas from English measure and Cape measure. The distance and area factors do not correlate, and it is not clear why this was done when the regulations were drawn up. If they correlated,

1 Acre = 0,304 797 2654 X 0,304 797 2654 X 43 560 = 0,404 678 3808 Hectares

Instead, 1 Acre = 0,3048 X 0,3048 X 43560 = 0,404 686 Hectares

2. It is intended to investigate the possibility of amending the regulation in order to correct the deviation, but in the meantime the area factors must be used for the conversion of areas. I.e.:

1 Morgen = 0,856 532 Hectares

1 Acre = 0,404 686 Hectares

Using the prescribed area factor means that, for approximately each 13 Acres (7 Morgen in the case of Cape measure), the resulting conversion is 1 square metre larger than would be obtained using the corresponding distance factor.

3. In order that a consistent result is obtained, the following procedure should be used in dong the conversion whether it be by computer programme, calculator, Facit, or long multiplication:

•                 Convert the imperial units to Acres (or Morgen)

•                 Multiply by the relevant factor from the regulations

•                 Round off the result to the nearest square metres "

So that's clear then, if only I had had a lawyer to ask then.

Restart

1. Find a number of boxes of aerial photographs showing all the farms in Northern Transvaal near the Limpopo andspend the next two weeks cutting them up and sticking them together to create a scale photomosaic.  To do this I drew on my experience of watching Blue Peter rather than my university lectures, all that time watching TV was not wasted!

2. Find all the dams and tanks on the photos and start adding up the areas by measuring and tracing onto graphpaper.

3. Discover what a planimeter is and speed up immensely.

4. Ring up a random sample of farmers to get an average depth of tank, discover farmers tend not to beinside to answer the phone during office hours. (for the newer generations this is pre mobiles and in fact pre answer phones and for many farmers pre phones!)

5. 
   

6. Arrange a road trip to drive around farms and ask how big their tanks are - discover that summer inNorthern Transvaal is a bit hotter than summer in Birkenhead (40degrees as opposed to 20 degrees) discover Watermelons - discover getting lost and arriving at border post with Zimbabwe to ask directions discover language barriers

7. Return to office, calculate total available storage per farm, likely useage rates during growing seasons and resultant volumes of storage required in weirs at 5-10km intervals on river.

8. Sketch up a typical weir and cost up value of scheme

9. Present report - get told its way too expensive and not going to proceed

10. Understand not all planned schemes get built!

11. Go to drown sorrows of wasting 3 months by going to local Harlequins rugby club

12. Realise haven't wasted 3 months as learned a lot

13. Get next task

" we are thinking of putting a new dam in Northern Transvaal, can you find a location, look at the discharge patterns it would need when operated in conjunction with two other dams and come up with an approximate size and cost." you have 2 months

Step 1 - Panic (lessons learned!)