[IsaacL]

A while back I had two friends, one an architecture student, one a civil engineering student. They had some interesting banter:

Architecture student: if civil engineers had their way, all buildings would be square concrete blocks

Civil engineering student: if architects had their way, all buildings would be beautiful, and collapse in the slightest breeze

[grumblepeet]

I used to work in a civil engineering company and ran the intranet. The most secure part was the company wiki, which held all of the organisation's collective wealth about how to make things that wouldn't fall down, explode etc. They used this knowledge to help architects make buildings that would be safe, but were equally careful to ensure that none of this knowledge was ever transferred to other civil engineers.

I suppose this made perfect financial sense, but it does mean that there is no "collective knowledge pot" that people can pull against to ensure they don't make the same mistakes.

BTW in the wiki there were countless pages about concrete. Concrete pipes, concrete under water, concrete in a desert, concrete under stress, you name it. Ever tried tuning a search engine results page for concrete pipes?

[token78]

Hehe - I'm sure there's a middle ground somewhere!