Cartography

As the only engineer for my building, one of my jobs includes updating all of the electrical, piping, equipment, and other drawings whenever someone (like me) changes something. This is not generally a big deal. Most changes in a well-established building just attach to things that were already there. The hard part is in sizing and selecting what you want, not drawing a picture of where it goes.

Recently, I had the pleasure of unearthing a drawing of my building’s steam boiler systems. We currently have two large boilers cranking out a steady stream of 150lb steam. Back in the early days (before an explosion), we had three smaller, somewhat less quality boilers in an entirely different place.

It took me a few seconds of staring at the drawing and wondering why it didn’t make any sense to notice something. Three boilers.

This may not seem like a big deal to you. It’s certainly fair to say that it was simply a case of some previous engineer not finishing a job he started.

But this is akin to working as a cartographer and being handed the 2007 atlas of the United States with the instructions to: “Update any of the little changes that have gone through since the last revision.”

You reply, “No sweat!” cheerfully sit down at your desk, open to page one, and discover this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:United_States_1789-08-1790.png

Suddenly, you don’t like your job so much.