u/Rhinohumpenpanda_2

Hey y'all. My dad recently passed away 2 months ago, so me and my wife have been trying to keep my mom occupied. Pretty much all she does is watch TV (which is all she did before). We thought it would be fun to show her a few animes. What would be yalls "anime sampler mix" if you were showing a 72 year old woman that thinks family guy is anime? Erased, witch watch and death note, probably brotherhood are all currently on the list, but we want to hear yalls picks!

Hey everyone. I’m 32 and work with my father (62) running a civil engineering company in the Dallas/Fort Worth area focused on land development. My dad has owned his own firm for over 30 years. Me and my wife handle 99% of day-to-day operations at this point, which includes managing all of our projects, invoicing, bookkeeping, etc.

Over the last couple years, proposal writing has gotten a lot easier because I’ve developed a pretty solid feel for what jobs are worth (by our definition). Recently, though, I saw another engineer’s proposal on a project, and their fee was probably double what we would have charged.

We’re a small operation — one employee, with most engineering and processing handled by long-term subs/consultants — but we’re never flush with cash. It’s made me wonder if we’re underpricing ourselves. At the same time, a lot of our work is county-related, and I already spend enough time fighting over fees with our clients as is.

Are there any good resources, forums, or threads where engineers share proposal ranges or contract amounts for different types of land development work? Even informal benchmarking would help. I’d also be open to comparing notes with anyone in a similar position. We’re pretty isolated, so I honestly don’t have a good reference point for whether we’re charging too much or too little.

Also, I previously worked with an EE who priced professional fees based on anticipated improvement/construction costs. Has anyone here experimented with that model in civil/site development?

Thanks.

Recently passed the FE (~250 hours of studying). Took the PE with about 60 hours of studying and bombed hard. After spending another 50 hours studying, I realized I really didn't understand the first think about electricity, I just knew how to solve problems and use formulas. Okay, very fair, the PE is a different animal. This time around, I'm asking more "what does this word mean?" and "how does this actually work" instead of "how do I solve this?".

I'm getting through it, and have made it about halfway through Wasims prep book and have been doing okay (other than autotransformers, 4 hours in and I give up on that one), and I'd say I have another 150 hours to go until I feel comfortable for the next go at the test. I'm feeling so much better, but I do feel like I'll never truly "understand" electricity. Some concepts are just over my head to be honest. I've made it about halfway (for the second time, the first was very rushed) and its been going well, but I am very suddenly getting to the "wtf do these words mean" point again. I'm not dumb by any account, but I'm not an outside of the box/conceptual thinker, I'm more of a brute force learner. Not feeling down at all, but I am concerned that the concept as a whole will never truly "click" for me, and everything I know will be more of a "I remember how this worked in the problems" and not "I know this because I understand electricity". If I can't find some alternate way to visualize it without use differential equations and vector fields, I'm remembering core rules to compensate. Some things have definitely clicked, but for me to able to truly understand the concepts behind magnetic fields, flux, harmonics, and all of that jazz, were talking 500 hours, not 200. Please tell me I'm not alone, I just want to play video games again <3