Antidote to Burnout

Carelessness in construction in Vietnam

The following article on 20 November 2009 from Thanh Nien News Online (English version) tells an unfortunately common story about construction mishaps in Vietnam: Quang Ninh resident dies in bizarre housing accident A house in Quang Ninh Province tilted and... Read more →

No more construction voreurism

As much as I love construction and watching the contractor behind my house manage the construction site, my wife is making us relocate way the hell out there in District 6, where she was born long ago. She made this... Read more →

Building Construction Week 19

This week the contractor brought in infrastructure to support the work and make operations on the site less messy. Foundation construction is inherently messy in Vietnam since most large building foundations involve drilled piers using massive quantities of water mixed... Read more →

Building Construction Week 18

Construction resumes on the 3,600 square meters (38,750 sq. ft or .9 acre) site behind my house outside my bedroom window. Two months ago, I said that the site would be idle for two or three months while the engineers... Read more →

Building Construction Week 9

This will probably be the last post on this subject for the next two or three months. The site is empty now -- this past week, the pile testing contractor finished testing the third pile and then took away all... Read more →

Building Construction Week 8

Jon over at the blog It's the final word commented on last week's posting about construction that I "must be the only man in Saigon who actually enjoys having a large scale construction project behind his house..." Yes, it's true... Read more →

Building Construction Week 7

All of the big concrete blocks that had been brought to the site were put to use this past week as the pile testing contractor set up a frame and piled the blocks on. The frame was set up so... Read more →

Building Construction Week 4

Although the photo below doesn't look like it (end of the week), there was a lot of work on the site in back of my house every evening this week as the foundation contractor drilled and poured concrete for two... Read more →

Building Construction Week 3

I skipped the second week of construction behind my house because nothing progressed except for delivery of materials. In this third week, ironworkers formed rebar cages to be dropped into a bore hole to reinforce foundation piers. This weekend they... Read more →

Building Construction 1

Construction is starting on the large lot behind my house. Since I have a ringside seat for all the action, I will post progress on the site weekly. This week, construction equipment and materials dribbled in slowly each night. Since... Read more →

Camping on the construction site

In my last posting photographs, you may have noticed a tent camp in the middle of the site under demotion behind my house in HCMC. It is typical in Viet Nam for some of the construction laborers to live temporarily... Read more →

Foundations for houses in HCMC...

I have previously posted about leaning or tilting houses in Ho Chi Minh City here. There have been several recent Vietnamese news articles about houses adjacent to rivers collapsing, and there have been several stories lately about the collapse of... Read more →

New sewer line outside our front door...

Concurrent with the extended rainy season we seem to be experiencing, workers came to tear up our hẻm (lane) and replace the storm sewer line. The existing line was not large enough to accommodate the torrential rains, resulting in minor... Read more →

Constant construction in the hẻms of HCMC

Kevin over at SaigonNezumi.com often posts about the constant construction around his house in a hẻm (lane) on the other side of the Phu Nhuan District from where I live. He is usually concerned about the dust, mud, and noise... Read more →

For old nostalgic U.S. Navy C.E.C. officers only:

My blog service, Typepad, gives me information daily on how many page hits the blog receives the previous day. In addition, I can also see what kinds of Google searches people have done to find the blog. However, I cannot... Read more →

More tilting houses

Article from Thanh Nien News 23 March 2007 Deteriorating HCMC bridge poses threat to houses A recently built overpass in Ho Chi Minh City, which has been in the news for corrupt contractors and poor quality, is continuing to sink... Read more →

Living on a tilt....

I came across this series of houses while on a walk down Đường (Street) Chu Văn An in Quận (District) Bình Thạnh. It is difficult in this image to figure out what is what is perfectly vertical, but it seems... Read more →

Street widenings....

Đường (Street) Nguyễn Văn Trỗi in Quận (District) Phú Nhuận of Thành Phố (City) Hồ Chí Minh is being widened, as many major streets have over the past several years. This street is the primary route from Tân Sơn Nhất... Read more →

Getting civilian military construction done -- RMK-BRJ [Part 1]

KBR (formerly the M.W. Kellogg Company and Brown & Root, Inc.) is the 4th largest American construction firm today (listed by Engineering News Record) and is a subsidiary firm of Halliburton, well known for its former CEO, now U.S. Vice... Read more →

RMK-BRJ Construction Industry Legacy in Việt Nam [Part 2]

All of the photographs below were taken in 1972 -- click on any of them to enlarge it. The huge American construction consortium RMK-BRJ was ubiquitous thoughout southern Việt Nam is the 60s and early 70s with its thousands of... Read more →

RMK-BRJ Construction Legacy in Việt Nam Today [Part 3]

Between 1965 and 1972, the consortium of the four largest American construction companies, RMK-BRJ, built much of the infrastructure of the lines of communications now serving southern Việt Nam today. All of the photographs below were taken in 1972 --... Read more →

Why I am not getting any work done...

This is the current view out of my office balcony door: The worker is applying the second and final coat of hard plaster on the new house across from me. Presumably he will drop back down next week to apply... Read more →

OSHA? What's that?

In the good ole' USA, construction people are very aware of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Admiinistration (OSHA), and the various state agencies regulating worker safety. On the whole, these agencies and the construction industry together have positively raised... Read more →

The La Nga River Bridge

In 1970, the U.S. Navy Officer in Charge of Construction RVN awarded a construction contract to a French construction contractor, Eiffel-Asie, to construct a bridge across the La Nga River on national highway QL-20 running north of Sai Gon to... Read more →