54 PRACTICAL STRUCTURAL DESIGN 



the steel salesman. Sometimes the above procedure is varied by 

 a draftsman being employed to make the building plans and the 

 owner takes up the design of the structure directly with some steel 

 salesman. In this case the plans are furnished without cost to 

 the owner, provided the firm supplying the plans sells the steel. 

 A price is fixed for the plans in case the owner purchases the steel 

 elsewhere. The price for the design must then be added to bids 

 for the steel, which usually results in the owner purchasing the 

 steel from the firm giving him the " free " design. There is severe 

 competition in the steel-selling game, the result being that few 

 designs thus made are as good as they should be. 



The designers employed by steel salesmen are first-class men 

 in nearly every instance, but in order to hold their positions they 

 work for their employers rather than for the owners, which is quite 

 natural. Few of these men, when they finally go into business for 

 themselves, design exactly as they were forced to design when they 

 were required to assist in selling steel. If the owner employs a 

 reputable engineer in private practice to do the engineering work 

 and pays him a fee in addition to that paid to the architect, he 

 will receive designs which conform to the best modern practice and 

 all contractors will bid on these designs. The difference in cost 

 between the certainty of good work and the uncertainty affect- 

 ing the " skinning " of designs by steel salesmen will be very small. 

 Frequently the competition between contractors will entirely 

 wipe out the difference. 



Owing to the large number of unsatisfactory designs received 

 under the competitive method of having steel salesmen furnish 

 the engineering work, and to the failures occurring during con- 

 struction, the practice should be abandoned. The average owner, 

 and many architects, consider the engineer as an expert juggler 

 with figures and a sort of human attachment to a slide rule and 

 table book. When a steel-selling concern boasts of the ability of 

 the engineers employed by it the engineers are really only highly 

 trained men doing clerical work, for computing the strength of 

 parts is nothing more. The engineer really is, or should be so 

 considered, a man whose only interest is the safeguarding of the 

 interests of his employer. No man can serve two masters, and the 

 designer who is trying to help his employer make the largest pos- 

 sible profit on the sale of steel cannot be a disinterested designer 

 for the owner who does not employ him directly but merely 



