Request Change Documents -Final: Fill & Download for Free

Find a JavaScript project that looks interesting to you. Try to find one that is simple and small (< 1000 lines of code) since it will take you less time to get up-to-speed with the codebase. If you don’t know where to start, I can recommend one of my own projects since I’m happy to help newbies through their first open source contribution.Identify issues that you may be able to fix. Check the issue tracker for issues tagged “Good first issue”, “Easy”, or “Help Wanted” to find issues that are likely to be completable by a beginner to the project.Leave a comment indicating that you’re planning to tackle the issue. It’s a good idea to roughly outline how you plan to approach the issue and ask any clarifying questions you might have. For example, if you’re not sure the best way to handle one part of the solution, you could list a couple possibilities that you brainstormed to solicit feedback from the project maintainers.Make the code and/or documentation changes. Clone the code to your computer. Get your hands dirty and make the changes!Send a pull request to the project. A “pull request” is a formal request to have your code changes become an official part of the project. Your pull request may get comments from the project maintainers. If they ask any questions, you should answer them in a timely manner. If they request changes to the code, you should probably make the changes, or if you think they’re missing something, you can make an argument for why your approach makes more sense.Finally… The pull request is merged! Congrats, you’ve just used your JavaScript skills to participate in an open source project!From the way the question was worded, I assumed you’re new to open source. I answered from that perspective. If that’s not true, my apologies.If you liked this answer, consider supporting my open source work on Patreon! ✨

The Hyatt Regency Hotel Walkway collapsed with 1,500 people in the lobby, how could that happen?The Cause of the collapse was a last minute change.You see a design team, composed of a dozen Engineers and Architects, spends months and months working on every last detail of a building long before the construction begins. Once the design is finalized the contractor looks over the construction documents. It’s important to highlight that the Design team works for the owner, and is there to protect and advocate for the owners interest. Where as the contractor represents their own interest, which is delivering a building which meets the specifications put forth by the design team for as little cost as possible. Often contractors will request approval to change the original design, usually because they have found a way to do something quicker or cheaper. In theory it would be possible for a contractor to propose changing the design to provide a better product for less money … but this kind of change order has not crossed my desk thus far.Back to Kansas, during the design process, which takes months, the team of engineers agreed on a design whereby the third floor walkway hing from the roof framing (by itself) similarly the fourth floor walkway hung from the roof framing, however the rods continued down to support the second floor walkway as well. Like two kids hanging from one rope, the two walkways hung from the roof framing:At some point during construction the contractor deemed it rather difficult to work with the long tension rods. If each floor is 16 ft, then from the roof to the second floor is around 64 ft. I get it, the roof is mostly on, and you have to use an indoor lift (as opposed to a crane from outside, no one is saying it was easy to install. Well the contractor, who has nothing lose in asking, calls the engineer on the phone and says hey:“Can we just get this done in two pieces?”The single engineer on the phone, having like 5 minutes to think about it on the spot, says:“Sure, that doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable request”*Time out* This happens all the time, the contractors call up asking for a minor change. Perhaps 999 out of 1,000 it’s a totally acceptable change. However when your 5 minute conversation alters the design that took months to create you are (very) likely to overlook something. I would like to point out that at this stage of the game the Engineer is likely mid design of the next project, you know because they take months to design. It has been months (or nearly a year) since the engineer last worked on the design aspect of the project in question.So there verbally over the phone the contractor was granted permission shorten the rods. Let’s call this: Two kids on two ropes:Please note the lower kid is hanging from a rope tied to the upper kid’s elbow.This is my favorite contractor fallacy: “It was really solid when we were working on it”. Well I agree it probably was. However when we design structures the gravity loads during construction are about 25-30% of the loads the structure is designed to carry. In other words the walkways are going to see 300-400% greater loads during a full hotel event than during construction.As the story goes 1,500 people were in the Hyatt Regency Hotel lobby when the walkways collapsed. The problem was that the rope ripped through the upper kids elbow, effectively dropping the lower kid and his rope. This left the upper kid with one good arm which was insufficient and he too fell. Consider the following diagram:The nuts and bolts version: The nut’s holding the fourth floor walkway to the tension rod experienced twice the load it would have in the original design.Original Design, each nut/washer hold the “weight” of one floor.Modified Design, the 4th floor nut/washer failed to hold the “weight” of both walkways.Who is to blame?The contractor had no intention of weakening the structure. They are used to asking for minor design alterations. However the urgency they likely conveyed in having a decision made likely contributed to the human error.The Engineer, sure they are on the hook for approving the design change. Ultimately they are found to be at fault for … um … changing the design without making any (or sufficient) calculations.The system. I do really blame the system, the way things are set-up. The fact that contractors are allowed to influence the design through requesting changes. It requires the design team to jump through hoops, in a timely fashion, because at this stage of the game there is no time for carefully considering the implications of a design change. Because the contractor likely has to pay significant fines for not being done on time. And it the steel rod order is “held up” because the engineer wanted a week to think about a change, then there will be a lot of finger pointing. That being said the design-build and the design-bid processes nearly require this kind of last minute change from the design team.

Set finite time limits for reviewing and requesting revisions to the work. Don’t let a two week project turn into a four month nightmare by allowing the client to endlessly request changes because they can’t make up their mind.Once the work is presented, allow them 10 days to review it and submit final revisions (in writing). Add language that additional revisions will be billed hourly.Always include specifications in the contract. Many clients try to avoid writing up a specifications document. You may have to assemble this yourself by gathering details about what they want done. If you don’t define the work in the contract you could end up with a project that can’t be completed and you won’t get paid.