Chapter 17 — The owner of the car shop behind the school gate

The official survey started with a wheelchair stuck on the steps.

The survey unit brought two engineers, a laser measuring machine and clipboards. They planned to follow the main path, take pictures, measure the width and then conclude in the morning. Ms. Van invited the club group to come along. Vy suggested they start from the back, where users had the most problems.

A young engineer named Lam looked at the cracked steps. “We will take note.”

“Record how?” Khoa asked. “Measure the slope or let the user try to traverse it?”

No one answered immediately. Quynh Chi called Ms. Hanh, the mother of a student who uses a wheelchair, and invited her to come for a survey if she could arrange it. Ms. Hanh arrived with a small electric wheelchair, carrying a list of corners where her daughter often gets stuck.

Try going in. The front wheel touched the drainage ditch, the car tilted to one side. Khoa stepped forward to help, but Ms. Hanh stopped him. "Let me try it myself. If I always have someone supporting me, the measurements won't be real."

The survey team adjusted the machine's position. Vy recorded the time it took the wheel to pass each section, including the distance from the handrail, the height of the lock, and the area of standing water. Ms. Hanh pointed out a point that few people notice: the rolling door handle is too high for people in wheelchairs.

Next, a cleaning lady pushed a garbage collection cart. She had to go around forty meters because the side gate was blocked by a motorbike. A twelfth grade student with an electric bicycle said the charging socket is now located close to the emergency exit. A junior student said that every time he locked his car, he had to ask his friend to bring the chain.

Engineer Lam started asking more questions. “If we widen this way, what else do you need?”

“The lights are bright enough, the surface is not slippery, and don't place the advertising sign at eye level,” Ms. Hanh said.

Huy was in charge of taking photos, but he asked each person if they agreed before including the photos in the report. One student did not want to show his face, so he only took pictures of the wheel and cracks. Quynh Chi clearly stated the conditions for using the photo.

At noon, the group ate a boxed lunch under a corrugated iron roof. The survey representative asked why students care so deeply about contracts. Huy said: "Because if the report is wrong, the person who has to correct it later is usually not the person who signed it."

Faculty looked at the preliminary drawing. "Do you include the time it takes to clean the car every day? If the construction is completed without a process, the path will still be blocked."

Lam nodded, adding a line about operations. He asked Mrs. Man what the minimum size of the repair area needed. She took a ruler and pointed to the old welding table. "I don't need it to be large, but I need enough room for people coming to repair to stand facing each other, not behind each other. And the space for spare parts must be dry."

Vy saw the plan begin to change when the question shifted from "what to build" to "who will use it how". A new area is more than just walls, roofs and paint. It has an opening schedule, cleaning staff, storage space, safety rules and what to do when items break.

At the end of the session, engineer Lam asked the team to confirm the data. Quynh Chi read each number out loud and corrected two mistakes. Faculty requested to add a note that the number of users is counted by time frame, not the number of unique people.

“You're really difficult,” Lam said.

“Because a nice number can cause people to build a missing slope.”

Before they left, Ms. Hanh gave Vy a piece of paper. Above are three things: do not turn disabled people into illustrations; Ask them before designing; Maintenance must be accounted for from the beginning.

Vy put the piece of paper in her notebook, next to Mrs. Man's question. She felt that those small things were creating a different map, not like the drawing Dad's shiny but much more real.

In the evening, she sent the summary to her father. He replied: "If you want to criticize the company's plan, use the right data. Don't turn experience into a slogan."

Vy texted back: "I'm learning that."

Khoa stood at the garage door, listening to her read the message. You don't tease. He just asked her if she could help correct the chart. They sat next to each other, pulling each column of data straight. When Vy's hand touched Khoa's hand on the mouse, they both retreated.

Quynh Chi in the corner of the room burst out laughing. "You two have measured the aisle, but you haven't measured the distance sitting next to each other, right?"

Vy threw the tape at her. Khoa bent down to hide his smile. The garage was still cramped, the roof still leaked, but that evening it no longer felt like they were alone against a large building.

After the official survey, the team must confirm each number. Vy called users back at different time frames, asking them if they felt they were quoted incorrectly. An 11th grader said your answer was shortened too much. Quynh Chi edited and kept the conditions.

Engineer Lam sent the raw data, but a wrongly formatted time column caused the number of people leaving school to be unusually low. Huy found out because the chart has a straight line. He reported it instead of adjusting silently. Lam thanked him and said that if the report continued, that error could cause them to design a missing side gate.

Khoa took Ms. Hanh to try the ramp at the end of school. A motorbike standing sideways, making a perfect slope is also useless. Ms. Hanh said there must be operating rules and inspectors. Vy added the item "premises not occupied" to the standard, even though it is not a construction item.

A junior asked if there was a slope, would we need a ladder? Ms. Hanh explained that not everyone who uses the ramp is in a wheelchair; People pushing shopping carts, people with sore feet, and people carrying heavy objects all need it. Huy drew a barrel icon next to the wheelchair icon.

In the afternoon, the cleaning lady tried to push the garbage truck past. The wheel hits the floor brace. The contractor said the splint was within limits, but the janitor said it made the car vibrate strongly. Lam recorded field opinions. Vy sees a standard that can be met on paper and still make users uncomfortable.

The group debated whether photos of bad spots should be published. Huy is afraid that the school will be evaluated. Quynh Chi said that if the photo only has beautiful angles, the report will become an advertisement. She suggested covering up identifying information but leaving the crack and location intact.

Vy sent photos to her father via the official directory. He responded that Van Hung's design also needed to review the background. She was not thrilled, simply writing in her project diary: “Data makes both options more difficult.”

At the end of the day, Khoa gave Vy a used piece of tape. He told her to write the name of the borrower on the core, so that next time she would know to buy it back. Vy asked why not throw it away. Khoa says the smallest things are often what make a plan run smoothly.

Vy looked at the dusty roll of tape and thought about the data columns. No detail is naturally important. It's important because there are people who are willing to write, check and come back when reality says something different from the drawing.

When sending the data set to administrators, the team added a limiting page: the data only reflected the seven days of the survey, not the entire school year. Huy is worried that the page is making weak reports. Engineer Lam said the opposite, it makes the reader know where to use the data.

Ms. Hanh suggested further investigation rainy day. The group could not wait for a natural rain, so they tested the area with a water hose under the supervision of security guards. They don't pretend to simulate perfection, just test water flow and slipperiness. The result caused the contractor to change the trench position.

A lower classmate asked why he didn't use software to simulate. Huy explains the software is useful, but still requires a real person to come through. Khoa said that if a person fails in a simulation, it still won't know where the pain is.

Vy wrote down that sentence, then asked Khoa if he wanted to be named in the report. He refused, saying his experience was no more important than others. She records the user group name, not individual names if not needed.

At the end of the session, Huy discovered that Ms. Hanh's photo was automatically recognized by the machine in the storage software. Quynh Chi immediately deleted and changed tools. They informed Ms. Hanh, apologized, and then added a rule not to upload user photos to unchecked services.

Khoa asked if they could do everything perfectly. Vy said no, but she could know what she had checked and what was missing. He nodded, continuing to measure the distance between the two painted lines.

Before leaving the field, Khoa checked the surface again. He discovered a small piece of glass stuck under the painted line, picked it up and reported it to security. Vy recorded that in the notebook, even though it was not directly related to the design. A safe corner cannot exist if passersby have to avoid things that no one accepts responsibility for.

Ms. Hanh said the final data is only trustworthy when users can see it. The group makes an appointment to send a summary, with feedback if anyone finds it wrong. Vy sees the survey process closing with another open door: the person being asked has the right to see where their words go.

Huy labeled the survey photos by date and location. An unknown photo is now moved to the "reference only" category, not used for decision making. Vy likes how the team doesn't try to save a weak piece of data just because it's a waste of time.

Ms. Hanh suggested that when publishing the report, it must be in large print. Quynh Chi adds an easy-to-read version, while Huy checks contrasting colors. Khoa said accessibility is not just about building slopes; Information must also have a path.