Rachel Sousa
If you’ve read a sentence on this site, I probably wrote or edited it. My job is to take an engineer’s answer and make it make sense to the person standing in the mud with a wheelbarrow.
B.S. Civil Eng. · Purdue
The writer who keeps it readable
Rachel trained as a civil engineer at Purdue University, then spent her career on the other side of the page — turning dense construction and engineering material into documentation people can actually use. She led technical documentation for a national ready-mix supplier and contributed specification language for state Department of Transportation projects across three regions, so she is fluent in both the published standard and the shorthand used on a real jobsite.
On AllConcreteCalculator.com she is the Content Lead. She writes and edits every calculator description, how-to, and guide on the site, and she owns the editorial standards behind them — the sourcing rules, the update schedule, and what “clear” is actually allowed to mean here.
Her north star is a single question, applied to every line: would a journeyman contractor understand this on the first read, standing on a jobsite with a truck idling? If a sentence needs a second read, it gets rewritten until it doesn’t.
She also decides what each tool is honest about. Every calculator ships with its limits spelled out in plain language — what it is for, and what it is not — because good documentation tells you where a tool stops, not just what it does.
Would a journeyman get it — first read, on the jobsite?
“Compute the requisite volumetric quantity, incorporating a dimensional overage coefficient to account for placement variance.”
“Add about 10% extra so you don’t come up short mid-pour — here’s why, and when to add more.”
- Plain verbs over abstract nouns. “Add,” “pour,” “measure” — not “incorporate a factor.”
- A number always carries its reason. No figure appears without the “why” a user needs to trust it.
- Every tool states what it can’t do. The limits are in the page, in plain words — not buried in a footer.
What I write & maintain
Every one of the 80+ calculators carries documentation I wrote or edited. These are the areas where my own background does the most work.
Cement, water-cement ratios, admixtures, batching — the ready-mix world I came from, tied to ASTM specs.
All Mix Design tools →Budgets, bids, labor, and delivery — the numbers that decide whether a job makes money.
All Cost & Estimating tools →The everyday math — yards, bags, weights, and unit conversions people reach for first.
All Volume & Conversion tools →The how-to guides, the sourcing standard, and the update log that keeps every page current and honest.
All Guides & Editorial tools →How a page gets written — and kept honest
The path every calculator’s content follows, from the engineer’s math to the words you read.
Start from the math
Begin with the engineer’s verified formula and the source standard behind it — never a guess.
Translate to plain language
Run it through the journeyman test until a first read on a jobsite is enough.
State the limits
Write, in the page itself, what the tool is for and where it stops.
Cite the source
Point each figure back to its ASTM, ACI, or DOT origin so it can be checked.
Keep it current
Log every change, and review on a schedule when standards or prices move.
The standards & systems I work from
Clarity isn’t the enemy of accuracy. Every plain-language line still traces to a published source.
“Accuracy isn’t just the right number. It’s the right number, explained clearly enough that nobody misuses it.”— Rachel Sousa, Technical Writer & Content Lead
Where to find Rachel’s work
The areas she writes and maintains, plus where to send a correction or a question.
Put these tools to work.
80+ free concrete calculators. No account, no paywall.
Rachel writes and edits the documentation, guides, and calculator descriptions across AllConcreteCalculator.com and maintains the site’s editorial and sourcing standards. Found something unclear or wrong? Every accuracy report reaches her team.