Wondering if I'm nuts...

[tylermckee]

Keep on keeping on, the slackers just make us look better, right? do what you can and dont sweat the rest as long as your check clears.

 

[MKTEF]

Your not nuts at all, we know from your previous posts

My advice is to start asking some stupid questions to your managers/foremenn.
Ask questions u know the answer on, and in a way so that theese guys comes up with the answers.

Like: I'm new here, and not that familiar with the prosess on this project. Can you maybee spend some time on your computer and make a list of what prosess that follows each other here?

Then your boss will think, thats a good idea and make a product he can show both you and his supers..

Next question is to ask if this "workprosess" list can be equiped with timeframes.
In a week/two/month you will have a boss with a plan and time schedule for the project.

After some time your boss will understand that u are not as stupid as the rest and your job will change in a second.

But don't show that u know the answer for everything, thats making your boss feel stepped on.
And be carefull, there is always a hidden leader in the group, and they are testing you out before you are let in.
When they accept u, you will soon be the leader of the group because of your knowledge and skills in making the job done quick and easy.

 

[LowBoy]

I'm almost feeling awkward to think it's ME in this position for some reason. Usually, I'm mentoring someone else.
I see it getting better every day which is consoling. Today, I was informed a 314C is coming Monday for me to run, which will keep me busy doing miscellaneous ditching, erosion control, etc. That's a good start. I also was taken back a little when the assistant manager asked my advice on what to do about a kid who showed up 2 hours late for work for a second time... He was at a loss for words with a form to fill out regarding the employees behavior patterns.I lent my perspective by saying it's time for a talk about the "3 strikes and you're out rule". I'm thinking MKTEF is correct in saying there are "hidden leaders" among them now. It's time for me to use my leadership traits gently but seriously and I think they're receptive to me eventually being in a leading position.:drinkup

 

[stock]

eventually a foreman for a pipe crew on a 2 yr. long project in town here,
The project manager's a young guy that basically doesn't do much but ride around in his pickup all day. Ask him a question, he doesn't know. There's never a plan.
Having no structure, no veteran leadership, and guys 1/2 your age running a job that has a deadline of 2 years of heavy highway construction in 2010 is proving to be disasterous.

Thanks.

Well as another "IRISHMAN" and as an old timer told me many moons ago "sonny the first letters you learned at school were "A B C " ALWAYS BE COVERED are you the G.F.? No! then have a chat with him ,your PM is probably on his first job so is depending on project management software and wont last long,
My advice
GET A DIARY fill it out daily.
As a foreman you're responcable for safety, so address it.
I have given years as a heavy civil foreman on road jobs motorways etc covering all aspects of the job and I all adressed safety first,so everyone goes home safe and it's amazing how everything else fall in to place with a little disipline.

LEADERSHIP is not to know everything but to know enough and some people who can fill in the blanks .
hope this helps
STOCK

 

[atgreene]

Sometimes these companies have crews that get lost through the cracks and you just have to fit in. I've seen it back when I started out and in the FD as well. Sometimes you have to just make gentle suggestions or head off in your own direction and take the lead to get things done.

When I first got hired in the FD I was told that it didn't matter what I did, just be able to explain my reasoning as to why I took the action I had. As long as I had a reason and could explain it, I could do no wrong.

I started my own business and have learned that without the goal explained to everyone everyday nothing gets done. Without a daily plan you may as well stand there and scratch your @##. The FD taught me to delegate, and a good manager will continually delegate responsibility to those who can get things done. Sounds like your supervisor is already utilizing you and capitalizing on your strengths.

That's a big company, and getting bigger. They just bought out a local company here and this am I heard they are trying to swallow another one near me.

Good luck with it.

 

[LowBoy]

Without a daily plan you may as well stand there and scratch your @##.
Sounds like your supervisor is already utilizing you and capitalizing on your strengths.

That's a big company, and getting bigger. They just bought out a local company here and this am I heard they are trying to swallow another one near me.

You said a mouthful there, atgreene. That's my primary gripe, that they don't implement a simple goal, or plan of any kind in the mornings. The PM sits in his pickup with the door open so he can spit his Kodiak without hitting anything, while 7-8 workers stand there chatting for at least the first 30 minutes before there's an inkling of any work to get done. I'd rather have bamboo slivers up under my fingernails than do this every single morning...

They claimed on Friday with the arrival of another trackhoe that I'll have something to do now, but I can't see how yet, because there's 2 of them there now, 6 haultrucks, 2 dozers, a roller, and several other pieces of iron sitting, but until we get the authorization to fire anything up, you just play this same game over & over it seems.

I hope it will get better. It has to eventually. Even the biggest, mismanaged corporations will eventually see the bleeding and get to the bottom of it.

 

[JJK]

Sounds ALOT like the company I'm working for right now.

 

[surfer-joe]

Been there, done that, same as some others here. Not a lot of dirt-smarts in younger people coming into construction now. They haven't grown up on farms or ranches, nor ever been involved with heavy equipment in any way. Then there are the outside factors. There are way too many entities and people involved now in construction work. Tons of half-baked engineers and designers that haven't half a clue how to build anything, let alone show or tell someone else how to do it. There are people from every agency on earth all claiming to have some jurisdiction over a certain portion of the project, and all going at it on their own schedule without any coordination or cooperation with anyone else. There is a boatload of folks determined to make it as difficult as possible to do any work at all. These would be environmental and safety inspectors, plus people from the various state and other govermental agencies whose major concern seems now a days to be prolonging a project so that they can stay employed at maximum cost to taxpayer.

Young project engineers and managers are the bane of construction and mining. Learning must begin somewhere, but one wishes that it were done on someone else's job besides yours. It can be very difficult to work with some of these guys, just like young officers in the military. They just don't know, but are too prideful or afraid to show it or ask for advice and help. Some mention here to step forward and show your leadership and inititive, but that's risky untill you know better just how the ground lies and how the politics of a job are set up. Move to soon and earn the ire of some fellow workers and management. Be careful!

Old hands are scarce now, pre-boomers are gone, many boomers are retiring or going out on disability, and we taught our kids to get a degree and stay away from hot, dirty, dusty work. I've seen this coming for quite a while, as have others. When you get on a site today, look at where the laborers, finishers, drivers, and operators are coming from. Hint, they commonly do not speak English.

I'm glad to be out of it myself, though I'd love to operate some more, but the body is not willing to absorb the punishment, and I'm not willing to put up with the BS involved in today's work environment. Too many chiefs, not enough indians.

Good Luck!!

 

[alan627b]

There'a way too much of the "We can't do it right, but we sure can do it over" mentality around these days.
As if the slowdown in housing, and wet weather this spring wasn't enough, now I've gone and accidently torn my rotator cuff!
11 days waiting to get the surgery, and who knows how long afterwards until it's good enough to run a scraper again.Assuming there's any work to do by then.
Oh well....I feel your pain.
Alan627b
New Smiley we need here....

 

[hvy 1ton]

Don't worry we got it, and starting to need it more and more.
:deadhorse

 

[catd8t]

lowboy i know what u mean about what u have said i might only be a 20 year old but i grew up in constuction. i uslally get thier talk to my foreman and then go to my dozer check it out then start her up grease then clean my excess and go back to my foreman to see what im doing.


it would drive me nuts as the pipe crew and the labors sit thier and talk not getting anything ready we get payed 30 mins in the morring to do our PM and just becasue u dont have equipment doesnt mean u can stad around and get payed for it.

i worked with this old guy Ray the guy could hardly walk but one hell of an operator well in the spring when everything is mud we would have to clean tracks even if i clean mine every night even if it wouldnt freeze. well we would stop at 430 and park and clean. well all the labors and other guys would just take off well i would always but out last cause im not tracking the dozer half a mile out just to track it back and every day Ray would be their and id stop and help. just cause im not getting payed for 15 min im not not going to help someone. maybe thats why i run the equipment and the old kids as i call them still run the D-1

 

[LowBoy]

Sorry, but I've been experiencing computer problems since a lightening strike a month ago here, and finally got a new one.

Surfer-Joe...your experience, boots-in-the-field time, wisdom, whatever you want to call it shines through all the time. You've seen and done everything most of us all are into or about to get involved in. You explained everything I personally am going through currently on this jobsite right to a "Tee".

I found out recently that this is the very first heavy highway job this outfit has ever taken on in it's entirety. Even though they've been around a hundred plus years, their forte' is in asphalt paving and aggregate production. The source I was talking with explained that in these economically difficult times, the corporate neckties figure they are guaranteed the paving and aggregate sales if they were to take on the whole project. Therefore, it would all average out in the long run....hopefully.

Being a man who's "been around the horn" a little bit myself, the second day showed me I'm dealing with way too much overwhelming nonsense to try and overcome it all with basic common sense and standard operating procedures that I've applied over my lifetime. Fresh-outa-college inspectors and OTJ trainees that work in that field, along with 1 year veteran project managers, substandard materials to work with and many other variables are making it hard to keep a long term goal of being a foreman with this outfit a realistic position I think.

Here's a great example: Friday I was assigned to a really important task...building waterbars off the haulroad to divert stormwater. They have some specs. to them, depending on the degree of slope. Mainly I was asked to "eyeball" my work, so it's fairly mindless for me to form a swale that is 18" from top of berm to bottom of swale. I built about 5-6 of them by 11:00 a.m., and upon inspection by a 21 yr. old female inspector with a wooden rule, was informed that 3 of them needed to be 2" higher on the downside of the slope. So I had to waddle back across a 45 degree embankment and add an inch or two to the already completed "eyeballed" swales.

Then I was asked to put in a tracking pad approaching a town road, with 4"-6" stone, fabric underneath, and a culvert pipe for the haultrucks to cross the road. Halfway through the process, the decision was made to eliminate the culver pipe, just put a piece of fabric down, fill it with stone and wrap the stone. The state didn't want to pay for the $120.00 pipe, so they wasted fabric and stone instead. Water didn't pass through the stone as planned, and ended up with a dam which shut the project down for 2 hours until a different approach was taken. By then thankfully, I was doing something else.

Same thing across the road. Building a footing for a bridge abuttment. Raised grade 6 feet in lifts with granular material right in a mudhole, water flowing everywhere. Engineers decided to put underdrainage around it finally to drain the water. 2 laborers up to their knees in mud placed a 6" pipe in the proper area, only to have 4 engineers tell them to remove the pipe, and wrap some stone instead. Didn't want to pay for the piece of 6" pipe...

It's all tough stuff to swallow, but it's the way it goes.:usa

 

[surfer-joe]

The last dirt job I was on last fall was a Roman circus. The contractor didn't use grade stakes, just GPS, but not every machine had that either. Now dump trucks and scrapers I can see not having the new high tech stuff, but the dozer and compactor I was running didn't either, and I was the one spreading most of the fill. The motor graders all had it, but they weren't always around and there were times when I laid fill in at a rapid pace, and cause I had no reference points, it didn't always go where it was supposed to. Then the grader operators would raise hell cause they had to pull it back in. For several weeks, the contractor GPS equipment and the State's GPS equipment wouldn't agree on grades, so no work except some basic pioneering. Water was another big issue, I never had a test fail for moisture or density, but caught hell all the time cause I wouldn't let the water wagons turn the fill into mud. Like many older dirt stiffs, I was taught to "eyeball" grades on cuts and fills with occasional reference to a grade stake. Slopes and curves were brought in to fit the natural situation, not fulfill some designers opinion of what is politically correct or pleasing to the eye. But this is a banned practice these days. Every inch has to be "engineered!"

But then, at Christmas, the contractors GPS stuff all got stolen, and the new stuff they bought to replace that wouldn't compute either their own previous data nor the State's. Job was down again for several weeks. (It cost over half a million bucks to replace the stolen GPS equipment. How many grade stakes and surveyors would that have bought?)

There were State and Federal highway inspectors and engineers on the job, also Bureau of Land Management people, folks from the Bureaus of Indian Affairs -- both State and Federal, Environmental engineers both State and Federal, let's see, oh, also people from the State and Federal Parks entities, and last but not least, all kinds of "consultants" and "experts"!

I know exactly what you mean by some junior engineer coming over and saying that I went out of the ROW or knocked a bush or Cactus over that was marked to be saved. Grades changed daily and we moved a lot of dirt twice or more as people came and went with different ideas and interpretations. These supposedly highly trained and educated people often didn't use a lick of common sense nor exercise any judgment on small details. And if it looks good on paper or a computer screen, build it, no matter what actual field conditions indicate. Ya got to get to a person over fifty with years of time in grade and vast experience in the field to find sense and judgment these days it seems to me.

Years ago, when I worked with asphalt, we took especial pains to lay a smooth mat. That often took a lot of hand work, but when you drove over the road, you could set a glass of water on the dash and never see a wiggle. Not any more. If you don't have a lid on that glass and have it secured in hand, you're going to get a bath. I'd be ashamed to say I laid new blacktop in some places I've been the last few weeks, it was terribly rough. Concrete is even worse. Most places now it seems that the contractor doesn't even try to get a smooth surface. They just pour the mud down and rough finish it, then a few days later they run a grinder over it, directed by……, you guessed it, a GPS.

Used to be, we always did extra careful work at overpass and bridge transitions so they would be smooth without a thump and bump. That seems to have gone by the boards now. My wife and I always duck when we hit (literally) one of these spots in the road. It either that or hit our heads on the cab liner as the truck springs up in the air onto the overpass. Having a trailer hooked on only makes it worse. Why are State and Federal inspectors accepting sloppy workmanship like this?

I see a lot wrong with the way our transportation systems are built and maintained. I think there are way too many things being given weight that shouldn't be of any consideration, and the most important items are given lip service. I see this in commercial construction too, particularly in one of my pet peeves, which happens to be egress, access, and simply moving through a simple parking lot. If you drive anything bigger than a Smart4Two these days, you will have trouble getting in, out, and simply having enough room to maneuver around in most modern parking lots, with their long rows of curbing and impossibly tight turning radius's. Not to mention parking spaces that are only wide enough to get a small car in and out of, but not enough room to get a door open. The moronic architects that design these things are all smoking dope in my opinion, or trying to win a prize for the most beautiful and exceptionally most useless and difficult to use parking lots possible!

City streets are the same if not worse. Center dividers, curbs, planters, and medians drive me crazy. In some places you have to drive miles out of your way simply to make a U-turn or drive into a Wendy's. This saves a lot of fuel you know, ha, ha, but doesn't do anything else that contributes to smooth and efficient traffic flow, which is the only good reason that there is a street or road there in the first place. It's not meant to be a thing of beauty, or something for the local horticultural club to plant flowers in every other weekend.

OK, I had fun with this, just venting you know. There are a lot of good people out there trying their best to do good work, but the way we spread out engineering, responsibility, and oversight in construction these days, it's a wonder that anything gets done at all.

 

[AtlasRob]

Surfer Joe :notworthy :notworthy :drinkup
The frightening thing is so many of those things that you mention are the same this side of the pond, and I agree it is NOT FUNNY :Banghead

 

[LowBoy]

So it's safe to say then, most likely...that I'm NOT nuts!:beatsme:usa

 

[Grader4me]

So it's safe to say then, most likely...that I'm NOT nuts!:beatsme:usa

Now... let's not be to hasty here :lmao...Welcome back buddy!!

 

[LowBoy]

[/B]

Now... let's not be to hasty here :lmao...Welcome back buddy!!

Thank you for shoring up my confidence Mr. Grader...:thumbsup:wavingointlaugh

Good to hear from you also.

 

[DustyOne]

Just keep plugging away and building resume' time as well as getting the ever critical paycheck, the resume' effort will provide you the springboard to better places down the road and also just as important, builds your character in a positive way.

 

[LowBoy]

Just keep plugging away and building resume' time as well as getting the ever critical paycheck, the resume' effort will provide you the springboard to better places down the road and also just as important, builds your character in a positive way.

That's all good stuff, DustyOne. Thanks.:thumbsup

 

[AtlasRob]

So it's safe to say then, most likely...that I'm NOT nuts!:beatsme:usa

Your not nuts..............yet stay tooooo long and you might be.

You are of the dieing breed that still feel responsible and have principles, you expect to do a days work for a days pay and there is nothing nuts about that.

Keep your chin up, dont let them drag you down to thier level and if the management cant see it after a fair crack of the whip, ..................then it will be thier loss not yours and move on. Good luck :drinkup