Slowing down the pace of work to put quality over quantity.

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qcroanoke

Sometimes I don't know if I'm the boxer or the bag
Location
Roanoke, VA.
Occupation
Sorta retired........
I hope you took advantage and had a little conversation to avoid the shouting in the future, if for no other reason.

I agree with that! When i was a helper i had my journeyman yell at me in front of several people. Embarassed me to say the least!
Asked him later, let's go somewhere and talk. And I told him to never,ever do that again in front of others. if you have a problem with me, tell me, not everyone in shouting distance.
 

ActionDave

Chief Moderator
Staff member
Location
Durango, CO, 10 h 20 min from the winged horses.
Occupation
Licensed Electrician
If you don't have the time to do it right the first time, odds are you won't find the time to do it over.

That said as was said on large jobs, the trick to speed is finding men that work well together then find their strength. The advantage there is they know each others little tricks. Like the first one I would teach my helper on a big job about conduit spacing. Measure to the first one and space the rest from there with the nose of your Kleins between the strut straps. On 1-1/4 and bigger turn them side ways to get the extra space needed for lock nuts. It doesn't take long and you know what a each size pipe plus you pliers adds or subtracts depending on what you are bending around.
That's how you do it right there. Good work doesn't have to take longer when done efficiently.
 

patriot

Member
Location
Chapmansboro,Tn.
It would really be nice if everything were done right the first time but with a large crew of 20-50 men on a job it normally is not going to happen. So you can slow things down and shoot for top quality or you can drive the men like sled dogs and then do punch-out with a much smaller crew after the bulk of the work is accomplished.

This is just the ways things have been done for years and it does keep total man hours down.

I have lost a couple of jobs for concentrating to much on quality and not pushing hard enough for production.

Thats where you and I will have to disagree. In my experience running jobs with say 20-50 men, you push for production and quality. It is possable to do a good job and be productive. My deffinition of a good job is one that meets the job schedule with minimum punchlist items. Now do I think every job will go silky smooth and you will never have punch list items? No, of course not. Have I ever ran say...a million dollar plus job and not had any punch list items? Yes. But one thing we have to remmember is if you dont man a job with truley skilled workers, this can not be accomplished. The lack of having good skilled electricians and lazyness on the job is the reason were seeing this so called "quality vs quanity" disscussion. I will and have always push for both.
 

Davebones

Senior Member
Thats why I like doing heavy industrial ,especially with the utilities . You have time to do something but only time to do it right the first time . Allow people to get in a hurry doing that kind of work and someone will end distroying equipment or killing someone . Would like to see more work installed according NEIS standards .
 

jaylectricity

Senior Member
Location
Massachusetts
Occupation
licensed journeyman electrician
If the customer has paid for a Kia I am not going to provide a Lexus. That does not mean ignoring the codes and job specifications that but it does mean speed is very important.

I know I'm a few days late, but it's been my experience that a Lexus goes much faster than a Kia. :grin:
 

Rockyd

Senior Member
Location
Nevada
Occupation
Retired after 40 years as an electrician.
According to the recalls Toyota, and the throttle beat everyone back to he barn for recalls...

Installs themselves normally take somewhere between .5, and .7 of the national average to actually install the work, the rest normally gets munched in indirect job costs, mobilation, and de-mob, etc. A skilled craftsman should be able to do good work, and stay ahead of schedule if you don't get into "unreal" bid numbers.

It also normally takes twice as long, and costs twice as much as the usual journeyman thinks it does....

Teaching apprentices to maximize on time efficiency, and effectiveness is key.
 

izak

Senior Member
Location
Springfield, MO
I have never been particularly fast, sometimes, I am just plain slow. I have been ridiculed for it and the care that I take in putting in my work.

I WILL NOT be pushed like a sled dog. Job foremen figure that out fairly quickly. The smart ones leave me be and know that what I put in, will not need to be changed due to a mistake.

The Really smart ones put me somewhere that my abilities are best utilized: Large pipe racks, setting and interconnecting large Gear, Electrical rooms with exposed piping, exposed piping of any type, Panel work, controls, etc.

As far as not worrying about piping in a wall, or especially a ceiling, I dont think about the fact that its gonna be covered up, so who cares, I think about the fact that its gonna be 3 or 4 months BEFORE its covered up, and EVERYONE is gonna be staring at it.

when I do private work for a friend or a customer, and I feel that I have taken too much time to put it in -due to my pickiness- then I just lower my hourly rate or bill for less time. I realize private citizens dont want to spend 1000 dollars on a job that could be slapped up for 600, but I dont 'slap-up' anything thats permanent.

In the end, the joy I get from a real good looking well planned code compliant job makes up for the fact that I may have dropped the hourly rate to compensate.
 

stevenje

Senior Member
Location
Yachats Oregon
There are many other factors that keep the "speed" up on a job. Such as good planning, the right tools, the right parts, qualified help, qualified supervision, safe working conditions, a workable schedule and on and on. Without these, production drops like a rock.
 

jmellc

Senior Member
Location
Durham, NC
Occupation
Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
Part of this too, is having what you need on the job. I remember 1 foreman that never looked ahead at what would be needed. Had 2 dozen of us start trimming out a retail store. He had no long 6-32 or 8-32 screws on the job, no fire rings. Someone had to go out for them. We would constantly run short on 3/8 rod & hardware. No matter how many lists were given to him, we ran short. We were hanging racks with 3/8 rod on 1 end & 1/4 on the other. We begged, borrowed & stole hex nuts & beam clamps from other trades as much as we could. Conduits were held to racks with tie wire until strut straps got there. Then he had the nerve to shout at us at roll call that things were moving too slow.

I remember another foreman that was pushy, did his share of shouting too. But he did have what we needed.
 

jmellc

Senior Member
Location
Durham, NC
Occupation
Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
Also, if you have a few guys on a job that are always a pain, get rid of them. I don't mean having a bad day, or just being a little different or strange. I mean the guy who no one can work with, complains all day about everything. Complains about OT, has no time for anything else. OT ends, now he doesn't have enough money. Give him a dirty job & he's keeping a book on how many dirty jobs he's had compared to everyone else. Give him a clean job, he milks it for all it's worth.

Better to work a short crew than have a misery generator on the job. His bad attitude gets contagious, fast.
 

Fulthrotl

~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
This may sound like BS, but I mean it, and would like any feed back on others experience with this balancing act of quality over quantity. I am simply going to focus on improving quality, and expect that the quantity will occur as a byproduct of no rework.

saw this post, and figured it'd run a while.... ;-)

i'm as well balanced as a two legged stool, so my thoughts on this are probably
not the best that will be posted, but i can assure you they are my opinion,
unmarred by logic.

the first five years i did electrical work, i followed this adage, given by my
journeyman at the time... "learn to do it correctly, in a workmanlike manner,
and over time, your speed will increase of it's own accord... and you won't be
losing your butt with do-overs.

i've been doing this now, for 34 years, come this june. that means i'm old,
and if i hadn't learned to think and care about what i do, i'd not be doing it
anymore. i work alone, and set my pace to suit myself, and the job at hand.

you can't rock at 55 the way you could at 25, but it's funny, you can still
surprise people... friend of mine and i did something recently, 700' of feeder,
xfmr on the wall of the tilt up, panel, and plugs, etc.

figured it for three days, for two people. a realistic number. it took two. i'm 55
and he's 50.

backing up to when i was 25, and was paired with a journeyman named Joe
Cussman, and he was about 60, and we were doing drop in lighting in a T bar
ceiling, and i was going as fast as i could, quite impressed with myself, i might
add, and had unpacked, dropped in, and cleared away the wrappings for 175
lights, in 7 hours... i was beat.... it's like one every two and a half minutes...

joe did 150, and looked as fresh as when we started..... i learned a lot
that day, and haven't forgotten the lesson.

when you watch a craftsman whose work you know is excellent, he won't be
following one set path. the work will determine his actions, and his actions
will affect the work, until the work is completed, at the same time he's at peace
with what he set out to do. there is a flow to the work.

caring what you do is the defining factor. if you care, you will be alert, engaged
in what you are doing, and attentive, and the work will reflect that.
 

tryinghard

Senior Member
Location
California
...when you watch a craftsman whose work you know is excellent, he won't be
following one set path. the work will determine his actions, and his actions
will affect the work, until the work is completed, at the same time he's at peace
with what he set out to do. there is a flow to the work.

caring what you do is the defining factor. if you care, you will be alert, engaged
in what you are doing, and attentive, and the work will reflect that.
Fulthrotl, Well put thanks for posting!
 
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