Scrap wire

[growler]

Someone I used to work with (we'll call him Tim) told me a story a short time back. He was doing a big commercial job and talked with the electrical inspector about using aluminum wire instead of copper. The inspector said ok.

So later on that day the superintendant came out to the jobsite and Tim informed the superintendant of the conversation he had with the electrical inspector. The superintendant was thrilled due to the cost of copper at the time. So the superintendant told Tim to go ahead and resize the conduit and wire.

What's the electrical inspector got to do with materials used on a job. All he can say is that Al. is legal for use on this job.

If the job specs. call for copper wire then you would need more authorization than an electrical inspector and a job super to change out the cable.

What was the customer paying for on plans and specs. submitted? A large commercial project is going to have engineered plans. You don't get to change these because you find a cheaper way of doing things.

Most jobs will require you to go all the way back to the engineering stage to get authorization to make changes like this. If they wanted the job engineered by any Joe Blow on the job they would have paid for plans to start with.

 

[daleuger]

So you are a thief? Standing by while employees are stealing make you culpable. I have heard all sorts of things from people caught stealing. While I worked 5 minutes OT and did not charge you as he tries to take a box of receptacles. Yeah what about all those days you came in late ands you were not docked.

Most of the places this would go on would be particularly big jobs out of town, nobody reporting to the shop. This particular company was a lot of the "good 'ol boy system"....."what happens on the job stays on the job, etc", and this crap was being pulled off by people that had been there 10, 15 years and even longer. The whole reason for starting this thread was my own curiosity at how commonplace this really was, believe me it stuck out to me too. You quickly see the kind of people you're working with. Needless to say I don't work there anymore.

 

[daleuger]

Guys think - well the company makes millions they won't miss this - in some small cases this is true however, theft on a larger scale is noticeable.

On that note there was another guy who worked for the same company I was talking about who got caught outright stealing thousands of dollars of scrap that had been brought back to the shop. He got sent down the road at the time, but was eventually allowed to come back. Find the logic there.