chris kennedy
Senior Member
- Location
- Miami Fla.
- Occupation
- 60 yr old tool twisting electrician
Dennis Alwon said:
Got Brains?
The Spiral Staircase
- Thread starter chris kennedy
- Start date
- Status
Got Brains?
- Location
- Chapel Hill, NC
- Occupation
- Retired Electrical Contractor
chris kennedy said:
I may not be very smart but I can lift heavy things..:grin:
ceb
Senior Member
- Location
- raeford,nc
On a job like this I have lead men in different parts of the bldg. This small project had two of my lead men assigned. They will be moved to other jobs at the end of the week. I'm not talking about $16-$17 an hour "workers" these are well compensated lead men.
Their are two statements I have found to be true over the years. #1 It doesnt matter if you pay someone $5.00 per hour or $50.00 per hour if they don't care about their work ethic pay doesnt matter. #2 If those persons had the same drive and sense of responsibility toward their work as you do, you could be working for them instead of them working for you.
Their are two statements I have found to be true over the years. #1 It doesnt matter if you pay someone $5.00 per hour or $50.00 per hour if they don't care about their work ethic pay doesnt matter. #2 If those persons had the same drive and sense of responsibility toward their work as you do, you could be working for them instead of them working for you.
Chris,
I would explain to your men, that they are paid a decent rate, and for your company to continue their employment, you need them to be more involved, in the day, to day job schedules, and meeting project targets.
I can see thy there are problems on the project!
"a circus run by the owners rep."
When the owner has a rep involved, it will turn into a circus, and your men may be just as unhappy with everything as you are, actually you should give them an award for hanging in there, working with a clown trying to run the job.
I would at times have 5 or 6 floors with fit-up work, and when they had an owner rep on site, I would never look at the men, for problems, it would look at what the owners reps were doing to mess up the schedule, and slow down the job.
I would explain to your men, that they are paid a decent rate, and for your company to continue their employment, you need them to be more involved, in the day, to day job schedules, and meeting project targets.
I can see thy there are problems on the project!
"a circus run by the owners rep."
When the owner has a rep involved, it will turn into a circus, and your men may be just as unhappy with everything as you are, actually you should give them an award for hanging in there, working with a clown trying to run the job.
I would at times have 5 or 6 floors with fit-up work, and when they had an owner rep on site, I would never look at the men, for problems, it would look at what the owners reps were doing to mess up the schedule, and slow down the job.
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jrannis
Senior Member
- Location
- Fort Lauderdale/ Miami
Its called "out of sequence work". Let the owner know about the delay and the amount of impact the delay will cost. If the owner demands that the schedule be maintained, let him know how much the premium time will cost.
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- engineer
chris kennedy said:
Have you made it clear to your lead men that part of their job is to deal with these kind of situations to reduce the cost impact to your company? If not, that is your fault.
I have found that lead man or not, very few worker bees really want to deal with anything outside the direct scope of what they consider their job to be. They are quite happy to come up with a list of parts they will need to do some work, what equipment they will need, even to schedule the workers, and work out the little kinks that come along amongst themselves. But, they often just do not see coordination with other contractors as part of that work. And I do not blame them for that.
It sounds to me like you did not have proper management of the project, and that is your fault. You should not be blaming them because you chose to try and save money on the project by not having adequate management of your project.
I also agree with the poster that suggested the owner or GC be billed for the extra time involved.
LawnGuyLandSparky
Senior Member
Rewire said:
-In truth, you're only going to retain a certian number of employees when work slows. Who stays and who goes is going to be determined more by the balance in the checkbook and the upcoming work outlook and your own particular financial goal at the moment, than the degree of loyalty (real or imagined) each individual employee has demonstrated.
Sounds like your employees are smarter than you give them credit for, they just don't posess the degree of gulliability you'd prefer.
Snafu's like the one you describe are an everyday occurance on poorly managed projects. You just happened to witness this particular one. Surely you realize (or perhaps not) that not having a general foreman is going to lead to some loss of production, but to an acceptable degree based on the savings of a GF's salary. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Rewire
Senior Member
- Location
- Lake of the Ozarks
Why would I get rid of a top hand who was productive and keep an idiot who could be replaced by a heavy rock?I keep my top hands and compensate them well because the bottom line is they make the company money.LawnGuyLandSparky said:
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
chris kennedy said:
Just how many lead men do you have on a 30K sq ft building? You have 3 guys working on the second floor and two of them are lead men? I see your problem, you have too many chiefs and not enough indians.:grin: :grin:
LawnGuyLandSparky
Senior Member
Rewire said:
-You wouldn't get rid of a top hand. And we're not talking about your top hands anyway, now are we?
-This is about those who fall into your pecking order who are below "top hand" status. The ones who don't buy into your line of BS that if they start acting and working like your "top hands" they'll be treated exactly the same. Which would be false, since even those who are dumb as rock realize that no matter what, when push comes to shove when there's no work, they'll be the first to go.
-Your "issue" is the competitive game you've laid out is only working to the extent it can. If it worked better, you'd profit more. But they wouldn't.
-Even your bottom feeders make the company money. Otherwise you wouldn't hire them, unless of course it is you that a rock could replace.
iaov
Senior Member
- Location
- Rhinelander WI
The term "lead man" to me means some one who leads.The guy you have on the job to keep things moving. I'ld be furious that they either didn't know that the stairs was being moved because they failed to communicate with the hand crafters, or that they couldn't be bothered to spend a couple extra minutes and get thier tools.It doesn't matter how much they are making, by being on the job they have agreed to what ever terms of employment there are and I don't know of a single job description in the world that includes the term irresponsible.:smile:chris kennedy said:
LawnGuyLandSparky
Senior Member
growler said:
Responsibility without power is an illusion. The issues here are the result of no one person having a full stake in the job. As usual, the brown stinky stuff flows downhill onto the people who have the least to gain and without boo to say about it.
LawnGuyLandSparky
Senior Member
iaov said:
Actually, the term "lead man" is "cheap replacement for a real foreman." He's getting what he pays for.
Rewire
Senior Member
- Location
- Lake of the Ozarks
General foreman, foreman, leadman(journeyman), journeyman, apprentice, summer helper (limited to material handling) .This is how most larger commercial jobs are set up depending on job size you may have more than one general foreman or you may just have a foreman.The Gf is over the job the foreman is over an area or phase of the job the leadman is over a task and the journeyman preform the task and oversee the apprentice.LawnGuyLandSparky said:
LawnGuyLandSparky
Senior Member
Rewire said:
Multiple lead men on one small project. Since they're the "top dogs" they're not going to be blamed. But someone has to, and there's no GF. Essencially, he's blaming the non-lead men for not being lead men. Can you see where this is going?
No job, even the best managed jobs go without incident. Let's get realistic - if there was a ton of money being made here this wouldn't be an issue.
As an aside, there's more to management that assigning tasks and handing out uncompensated titles to powerless appeasers. There are foremen, and then there are "fireman." A good foreman never has to put out a fire.
LawnGuyLandSparky said:
So what is the point in paying top dollar for your labor, when you have to pay them extra to think? You make it sound like a contractor would be better off hiring one good foreman paying him “tones of money” and then getting him a bunch of “Mexican Apprentices” to clean up the brown sticky stuff.
LawnGuyLandSparky
Senior Member
ITO said:
No idea how you got that from that. You pay top dollar for labor you expect fewer mistakes. Not perfection.
I should pass out pacifiers here.
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