The Spiral Staircase

[ITO]

You made it pretty clear, thanks. I think will try your business model it might work. I will hire me one good GF, pay him really well maybe even give him a stake in the job so he makes sure nothing catches on fire, and since nobody else will perform professionally for a fair wage I can just hire a bunch of Mexicans at a cut rate to do the work.

Hey why not? I mean that is what all my competitors are doing so it must work really well.

 

[Rewire]

When I worked as a GF part of the job was keeping up with what was going on with the other trades and making sure it did not impact the workforce in a negative way I also informed the GF s of other trades when we would have outages and such,had an incident were we had the upper floors ready for sheet rock but the guys doing the sheet rock did not want to pack their tools up so they started on the lower floors while we were at lunch I went to their "lead man" and told him he was covering us up and he just looked at me and said you better get busy and went back to screwing rock to the wall I went out to the temporary and shut it down he comes running out to find out why his drills don't work and I tell him I need to repair the temp and it could take hours he stomps back inside and in a few minutes he and his crew leave.

 

[chris kennedy]

It sounds to me like you did not have proper management of the project, and that is your fault.

Seems to me this is not a worker failure. It is a management failure.

Suck it up and take responsibility for not properly managing your project instead of blaming it on your workers.

Peter, whats your point?:grin:

No your right, tomorrow morning I will ask the GC's PM .... Oh wait there isn't one.

Ok, tomorrow I will ask the owners rep if they plan on mabey moving all the walls or say lifting the building and rotating it 180 degrees.

When the unscheduled and unexpected occures I expect someone to step up to the plate. And there are many out there that will.

 

[LawnGuyLandSparky]

Peter, whats your point?:grin:

No your right, tomorrow morning I will ask the GC's PM .... Oh wait there isn't one.

Ok, tomorrow I will ask the owners rep if they plan on mabey moving all the walls or say lifting the building and rotating it 180 degrees.

When the unscheduled and unexpected occures I expect someone to step up to the plate. And there are many out there that will.

Of course there are. They're just not working for you.

 

[satcom]

Peter, whats your point?:grin:

No your right, tomorrow morning I will ask the GC's PM .... Oh wait there isn't one.

Ok, tomorrow I will ask the owners rep if they plan on mabey moving all the walls or say lifting the building and rotating it 180 degrees.

When the unscheduled and unexpected occures I expect someone to step up to the plate. And there are many out there that will.

Chris,

Did your guys attend the scheduling meetings, or did you? If they were kept updated with schedules and knew the trade sequences, then I would say they should of been on top ot things, some of these jobs are ones you just don't want to get involved with, the owners hire on a designer, non licensed in any field, great picking paints and hanging pictures, these clowns try to do engineers work, some of them should not be left out of the house on their own, If this is the type of PM you have then there is little hope for anyone.

Could the owners rep, be one of these clowns?

What was stopping the men from setting a ladder up, and getting their tools?

 

[chris kennedy]

Chris,

Did your guys attend the scheduling meetings, or did you?

Please bear in mind that I am an hourly employee. I usually have a part in the bidding process but not on this one.

This has been a "shoot from the hip" job since I started in October. There is no schedule, no penalties. This is between the owner of my company and the club owners.

Take another look at the OP. That was only a heads up as to whats going on down here. Some jobs are smooth, then there are these.

Thanks for the input everyone!:smile:

 

[bigjohn67]

Satcom..

Satcom..

You are correct.... the worker gets paid by the hour that they work, not at work. To make that kind of argument starts a very bad cycle of finger pointing.

Large or small, a contractor can make the same percentages even if they do it themselves. Just not on a large scale if they chose to do so.

Bottom line, there are not any workers who think ahead these days because they feel the CO. is making all the money. Maybe we should stop the clock when nothing is getting done as workers are paid for working, not just showing up.

I would have brought them one of the probably 50 extension ladders on the job, but then OSHA would issue a violation for not having hand rails.

In the end, the workers would be sent home until the stairs were replaced.

so many views.

Maybe it is the responsibility for the workers to take 2 minutes of the time they are being paid to let the job forman know about this. But then again maybe the Co's should deduct every minute over the 30 min lunch break they go over not actually working.

It never ends. Just a view from all sides.

 

[360Youth]

2) Why would they cooridnate with the iron workers, are they managment
or labor ? the GC or PM's job is to cooridnate the work, not your men.

...is just another example of....

3 mechanics see this as they go to lunch and can't take a minute to go get thier tools or cooridnate with the iron workers?

Sorry, I don't think it's too much to ask of a crew, when they see something happening or about to happen, they make sure/double check that crew leader is aware. IMO.

 

[360Youth]

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.

Chris,
Did your guys attend the scheduling meetings, or did you?

Some of you guys think nothing unscheduled happens on a job. I am not saying that applies here, but nobody seems to ask. There has been a lot of talk about who gets paid for what and who doesn't get paid for what. We are all in the business to make money for the company so hopefully the company will reward us for it. I pay as much for initiative as I do the work. You can be the best worker there is but if you are not looking out for the company, then I won't keep you any longer than I have to.

Thanks for the input everyone!:smile:

Now say it like you mean it. :grin:

 

[jrannis]

Chris,

Did your guys attend the scheduling meetings, or did you? If they were kept updated with schedules and knew the trade sequences, then I would say they should of been on top ot things, some of these jobs are ones you just don't want to get involved with, the owners hire on a designer, non licensed in any field, great picking paints and hanging pictures, these clowns try to do engineers work, some of them should not be left out of the house on their own, If this is the type of PM you have then there is little hope for anyone.

Could the owners rep, be one of these clowns?

What was stopping the men from setting a ladder up, and getting their tools?

You guys ever notice how the electricians can end up running the job and keeping up the schedule while other crafts could care less?

 

[480sparky]

You guys ever notice how the electricians can end up running the job and keeping up the schedule while other crafts could care less?

That 'cause we're there almost as much as the GC.

As soon as the rough grade is started, we're there doing a temp service. And we're usually one of the last ones out of the parking lot at the end.

 

[Minuteman]

And, about the only ones that are there every day.

 

[petersonra]

Maybe it is the responsibility for the workers to take 2 minutes of the time they are being paid to let the job forman know about this.

Sort of a moot point as there was no foreman to tell. IMO, most projects with 5 or more worker bees, needs a foreman. You get that many people working and there are just too many side issues that need to be dealt with and the foreman is the guy that should be doing the dealing. Its too disruptive for the worker bees to stop what they are doing and go deal with outside issues.

 

[360Youth]

Its too disruptive for the worker bees to stop what they are doing and go deal with outside issues.

Not if it is potenttially disrupting to their work. BUt I agree for the need of a foreman to deal with these issues and to hopefully stay on top of and ahead of them.

 

[petersonra]

A lot of people (including some people who should know better) denigrate the value of good supervision and management skills. IMO, they are generally more important to the success of most projects (other than very small ones) than the general skill level of the worker bees.

A good foreman can assign the lesser skilled workers to tasks they can adequately perform while keeping the higher skilled workers on the tasks requiring more skill. He can also make sure the limited quantity of higher skilled labor is not spending a lot of time hunting down parts and looking for tools so they can actually do their job most efficiently.

I know for a fact that in most cases I have been involved in the success of the project was often in large part because of the PM, and not the engineers and other assigned to the various tasks.