[Red] Summer Wrap-up

As my very sporatic postings suggest, my usual high-life of hookers and blow was suspended this summer. In its place was a placement at a coal station during a major refurbishment with 60 hour work weeks. It was a summer of fly ash and sweat. Lies and Weaseling. Safety meetings and safety walks. Lots of safety. Enough safety to make you want to wear a hi-vis vest and safely step in front of a train.

Anyways, at the end of a project it is a good idea to reflect. Learning points, points for improvement - that sort of thing. Anyways, here's mine.

I need to be more cynical.

I was looking after a final drains project. It was going very smoothly, and didn't need much interference on my part at all. I was periodically popping my head in, only to see it progressing farther and farther along on its own. Minor problems, but nothing sensational.

The contractor's beancounter raised an issue that the project was not as they thought, and they needed to submit an additional work order. This is a fairly common practice when bidding on large projects such as a coal plant refurbishment. The additional work came to the tune of 110,000 lbs. Holy hell. 110k. Not my fault, but this looks badly on the drains project. Work continues smoothly - I feel like a bag of ass.

The project essentially finished itself on its own. Except for one thing. There was a spring support on a pipe that was disconnected, but the foreman said it was going to be hooked up soon, and that he had his crew working on something else.

The end of the outage came close, and the spring support was not reconnected. The pressure parts had more priority than external works, so I didn't press the issue. After the pressure parts were completed, the gas pass had priority. By this time, the foreman had gone back to his retirement home in Spain.

After gas pass ended, the support could be re-attached. As I showed the new foreman the support that needed to be re-attached, he pointed out something. The main beam the spring supports was attached to was cut to make room for some of the drain lines.

That prick found a conflict between drain line and structural support, and decided to perform some streamlineing.

Anyways, a new beam was welded, and the pipe support needed to me moved slightly. Simple matter, and I got one of the laggers to remove some insulation. With this bare section of pipe, the drain manifold was hung from the spring support properly and all was well.

Until the scaffolding was taken down with the bare section of pipe still exposed.

Recapping: my simple drain line project has been torn to shreds. It is later than expected, way over budget and a chunk of this several hundred degree drain manifold is bare.

The best part is that I'm using this experience to tackle a significantly larger role next year.

With more cynicism.