Yesterday’s little construction management adventure.

Lead in -- we are working on two separate public school projects doing
masonry rehabilitation for the NY School Construction Authority (SCA).
At present we have one site superintendent handling both schools, which
means that he has to run between the two sites as needs dictate. And we
have apprentices working on the projects, who are not always savvy to
schoolyard etiquette. The site superintendent works under our operations
superintendent (Ray), who oversees all of our projects.

The story -- an apprentice who was assigned to hoist buckets of mortar
using a rope and well wheel decided to rest for a moment by sitting down
on an overturned plastic bucket. The bucket had some water on it, from a
recent spell of unending rains. The apprentice quickly realized that his
pants were wet, stood up, and brushed the water off. He then, hopefully
not knowing he was being observed, reached in to see how wet wet is when
it is all the way through. Several school children appear to have been
watching from their classroom windows and freaked, assuming that the
apprentice had been using the bucket, in broad daylight, for elementary
needs. Howie, who was at the other school, got an emergency call from
the SCA project manager to hurry to the scene. Howie got nervous, not
knowing if the emergency report involved an injury, and he contacted Ray
via radio. The operations superintendent then diverted his scheduled
visit to another project and headed to the school with an extra
superintendent who was supposed to have been dropped off by Ray
elsewhere. I have yet to hear the conclusion of the story, but assume
everything was cleared up in the end.
--
][<en Follett
SOS Gab & Eti -- http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/5836

PS: I’m wearing a new pair of pants today.