Following the lead of our highest elected officials, some jobsite meetings are deteriorating into combative and unproductive quagmires as the impeachment hearings and Congress as whole act like immature kids. If these bad interactions didn't impact our built environment, they would make for a pretty entertaining circus.
The problem is our elected officials aren't great examples to follow. The best leaders lead by example and, unfortunately, the bad ones do too whether they know it or not. It appears that many of our elected officials aren't the best even if they came into office as nice and respectable people. Somewhere along the way, they lost their soul and jobsites are starting to copy their example.
A young engineer who is still holding onto the belief that we can all (mostly) get along. He has started recording meetings in the hopes that he can discuss the conflict and team issues with everyone when they aren't heated up and fighting with each other. Below is a partial transcript from a recent weekly meeting with a client:
Client: Let's discuss change orders now. I know think there have been any major issues in the last week or so.
Contractor: No major issues? We literally uncovered an unexploded bomb, called first responders and then had to evacuate the entire jobsite until it could be safely removed by the bomb squad.
Client: Yes and now we are back...
Contractor: Back to verifying if additional bombs are buried? Yeah, that's what we are doing now.
Client: Well, we can't verify all existing site conditions in the soils report. You assume the risk of the work and should have assumed that there were buried bombs because our project is at the end of an old Air Force runway.
Contractor: You're kidding me. We'll just track out T&M and settle things out a later date. By the way, how's your review of change order we submitted a few weeks ago going? We need to get moving or it's going to delay the project significantly.
Client: Are you talking about the million dollar pipe change request? Yes, we've looked at it and we don't know how changing 50' of 6" PVC to 8" PVC leads to a million dollar add.
Contractor: Well, it's actually only a $999,991 change request. There's not that much work but the level of effort required to price this change and then get the right material on site and installed is pretty high.
Client: So the bulk of the cost is for your high priced management expertise?!?
Contractor: It's also in a tight area where we can only put in 6' section instead of full lengths. It will take 3 times longer than a straight run would take. More crew time and equipment usage means more cost.
Client: Sounds like an expensive plan. I'm pretty sure my 4 year old could do it faster and cheaper with Tonka Trucks.
Contractor: Well, I've got some Tonka Trucks at home too. We will start the work with Tonka Trucks tomorrow. We'll track things with T&M tickets and go from there.
This was just a partial transcript to one jobsite meeting. Discussions like this, if you can call them that, are happening up and down the construction supply chain. Engineers, operators, vendors, subs, 2nd and 3rd tier subs and vendors are all interacting in a similar manner. Optimistic builders are holding out hope that we will get back to the way things used to be where the worst anyone might encounter was a bit of cussing and yelling, some off color humor and a trailer prank or two.
***This was another Fake Construction News article. Stay tuned for more.***
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