The question was who was doing this? Then why? And finally how?
Start with the last question, how. It seems easily answered. Except we had different equipment on the project. We had Cat, Case, and Komatsu, all required different keys to start. Even the Cat keys were two different types since the scrapers and the D-8 dozer were cable models and the 225 trackhoe and D-4 dozer were newer models. Also,the newer models had kill switches on them, we made sure these were in the kill position every night before we left. So the answer to how was he had to be an operator with keys and knowledge to start and move the equipment.
The question who, we thought it was obvious. It was some one who had worked for us in the past, maybe some one we fired or didn't hire? I concentrated on this even though I was new.
The why, again it was someone with a grudge against the company. They have done over twenty thousand dollars in damage. The next question was, is this enough? Since we still had no clue who or why we needed to have some protection.
So far we had been hit on Friday night or Saturday morning, and on Sunday night or Monday morning. This next weekend I sat out there on Friday night, our chief mechanic took Saturday night, and Sam took Sunday night. They struck again on Monday night. Out the window went theory of them having a job and they only struck on nights they weren't working.
On Tuesday morning after making the latest police report the decision was simple, to contract off duty sheriff deputies to guard our equipment. Since all the damage was done between two and four in the morning we had them start at midnight and would be there until six.
That night the captain that I was talking to drove by the site around six pm and saw all our equipment lined up about one hundred and fifty fee off the road. The deputy that was to sit our there drove past the site around nine pm and didn't see any equipment. Guess what? They hit us between six and nine. The deputy sat out there and guarded nothing. The damage had been done.
Now I was convinced that this was an inside job. Our employees knew the deputy sheriff's had been hired. Who else could it be. The captain from the sheriff's department and myself decided on a new strategy. Random times, he would schedule men to be on site the patrol right before they are to be there. These times would be from six pm to six am, four hours at a time per night. I would the only person knowing these times and I wouldn't tell anyone including Sam.
This seem to work, for about three weeks. Then on a Saturday morning I get the call from Lonnie. “Have you moved my backhoe out?” I told him to look for it.
The next call, “I found it, you'll never believe it, send a mechanic.” This said all before I could key up my mic to ask any questions. When I did get a turn to speak, it was to come out and see for myself and bring a camera.
They backhoe was in a ditch, upside down resting on the roll over protection or most people would say on its top. The key was in the on position so it had been running when it landed there. To this day I do not know how it got in that position and if someone was driving it how they got out without killing themselves. The sheriff did check the local hospitals.
Mystery solved. On Wednesday morning I got a call from a deputy. He was scheduled to be on duty the night before when he drove by he heard our equipment running. He pulled back into the site and saw three kids starting our equipment. He pulled up and flashed his lights they were off like jack rabbits through the woods. He never caught them.
When he called he asked if the company would press charges. When he was told that we would rather hire them he laughed. It's true, fifteen, sixteen year old kids operating equipment like they were, it had to be a hidden talent. I've been around equipment all my adult life and it would take me about thirty minutes to move a Cat 225, they were doing it in five. It would take me longer than that to find the kill switch.
The deputy said he got a good look at two of the boys, he would go through the local school year books to try and locate them. He, also, went to all of the local farms and told them who he was looking for and the damage totaling over thirty thousand at this point. To my knowledge, he never did locate them. No arrest were made. The company paid all the damages.
So, I was wrong on it being an inside job, on the profile of who was doing it, and on why anyone would be attacking us in this way. It was kids, they went to Cat and got keys. They told them it was for their fathers. I assumed they did the same to obtain the Case and Komatsu keys. They practiced on our equipment.
They baffled me and made me mad. To this day I am still amazed how they didn't end up dead. God must have been looking out for them.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Case of The Missing Equipment
The title is a little deceiving. We did find all the equipment, it's where we would find it that was really puzzling.
A few months after going to work for Sam Minnielli in 1987, we started a subdivision for Mike West on Old Colerain Road. It was my first subdivision and it was in a location I was very familiar with. Growing up in Ross we traveled Colerain Road through Dunlap a lot as a kid. During my high school years this section of Colerain was by-passed with a new road thus the name Old Colerain as it became known. It was brought to my attention that this was not the correct name, I'll explain that later.
I found that site projects and subdivisions were a lot alike except subdivisions usually are long and narrow running between right of ways where site packages will control large amounts of acreage. In subdivisions you do not disturb any more than you have to.
We started an off site water line the same day we started the clearing and the dirt. About four days into project I get a call on the radio from Lonnie Creech asking if we moved his equipment. The mechanic who fueled up all the equipment told him he found his completely out of fuel to the right of the entry. Since that area was wooded I didn't think too much of it except for the question “who moved Lonnie's equipment?”
That was incident number one, incident number two happened a couple of days later. Usually, Sam would be in before me and get the crews out to the job sites with men and tools they needed for the day. This particular Monday morning, he wasn't in. I got everybody out the door and was in my office when he came through the door.
Some one had hit our equipment at Mike West subdivision. Mike had called Sam around four in the morning telling him a Deputy Sheriff had called him to say our equipment at the site was running.
When he got there a brand new D-4 dozer was stuck on a tree. This tree was one that was to remain, not good. Some one had started a 225 track hoe and tried to tip over a scraper. This damaged a hydraulic cylinder. All toll about ten thousand dollars in damage plus a five foot diameter oak tree.
The first police report was filed with the Hamilton County Sheriffs Department. Assumptions were made about who was responsible. One, they knew their way around equipment. Two, they may have a grudge against the contractor or the realtor. Three, they wanted to be destructive.
We also had several questions, the first being how did they get the D-4 on top of the tree trunk? The second was why us? The third was who did this?
The rest of the week Hamilton County stepped up patrols after hours. We got lulled into thinking the worst was over when it was just beginning.
Mike West started his first house, the foundation was in and part of the first floor framing. The roadway took shape, and the on-site utilities were going in. The sun was shinning and all seemed to be going well. Then it happened.
On Saturday morning Lonnie called on the radio asking for his backhoe. Sam told him that it wasn't moved, to go look for it. He called back a few minutes later, he found it. It was nose down in the basement. Oh yea, they knocked down the house that was started a few days ago.
Ever try to pick up a twenty thousand pound machine that usually sits horizontally now sitting vertically on the bottom of the basement. We knew we would have engine problems because it was running when it went over the foundation wall. Now it was obvious that someone had a vendetta against us.
The thought crossed our mind that some one was getting even for something we may or may not have done. The person doing this knew us. Who could it be?
Next time I will conclude this.
A few months after going to work for Sam Minnielli in 1987, we started a subdivision for Mike West on Old Colerain Road. It was my first subdivision and it was in a location I was very familiar with. Growing up in Ross we traveled Colerain Road through Dunlap a lot as a kid. During my high school years this section of Colerain was by-passed with a new road thus the name Old Colerain as it became known. It was brought to my attention that this was not the correct name, I'll explain that later.
I found that site projects and subdivisions were a lot alike except subdivisions usually are long and narrow running between right of ways where site packages will control large amounts of acreage. In subdivisions you do not disturb any more than you have to.
We started an off site water line the same day we started the clearing and the dirt. About four days into project I get a call on the radio from Lonnie Creech asking if we moved his equipment. The mechanic who fueled up all the equipment told him he found his completely out of fuel to the right of the entry. Since that area was wooded I didn't think too much of it except for the question “who moved Lonnie's equipment?”
That was incident number one, incident number two happened a couple of days later. Usually, Sam would be in before me and get the crews out to the job sites with men and tools they needed for the day. This particular Monday morning, he wasn't in. I got everybody out the door and was in my office when he came through the door.
Some one had hit our equipment at Mike West subdivision. Mike had called Sam around four in the morning telling him a Deputy Sheriff had called him to say our equipment at the site was running.
When he got there a brand new D-4 dozer was stuck on a tree. This tree was one that was to remain, not good. Some one had started a 225 track hoe and tried to tip over a scraper. This damaged a hydraulic cylinder. All toll about ten thousand dollars in damage plus a five foot diameter oak tree.
The first police report was filed with the Hamilton County Sheriffs Department. Assumptions were made about who was responsible. One, they knew their way around equipment. Two, they may have a grudge against the contractor or the realtor. Three, they wanted to be destructive.
We also had several questions, the first being how did they get the D-4 on top of the tree trunk? The second was why us? The third was who did this?
The rest of the week Hamilton County stepped up patrols after hours. We got lulled into thinking the worst was over when it was just beginning.
Mike West started his first house, the foundation was in and part of the first floor framing. The roadway took shape, and the on-site utilities were going in. The sun was shinning and all seemed to be going well. Then it happened.
On Saturday morning Lonnie called on the radio asking for his backhoe. Sam told him that it wasn't moved, to go look for it. He called back a few minutes later, he found it. It was nose down in the basement. Oh yea, they knocked down the house that was started a few days ago.
Ever try to pick up a twenty thousand pound machine that usually sits horizontally now sitting vertically on the bottom of the basement. We knew we would have engine problems because it was running when it went over the foundation wall. Now it was obvious that someone had a vendetta against us.
The thought crossed our mind that some one was getting even for something we may or may not have done. The person doing this knew us. Who could it be?
Next time I will conclude this.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Venezuela 3 - The Ball Game
Being in a location in which you are not wanted can be a very unpleasant place to be. It's even worse when you are out of the country and away from your family. That was San Diego in the state of Carabobo, Venezuela. What had been a lazy farming town was now a busy industrial town due to oil. The locals resented foreigners, we were carpetbaggers in their eyes. In a sense, I guess we were. We were bringing change and most long time residents didn't like it.This was the fourth time we had built this same test facility for Creole International, the second time using metric in lieu of British units. Luther Borgston taught me in Borneo to think in metric and stop doing conversions in my head. Building this building did get easier when I took his advice.
Another thing that made this job easier was I kept the same sub contractors and suppliers from the project in Borneo except for the plumber. The plumber was local and was the only local contractor to give us a bid. With my broken Spanish we worked out the numbers so he got the project and to this day I believe he was grateful.
Americans had the dirt, concrete and carpentry portions of the project. South Koreans had the steel erection. The electric was contracted to a company in South Africa and the HVAC to a company in England. All these companies came together to build a little ten thousand square foot test facility in record time.
Being out of town and away from home the work schedule tends to be long. The trick is not so long that you slack up on safety and get sloppy. This particular job, we worked five twelve hour days and one eight hour. We would take Sundays off unless we were rained out more than one day. Our goal was to get the job done and go home.
Americans had the dirt, concrete and carpentry portions of the project. South Koreans had the steel erection. The electric was contracted to a company in South Africa and the HVAC to a company in England. All these companies came together to build a little ten thousand square foot test facility.
After the trouble at the bar, none of the men ventured back into town to have a night out. They had their beer in camp. Sundays was the only day they ventured out and that was to the local school grounds to play softball.
Several locals would come out to watch but not to partake. The younger ones would taunt about not really playing a real game. My men tried to get them to join us but they looked at slow pitch softball as a woman's game. They would only play a man's game of baseball. One Sunday afternoon a few locals came around and challenged us to a game of baseball. Luther told them that they had better watch what they asked for. They held pat and the challenge was on. They gave us a couple of weeks to get ready which was their mistake.
Luther told the boys that baseball was my game and for a few years had managed a high school aged baseball team. Getting onto site the next day Luther told me of the challenge. Having my doubts since I didn't think anyone played baseball after high school or before. The second thought was it may be good for community relations which we greatly needed.
With Mr. Lee and his South Koreans, we had fourteen at our first practice. Not one pitcher among us. The only thing that went right was the hitting show I put on. The pitcher would deliver me a fat one I would take it long, he throw inside, I'd take it to the opposite field, and if he throw outside, I'd take it again to the opposite field. It was obvious that fielding was not my problem, it was throwing. The team had the same problem.
At sixteen, I had a pretty good career ahead of me in baseball, at seventeen, I threw out my arm, all I could do is hit. Granted I could still throw, it just didn't pop like before. So I planted myself at first base a position in which throwing was limited.
Mr. Lee came though with a pretty good pitcher in his organization, a kid that could throw a ninety mile an hour fast ball. He didn't have any junk pitches but his speeds was fast and faster.
Have you ever seen “Major League, Back to the Minors”? Doc was a little like me. I could throw a round house curve, a slider and the all purpose knuckle ball. With one practice, this kid picked up a knuckle ball to use as a change up. It worked about one out of four times, the other three was spinners with a speed of about seventy in lieu of ninety miles an hour. Not a bad change up.
We scored first in the first inning. They tied it up in the third and went ahead in the fourth. We scored two in the sixth to go ahead.
Still leading in the ninth, it came down to the last three outs. The first batter walked, the second hit to third. The third baseman bobbled and they had men on first and second. The next man struck out.
One out with men on first and second. The fifth man up in the inning hit a sharp ball to Mr. Lee at short. He flipped to second but we couldn't get the double play.
Two out men on first and third, I called time out to make sure everyone knew the signals. Their cleanup hitter was coming up next. The first pitch was a ball. The second was a strike. The third was a ball. The fourth pitch was a bunt down third base line that went foul. He hit two more foul balls.
I knew he was expecting the knuckle ball that was a more or less a spinning change up. The pitcher shook off the next pitch, all I could do is shake my head. I knew the game was over.
What happen next was too good to be true. The knuckle ball worked and the bottom dropped out of it. He could have swung twice at it and to this day I still it see it in slow motion. No one could have thrown a knuckle ball better.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Cooking for two hundred
I have always thought of myself as a pretty good cook, from my stuffed pork chops to my award winning chilli. Learning to cook was a way of having a home cooked meal all of those years I was by lived by myself. Today my wife does the cooking. She doesn't allow me to cook any more, she is afraid of the ingredients that I may use.
I made stuffed pork chops for my wife only one time. She knew about my secret to my chilli and decided to eat everything except the pork chops. Needless to say I'm not allowed to cook.
My award winning chilli is truly award winning. In 1979 a group of us approached our boss and asked about the company sponsoring us in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo chilli cook off. The first year we didn't even come in the first one hundred. The second year we added a secrete ingredient. We didn't cook enough it was so good everyone ate it before the judging. The third year we tied for fourth.
I did make my chilli one year for the yearly meeting of managers at Bray-Arnsperger. It went over very well. You'll have to wait until the book comes out to find out who ate two helpings and had the third in front of him when I told everybody the secret ingredient.
The best day of cooking was not actually for me or in a competition, it was at Plant Daniels north of Pascagoula, Mississippi. You see, in the south when a contractor finishes a successful project it is a tradition to feed everybody on site. Since we finished our construction contract and about to sign a five year maintenance contract we didn't want to do anything to jeopardize our position with the power plant.
How afraid would you be when you are told that you would be cooking for up to two hundred people? I didn't have butterfly's in my stomach, I had dive bombers.
I think our original thought would be to have the Colonel cater it. You know, call up the local KFC and order enough for two hundred. After kicking around ideas for the better part of a week we kept coming back to this.
One site about a week before the lunch date was a sub contractor, I think he was doing the pavement markings. We asked him to come to the lunch for the plant. He asked what we were having, when told, probably KFC he volunteered to cook if we bought the ingredients and supplied the help. This man was pretty smart, he knew a bunch of Yankees didn't know how to make good on this tradition. He knew what the plant would like and told us he would save us money.
This was the first time I ever saw a deep fryer for cooking turkeys was on this day. It wasn't used to cook turkey, we used it to cook the rice. Also, we had a gas grill to to cook the chicken and sausage. The menu was Jambalaya, tossed salad, cake, and a soft drink.
We fed one hundred sixty two that day for less than one hundred dollars. Lunch started at eleven o'clock and we served until after one. Everybody was full and we had plenty left over that went to the local firehouse. And the most important thing, we had a good time doing it.
I have kept this recipe for a long time in case I may need to cook for two hundred again.
I made stuffed pork chops for my wife only one time. She knew about my secret to my chilli and decided to eat everything except the pork chops. Needless to say I'm not allowed to cook.
My award winning chilli is truly award winning. In 1979 a group of us approached our boss and asked about the company sponsoring us in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo chilli cook off. The first year we didn't even come in the first one hundred. The second year we added a secrete ingredient. We didn't cook enough it was so good everyone ate it before the judging. The third year we tied for fourth.
I did make my chilli one year for the yearly meeting of managers at Bray-Arnsperger. It went over very well. You'll have to wait until the book comes out to find out who ate two helpings and had the third in front of him when I told everybody the secret ingredient.
The best day of cooking was not actually for me or in a competition, it was at Plant Daniels north of Pascagoula, Mississippi. You see, in the south when a contractor finishes a successful project it is a tradition to feed everybody on site. Since we finished our construction contract and about to sign a five year maintenance contract we didn't want to do anything to jeopardize our position with the power plant.
How afraid would you be when you are told that you would be cooking for up to two hundred people? I didn't have butterfly's in my stomach, I had dive bombers.
I think our original thought would be to have the Colonel cater it. You know, call up the local KFC and order enough for two hundred. After kicking around ideas for the better part of a week we kept coming back to this.
This was the first time I ever saw a deep fryer for cooking turkeys was on this day. It wasn't used to cook turkey, we used it to cook the rice. Also, we had a gas grill to to cook the chicken and sausage. The menu was Jambalaya, tossed salad, cake, and a soft drink.
We fed one hundred sixty two that day for less than one hundred dollars. Lunch started at eleven o'clock and we served until after one. Everybody was full and we had plenty left over that went to the local firehouse. And the most important thing, we had a good time doing it.
I have kept this recipe for a long time in case I may need to cook for two hundred again.
Monday, March 29, 2010
France
It was late spring and Creole wanted another test facility, this time in the south of France. Nothing like being in Europe in the springtime and being paid to build a building that you have built three other times. Oh yea, Cannes Film Festival would be going on during construction.
Several twist on this project verses the other Creole test facilities. The first was a parking garage to be included. Another twist, the local labor force was union and with the timing of the film festival created created a shortage of skilled labor and union frowned on importing labor. As always, to me the job was the most important. Since I couldn't get local labor I did import it. The final twist was Creole had a French partner.
The parking garage turned out to be the least of my worries. I settled on a precast design with the supplier in Paris giving me a turnkey product. This garage was round and they claimed the foundations would take a week to form and pour, the precast set in a day, and a lightweight topping slab finished in two days. My original thoughts was that this was totally B S.
To reaffirm that I am a person of logic. If it seems logical I can buy in to it. If it doesn't seem logical it is very difficult for me to buy. That's me, that's the way I am. So when Creole told me the next test facility was to be in Nice, France. I did my research and found that this was the most illogical place to put one of their facilities for testing and re-building turbine engines for off-shore oil wells. Especially since there was no oil (off shore or on shore) in the north Mediterranean region.
In 1981 the closest established wells were Libya. Just a few years earlier they started drilling off the Canary Islands, and of course there was the USSR in the Black Sea. I figured out that since this was France with a French company owning over fifty percent of the partnership with Creole, it technically was a French company. Remember, this was before sanctions against Libya I still couldn't belief Nice.
My first encounter with the French people was at De Gaulle in Paris. Of course people in most airports aren't very friendly. The people encountered at Nice Cote d'Azur Airport was just the opposite. It was more like flying into Kansas City or Nashville. These people bent over backwards to help you and didn't show any resentment in my lack of French. I can still remember laughing when I called the desk to check on my flight and I heard in a deep southern accent “Air France y'all, how can I help ya.” Several years later I heard a comedian say about the same in a skit except he was talking about Air France out of Louisville.
Arriving in early April it was cool but it had a subtropical appearance. I noticed the usual palms, eucalyptus and the citrus trees but there was a broad leaf evergreen shrub that I don't think I ever saw before. These broad leaf evergreens proved to be a problem when we cleared the site, in the end we recycled them. This was fifteen years before recycling began.
It is always warming to be in a distant city and see someone you know. Martha Borgeston was at the airport to pick me up. Her and Luther had been in town for two weeks while I was finishing up the preconstruction details. Luther was meeting with the local construction union so I saw her smiling face waiting at the gang way.
In upcoming blogs I want to decribe the parking garage, “The Chariots of Fire”, and the trip to Paris.
Several twist on this project verses the other Creole test facilities. The first was a parking garage to be included. Another twist, the local labor force was union and with the timing of the film festival created created a shortage of skilled labor and union frowned on importing labor. As always, to me the job was the most important. Since I couldn't get local labor I did import it. The final twist was Creole had a French partner.
The parking garage turned out to be the least of my worries. I settled on a precast design with the supplier in Paris giving me a turnkey product. This garage was round and they claimed the foundations would take a week to form and pour, the precast set in a day, and a lightweight topping slab finished in two days. My original thoughts was that this was totally B S.
To reaffirm that I am a person of logic. If it seems logical I can buy in to it. If it doesn't seem logical it is very difficult for me to buy. That's me, that's the way I am. So when Creole told me the next test facility was to be in Nice, France. I did my research and found that this was the most illogical place to put one of their facilities for testing and re-building turbine engines for off-shore oil wells. Especially since there was no oil (off shore or on shore) in the north Mediterranean region.
In 1981 the closest established wells were Libya. Just a few years earlier they started drilling off the Canary Islands, and of course there was the USSR in the Black Sea. I figured out that since this was France with a French company owning over fifty percent of the partnership with Creole, it technically was a French company. Remember, this was before sanctions against Libya I still couldn't belief Nice.
My first encounter with the French people was at De Gaulle in Paris. Of course people in most airports aren't very friendly. The people encountered at Nice Cote d'Azur Airport was just the opposite. It was more like flying into Kansas City or Nashville. These people bent over backwards to help you and didn't show any resentment in my lack of French. I can still remember laughing when I called the desk to check on my flight and I heard in a deep southern accent “Air France y'all, how can I help ya.” Several years later I heard a comedian say about the same in a skit except he was talking about Air France out of Louisville.
Arriving in early April it was cool but it had a subtropical appearance. I noticed the usual palms, eucalyptus and the citrus trees but there was a broad leaf evergreen shrub that I don't think I ever saw before. These broad leaf evergreens proved to be a problem when we cleared the site, in the end we recycled them. This was fifteen years before recycling began.
It is always warming to be in a distant city and see someone you know. Martha Borgeston was at the airport to pick me up. Her and Luther had been in town for two weeks while I was finishing up the preconstruction details. Luther was meeting with the local construction union so I saw her smiling face waiting at the gang way.
In upcoming blogs I want to decribe the parking garage, “The Chariots of Fire”, and the trip to Paris.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Gorman Exploration or “How to complete a good job and still get sued”
Have you ever had a gut feeling about a project? You know, one that just didn't feel right. I had that kind of feeling about Gorman Exploration in Lafayette, Louisiana.
The logic of one project manager for both projects makes sense, except I didn't know anything about Gorman. Even though I had built the first Creole job, the project was so complicated that I felt as though it was the priority and Gorman would be secondary.
The Gorman project was a multi story building with the first floor open except for a fountain and an elevator. If you are not familiar with exploration companies, the first thing you need to know is they are very security conscious. Only personnel with security clearance can enter the elevator. If you were invited to their office, you would be met by the person you were meeting on the first floor at the elevator and would be escorted to where you are going in the building.
I was behind the eight ball and was playing catch up all the way through the construction process. It look like it was going to be a very good job. We finished on budget and on schedule and every one seemed happy. But my gut kept telling me something was going to go wrong.
You remember that fountain on the first floor. Some one from Gorman saw a fountain similar and wanted the same for their building. It would spray a ball and give a soothing sound. A great idea except we are on the Gulf Coast and any one on the Gulf Coast will tell you not only there is a wind factor but a humidity factor.
With the fountain came sensors, when the wind blows the sensors would turn off the fountain. When it rains the sensors would turn off the fountain. So in the this particular location the fountain would start up and kick off every ten or fifteen minutes either by wind or by the one hundred percent humidity. Of course this was unacceptable to the owners who wanted the fountain to work one hundred percent of the time.
The meeting was quite ugly when I told them that the fountain could not be fixed due to the wind and the humidity. They turned the fountain off and sue us. We had an ace in the hole.
The ace was a letter I had written to the company representative early in construction stating that after reading the specifications on the fountain and finding out wind would affect the performance that we should find another fountain or drop the fountain altogether. I knew rain would turn the fountain off but I didn't think of humidity until after the building was built. The humidity would be so thick that the sensors thought it was rain.
He had the feeling that we didn't want to put in a fountain, so he wrote me back a letter insisting not only on a fountain but this particular fountain. He totally dismissed my concerns.
When we got to arbitration I sat through two days of hearing how bad we were as contractors. When it was our turn, I was the first and only witness for the defendants. The letter I wrote to Gorman was produced as well as the return letter from Gorman addressed to me. I explained my concerns in my letter and the owners response. Of course, this is one in which we won the battle and lost the war. I don't think we ever worked for Gorman again.
Our company was set up for a project manager to take a project from conception to punch out. This is what I was use to. Bob Newton, the big fig as we called him, thought that two project managers in the same town was too much. He wanted one project manager to do both projects. Since I would be in Lafayette doing the Creole Project which could not be given to another manager, I would do both.
The logic of one project manager for both projects makes sense, except I didn't know anything about Gorman. Even though I had built the first Creole job, the project was so complicated that I felt as though it was the priority and Gorman would be secondary.The Gorman project was a multi story building with the first floor open except for a fountain and an elevator. If you are not familiar with exploration companies, the first thing you need to know is they are very security conscious. Only personnel with security clearance can enter the elevator. If you were invited to their office, you would be met by the person you were meeting on the first floor at the elevator and would be escorted to where you are going in the building.
I was behind the eight ball and was playing catch up all the way through the construction process. It look like it was going to be a very good job. We finished on budget and on schedule and every one seemed happy. But my gut kept telling me something was going to go wrong.
You remember that fountain on the first floor. Some one from Gorman saw a fountain similar and wanted the same for their building. It would spray a ball and give a soothing sound. A great idea except we are on the Gulf Coast and any one on the Gulf Coast will tell you not only there is a wind factor but a humidity factor.
With the fountain came sensors, when the wind blows the sensors would turn off the fountain. When it rains the sensors would turn off the fountain. So in the this particular location the fountain would start up and kick off every ten or fifteen minutes either by wind or by the one hundred percent humidity. Of course this was unacceptable to the owners who wanted the fountain to work one hundred percent of the time.
The meeting was quite ugly when I told them that the fountain could not be fixed due to the wind and the humidity. They turned the fountain off and sue us. We had an ace in the hole.
The ace was a letter I had written to the company representative early in construction stating that after reading the specifications on the fountain and finding out wind would affect the performance that we should find another fountain or drop the fountain altogether. I knew rain would turn the fountain off but I didn't think of humidity until after the building was built. The humidity would be so thick that the sensors thought it was rain.
He had the feeling that we didn't want to put in a fountain, so he wrote me back a letter insisting not only on a fountain but this particular fountain. He totally dismissed my concerns.
When we got to arbitration I sat through two days of hearing how bad we were as contractors. When it was our turn, I was the first and only witness for the defendants. The letter I wrote to Gorman was produced as well as the return letter from Gorman addressed to me. I explained my concerns in my letter and the owners response. Of course, this is one in which we won the battle and lost the war. I don't think we ever worked for Gorman again.
Monday, March 1, 2010
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
“If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” this quote was from the only true legend that I have ever met. As a person who have had the opportunity to meet sports heroes, leaders of industry, astronauts. governors, congressmen, senators, and even two presidents some may think of them as legends and they may even think of themselves as legends in their own time, they were not on par with this man. The man who gave us that quote was a legend to all that had met him, wanted to meet him or seen John Wayne portray him. His name was Red Adair.
At Rogers-O'Brian in Houston a salesman would make the initial sales call and then be paired with a project manager. Finishing up a couple of projects I had enough time to oversee a couple of local projects. One of the projects assigned was a office and warehouse for the Red Adair Wild Well Control Company.
Stepping into his office for the first time was total fascination. The only thing I knew about Red Adair was from an occasional newspaper articles and the 1968 John Wayne movie, “The Hell Fighters.” The lobby was full of awards in glass encasement's and pictures on the walls. The conference room was even more impressive, it had pictures in poster size of well fires that they had put out.
It wasn't until the third meeting with company officials that I had actually met him. He was so laid back and really genuine that at first I didn't know who he was because no one introduced him. The salesman that was with me was answering his questions directed toward this new man in the meeting no matter who asked them. I was answering the questions directed to me to who ever ask them and to the man I was first told was in charge of the project.
Around thirty minutes into the meeting the man who no one introduced asked everyone to step out except the man in charge of the project and me. After the door closed he turns around and said he was Red Adair and promptly replied that I knew, even though I didn't until that moment.
My senses was telling me that things were not going well in the meeting. Mr. Adair confirmed this when he asked me about the used car salesman I was with. You see, Kenny Hofman looked like and sounded like Herb Tarlek from 'WKRP in Cincinnati,' complete with the green, yellow and blue plaid suit, yellow shirt and blue and yellow striped tie.
After explaining to him how the company was setup. That any pricing for this project had to come through me and it was a firing offense for any salesman give out any numbers or estimates without a project manager signing off. I think this assured him that I would be his go to man, and not Kenny.
The project was an eighty thousand square foot warehouse with a twenty thousand square foot two story office building. Nothing in particular to note about it, you see these any where you go. I think the office building was built for future use or resale value. All we finished in the office building was the elevator, rest rooms and the perimeter walls. The warehouse was to store the company's fire fighting equipment and well head inventory.
I have found his quote “If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur” to be true in many cases. The times I was hurt in construction it was because I hired amateurs and not true professionals. It happened in Morrow and it happened at Splash Mountain. This is one lesson I vowed never to repeat.
At Rogers-O'Brian in Houston a salesman would make the initial sales call and then be paired with a project manager. Finishing up a couple of projects I had enough time to oversee a couple of local projects. One of the projects assigned was a office and warehouse for the Red Adair Wild Well Control Company.
Stepping into his office for the first time was total fascination. The only thing I knew about Red Adair was from an occasional newspaper articles and the 1968 John Wayne movie, “The Hell Fighters.” The lobby was full of awards in glass encasement's and pictures on the walls. The conference room was even more impressive, it had pictures in poster size of well fires that they had put out.
It wasn't until the third meeting with company officials that I had actually met him. He was so laid back and really genuine that at first I didn't know who he was because no one introduced him. The salesman that was with me was answering his questions directed toward this new man in the meeting no matter who asked them. I was answering the questions directed to me to who ever ask them and to the man I was first told was in charge of the project.
Around thirty minutes into the meeting the man who no one introduced asked everyone to step out except the man in charge of the project and me. After the door closed he turns around and said he was Red Adair and promptly replied that I knew, even though I didn't until that moment.
My senses was telling me that things were not going well in the meeting. Mr. Adair confirmed this when he asked me about the used car salesman I was with. You see, Kenny Hofman looked like and sounded like Herb Tarlek from 'WKRP in Cincinnati,' complete with the green, yellow and blue plaid suit, yellow shirt and blue and yellow striped tie.
After explaining to him how the company was setup. That any pricing for this project had to come through me and it was a firing offense for any salesman give out any numbers or estimates without a project manager signing off. I think this assured him that I would be his go to man, and not Kenny.
The project was an eighty thousand square foot warehouse with a twenty thousand square foot two story office building. Nothing in particular to note about it, you see these any where you go. I think the office building was built for future use or resale value. All we finished in the office building was the elevator, rest rooms and the perimeter walls. The warehouse was to store the company's fire fighting equipment and well head inventory. Being twenty seven or twenty eight at the time I was amazed at the amount of men who flock around him. We went to lunch a couple of times and seeing all these men with the alligator skinned cowboy boots and the Rolex watches come up just to say hi. They all wanted to be like him and I've to say I changed my preference of boots to bull hides like his.
Red Adair was seventy seven when President George H.W. Bush called on him to put out the oil well fires in Kuwait. He put together a coalition of companies that were owned by former employees like Boots and Coots International Well Control. The experts were saying it would take three to five years to put out all the fires. When I heard that Red Adair was on the job I made a bet that he would have them out in less than a year. It took nine months, I felt bad about taking their money because it was a sure thing in my mind.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Teaching
Most go through life and meet people that they never get to know or in some cases want to know. I try to go through life learning from the ones I meet. I am a firm believer that each of us has attributes that we can give to or should acquirer from the people we come in contact with. This is about Mike Connolly whom I learned a great deal from.
Mike taught me the importance of training your crews and the people under you to do their jobs your way. The better you prepare them the smoother the job. I relieved Mike a couple of times on projects and the truth of the matter, I wasn't needed at all. Mike had his crew so well trained that they ran themselves.
I first met Mike on the Gerbus Brothers Clock Tower project. This particular project was to build a shopping center on land that once was used for a railroad round house. We were having trouble meeting the compaction density.
After scrutinized the soils reports and found nothing in them that would keep us meeting the requirements I went out to the jobsite to meet with the superintendent. The superintendent was not on site so I talked to Mike, who was an operator at that time. He told me the very detailed characteristics of the compaction failing.
Back at the office I placed a call to Jerry Linsey at H.C. Nutting. I figured I would get better advise from him than Don Theland who had made the reports. You see Don Theland and Rudy Gerbus had gone nose to nose in an argument just a few days earlier out at the Florence Wal-Mart job. With Rudy pushing Don in the chest with his finger, Jerry Linsey was my best bet for advise.
Jerry told me with what I had described the soil was probably contaminated with diesel fuel. Even though you could not smell it he would bet on it. When I told Rudy he told me I was full of, you know what. A few days later Rudy was pretty happy when he told me that Theland had tested the soil for diesel fuel and all of our compaction problems stemmed from that and now we can develop a game plan to finish the job
Before the job ended Rudy drove up on the site and told Mike he was the new superintendent, his truck was on the way out there. Mike had never wanted the job, now it was thrust on him.
The next spring Rudy calls me to stop by Widows Creek Power Plant. Again not knowing why I was there I saw Mike who was the superintendent. Riding around the site he tells me about a sub bid to move the dirt. The price was eighty five cents a yard, our historical cost at the time was a buck twenty to a buck twenty five.
Asking when the sub is going to start, Mike told me that Bob Gerbus told him that “we are dirt movers, if they can move it for eighty five cents then so can we.” My first thought was that this was a bad idea. We have historical cost for moving dirt in Cincinnati, this project is in Stephenson, Alabama plus it is TVA which means it is a union project, and a strong union that does not always play by the book. Mike was caught by the short hairs, I was his way out.
The next day, Rudy asked me about the project and I told him about the eighty five cent dirt. He called in Bob, we talked and he told me to write the contract.
More about Widows Creek in future blogs.
Mike taught me the importance of training your crews and the people under you to do their jobs your way. The better you prepare them the smoother the job. I relieved Mike a couple of times on projects and the truth of the matter, I wasn't needed at all. Mike had his crew so well trained that they ran themselves.
I first met Mike on the Gerbus Brothers Clock Tower project. This particular project was to build a shopping center on land that once was used for a railroad round house. We were having trouble meeting the compaction density.
After scrutinized the soils reports and found nothing in them that would keep us meeting the requirements I went out to the jobsite to meet with the superintendent. The superintendent was not on site so I talked to Mike, who was an operator at that time. He told me the very detailed characteristics of the compaction failing.
Back at the office I placed a call to Jerry Linsey at H.C. Nutting. I figured I would get better advise from him than Don Theland who had made the reports. You see Don Theland and Rudy Gerbus had gone nose to nose in an argument just a few days earlier out at the Florence Wal-Mart job. With Rudy pushing Don in the chest with his finger, Jerry Linsey was my best bet for advise.
Jerry told me with what I had described the soil was probably contaminated with diesel fuel. Even though you could not smell it he would bet on it. When I told Rudy he told me I was full of, you know what. A few days later Rudy was pretty happy when he told me that Theland had tested the soil for diesel fuel and all of our compaction problems stemmed from that and now we can develop a game plan to finish the job
Before the job ended Rudy drove up on the site and told Mike he was the new superintendent, his truck was on the way out there. Mike had never wanted the job, now it was thrust on him.
The next spring Rudy calls me to stop by Widows Creek Power Plant. Again not knowing why I was there I saw Mike who was the superintendent. Riding around the site he tells me about a sub bid to move the dirt. The price was eighty five cents a yard, our historical cost at the time was a buck twenty to a buck twenty five.
Asking when the sub is going to start, Mike told me that Bob Gerbus told him that “we are dirt movers, if they can move it for eighty five cents then so can we.” My first thought was that this was a bad idea. We have historical cost for moving dirt in Cincinnati, this project is in Stephenson, Alabama plus it is TVA which means it is a union project, and a strong union that does not always play by the book. Mike was caught by the short hairs, I was his way out.
The next day, Rudy asked me about the project and I told him about the eighty five cent dirt. He called in Bob, we talked and he told me to write the contract.
More about Widows Creek in future blogs.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Venezuela Part 2
The blog titled “Luther Borgeston” started off being about a project a little over one hundred miles west of Caracas, Venezuela in San Diego close to Lake Valencia. This part of the country was the largest of Venezuela's agricultural regions until shortly before we showed up. It was in the process of switching from agriculture to being a service center.
It was early January, the middle of the hotter, drier months. Their summer. This would a be another testing facility for Creole International. The same building we had built three other times, of course being outside the United States, it was in metric not British measurement. I did learn a very important step in my personal development, to think in metric and not try to do conversions like I had in Borneo. Of course, to this day I still have never retained the Spanish I was taught from books, but a few years ago I found out that I can still swear in the Mayan dialect that I picked up.
The winter month in Houston, yes I did say month, is the month of January. It is usually wet and cold so going to Venezuela was a relief with the temperature being in the low eighties and dry. Very springlike. The goal was to have the project completed by the start of winter in May. The temperature did not change much except it was wetter and more humid.
This project did not go as smooth as some of my others have. The nationalized petroleum company of Venezuela wanted us here, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA for short), we had resistance from locals that didn't want to see change or foreigners working in their town. We were far enough out of Caracas that we could not find quality subcontractors, as a matter of fact we hired only one, the plumber. The locals resented that our steel erector came from South Korea, our concrete sub brought in his own concrete plant from the U.S. to pour the concrete, and our electrician imported all of his materials.
Now to the dumbest thing I have ever done. How I fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. After dinner, Luther and I was in the job trailer when five or six guys came in to tell Luther that they were headed to the cantina about two clicks away. Luther always had a rule, no drinking after 10:00pm on work nights. All knew the rules. Luther wanted clear heads on his job and the quickest way to be sent home was to show up with a hang over.
This particular night, after we finished working on our schedule we went out and built a camp fire in a pit on the living quarters side of the site. We were there when the men showed up minus two. They had picked up two women and wouldn't leave. The ones that left saw that trouble brewing and got out of there.
Getting up, Luther asked where I was going. To bring 'em home. Luther argued that they were grown men. They're my men. By this time Mr. Lee, the South Korean foreman brought up a jeep. I started for it, Luther told me to wait, he opened a door to a storage shed and pulled out two baseball bats. We may need these. We jump in the jeep and head to town.
When we got there, they had been stabbed. One was dead the other was still alive, he didn't make it to the hospital. I tossed my bat to Mr. Lee put one over my shoulder and grabbed the other by the collar and dragged him out. One man stood up, Luther drew back the bat as if to swing, the man backed down.
We did report this to the local police, the eyewitness reports stated that one killed the other and then committed suicide. While sitting at the hospital, Luther told me how stupid it was to go in after them. We all could have been killed, or committed suicide like the official report said. We all knew better.
I've got to say, I never put myself into that position again. The only other time that came close was when in a bar in France. I didn't know how many it would take to whip me but after seeing how many they had I decided to get out of there.
On his death bed, he asked me if I had done anything stupid like that night in Venezuela. The next time I talk about Venezuela I'll talk more about the job and the baseball game with the locals.
It was early January, the middle of the hotter, drier months. Their summer. This would a be another testing facility for Creole International. The same building we had built three other times, of course being outside the United States, it was in metric not British measurement. I did learn a very important step in my personal development, to think in metric and not try to do conversions like I had in Borneo. Of course, to this day I still have never retained the Spanish I was taught from books, but a few years ago I found out that I can still swear in the Mayan dialect that I picked up.
The winter month in Houston, yes I did say month, is the month of January. It is usually wet and cold so going to Venezuela was a relief with the temperature being in the low eighties and dry. Very springlike. The goal was to have the project completed by the start of winter in May. The temperature did not change much except it was wetter and more humid.
This project did not go as smooth as some of my others have. The nationalized petroleum company of Venezuela wanted us here, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA for short), we had resistance from locals that didn't want to see change or foreigners working in their town. We were far enough out of Caracas that we could not find quality subcontractors, as a matter of fact we hired only one, the plumber. The locals resented that our steel erector came from South Korea, our concrete sub brought in his own concrete plant from the U.S. to pour the concrete, and our electrician imported all of his materials.
Now to the dumbest thing I have ever done. How I fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. After dinner, Luther and I was in the job trailer when five or six guys came in to tell Luther that they were headed to the cantina about two clicks away. Luther always had a rule, no drinking after 10:00pm on work nights. All knew the rules. Luther wanted clear heads on his job and the quickest way to be sent home was to show up with a hang over.
This particular night, after we finished working on our schedule we went out and built a camp fire in a pit on the living quarters side of the site. We were there when the men showed up minus two. They had picked up two women and wouldn't leave. The ones that left saw that trouble brewing and got out of there.
Getting up, Luther asked where I was going. To bring 'em home. Luther argued that they were grown men. They're my men. By this time Mr. Lee, the South Korean foreman brought up a jeep. I started for it, Luther told me to wait, he opened a door to a storage shed and pulled out two baseball bats. We may need these. We jump in the jeep and head to town.
When we got there, they had been stabbed. One was dead the other was still alive, he didn't make it to the hospital. I tossed my bat to Mr. Lee put one over my shoulder and grabbed the other by the collar and dragged him out. One man stood up, Luther drew back the bat as if to swing, the man backed down.
We did report this to the local police, the eyewitness reports stated that one killed the other and then committed suicide. While sitting at the hospital, Luther told me how stupid it was to go in after them. We all could have been killed, or committed suicide like the official report said. We all knew better.
I've got to say, I never put myself into that position again. The only other time that came close was when in a bar in France. I didn't know how many it would take to whip me but after seeing how many they had I decided to get out of there.
On his death bed, he asked me if I had done anything stupid like that night in Venezuela. The next time I talk about Venezuela I'll talk more about the job and the baseball game with the locals.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Mexico Part 2
Have you ever been in a place where the humidity is so high makes it hard to breath? That is Merida, Mexico during the monsoon season. Merida is inland about thirty miles in a low lying area about sea level. It is close to the Tropic of Cancer with trade winds from the east making it a tropical wet climate. The average temperature is in the low nineties with May being the highest month, usually around one hundred degrees in the afternoon.
I arrived there in August, the goal was to have the camp set up and ready to start the pump the station and pipe line by the time the monsoons were over in October. The first week is always the boring stuff, just feeling your way around and finding locations. You always seem to find people that want to help you, the first week usually means they are used car salesmen that want you to line their pockets. It's not tell the third or fourth week that you find the ones that really want to help.
Going back the second week, I had the company of Bobby Lee's wife, Marie Ward. She is a delightful woman, a charming southern beauty through and through. Bobby Lee always said he married up and while she married down. I have to agree with him on that. In all the years I have known her I have never heard one derogatory remark come out of her mouth. I never heard any negative remarks of any kind or anyone saying anything negative about her. Anyway, she was coming down to set up house keeping in a house Bobby Lee rented the week before.
Coming from Cancun there is a military and customs inspection checkpoint at the state borders of Yucatan and Quintana Roo. Typically you show your passport and vehicle documentation and they let you right through. The men managing these sites are usually bored and this time they saw a pretty lady and decided to search for contraband chickens. We didn't have any but we did see two buses pass by while we were there with chicken coops tied on top.
They have some highly unusual driving traditions in the Yucatan. The average speed on the 180, the highway between Cancun and Merida, is around seventy. It was a two lane highway with extra wide shoulders. One of the hardest things I had to get used to driving this highway was if I came up from behind on a vehicle and he flashes his left turn signal, it may mean he intends to turn left, but it would most likely means it’s safe for you to pass. On two-lane roads, the vehicle in front may drive on the shoulder so you can pass between him and oncoming traffic. In return drivers behind you expect this courtesy and may express their wishes to pass by flashing their headlights. So if you see a vehicle barreling down the middle of the road toward you, it is common courtesy to give him some room and let him through.
The other thing I really remember about the driving there,Yucatecos love to honk their horns. After I found out that it was their way of telling other drivers “here I am” I stopped being offended and expected to be honked at. I can say that I never saw any road rage in the three month or so I was traveling there.
Next time in “Mexico” I'll get more into the people, the job and the jungle.
I arrived there in August, the goal was to have the camp set up and ready to start the pump the station and pipe line by the time the monsoons were over in October. The first week is always the boring stuff, just feeling your way around and finding locations. You always seem to find people that want to help you, the first week usually means they are used car salesmen that want you to line their pockets. It's not tell the third or fourth week that you find the ones that really want to help.
Going back the second week, I had the company of Bobby Lee's wife, Marie Ward. She is a delightful woman, a charming southern beauty through and through. Bobby Lee always said he married up and while she married down. I have to agree with him on that. In all the years I have known her I have never heard one derogatory remark come out of her mouth. I never heard any negative remarks of any kind or anyone saying anything negative about her. Anyway, she was coming down to set up house keeping in a house Bobby Lee rented the week before.
Coming from Cancun there is a military and customs inspection checkpoint at the state borders of Yucatan and Quintana Roo. Typically you show your passport and vehicle documentation and they let you right through. The men managing these sites are usually bored and this time they saw a pretty lady and decided to search for contraband chickens. We didn't have any but we did see two buses pass by while we were there with chicken coops tied on top.
They have some highly unusual driving traditions in the Yucatan. The average speed on the 180, the highway between Cancun and Merida, is around seventy. It was a two lane highway with extra wide shoulders. One of the hardest things I had to get used to driving this highway was if I came up from behind on a vehicle and he flashes his left turn signal, it may mean he intends to turn left, but it would most likely means it’s safe for you to pass. On two-lane roads, the vehicle in front may drive on the shoulder so you can pass between him and oncoming traffic. In return drivers behind you expect this courtesy and may express their wishes to pass by flashing their headlights. So if you see a vehicle barreling down the middle of the road toward you, it is common courtesy to give him some room and let him through.
The other thing I really remember about the driving there,Yucatecos love to honk their horns. After I found out that it was their way of telling other drivers “here I am” I stopped being offended and expected to be honked at. I can say that I never saw any road rage in the three month or so I was traveling there.
Next time in “Mexico” I'll get more into the people, the job and the jungle.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Knowing the Rules
Growing up, baseball was my game even though football was what I was known for. Coming out of high school my old Babe Ruth manager, Butch Dent, asked to help him coach his sons little league baseball team. About half way through the season the Butch had quit to take a new teaching position in South Carolina leaving me to finish the season.
Our season was a disaster up to that point. You see Butch drafted his sons friends and other kids from his neighborhood and didn't draft for talent. I started working on basics and fundamentals. I sat down and reread the little league rule book. By the end of the year I knew the rules better than coaches with years of experience.
The three items we all need to work on are the same in construction as in baseball:
1.)work on the basics, get your mental game down
2.)work on the fundamentals, get your consistency down so you can do it in your sleep
3.)know the rules better than the men who wrote them, know what they say, not necessarily what they are meant to say
We ended up winning three out of five games to finish the season.
In 1976, an election year, Gerald Ford introduced a program called the Economic Development Fund. This fund was to assure minority participation in all projects that had federal money from this fund in it. It was set up to get the party in charge re-elected. It didn't do much for Gerald Ford, but it did stimulate the economy and it gave a yard stick for hiring minority companies.
In 1976, I was an estimator for Arnold Beck & Son in Cincinnati. Arnold Beck was a medium size general contractor with it's main competitors being Frank Messer and Sons, Dugan & Meyers, and Universal. After reading the regulations for the Economic Development Fund, I was convinced that we could make money by knowing the rules and by being ready when the municipalities where funded.
When the first one came out I wasn't completely ready. The project was to remove the deck off the porches at Cincinnati General Hospital and replace them with precast planks from Price Brothers. I had painters and masons lined up, now I needed a demolition sub.
The project bid between Christmas and New Years. Bob Beck asked me one day why we were even fooling with bidding this project and when I told him that none of the contractors that held drawings could do it he changed his attitude and asked about the mark up. When I told him due the difficulty I was thinking cost times two or one hundred percent markup. He laughed and said we would never get it.
Guess what? We were the low and only bidder. By knowing the rules and how the game is played we got the job, we got the job at my mark up. The only problem we had was finding a minority sub contractor. This was resolved by a phone call to William Cargile, a minority general contractor. He made a recommendation and we welcomed it.
The sub is a blog is a story into it's self. You will enjoy the story.
Our season was a disaster up to that point. You see Butch drafted his sons friends and other kids from his neighborhood and didn't draft for talent. I started working on basics and fundamentals. I sat down and reread the little league rule book. By the end of the year I knew the rules better than coaches with years of experience.
The three items we all need to work on are the same in construction as in baseball:
1.)work on the basics, get your mental game down
2.)work on the fundamentals, get your consistency down so you can do it in your sleep
3.)know the rules better than the men who wrote them, know what they say, not necessarily what they are meant to say
We ended up winning three out of five games to finish the season.
In 1976, an election year, Gerald Ford introduced a program called the Economic Development Fund. This fund was to assure minority participation in all projects that had federal money from this fund in it. It was set up to get the party in charge re-elected. It didn't do much for Gerald Ford, but it did stimulate the economy and it gave a yard stick for hiring minority companies.
In 1976, I was an estimator for Arnold Beck & Son in Cincinnati. Arnold Beck was a medium size general contractor with it's main competitors being Frank Messer and Sons, Dugan & Meyers, and Universal. After reading the regulations for the Economic Development Fund, I was convinced that we could make money by knowing the rules and by being ready when the municipalities where funded.
When the first one came out I wasn't completely ready. The project was to remove the deck off the porches at Cincinnati General Hospital and replace them with precast planks from Price Brothers. I had painters and masons lined up, now I needed a demolition sub.
The project bid between Christmas and New Years. Bob Beck asked me one day why we were even fooling with bidding this project and when I told him that none of the contractors that held drawings could do it he changed his attitude and asked about the mark up. When I told him due the difficulty I was thinking cost times two or one hundred percent markup. He laughed and said we would never get it.
Guess what? We were the low and only bidder. By knowing the rules and how the game is played we got the job, we got the job at my mark up. The only problem we had was finding a minority sub contractor. This was resolved by a phone call to William Cargile, a minority general contractor. He made a recommendation and we welcomed it.
The sub is a blog is a story into it's self. You will enjoy the story.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Borneo Part 1
Have you ever heard the expression “you can't get there from here.” Try flying into Borneo, it's true, you can't get there from here or any where for that matter. Being from Cincinnati, it is an on going joke, to get to heaven you have to go through Atlanta. Well getting to the country of Brunei Darussalam (I hope I spelled that right so you can find it on the map) on the island of Borneo is worse than going through Atlanta to get to your final destination.
Believe it or not, because I didn't, Borneo is the third largest island in the world. It is lies in two continents, Malaysia and Indonesia. And it is divided into three countries. While I was there it was part of the United Kingdom and ruled by a sultan which changed in the mid to late 1980's, they are now under their own government.
After completing a test facility for Creole International in Houston and Lafayette, Louisiana, Rick Carruth asked if I would be available to build the same facility in Brunei Darussalam on the South China Sea. The company agreed and I was off. Not really, we had to convert our drawings from British measure to Metric. This was before CAD and personnel computers every thing had to be done by hand and double checked. Waiting for the drawings took an extra month.
Karen Green, my personal assistant, actually her title was secretary to several project managers but she took really good care of us so personal assistant is a good fit for her, made the arrangements. I would fly from Houston to Dallas, Dallas to San Francisco, San Francisco to Sidney, Sidney to Melbourne, Melbourne to Singapore, Singapore to Kuching, Kuching to Bandar Seri Begawan. In all, about thirty eight hours with layovers in every city except Dallas.
Karen apologized several times for the flight arrangements. Leaving at 10:00am on Monday arriving in Bandar Seri Begawan at 6:00pm on Tuesday, Houston time. In reality it was 2:00pm on Wednesday Borneo time. Needless to say this was one of those jobs I would be missing a lot of those Monday morning meetings that required project managers to be in.
Meeting me at the airport was John Calvin Williams, Luther Borgeston was my superintendent on this project but John Calvin would get it started so Luther could take a well deserved vacation. He looked like a good Texan in most peoples mind, six foot two, slim, wore cowboy boots that made him taller and a cowboy hat when he was not in his hard hat and always in need of a shave even an hour after he shaved. When those hard hats came out shaped like cowboy hats in the ninety's, I always imagined him in one.
John Calvin was borrowed from a project in Kuwait, he and his wife had arrived in country two days before me. While driving up the coast to Maura Town I noticed how dense the forest was in mangroves and nipah palms. It was beautiful. As usual in the rain forest, no mammals are visible except for an occasional squirrel scurrying along a low branch and quick flashes of birds.
The sounds of unseen creatures surrounded us as we drove. I found out over my off and on three month stay, the Bornean rain forest is rarely silent. The forest sounds seem random at first, however, the background drone is an incessant almost irritating whine of cicadas set against the endless "ttok-took-tarook-took-took" up high in the canopy. Punctuating the bird songs are mysterious grunts, roars and barks: monkeys, orangutan, barking deer?
I'll describe the job and the girls of Borneo in future blogs.
Believe it or not, because I didn't, Borneo is the third largest island in the world. It is lies in two continents, Malaysia and Indonesia. And it is divided into three countries. While I was there it was part of the United Kingdom and ruled by a sultan which changed in the mid to late 1980's, they are now under their own government.
After completing a test facility for Creole International in Houston and Lafayette, Louisiana, Rick Carruth asked if I would be available to build the same facility in Brunei Darussalam on the South China Sea. The company agreed and I was off. Not really, we had to convert our drawings from British measure to Metric. This was before CAD and personnel computers every thing had to be done by hand and double checked. Waiting for the drawings took an extra month.
Karen Green, my personal assistant, actually her title was secretary to several project managers but she took really good care of us so personal assistant is a good fit for her, made the arrangements. I would fly from Houston to Dallas, Dallas to San Francisco, San Francisco to Sidney, Sidney to Melbourne, Melbourne to Singapore, Singapore to Kuching, Kuching to Bandar Seri Begawan. In all, about thirty eight hours with layovers in every city except Dallas.
Karen apologized several times for the flight arrangements. Leaving at 10:00am on Monday arriving in Bandar Seri Begawan at 6:00pm on Tuesday, Houston time. In reality it was 2:00pm on Wednesday Borneo time. Needless to say this was one of those jobs I would be missing a lot of those Monday morning meetings that required project managers to be in.
Meeting me at the airport was John Calvin Williams, Luther Borgeston was my superintendent on this project but John Calvin would get it started so Luther could take a well deserved vacation. He looked like a good Texan in most peoples mind, six foot two, slim, wore cowboy boots that made him taller and a cowboy hat when he was not in his hard hat and always in need of a shave even an hour after he shaved. When those hard hats came out shaped like cowboy hats in the ninety's, I always imagined him in one.
John Calvin was borrowed from a project in Kuwait, he and his wife had arrived in country two days before me. While driving up the coast to Maura Town I noticed how dense the forest was in mangroves and nipah palms. It was beautiful. As usual in the rain forest, no mammals are visible except for an occasional squirrel scurrying along a low branch and quick flashes of birds.
The sounds of unseen creatures surrounded us as we drove. I found out over my off and on three month stay, the Bornean rain forest is rarely silent. The forest sounds seem random at first, however, the background drone is an incessant almost irritating whine of cicadas set against the endless "ttok-took-tarook-took-took" up high in the canopy. Punctuating the bird songs are mysterious grunts, roars and barks: monkeys, orangutan, barking deer?
I'll describe the job and the girls of Borneo in future blogs.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Whitaker boys
A.J. Whitaker died this past Saturday. His visitation is this evening. His brother Carl died two months ago, I made it to his visitation too. Carl and A.J. Whitaker, one was a character one was a man of character. I met both after returning to Cincinnati. Both were working for Sam Minnielli General Contracting at the time and both had worked for Bill Minnielli before that..
It was difficult time finding a job. The larger companies were afraid to hired me. I can still hear John Marks, Vice President of Dugan and Meyers, say "if Iwas to hire you and spend time and money on you how do I know if your old company called with a project in the Bahamas that you wouldn't be off." My only defense was, I am home to stay.
So when I ran into Sam Minnielli and he told me about his small utility company, he hired me. I did have experience in dirt but very, and I mean very little in pipe. Lets face it, with the experience I had I wouldn't have hired me for a utility company. Most of my experience was building buildings.
On the first morning at Sam Minnielli General Contracting is when I met Carl and A.J. A.J. was a dirt foreman, a scraper man. Carl was a dozer operator, a finish grade dozer man. I forget now which one complained about the other making the same amount as he, Sam's solution was to pay one two cents more an hour than the other one.
A.J. was the character. He talked all the time mainly about him. He worked hard and played hard, it showed on his face. We were doing a sub-division for John Sansalone, the clearing was piled in a row so we could dig a hole and bury it at the back of the lots. The fire department called me about six in the evening and said our wood pile had caught fire. They, the fire department, speculated that kids smoking had caused the blaze. They were there and would let it burn out. The next day A.J. fessed up that he bought some gas and started the fire then left the site. I was furious, nothing I could do though. This was A.J., he would rather do something on the shady side than do it the right way. You could not help but like him, just don't trust him.
Carl was just the opposite. He talked very little. When he did talk it usually meant something. He did have a sense of humor. I can remember one time I saw him grading a street in the same John Sansalone subdivision off North Bend Road. John's brother, Tom, laid out the street and Carl had questions about the grading.
I was on site sometime after Tom left. “Hee, hee, hee,” thats how he laughed. “The smartest man in Hamilton County told me to grade this street by his stakes, look at them if I grade it that way it won't drain to the catch basins.” He preceded to tell me how Tom Sansalone told him he was the smartest man in Hamilton County. “Just look. Hee ,hee, hee, it won't drain, hee, hee, hee. The smartest man in Hamilton County told me to grade that way, hee, hee, hee.” He fixed Sansalone's mistake and no ever knew but him and me. This was Carl, he took pride in what he did and always wanted it to be right.
They are both gone now, I am a little sad. Two characters in their own way. Mike Whitaker summed it up best, A.J. lived to be seventy seven, in Whitaker years thats a long time. Even though Carl died two months earlier, he had a longer life.
It was difficult time finding a job. The larger companies were afraid to hired me. I can still hear John Marks, Vice President of Dugan and Meyers, say "if Iwas to hire you and spend time and money on you how do I know if your old company called with a project in the Bahamas that you wouldn't be off." My only defense was, I am home to stay.
So when I ran into Sam Minnielli and he told me about his small utility company, he hired me. I did have experience in dirt but very, and I mean very little in pipe. Lets face it, with the experience I had I wouldn't have hired me for a utility company. Most of my experience was building buildings.
On the first morning at Sam Minnielli General Contracting is when I met Carl and A.J. A.J. was a dirt foreman, a scraper man. Carl was a dozer operator, a finish grade dozer man. I forget now which one complained about the other making the same amount as he, Sam's solution was to pay one two cents more an hour than the other one.
A.J. was the character. He talked all the time mainly about him. He worked hard and played hard, it showed on his face. We were doing a sub-division for John Sansalone, the clearing was piled in a row so we could dig a hole and bury it at the back of the lots. The fire department called me about six in the evening and said our wood pile had caught fire. They, the fire department, speculated that kids smoking had caused the blaze. They were there and would let it burn out. The next day A.J. fessed up that he bought some gas and started the fire then left the site. I was furious, nothing I could do though. This was A.J., he would rather do something on the shady side than do it the right way. You could not help but like him, just don't trust him.
Carl was just the opposite. He talked very little. When he did talk it usually meant something. He did have a sense of humor. I can remember one time I saw him grading a street in the same John Sansalone subdivision off North Bend Road. John's brother, Tom, laid out the street and Carl had questions about the grading.
I was on site sometime after Tom left. “Hee, hee, hee,” thats how he laughed. “The smartest man in Hamilton County told me to grade this street by his stakes, look at them if I grade it that way it won't drain to the catch basins.” He preceded to tell me how Tom Sansalone told him he was the smartest man in Hamilton County. “Just look. Hee ,hee, hee, it won't drain, hee, hee, hee. The smartest man in Hamilton County told me to grade that way, hee, hee, hee.” He fixed Sansalone's mistake and no ever knew but him and me. This was Carl, he took pride in what he did and always wanted it to be right.
They are both gone now, I am a little sad. Two characters in their own way. Mike Whitaker summed it up best, A.J. lived to be seventy seven, in Whitaker years thats a long time. Even though Carl died two months earlier, he had a longer life.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Experiment
In the course of my job I've experimented on several different things, the most being fly ash. I've experimented using corn syrup in class “C” fly ash, I've experimented in making light weight aggregate with fly ash, I've experimented with spent bed material. One of the most interesting happened on an fly ash land fill but not with fly ash.
My wife says that I am walking source of useless information. She's right, but don't tell her that. You do don't want to play against me in Trivial Pursuit. This time I was in New Johnsonville, Tennessee at a TVA plant. Only at TVA would they put a fly ash pond in the middle of the Tennessee River. That's exactly where it's at, you have to take a bridge to get to it.
For years TVA has been stacking fly ash from this pond under high voltage utility lines. These are the ones made out of steel three to four hundred feet high. TVA had been stacking so long that the we were approximately one hundred feet below the lines plus or minus.
One morning I was talking to Dave Schneider, our surveyor, out on this fill when he got shocked getting into my SUV. It hit me, I remembered a made for TV movie I had seen with Ralph Waite for 'The Walton's' fame. In this movie he played a father of a high school girl who was protesting the construction of high voltage wires over their farming community.
Her high school science teacher filmed her holding up a neon light bulb, like you probably have in your basement or shop, you know about four feet long with two metal points coming out of each end. The type of light that is in every public building. Well this girl walked in under these wires that was several hundred feet above her and held up bulb with nothing attached to it, just held up a bare bulb with her right hand and it lit up. There was enough electricity in the air to light this bulb.
I told Dave that if he held up a neon light it would light up and his response was BS. No, I told him I had seen it done, I didn't tell him I had seen it on TV. He laughed and dared me to try it. So the challenge was on.
The motel we were staying at used neon lights in the bathroom so I borrowed one. I got to the job site around six thirty, still dark. I knew I was going to win this dare because there was a slight glow inside my SUV when I drove up on the fill. I covered the bulb with a towel and waited for Dave and his co-op to get come in.
Guess what, my mind with useless information stored in it paid off. When Dave held up the bulb and it was shinning almost as bright as it did in my bathroom I won the dare.
I will talk about New Johnsonville and TVA in future blogs.
My wife says that I am walking source of useless information. She's right, but don't tell her that. You do don't want to play against me in Trivial Pursuit. This time I was in New Johnsonville, Tennessee at a TVA plant. Only at TVA would they put a fly ash pond in the middle of the Tennessee River. That's exactly where it's at, you have to take a bridge to get to it.
For years TVA has been stacking fly ash from this pond under high voltage utility lines. These are the ones made out of steel three to four hundred feet high. TVA had been stacking so long that the we were approximately one hundred feet below the lines plus or minus.
One morning I was talking to Dave Schneider, our surveyor, out on this fill when he got shocked getting into my SUV. It hit me, I remembered a made for TV movie I had seen with Ralph Waite for 'The Walton's' fame. In this movie he played a father of a high school girl who was protesting the construction of high voltage wires over their farming community.
Her high school science teacher filmed her holding up a neon light bulb, like you probably have in your basement or shop, you know about four feet long with two metal points coming out of each end. The type of light that is in every public building. Well this girl walked in under these wires that was several hundred feet above her and held up bulb with nothing attached to it, just held up a bare bulb with her right hand and it lit up. There was enough electricity in the air to light this bulb.
I told Dave that if he held up a neon light it would light up and his response was BS. No, I told him I had seen it done, I didn't tell him I had seen it on TV. He laughed and dared me to try it. So the challenge was on.
The motel we were staying at used neon lights in the bathroom so I borrowed one. I got to the job site around six thirty, still dark. I knew I was going to win this dare because there was a slight glow inside my SUV when I drove up on the fill. I covered the bulb with a towel and waited for Dave and his co-op to get come in.
Guess what, my mind with useless information stored in it paid off. When Dave held up the bulb and it was shinning almost as bright as it did in my bathroom I won the dare.
I will talk about New Johnsonville and TVA in future blogs.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Splash Mountain
It happened one night, it sounds like a movie from the thirties with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. If this was a movie then I would be Clark Gable and the woman would be the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney world. In an earlier blog I told you how I got to Slash Mountain and how we worked around the clock. What I didn't tell you is what happened the first time I worked twenty eight straight hours. Back to 'it happened one night.'
I got to the field office about five thirty in the morning as I always did. Phil Burton and Pete Martin were starting their second pot of coffee getting their game plan ready for the day. Phil wanted me to spend some time on another project, the convention center at the Grand Floridian. It was crucial that he be at Splash all day and may not be able to cover the convention center. I would cover for him.
It was about an hour before sunrise when I grabbed my flashlight and walked around the reservoir, even with the light stands you had to look out where you were walking. All light was directed to the hole. Over night they had excavated to the upper sub grade. The sheeting subcontractor would make the final repairs on the east side today, then we could excavate the lower sub grade.
Around seven that morning I drove over to the convention center. The sun was just rising, men were coming in, the foreman asked me to take a couple of shots with the instrument on some landscaping mounds. At Disney you were not done until Buena Vista Construction came in to do the landscaping. We agreed he had some grading on one of the mounds the other was right on the money.
Before I left I told the foreman to call me instead of Phil today. He was competent and knew his men I knew I didn't have anything to worry about, but I would check in a couple of times anyway.
I got to the Orlando office on Contractors Row at Walt Disney World a little after eight that morning. It was on Disney property but outside the area where you needed a vehicle pass to go so the public could get into Contractors Row. Contractors from all over the United States were here, the best of the best. Our office was once owned by Dugan & Meyers out of Cincinnati, their name was still on the trailer. When they ran into some bad financial times we took trailer over and their spot. Next to us on one side was Centex-Rooney a large contractor from Ft. Lauderdale that had offices all over the United States. On the other side was Big Bob's Miscellaneous Metals, ran by Bob and his wife.
Steve Monahan and his wife Barb worked for Dugan & Meyers, when they cut back Steve, Barb, Bob Inkrot and Dave Schneider all came to work for us at Gerbus Brothers. Steve became our Florida Manager with Barb becoming the office manager, Bob went to our estimating department under Doug Sterit, Dave went to surveying and layout at the TransAsh division. They all went back to Dugan & Meyers after times got better.
Enough for now on Splash Mountain, I'll go further in detail in the “It happen one night” blog.
I got to the field office about five thirty in the morning as I always did. Phil Burton and Pete Martin were starting their second pot of coffee getting their game plan ready for the day. Phil wanted me to spend some time on another project, the convention center at the Grand Floridian. It was crucial that he be at Splash all day and may not be able to cover the convention center. I would cover for him.
It was about an hour before sunrise when I grabbed my flashlight and walked around the reservoir, even with the light stands you had to look out where you were walking. All light was directed to the hole. Over night they had excavated to the upper sub grade. The sheeting subcontractor would make the final repairs on the east side today, then we could excavate the lower sub grade.
Around seven that morning I drove over to the convention center. The sun was just rising, men were coming in, the foreman asked me to take a couple of shots with the instrument on some landscaping mounds. At Disney you were not done until Buena Vista Construction came in to do the landscaping. We agreed he had some grading on one of the mounds the other was right on the money.
Before I left I told the foreman to call me instead of Phil today. He was competent and knew his men I knew I didn't have anything to worry about, but I would check in a couple of times anyway.
I got to the Orlando office on Contractors Row at Walt Disney World a little after eight that morning. It was on Disney property but outside the area where you needed a vehicle pass to go so the public could get into Contractors Row. Contractors from all over the United States were here, the best of the best. Our office was once owned by Dugan & Meyers out of Cincinnati, their name was still on the trailer. When they ran into some bad financial times we took trailer over and their spot. Next to us on one side was Centex-Rooney a large contractor from Ft. Lauderdale that had offices all over the United States. On the other side was Big Bob's Miscellaneous Metals, ran by Bob and his wife.
Steve Monahan and his wife Barb worked for Dugan & Meyers, when they cut back Steve, Barb, Bob Inkrot and Dave Schneider all came to work for us at Gerbus Brothers. Steve became our Florida Manager with Barb becoming the office manager, Bob went to our estimating department under Doug Sterit, Dave went to surveying and layout at the TransAsh division. They all went back to Dugan & Meyers after times got better.
Enough for now on Splash Mountain, I'll go further in detail in the “It happen one night” blog.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Luther Borgeston
Have you ever been in a stupid moment? Or have you ever felt like you fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down? As Bill Engvall would say “here's your sign.” Today is the anniversary of my stupidest thing I ever done. I know because Luther Borgeston told me so.
Luther was one of my top three favorite superintendents of all time. He was on the General Electrics plane out of Iran, the last American plane to fly out of Tehran during the revolution in 1977. I was lucky enough to have him on his first project in the United States in seventeen years. He and his wife Martha lived in Iran the entire time.
Luther sent Martha back to the states the day after the Shah left the Iran for Egypt. When the Shah was admitted into the United States he knew all hell would break out. His final job was to disable all the heavy equipment we had on his projects. Luther passed his experiences on and taught me how to deal with muslims which have been proven to work.
Luther told the story of how he was seated on the floor outside the cock pit when he heard the co-pilot ask the pilot about the point of no return. This is on all the flight reports, it's the point where the pilot can turn around and fly back to the airport he took off from, usually it's the halfway point. On this particular flight the pilot replied that it was at the end of the runway, if they could take off with the weight they were carrying (over one hundred people were sitting on the floors of this 747) they won't be returning.
One Monday morning, Luther came in to my office raving about a movie Martha and he saw over the weekend. He told me that I had to see it on the big screen, not at a metroplex with multi screens, but on the really big screen. With all the action, this is where you have to see it. So the next weekend I went with Luther and Martha to see the movie. The movie was “Raiders of the Lost Arc.”
One other time he came in and wanted me to go with Martha and him to New Braunfels for Oktoberfest. New Braunsfels was settled in the 1880's by German immigrants outside San Antonio in the Texas Hill Country. Coming from Cincinnati, I was used to German Beer so the beer wasn't what impressed me about this trip, it was the food. The German food was terrific. I brought home enough strudel to last me a month.
I not only learned my job by being around Luther, I gained true friends with him and his wife. They both have since pasted on, I was pall barer at both funerals. They never had any kids, a nephew took care of the arrangements. Luther had an address book that had over eighteen hundred names and phone numbers in it, this nephew called everyone in the book. The funeral home was packed for the entire time it was open to the public. The church was standing room only. They touched a lot of lives.
This time of year, I think of Luther and how he stuck with me that night outside of Caracas. If he hadn't been with me I might not be here today. More about my stupidity and the situation later.
Luther was one of my top three favorite superintendents of all time. He was on the General Electrics plane out of Iran, the last American plane to fly out of Tehran during the revolution in 1977. I was lucky enough to have him on his first project in the United States in seventeen years. He and his wife Martha lived in Iran the entire time.
Luther sent Martha back to the states the day after the Shah left the Iran for Egypt. When the Shah was admitted into the United States he knew all hell would break out. His final job was to disable all the heavy equipment we had on his projects. Luther passed his experiences on and taught me how to deal with muslims which have been proven to work.
Luther told the story of how he was seated on the floor outside the cock pit when he heard the co-pilot ask the pilot about the point of no return. This is on all the flight reports, it's the point where the pilot can turn around and fly back to the airport he took off from, usually it's the halfway point. On this particular flight the pilot replied that it was at the end of the runway, if they could take off with the weight they were carrying (over one hundred people were sitting on the floors of this 747) they won't be returning.
One Monday morning, Luther came in to my office raving about a movie Martha and he saw over the weekend. He told me that I had to see it on the big screen, not at a metroplex with multi screens, but on the really big screen. With all the action, this is where you have to see it. So the next weekend I went with Luther and Martha to see the movie. The movie was “Raiders of the Lost Arc.”
One other time he came in and wanted me to go with Martha and him to New Braunfels for Oktoberfest. New Braunsfels was settled in the 1880's by German immigrants outside San Antonio in the Texas Hill Country. Coming from Cincinnati, I was used to German Beer so the beer wasn't what impressed me about this trip, it was the food. The German food was terrific. I brought home enough strudel to last me a month.
I not only learned my job by being around Luther, I gained true friends with him and his wife. They both have since pasted on, I was pall barer at both funerals. They never had any kids, a nephew took care of the arrangements. Luther had an address book that had over eighteen hundred names and phone numbers in it, this nephew called everyone in the book. The funeral home was packed for the entire time it was open to the public. The church was standing room only. They touched a lot of lives.
This time of year, I think of Luther and how he stuck with me that night outside of Caracas. If he hadn't been with me I might not be here today. More about my stupidity and the situation later.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The Blizzard of 1978
As I woke up to snow this morning I was reminded of the blizzard of 1978. Of course the weather this morning isn't even close to that day, but after surviving my first blizzard, every time I wake up to snow I think of that day.
The radio on Wednesday before the blizzard was talking all day about the weather change and the snow that we were to expect. Being from Cincinnati, I knew it could change and apparently the architect for Mulberry Church of Christ which bid on Thursday was thinking like me. When I called him about four in the afternoon on Wednesday the bid was still due at one the next day. The church was a million dollar bid, and with a tremendous amount of mill work.
By the time I left to go home I had the bid under control with all categories covered. Arnold Beck, the company I worked for, would do the concrete and carpentry. We probably had fifteen to twenty subcontractors and that many material suppliers. Usually we tried to have three or more prices in each category, on this bid when I left to go home I had at least one bid in each.
That night I met my good buddy Doc for dinner and I pitched a proposal to a group of investors for a farm I was looking to buy. It was seventy degrees when we left the bar. We laughed about the blizzard and thinking it had missed us. How can we have a blizzard by morning when it was seventy at one o'clock?
Well about three o'clock the wind woke me up and it was snowing. When I got up around six we had about a foot of snow with an inch or two of ice underneath and the wind was still blowing. All I could think of was my bid being due at one. My transportation at the time was a Firebird Formula, a sports car.
That morning the only people on the road was salt trucks, four wheel drives, and me. Making it to the office by nine, I was the only one there. Calling the architects office every fifteen to twenty minutes and no one answering was frustrating, I made it in, where was he? And is my bid still due at one?
Mel Wahlert picked Barry Carney up in his Bronco and came on in around ten o'clock. They were surprised to see me. The architect finally answered his phone around eleven o'clock and postponed the bid for twenty four hours. So I had to go through this all again tomorrow.
The next day, before I left home, all the counties declared a snow emergency and the only vehicles allowed on the road were four wheel drives. My little sports car made it in again. This time the architect did not answer his phone so I no choice but to delivered my bid to his office on Mt. Lookout Square at one only to find out it was closed. Now I'm mad, he knew yesterday that I was ready and he postponed it twenty four hours when he could have told me to have it ready on Monday.
My sports car had trouble in two spots in those two days of travel. One a lady spun out on I-275 in front of me and I momentarily lost control. The other was stopping on a slight grade on the ramp to Colerain Avenue. The first one I got out and pushed the lady back on the highway and the second I made it up by gunning my engine and moving a few feet at a time until I made it into the intersection.
It was satisfying to know I worked those two days when others gave up. The architect probably felt sorry for making me come in, we did get the job. This experience made me start looking for a job in warm weather.
The radio on Wednesday before the blizzard was talking all day about the weather change and the snow that we were to expect. Being from Cincinnati, I knew it could change and apparently the architect for Mulberry Church of Christ which bid on Thursday was thinking like me. When I called him about four in the afternoon on Wednesday the bid was still due at one the next day. The church was a million dollar bid, and with a tremendous amount of mill work.
By the time I left to go home I had the bid under control with all categories covered. Arnold Beck, the company I worked for, would do the concrete and carpentry. We probably had fifteen to twenty subcontractors and that many material suppliers. Usually we tried to have three or more prices in each category, on this bid when I left to go home I had at least one bid in each.
That night I met my good buddy Doc for dinner and I pitched a proposal to a group of investors for a farm I was looking to buy. It was seventy degrees when we left the bar. We laughed about the blizzard and thinking it had missed us. How can we have a blizzard by morning when it was seventy at one o'clock?
Well about three o'clock the wind woke me up and it was snowing. When I got up around six we had about a foot of snow with an inch or two of ice underneath and the wind was still blowing. All I could think of was my bid being due at one. My transportation at the time was a Firebird Formula, a sports car.
That morning the only people on the road was salt trucks, four wheel drives, and me. Making it to the office by nine, I was the only one there. Calling the architects office every fifteen to twenty minutes and no one answering was frustrating, I made it in, where was he? And is my bid still due at one?
Mel Wahlert picked Barry Carney up in his Bronco and came on in around ten o'clock. They were surprised to see me. The architect finally answered his phone around eleven o'clock and postponed the bid for twenty four hours. So I had to go through this all again tomorrow.
The next day, before I left home, all the counties declared a snow emergency and the only vehicles allowed on the road were four wheel drives. My little sports car made it in again. This time the architect did not answer his phone so I no choice but to delivered my bid to his office on Mt. Lookout Square at one only to find out it was closed. Now I'm mad, he knew yesterday that I was ready and he postponed it twenty four hours when he could have told me to have it ready on Monday.
My sports car had trouble in two spots in those two days of travel. One a lady spun out on I-275 in front of me and I momentarily lost control. The other was stopping on a slight grade on the ramp to Colerain Avenue. The first one I got out and pushed the lady back on the highway and the second I made it up by gunning my engine and moving a few feet at a time until I made it into the intersection.
It was satisfying to know I worked those two days when others gave up. The architect probably felt sorry for making me come in, we did get the job. This experience made me start looking for a job in warm weather.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Ice and Cold Weather
Have you ever been so cold that you had to look down to see if you had your pants on? The coldest I've ever been was the morning I left Hanna, Alberta at three in the morning. Even when the Bengals played at 53 below I don't think I was as cold as that morning. Driving the two hours to make an early morning flight out of Calgary on Delta, it was so cold that when I hit fog I would have to stop and scrape the inside of my windows. How cold was it? It was forty below, if you ask Celsius or Fahrenheit then you can do the equation and find that it is exactly the same in either. Bottom line, at forty below it is cold.
The worst ice was the January of 1994. It started snowing the day after Christmas, on New Years day it rained. All the melted snow and the rained combined into ice when the temperature dropped after dark. For the next week it snowed a little each day. I had to dig myself out each morning then slip and slide until I got off the side streets. Every time it got above freezing it rained and added to the ice then came the deep freeze. With a couple inches of ice and a foot of snow Cincinnati was in trouble, Kentucky was worse. In Ohio you could get around, Kentucky shut down, the only roads open was to the airport.
With projects like Plant Daniels in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Shawnee Plant for TVA in Paducah, Kentucky, I was shut off from visiting these projects. I wasn't too worried about Widows Creek in Stevenson, Alabama but some way I had to get to Plant Daniels.
The project was a new silo area and a mile roadway through a wet lands utilizing fly ash from a pond to make the fills. Being at a critical spot in the job, I thought it better for me to be there. Not only to help with decisions but it was a great learning experience. Plus we were in the middle of negotiating a five year deal to manage the fly ash disposal.
By now it had not been above zero at any time of the day for five or six days. Bob Inkrot and I was to fly to Pascagola in TransAsh's twin engine Cessna, along the way we were to stop off in Marietta, Georgia and pick up TransAsh's director of marketing, Mike Hammons. Even though the plane was hangared in Blue Ash we were going to fly out of Lunken because the plane could not take off with a full load of fuel to make it to Marietta. I could have flown out of Blue Ash but I chose meet it at Lunken with Bob and a good thing that I did. While taking off it slid off the runway and crashed. This may be the closest I've ever come to being in a plane crash.
Any way I was got on a commercial flight to Mobile that afternoon. Now you have to remember that Kentucky is shut down except for the roads to the airport. While driving there I was thinking that how unsure I was about getting home Friday night. If I got back to Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Airport could I get home because of the roads? Would my car even start in sub zero weather after being out side and not being started for three days?
I never thought of those things again until the flight back because I was in seventy degree weather for those three days.
The worst ice was the January of 1994. It started snowing the day after Christmas, on New Years day it rained. All the melted snow and the rained combined into ice when the temperature dropped after dark. For the next week it snowed a little each day. I had to dig myself out each morning then slip and slide until I got off the side streets. Every time it got above freezing it rained and added to the ice then came the deep freeze. With a couple inches of ice and a foot of snow Cincinnati was in trouble, Kentucky was worse. In Ohio you could get around, Kentucky shut down, the only roads open was to the airport.
With projects like Plant Daniels in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Shawnee Plant for TVA in Paducah, Kentucky, I was shut off from visiting these projects. I wasn't too worried about Widows Creek in Stevenson, Alabama but some way I had to get to Plant Daniels.
The project was a new silo area and a mile roadway through a wet lands utilizing fly ash from a pond to make the fills. Being at a critical spot in the job, I thought it better for me to be there. Not only to help with decisions but it was a great learning experience. Plus we were in the middle of negotiating a five year deal to manage the fly ash disposal.
By now it had not been above zero at any time of the day for five or six days. Bob Inkrot and I was to fly to Pascagola in TransAsh's twin engine Cessna, along the way we were to stop off in Marietta, Georgia and pick up TransAsh's director of marketing, Mike Hammons. Even though the plane was hangared in Blue Ash we were going to fly out of Lunken because the plane could not take off with a full load of fuel to make it to Marietta. I could have flown out of Blue Ash but I chose meet it at Lunken with Bob and a good thing that I did. While taking off it slid off the runway and crashed. This may be the closest I've ever come to being in a plane crash.
Any way I was got on a commercial flight to Mobile that afternoon. Now you have to remember that Kentucky is shut down except for the roads to the airport. While driving there I was thinking that how unsure I was about getting home Friday night. If I got back to Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Airport could I get home because of the roads? Would my car even start in sub zero weather after being out side and not being started for three days?
I never thought of those things again until the flight back because I was in seventy degree weather for those three days.
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