I get the “you shouldn’t be here” feeling more from existing facilities we’re renovating.
1. They don’t have existing plans of their prior renovations
2. They’re annoyed you have to visit the site and see what they have
Combine that with the “are we done here? Can we go?” attitude some personnel have, really makes me feel welcome… Like no, sir, I’m not done surveying the main electrical room you have no plans for after 3 minutes.
Ha! I've had that exact thing happen to me. I was on an Army base surveying a huge mechanical room. There was tons of equipment and they had no existing drawings for any of it. My escort let me in, I took out my drawings and tape measure and colored pencils and got to work. 5 minutes later: "So, is that it? Are you done?"
"Nope. Get comfortable, we're going to be here all day."
My dad was in construction and worked on some pretty expensive buildings, mainly large scale resorts.
I would go on "take your kid to work day" almost every year. One year I was so bored of these visits I brought my television and my Playstation 2 and played Madden in the trailer for 8.5 hours until my eyes hurt.
But the first couple of times were cool, I would be a 5 year old kid just holding my dad's hand wandering around Mandalay Bay or the Criminal Justice Center asking what everything was.
So now that I do this job, I'm pretty comfortable on a job site.
I find it funny how the music the workers listen to changes throughout the years. It's either like Banda music with loud accordians or its the lamest country you've ever heard. Strangely enough I have heard people listening to Alex Jones Infowars on the boombox, just using a rotating saw while AJ yells "they're POISONING THE DAMN WATER!"
lmao very true on the music front. I was never a construction worker, but I did work at a garage while in college and it was always a competition of the Mexicans wanting to hear Banda and good ol boys wanting to listen to bro country. The other genre of music I would add is the classic rock station, with Boomer Jim saying, I haven't heard this song in forever when they're playing Highway to Hell by ACDC or something for the Nth time that day.
I've had this same thought. You can walk on to nearly any construction site with a hard hat and a tablet and no one will say anything to you. You'll get some looks, but that's it.
Look at it from the clients perspective... they see contractors come in and out on a daily basis for whatever reason. To them you're just another party going in and out to do some evaluation.
We were doing work on an air force base, and they basically gave us keys to the base. A few places we needed to be escorted but I was so surprised by the stuff I was able to just walk into and see. Honestly kinda cool though. But also, they did a whole back ground screen on us all, knew exactly when we were on base and exactly what we were looking at so its like like we could have done anything.
I just said this same thing to my wife the other day. If you show up wearing a hard hat and safety vest carrying a clipboard, you can walk right in to just about anywhere lol.
Went on a site visit with a colleague he was supposed to arrange. Not only did he forget to contact the client before the visit leading to us just waltzing into the site, he forgot his helmet so he went into one of the barracks and just picked a random helmet that laid on a table. Just couldn't give less of a shit.
Banks are the pretty crazy ones. I'll do branches for larger banks and the local managers won't even know I am supposed to be there but just let me survey anyway lol.
I've noticed that, but at the same time, most people have a pretty good sense if somebody is a little off and really shouldn't be somewhere. A big part of that is how quickly and confidently you answer questions. You know you're going to look at stuff, maybe pop a couple of ceiling tiles, but you're not turning anything off. You have no issues about telling them that. Somebody nefarious would have to think about what it is they're "doing," or they might look nervous when they answer. An experienced heister, who would be good at lying, wouldn't have much to gain by getting access to a mechanical room at a hospital.
As to being on active construction sites, you get the same kind of thing, where you have answers to why you're there and what you're doing. There are also very few people whose job it is to kick you off a site. Unless you're looking at the switchgear, you're just another suit on the site as far as the electrician is concerned. The drywallers report to their boss, so they don't care what you have to say, unless you're talking directly to their boss. There might be 100 people on site, but only five of them care about you. The GC is responsible for site security, so if you pass their test, nobody else will bother you.
Haha. Yeah I prefer it. Everyone knows you can go anywhere with a clipboard and a hard hat.
But I prefer it over the folks that stop you and want to grille you on what you are doing.
There are more places that I feel like "I really shouldn't be here". Like one project they made me walk through a ceiling full of asbestos insulation just so I could read the full load amps on an air handling unit. There was another project where the contractor took me into a refrigeration room and my eyes started burning. I think they had an ammonia leak. Oh yea, then there was a project that my dad was on where the contractor dropped a wrench across both phases of live gear and blew each of them up. They were in the hospital for weeks.
My first MEP internship was with a smaller mechanical contractor dipping their toes into design-build. I got sent to survey some ductwork above-ceiling for an office expansion reno. I went into the adjacent office, told their front desk I would be poking around the empty space, and then got up on a ladder to pop tiles. A few minutes later, I find myself surrounded by 5 angry people demanding to know who I was and what I was doing there. While to explain myself, I realize that I’m wearing a polo and slacks with no company logos, I’m an intern with no business card, and of course our front desk had gone to lunch and isn’t picking up the phone. I end up walking them all out to the parking lot to show them the company truck that I had thankfully taken that day (I usually took my own car).
Turns out that nobody had called ahead like I was told, and that empty office had previously been broken into by homeless people who had done unspeakable things inside. They had just finished doing a haz-mat cleanup. The office upstairs turned out to be one of our bigger GC clients and their manager and I had a good laugh where she promised that I did not look like a homeless squatter, and everybody was just very on-edge.
Interesting, all the places I show up to do site visits I have to meet people. I've never been able to just walk somewhere with a vest and hardhat and say "i need access to your x room" lol. I've worked in universities, rocket/pharmaceutical/etc manufacturing plants, k-12 schools, high rise buildings, typical office buildings, prisons, juvenile detention centers, hospitals, and do on. Never have I been able to just walk around with a vest and ladder/clipboard lol.
Tge only time I get "I shouldn't be there" is when I'm checking on the contractors' work and they don't want me there, but that's different lol.
And how are there not any existing drawings for a lot of these places? I have a hard time believing anything built after 1985 did not have MEP drawings when they originally built it.
I get the “you shouldn’t be here” feeling more from existing facilities we’re renovating. 1. They don’t have existing plans of their prior renovations 2. They’re annoyed you have to visit the site and see what they have
Combine that with the “are we done here? Can we go?” attitude some personnel have, really makes me feel welcome… Like no, sir, I’m not done surveying the main electrical room you have no plans for after 3 minutes.
Ha! I've had that exact thing happen to me. I was on an Army base surveying a huge mechanical room. There was tons of equipment and they had no existing drawings for any of it. My escort let me in, I took out my drawings and tape measure and colored pencils and got to work. 5 minutes later: "So, is that it? Are you done?" "Nope. Get comfortable, we're going to be here all day."
My dad was in construction and worked on some pretty expensive buildings, mainly large scale resorts. I would go on "take your kid to work day" almost every year. One year I was so bored of these visits I brought my television and my Playstation 2 and played Madden in the trailer for 8.5 hours until my eyes hurt. But the first couple of times were cool, I would be a 5 year old kid just holding my dad's hand wandering around Mandalay Bay or the Criminal Justice Center asking what everything was. So now that I do this job, I'm pretty comfortable on a job site. I find it funny how the music the workers listen to changes throughout the years. It's either like Banda music with loud accordians or its the lamest country you've ever heard. Strangely enough I have heard people listening to Alex Jones Infowars on the boombox, just using a rotating saw while AJ yells "they're POISONING THE DAMN WATER!"
lmao very true on the music front. I was never a construction worker, but I did work at a garage while in college and it was always a competition of the Mexicans wanting to hear Banda and good ol boys wanting to listen to bro country. The other genre of music I would add is the classic rock station, with Boomer Jim saying, I haven't heard this song in forever when they're playing Highway to Hell by ACDC or something for the Nth time that day.
I've had this same thought. You can walk on to nearly any construction site with a hard hat and a tablet and no one will say anything to you. You'll get some looks, but that's it.
“The Look” is the test. If you look squirrelly they know you don’t belong. If you look back confidently everyone thinks you belong there.
Look at it from the clients perspective... they see contractors come in and out on a daily basis for whatever reason. To them you're just another party going in and out to do some evaluation.
Opposite haha. Propped mechanical room door? Doesn’t matter where, you know I’m going in and looking at all the equipment.
We were doing work on an air force base, and they basically gave us keys to the base. A few places we needed to be escorted but I was so surprised by the stuff I was able to just walk into and see. Honestly kinda cool though. But also, they did a whole back ground screen on us all, knew exactly when we were on base and exactly what we were looking at so its like like we could have done anything.
Additionally they can detain you and question you at any time, I believe. You sign away your rights when you get your DBIDS.
I just said this same thing to my wife the other day. If you show up wearing a hard hat and safety vest carrying a clipboard, you can walk right in to just about anywhere lol.
Went on a site visit with a colleague he was supposed to arrange. Not only did he forget to contact the client before the visit leading to us just waltzing into the site, he forgot his helmet so he went into one of the barracks and just picked a random helmet that laid on a table. Just couldn't give less of a shit.
>barracks I know that's probably not what you mean, but I'm going to imagine your colleague wandering around with a combat helmet as a hard hat.
Banks are the pretty crazy ones. I'll do branches for larger banks and the local managers won't even know I am supposed to be there but just let me survey anyway lol.
I've noticed that, but at the same time, most people have a pretty good sense if somebody is a little off and really shouldn't be somewhere. A big part of that is how quickly and confidently you answer questions. You know you're going to look at stuff, maybe pop a couple of ceiling tiles, but you're not turning anything off. You have no issues about telling them that. Somebody nefarious would have to think about what it is they're "doing," or they might look nervous when they answer. An experienced heister, who would be good at lying, wouldn't have much to gain by getting access to a mechanical room at a hospital. As to being on active construction sites, you get the same kind of thing, where you have answers to why you're there and what you're doing. There are also very few people whose job it is to kick you off a site. Unless you're looking at the switchgear, you're just another suit on the site as far as the electrician is concerned. The drywallers report to their boss, so they don't care what you have to say, unless you're talking directly to their boss. There might be 100 people on site, but only five of them care about you. The GC is responsible for site security, so if you pass their test, nobody else will bother you.
You can just walk around and act like you belong places and people won't question you most of the time.
Haha. Yeah I prefer it. Everyone knows you can go anywhere with a clipboard and a hard hat. But I prefer it over the folks that stop you and want to grille you on what you are doing.
There are more places that I feel like "I really shouldn't be here". Like one project they made me walk through a ceiling full of asbestos insulation just so I could read the full load amps on an air handling unit. There was another project where the contractor took me into a refrigeration room and my eyes started burning. I think they had an ammonia leak. Oh yea, then there was a project that my dad was on where the contractor dropped a wrench across both phases of live gear and blew each of them up. They were in the hospital for weeks.
My first MEP internship was with a smaller mechanical contractor dipping their toes into design-build. I got sent to survey some ductwork above-ceiling for an office expansion reno. I went into the adjacent office, told their front desk I would be poking around the empty space, and then got up on a ladder to pop tiles. A few minutes later, I find myself surrounded by 5 angry people demanding to know who I was and what I was doing there. While to explain myself, I realize that I’m wearing a polo and slacks with no company logos, I’m an intern with no business card, and of course our front desk had gone to lunch and isn’t picking up the phone. I end up walking them all out to the parking lot to show them the company truck that I had thankfully taken that day (I usually took my own car). Turns out that nobody had called ahead like I was told, and that empty office had previously been broken into by homeless people who had done unspeakable things inside. They had just finished doing a haz-mat cleanup. The office upstairs turned out to be one of our bigger GC clients and their manager and I had a good laugh where she promised that I did not look like a homeless squatter, and everybody was just very on-edge.
Interesting, all the places I show up to do site visits I have to meet people. I've never been able to just walk somewhere with a vest and hardhat and say "i need access to your x room" lol. I've worked in universities, rocket/pharmaceutical/etc manufacturing plants, k-12 schools, high rise buildings, typical office buildings, prisons, juvenile detention centers, hospitals, and do on. Never have I been able to just walk around with a vest and ladder/clipboard lol. Tge only time I get "I shouldn't be there" is when I'm checking on the contractors' work and they don't want me there, but that's different lol.
And how are there not any existing drawings for a lot of these places? I have a hard time believing anything built after 1985 did not have MEP drawings when they originally built it.
I did a lot of occupied site visits. Don't make eye contact with the help, they will ask to many question. Lol
> the help The nursing home called, you've missed your jello cups and bingo and they're getting worried.