8 comments/ 9510 views/ 6 favorites Hard Hats By: MSTarot Hard Hats "Hey, sexy lady! I want you to come sit on my face! Yeah you! I want you to come sit on my face!" Wolf whistles, cat calls and all other manner of Hollywood level stereotyping are the common perceptions of the modern construction worker. The classic image of a sexy woman walking past a work site and everything stops and then she is getting whistled at and having rude suggestions yelled at her is show often in cinema and in stories. Does this happen? Today? Not very often. You see there are now all kinds of legal ways to sue the hell out of the guy for doing that, and even if you don't do that a simple phone call to the site's general contractor (number is on the big sign in clear sight) will absolutely get that worker fired off, not only that job, but any job that general contractor works for the next year. If it is a school, college, or hospital job that ban is for life. He will never work for that company again. But yet that image of the rude hardhat yelling at the girls is so often shown that it's silly. More than that, it's insulting! As someone that has worked the construction trade I have seen, and heard shit that would make a sailor blush. The bit of dialog above was yelled by a guy I was working with to a girl walking past the job we were on. We were building a small church. The year was 1987 and I have to say that was just about the last time I ever heard that kind of thing yelled. The problem with stereotypes is they while they do have some basis in fact, maybe the past or in some other place. It's not the here. Not the now. Now? Well, if you are a woman and you are dressed to the nines and you walk past a construction site what can you expect? To be looked at. Yes, you will be looked at. Count on it. Why? Why are those dirty nasty men so rude as to stare at the women walking past? Because you are without a doubt the most beautiful sight to touch our eyes during those long hours. We spend eight hours plus looking at other sweaty, dirty men, having to deal with pissy people that think they know what needs done. We are in a constant state of being rushed, in a very dangerous place to be rushed. Most of the time we arrive on the job to be told we are three months behind on our first day there. Why? Because the general contractor was held up by changes, delays, weather, and "unforeseeable" problems that affect every job but are never made allowances for in the job schedule. The superintendent has a headache due to the fact the architect is pushing him. He passes that headache down the line... all the way to the poor guy trying to earn a living doing a job that sucks pond water, but pays the bills. Mostly. So there he is, standing there with a dozen people above him making his life miserable and when he looks up what does he see? A beautiful woman. He doesn't know who you are. He doesn't know your life story. He doesn't know about your college degree, that you have thousands owed in student loans or that you have two kids at home and a husband that wont cut the grass. All he knows, in that brief look, is that you are the best thing his eyes have seen in what has been an otherwise typically crappy day. So he looks. He enjoys the movement of those curves and hips your husband complains about. He doesn't think your getting too fat, he thinks you look great in those tight pants. His eyes will devour you like a starving wolf because he is just that. His mind is starved for anything that isn't the same 'shit' he sees day after day. Masons, electricians, carpenters, drywallers, roofers, plumbers, and all the pricks in business suits and shiny new hardhats that are making his life miserable. That is his day to day view of life. Safety men telling us not to do this and to stop doing that. Treating us like we are three year old kids at the top of a set of steps. Foremen telling us we only have 15:00 minutes to take a break and to not leave our work area to take it. Then his pain in the ass is standing there with a watch glued to his eyeball daring you to be a second late at lunch. Oh yeah, hardhat lunch time that classic visual cliché. Seen in hundreds of movies going back to the times of silent pictures. What's that lunch really like? Well you have only 30:00 minutes to eat your food. A cold sandwich or (if you're lucky to have a wife that loves you or time enough to do it yourself,) a bowl of leftovers from the night before, heated in a microwave someone brought to the site that only half works and has nine guys are waiting to use. Chug down a soda, stuff a Little Debbie cake past your teeth and it's back to work. "Take fifteen, call it twenty, wish it was thirty." is a very true saying. Oh yeah and they want you to go use the port-o-let in that time too. (I wont even go into the constant state of filth that is a port-o-let on a construction site.) Now live that, day after day, for about a year in the same place with the same faces, day after day, and does it surprise you at all that that guy will look up at you as you are walking past? You're a new face... although I will be honest, he's not looking at your face. For those few moments when you are walking past you are the girl of his dreams, you are his fantasy. You. You, who looking in the mirror think you look terrible. You, whose husband nags you to lose a few pounds. You are a fantasy, a daydream in the mind of a tired person who has too much to do and not enough time to get it done. But he will stop... stop and stare at... you. True, if you could read his mind you would probably want to slap him. But the fact is you will never be payed a more honest compliment. He will make half hidden motions to others around him to look at you. Drawing their attention to you as well. It's no longer the line of guys stopped staring at a girl's ass as she walks past. It's now almost one at a time, guy after guy checking you out, then sharing a grin with the others they are stuck working around. Soft whispers have replaced the vulgar shouts of the past. No less vulgar in some cases, mostly comments about your ass, your breasts, your legs, your face. The visible. The easily commented on. Oh, I can hear your mind. "Well, it's still rude." Is it rude to go into a museum and stare in wonder at the art work of the great masters? You, are no less than a Picasso, a Rembrandt, a modern day living, breath, beautiful painted Da Vinci. In all your glory you are presented to that hardhat wearing man. And that is an important part, as well. Man. (Yes, there are women in the work place, I've worked around more than a few. Guess what, they look at the sexy guys walking past. Well, some of them do.) He is in the end nothing more than that. Just a man. He probably is a father as well. A hard working, bill paying, birthday forgetting man. He smells of sweat, dirt, grease, exhaust fumes, and whatever part of the job his trade is working on. Just a man there doing a job. A hard job, no exception. A important job? Damn right it is! The house you live in, the building you work in, the school your children attend, and the hospital that saves your husbands life. They were all build by that tired, smelly, dirty minded man who just for a few moment of his long day wanted to take a moment and look at your ass. Maybe he grinned over the idea of what he would like to do with you in that little day dream fantasy where you are all soft and willing. For a moment he forgot about that asshole foreman who is rushing him to get finished and is then going to forget to turn in his time right. He forgot about the stupid architect that can't figure out that just because it works on paper doesn't mean shit. He stopped worrying about the power bill his check wont cover this week or if his truck will get reposed before he can't get a payment in... because he had to make the mortgage payment. He stopped worrying about all of that because of you. You! His kids are sick with the flu, his wife want to buy all of Walmart, his brother wants to borrow money, his mother wants him to call her more often and his dad needs him to come over and cut the grass Saturday cause he hurt his back and can't do it. His high school dreams of being a sports superstar are long gone. He's looking at thirty to forty more years of this same day, till he can get Social Security. At the same time he sees the older guys he first worked worked with dieing off within just couple of years of drawing their first S.S. check. He knows that is most likely his fate as well. He hurts, he lives in near constant pain, he is exhausted in every way possible... mental, emotional, and certainly physically. He is cold, or he is hot depending on the weather. He is just fucking fed up with the whole damn job, but is worried sick he might get laid off. His daughter need new braces. His son want a bike for Christmas. He want to get his wife a nice piece of jewelry for their anniversary. To maybe try and make up for the one he had to work out of town on last year. This is the man that just stopped what he was doing to watch "you" walk past. You probably should thank him for the compliment. If you're a writer at least thank him by doing him justice when you write of him. Don't use tired cliches and research his job like you would any other profession you were writing about. Who knows maybe next time when you are walking past a construction site and you catch him looking, hell if you're feeling flirty, give him a sexy grin. You will make his day. Hard Hats Ch. 02 Now that you have been preached at about using stereotypes, lets take a look at the average day of a construction worker. This will of course vary from job site to job site, and trade to trade, but in general this is what a day on a large construction job will be like. I will be writing this as if you are the worker. I am also not writing about a Union Job Site. Those are a bit different and I'm not qualified to advise on them. Sorry, not a lot of them near where I live and work. To begin with your day will start with an alarm clock. Now if you are just getting started in the trades this is probably the only way you are getting up on time. If you have been working for more than lets say ten years you wake up at that time whether or not you want to be, or have to be awake. That really sucks on your day off. Now, most construction sites open at about six to six thirty. That just means someone from the general contractor has gotten there. No trades are suppose to do anything without them on site. So... That alarm clock had better be ringing at about 5:00 to 5:30. You hop out of bed full of pep, singing a song and dancing a step! Bullshit. More like a zombie from a George Romero movie you crawl your way up out that wonderfully dark, incredibly soft bed and do your best to not smash that damn clock. There will of course be that temptation to hit a snooze button. Remember you have an hour till you have to be on the job. Most people that work the trades will cough at this point. The job sites are very dusty and you breath that in all day long. Your lungs get ride of that dust at night, while you sleep, so a morning hacking is normal. A trip to the bathroom is mandatory, but you're not concerned with the things that a suit and tie person would be. You don't need to shave (chins or legs) No one on a construction site cares what you look like or if you have bristle. Nope, you're there to use the cleanest bathroom you will get to use for the next nine to ten hours. Clock is ticking though, and don't fall back asleep sitting on the toilet. Okay, you're dressed in old clothes (white if you're a painter) and have on, or are carrying with you, a pair of work boots. These are required to work on any construction site bigger than a house. You are probably carrying them if you have a nice car. Wait, if you have a nice car why are you driving that to the construction site? Silly people, the site is DIRTY! Alright, you are out the door (please remember to tell your loved ones you love them, even if they don't hear it. On average at least ten construction workers die per day in the US) still half awake but moving. Wait! You didn't have coffee? Not yet you didn't, you see somewhere between your house and the job site is a little convenience story where the people working there are expecting you to be there almost like clock work. They could almost have that cup of cheep-ass coffee poured and steaming before you get there. Most construction workers don't have time to get up and make their own coffee. You have to set that clock back about thirty more minutes and you wanted sleep a lot more. By the way, you forgot your lunch again didn't you? Yeah. So you will grab a bag of chips and a snack cake and that cup of coffee, then get stuck standing in line behind someone that doesn't have to be at work till 9:00 and wants to run their head about the game last night. Don't get sucked into that conversation. Paid for and you're out the door. Now, drive like your driving for NASCAR (it's what you probably wanted to do with your life anyway) cause the clock is definitively ticking. Watch out for the mom in that minivan, she is trying to put on her makeup and get her kids to daycare at the same time. Now. The work day. Your days work will start at any time between 6:00 to 7:00. It varies by job and trade but for the most part every trade wants you to be there 10:00 minutes early. At least. That way you are already working when that clock hits. In other words, they want you to get ready to work on your own time. Don't expect to be paid for that ten minutes either, even though in a week it adds up to nearly an hour. You're giving them that bit of your life for the wonderful privilege of having a job. I need a sarcastic smile icon here. Oh yeah, don't forget your safety vest. It's in the trunk and smells from yesterday, but you 'Have' to wear it. I will not go into the various trades. The jobs they do are too different to detail out well. YOU, need to research just how they do what they do based on the character you're writing about. There are a lot of videos on YouTube that show you how to do most of the trades. Research! You can not fake this part and get away with it. Well, the work day is off and running, you have finally woke up... sorta. Your coffee cooled off enough for you to drink it. If you didn't forget and leave it in the cup holder. Whatever trade you are doing you will spend the next two hours catching up on the things you needed to get done yesterday and didn't, you are also trying to get as much ready before nine o-clock as possible. I'll explain this in a bit. Work, work, work, work...9:00. You get a break. This is required by the labor laws in most states, don't let them talk you out of it. However they might just usurp it somewhat to hold a safety meeting. You will still get your break but you will have to listen to a guy telling you to not do the very things you need to do. He's not telling you this because it's dangerous, but because somebody somewhere got hurt and the general contractor doesn't want to be sued. They also do not want to be fined buy OSHA. Fifteen minutes will never pass so fast in your life. You just have time to drink a can of soda, and maybe eat a biscuit. On some jobs they will have someone (this is a company thing) to come take orders for breakfast and then that one person will go get it. If there is somewhere close enough, say next to the site, for them to get the food. Don't expect this though, and if there is someone going to get food... expect to not get your change back. That was his tip for going to get your food. You do tip your waiter don't you? Okay, breaks over! Back to work. Now between this point and lunch is when you will be your most productive. This is when you try to get whatever quota you have to do in a day done, or as close to that point as you can get. You should have everything you need to work like mad in place from your efforts this morning. Hustle, hustle, hustle! By the way if that fifteen minutes passed fast this is when it will drag like it had lead weights on the clock. You will look at your phone to check the time and it will be just five minutes since you did it last. Resist this urge as it makes the day longer. Finally after what seems like ten hours lunch will get there. Oh yeah, you forgot your lunch didn't you. Well, you will just have to go get something. You have thirty minutes. I need that sarcastic smile icon again. You look over at the fast-food place where you got that breakfast biscuit from and every worker on the site seems to be piling into it. Thirty minutes?Not going to happen.You might could hop in your car and race to somewhere else close by, another fast-food place or a convenience store. Convenience store? Wait a minute, you bought a bag of chips this morning! Good planning. Now a drink? Well, on some sites the general contractors will set up a soda machine outside the main office trailer. You can get one there. It will be a dollar a can. Yeah... Tick, tick, tick. Thirty minutes will also fly by here if you let it. Now is the time to be watching that clock. It will be at this point however that someone from home will call, with some sort of honey-do for you to get done on your way home. These vary from a grocery run to getting the kids from daycare. While you are discussing this, far more than it needs to be discussed, your clock will run out, and it's "Honey I have to go." and you choke down the last of those chips and swallow that last sip of soda. Just crush the chips and eat them as crumbs, it's quicker. Oh, yeah you probably need to go by the port-o-let, but of course everyone else is trying to do that same thing. You'll go latter. You will get fussed at for not doing that during your lunch, but you will simply have to do it latter. Back to work. This is the time of day when things will either be easier or harder, and it will vary from day to day. Some days you can almost cake walk these last few hours, others... well, you will be working to those last minutes. About all you can really count on is, that just like when you were in school, that clock runs slow as molasses after lunch. Now by this time you are filthy, tired, and probably more than a little aggravated with someone, maybe even with yourself. Oh, and your eyeballs are probably floating cause you badly need to go to the port-o-let and you're too busy to go. I have seen more arguments start at this time than at any other time of day. People are just tired. Then, saints be praised, it's getting close to 3:00. YOU need to start wrapping things up for the afternoon. There will no doubt be things you needed to get done today, but didn't. Right now you have bigger things to worry about. You have to roll up your power cords and get them back in your game box. You can not leave them out overnight! Extension cords have legs and will get up and walk away if you leave them out. It is, as you're rolling them up, that you will find that someone ran over one of them with a forklift or a scissor lift and cut a bad place in your cord. Typical day, it will have to be fixed before you can use it again. Now, here is a funny thing, that clock will finally start speeding up, but you don't need it to. You have got to get all these things done and everyone else seems to be waiting for you so that the game box can be locked up. It would be nice if they would help, but they have important standing there talking to do. Remember what I said about arguments. Oh, and you still need to go pee. Maybe you go take care of that or whatever but you will turn around and everyone else will of course be gone. And now you have to make sure all the game boxes are locked or it will be your fault that they didn't get locked. That done you breath a sigh, and finally walk out to your car. It's 3:45, but don't expect to get paid for those fifteen minutes either. You take off that damn hard hat and toss it into the trunk. You want to toss it into a river but you can't. You take off that hot as hell yellow safety vest, and stuff it into the hardhat. You take off your boots, you want to send them into the river after the hard hat, but you can't. You will need them for tomorrow, when you get up and go do this all over again. Oh, yeah don't forget to pick up the kids from daycare... or whatever else it was that you were suppose to do. Hard Hats Ch. 03 Let's take a look at fleshing out that construction site where your fictional worker is going to be spending so much of his day. Again I'm writing this as if you are the worker. How does it all work? Well, flip that bucket over and have a seat and I'll try and explain it as we take lunch. Okay, well to begin with there is a owner. You will probably never see this person till the job is nearly finished. He will show up and do a tour like he's walking through Disney land. You will just have to resist the urge to call the people walking with him the "Princesses" Even if that's what the primadonnas are. The drama queen(s) in question is the architect(s). They have been hired to oversee the work on the job and make sure it's done the way he, the owner wants it. They draw up a set of prints that show him what they intend to sell to him at the final. This set of prints is meant to be the be all and end all of what needs to happen. But it can't be. You see you can't put that much detail in one set of prints. There will be in fact probably a dozen sets. There are field drawing, shop drawing, engineering drawing, wiring drawing, structural... and on and on. They will also have to be updated through out the job. Now the architects hire a General Contractor. The GC is there to coordinate the Sub Contractors. Now the subs are the ones that will do the work right? Not always. You see the sub may "sub-out"some part of his work and oversee that subcontractor as if he was a general contractor. Confusing? You bet it can be. And the bigger the job the more subcontractors and subs of subs there will be. Okay, back to the GC and how he gets paid. The architects have a set amount that the owner is wanting to spend (give or take a few million.) Now they get their profit by "bidding out the job" to the GC willing to do the job the cheapest. They show the prints to a few dozen GC and git bids. It's like Name That Tune. "I can do that job for X amount." "Well, I can do it for a million less than you!" "Have fun." And we are off and running. Now in exactly the same way the GC will hire their Subcontractors. They show them the prints and a... well in my companies case he's calls a Project Manager... bids on the job. Enough with all of this paper shuffling lets break some ground already. The site has to be prepped for the job, that means either flattened, excavated, or compacted to the point it will support the structure being built. This varies by the location of the site. A really big building will have to be excavated down to bedrock to get that support rating. Alright the big trucks are rolling, dirt is being hauled out and gravel in, they set up a tower crane or not and finally after about four months the first of the subcontractors is told they can show up. This is mostly steel workers, concrete workers and masons. And they will all be told that they are three months behind. "What?" Yep. You see there is a schedule. This is a mythical piece of paper agreed upon, by all the people involved that wont lift a finger on the job, to be when the job should be done. It is said to take in things like rain delays and delays in grading the site, permit delays and other mitigating factors, but I have never see those happen. Every job starts two to three months behind. Now here is where it gets fun. The Owner will at some point have asked the architects how much would it cost to get done quicker? The job should take a year... he wants it done in six months. He's willing to pay extra for that. (By the way our government does this more than any other owner. Your tax dollars at work.) The architects give him a number. He agrees to pay that extra money if they get it done faster. The GC will get a large part of that extra money if they can bring the job in on this new "FastTrack" schedule. So... your three months behind. Get to work. Now lets look at the biggest delaying factor in a construction site. Weather. Up to this point the only thing that all of the above will mean to your average construction worker is that he is going to be pushed by his boss. His boss wants his share of that "FastTrack" money as well. To your common hard hat most of the shit happening above his pay grade is nothing but a pain in his butt. But the weather? Now that is his personal hell. You see they don't want to hear that the job was delayed because it rained, or because it was too cold, certainly not because it was too hot! There is no such thing as a "Too Hot" day to work. Lets follow the normal yearly progression and begin with Spring. Remember the joys of Spring? Cool mornings, warm afternoon, spring rains. Let put that into construction worker terms. It's fucking cold as hell in the morning, you have to scrap frost from your car's windshield and remember to dress warm. Then you will have to shed those layers as the day goes by. Then just as you're getting comfortable it will come a quick rain shower. (or maybe snow if you are further north) The job site will be a mud hole for months. Because they compacted it when they graded it you wont sink up to your knees but your boots will be covered in mud all the time. Also, unless you bought a new pair with your tax return your boots have been all the way through Winter and will be leaking. Your personal problems, like wet feet, are not important though. This is the time of year when you can really get some work done. On those days when the weather is nice the push is on. Soon it will be getting hot and the heat takes your energy. Your boss will be on your back to get more done every day. Expect this. Your foreman is going to push you because he is being pushed from higher up. Oh yeah, the Foreman. Don't take anything he says personally. He's probably a nice guy. In fact he was most likely was doing the same job you are doing just a few years ago. He is just under a lot of strain. He is being hounded by the higher ups all day to get more production, to make up that three months the job is late. Here comes Hell... I mean Summer. Listen to me when I tell you this. You. Can. Die. Out. Here. From. The. Heat. The GC requires you to wear, leather boots (often steel toe), T-shirts with sleeves to the elbow in high visibility color, Long pants (blue jeans or khaki), a yellow nylon safety vest, and that damn hard hat. If you stood still you would be sweating buckets. You need water, and a lot of it to survive the day. Take a drink before you are thirsty. If you are feeling thirsty it's already too late. You're also loosing salts and minerals in your sweat. Think about the Gatorade commercials. Electrolytes. The funny thing is Gatorade isn't the best thing for you. You should be drinking Pedialyte. It tastes terrible but really helps. If you feel yourself craving salty things you're getting into trouble with your salt balances. Your body will tell you what you need if you listen to it. There are often storms in the Summer afternoons but they don't really shut down work too often, unless there is lightning. Lightning and construction do not work. It pops lightning you stop what you are doing and get some where safe, I don't care who says what. You can get another job, you can't get another you. Anyway, all that storm will do is drive up the humidity. That makes the heat feel worse but keeps you soaked in sweat which helps to cool you off. You will look like you fell into a river but try not to ring too much water out your T-shirt. Unless you are a woman with no bra and big breast no one on site will care that your shirt is wet because they fell out the same boat. It's miserable but you need that wet shirt to keep cool. Also try and eat what you can early. You wont be able to eat at lunch. Try to put something on your stomach at lunch, crackers maybe. The salt helps too. Avoid like the plague all dairy products. I know an icy cold milkshake sounds like the best thing in the world but I promise you if you drink one you will get to taste it twice. And it wont taste as good the second time. At this time of year your boss will be asking for you to work late. You need all the rest you can get and he wants you to do nine or ten hour days. You can't say no is the problem. This is when you get your part of that "FastTrack" money. Just drink plenty of fluids and survive, that's all you can do. As the sailors use to say when a strong wind was coming "Hold Fast" Now Fall. Summer into Fall is like the end of a roller coaster ride. You feel everything just kind of level out and you wonder if there might not be just one last curve to get through, but then you pull into the station and it's over. Suddenly it's Fall and the hell you went through has finally given way. You will still sweat buckets when you drink, because your body hasn't gotten the message yet, but you can ease back on that gallon plus of liquids a day. That first cool day is like your first kiss. It's wonderful even if it sucks. This (well for me) is about the best time of year to work. You should also be trying to catch everything up at home bill wise, hopefully you didn't blow all that overtime money you got. Not too much to say about Fall weather, just enjoy it and try and get back some of that energy that the Summer heat took away. Because as house Stark says. Winter is coming. Forgive me I had to. Lol. Somewhere in mid Fall, Winter will just sneak up and slap the hell out of you one morning. You will be expecting a normal day and that is not what you will get. A wind so damn cold it cuts you to the bone will come blowing in and you will suddenly remember that you need to replace your flannel shirts from last year. The boots you're wearing are too thin as well. You got them for Summer. So on the end of that first cold day you will rush to Walmart to get your winter clothes. They have shorts and tank tops on sale. Of course. In Winter you have to dress in layers. Lets start at the bottom and work up. Heavy insulated boots, thick socks. Try not to wear two pair of thin socks, that crowds your feet in your boots and doesn't let them move. They will feel colder in fact, than if you had on one pair. Now here is where you get to make a few different choices . Long underwear, or sweat pants. I prefer sweat pants as they very quickly feel like they are part of your bluejeans and aren't so tight, but it's your choice. You have to pick one as the cold winter wind will be cutting through your pants like a knife in just a few weeks time. Now you could choose a full body thermal suit. Those are popular, but I find myself sweating in them which is a very bad thing. They zip up over your regular clothes. If you choice to not wear one you will then come to layering up your chest. Your "CORE" This is where you give off the most body heat and where you need to trap it the most to stay really warm. T-shirt close to the skin. You could wear a long underwear top, but I find they bunch up and leave my stomach feeling cold. Then a flannel shirt, then a thin hooded sweat shirt, then a jacket. Why all of this? You will look like Ralphy's little brother from a Christmas story! Layers. You can open and close them as the temperature changes through out the day. Open up the coat once you get to working and are warm, then maybe zip it back as you take break, or lunch hold in that heat. If it warms up enough you can shed a layer or two. You can't do that so easily with the big thermal suits. For your head do what the GC will allow. Some do not want you to wear anything under your hard hat. That thin hood on that sweat shirt is a minimum. Now it is going to get cold as the frozen levels of hell. Depending on your trade you maybe able to work in those temperatures or not. Some trades all but shut down. You will miss work either way as the job will often be a mess of ice. Now further north they are better equipped to deal with this than where I am from. So up there things will be different. Ask a local construction worker about how they cope wit the cold. Research. I know they use a lot of heated tenting and big pipe heaters. Well, there is your weather year on a job site. All in all, the weather will play the biggest factor in getting that job finished on time, but it's not the only thing. When each Subcontractor finishes up his part of the job they will begin to pull off. Now things should be run like clock work but they are not. A lot of times what happens is something will get finished but what's next to it is still about halfway done. The finished product can get damaged. So the subcontractor has to send someone out to repair what got messed up. He then may damage what damaged his work. It's a nightmare that could be prevented by a true work schedule and not that mythical one that is being used. Okay now, the job is just about finished. The architects will start to make appearances more often now. They are walking around looking for things that are not on their pieces of paper. They look for little nit picking things that should and would have been caught by the subcontractor if the job hadn't been done on that "FastTrack" schedule. (are you getting the idea that I don't like the FastTrack crap? Yeah.) All of these little things go on what is called a punch list. That list is sent to the subcontractor's Project Manager (remember him from the bidding at the start of the job?) He looks through this punch list, decided what is actually his companies to fix and he gets the Project Supervisor to send someone out there to deal with these items. Project Supervisor? He is kind of like a foreman to the foremen. He's the one that decided what job gets worked by who. He is over just about everyone in the field and a few people in the office. Including that Project Manager. He sends someone out to fix the punch list items (That is what I do for a living by the way) on all the jobs he is overseeing. Which will be generally all of the jobs that his company has. A few very big companies have more than one Project Supervisor. Not many but a few. Anyway back to the punch list. The Subcontractor will do one, GC will do one, the architects will do one. Each will find something different that needs fixing. Not all will agree on just who is responsible for the repair, but in the end everything gets fixed. So all the punch list are done (Yes, I've been busy) and the owner does his walk through with the architects and the GC's top people. He is happy and the GC wraps everything up, turns it all over to the architects and the architects hand the owner the final bill (well it's more complicated than that but I'm not going into it, it's way beyond my pay grade) The owner pays the architects. Amount in full. They then (and this is the fun part) hold about 20 percent of the GC's payment for a year, just to make sure that nothing comes up that needs to be taken care of. That held payment trickles down through all those Subcontractors as well. The money will be held in a bank account, for that year,and the architect will get to draw interest off it. If that seems right to you let me know please. So the year goes by and the owner will have no doubt found a few things he wants taken care of. The architects tell the GC, who tells the Subcontractor's Project Manager, who alerts the Project Supervisor, who tells the guy who will do the work to go fix it. So the punch list guy (waves hand) gets sent back out there to fix the items on this new final punch list, but now he can make no mess what so ever as the building is occupied by the owner. So he has to work carefully, he (well, I) have to take it item by item, cleaning up after myself as I go, till I get this final punch list done. Problem solved. But... it is in the best financial interest for the architects to keep that money in their account. They don't want to give it up. Like Daffy duck hording the pearl. They will wrap their arms around it and come up with some reason to not pay what they own. So the Subcontractor will have to have their company lawyers get involved to get that final money. This can take years. So most General contractors and Subcontractor have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars owed to them. Often by the very architects who are asking them to come present a bid on their next job. It's a hell of a profession.