Missive from parts of Africa

A light hearted and sometimes serious look at moving 6000km into a place in Africa: April 2007. Promoted back to South Africa, the missive will continue to track my foray's into deepest Africa as and when I get there.

Name:
Location: Joburg, Africa, South Africa

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Things I have learnt from Site

1.
That “chunk of steel” sitting where it should not be is called a beam. You need to know this to make the technical people understand what the hell you are talking about.

2.
I learnt how to shoot levels with a Dumpy. A measuring tape on the stick makes it so much simpler. I was taught by people who do not use a dumpy level to do their job.

3.
You have to weld thin steel differently to thick steel otherwise it bends

4.
There is a difference between an AC welder and a DC welder. Although no-one can quite tell me what it is.

5.
You cannot weld pipes with a AC welder

6.
When someone says he can do something – do not believe him unless you can see it yourself.

7.
You can get fit quickly – who needs a gym subscription. Walking around site 3 times a day is more than a game of golf.

8.
Workers can break the unbreakable. Even steel punch’s

9.
Workers believe you never have enough transport, cranes, tools, money

10.
Never rely on technical people to do something right

11.
It never pays to fight with the client – you may be right, but it still does not pay.

12.
Something that should be done in 20 minutes takes 2 hours

13.
Something that should be done in 2 hours will take the day

14.
Estimators smoke something really weird when they estimate

15.
Clients smoke weird stuff when they award the contract as well

16.
The only problem is they are not smoking the same stuff

17.
Technical people do not think when they do paperwork

18.
Non technical people do not think when they do technical stuff

19.
Most people do not think at all

20.
There is no sex on site – but fark you get screwed often!

2 Comments:

Blogger Esther said...

Ah, this is where things went wrong ... technical people DO paperwork?
Technical people also have no concept of time "about 2 hours" can mean anthying from well, 2 hours to 2 days :)

5:53 PM  
Blogger Dan Lurie said...

Antoine, i am a consultant electrical engineer, i loved this post, CLASSIC!!

11:48 AM  

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