Originally Posted by Bossnass

A month later...

I'm 55 hours into my 4th 80 hour week. Takes alot out of anyone. I was tempted into this job by the wage... the time and a half makes it almost worthwhile. I hope I'll last the summer.

We spent the first two weeks at a residential subdivision. We spent the last two and the will spend the next 6 at a commercial subdivsion.

I'm an assisant foreman/coordinator. I have a surveyer/gradesman who I work closely with, a soils tech who I share with another site, and a crew of operators (2 push-cats, 1 shaping cat, 7 scrapers, 1 tractor with disc/sheepsfoot, 1.5 graders and 1.5 packers (one of each floats between sites)). I also have a go-for guy/ mechanic on call.

I help the surveyor mark out sites. I tell the crew where to cut a pit, where to fill, where to grade. I call in the soils guy when the material in the pit is questionable. I decide where to stockpile black dirt and I have to make the call when we are into usable clay. I have the surveyer/gradesmen mark out stakes with cuts and fills for the grader. And in general I try and make things run smoothly. Downtime, scapers waiting in line, etc, are bad things.

For the most part things have gone smoothly. I was a bit overwhelmed the first couple weeks, but the kinks are working out. I don't have enough control over staffing... it has rained this week, I told the head foreman (who runs 4 sites) that I didn't need any packers to work. They showed up anyway. The old potheads bug me, but are pretty good hands. The young guys all have attitudes, but it was a simple matter of yelling at the alpha jackass and acting like I knew what I was talking about. I did fire a guy who showed up drunk (at 700AM) with puke on his pants smelling like alcohol the day after payday.

All in all, it has been a bunch of learning and way too many hours.