This particular item of note is not just about the aforementioned title. It also harps on one other key area of this job - the ability to get along with others, in particular, workers.
I will start from the start. As all civil/structural engineers know, Quality Management is an annoying but key part of any of the construction phase, especially when it comes to paperwork. The fun part are the tests themselves, because that is where you can get your hands dirty and play with mud, concrete, or whatever else you have to test. In this case, concrete.
The concrete testing entails a slump test - filling an upside-down conical device with concrete and when lifting it up, seeing how low it has 'slumped', or fallen from its original height. With each slump test comes typically three cylinder tests that are compressed at a later stage. On our site we have 4 cylinder tests, for reasons I won't go into. So anyway, Phil and I went to go do a pre-pour inspection and since all was well, we said they could pour. Since Phil didn't want to get his hands dirty, I ended up carrying out the slump test on my own. So I carried out the slump test on my own, but one of the boys Bill lifted the bucket to the testing area for me since no one else was there. Then Eddie, their supervisor, came and gave me a hand to fill the cylinders because there should have been two anyway.
I had initially started to trowel off the cylinders for capping but Eddie said to leave it for a while to let them settle and said to go get a drink to fill in the time. So I took that time to clean my tools. After that, Eddie showed me properly how to trowel down the tops and I said to him that he can inspect my work for a change.
Anyway, I got to tea that night and Bill said, 'What did you forget to do after the testing?' and I had no idea until he said, you didn't clean the bucket. The bucket that the concrete gets used for the tests. He continued on by saying, 'I reckon that's a carton (standard payment in mining, construction and other blokey types of industry) but we did end up cleaning it for ya. If you were the other engineer, we would have left it. But we'll look after ya.' Now, this they didn't have to do since the company I work for carry out the tests, they, as part of the subcontracting company, do not. They covered my arse (by washing the bucket and preventing problems down the track with it not being washed) when they could have left it. After the admission that if it were Phil they would have left it, I felt really chuffed. Especially after the admission that they'd look after me. Pat, another granno, said, "We all stood around and thought, should we? Yeah, she's only new!" and with the excess concrete in the bottom, Damon (yet another granno) carved my name in it as a keepsake.
The next day at pre-start I got Bill to show me it since I really wanted to, and he brought it over and I sat it near where I was sitting. Bill ended up blocking the way after I signed onto the meeting sheet and I thought, oh well, get it after pre-start, then next thing Eddie explained that there was a bit of an incident on site and as soon as he mentioned, we have a new engineer on site, I just went bright red and all the boys were laughing good naturedly as Eddie said that he presents the 'Sammy' award, like the Darwin award, for forgetting to clean the bucket. That's when Bill gave it to me in a more official capacity. In my acceptance speech, I explained that I have never been more embarrassed in my life but that I was chuffed at the effort and it will take pride of place on my mantelpiece. I saw Damon on site later that morning and he said, you're really going to keep it? And I said, of course, you guys went to the trouble of cleaning the bucket and giving me this. I think he was pretty pleased, and then I showed both Damon and Bill at tea that night where it was in my room in a photo.
To explain why it meant so much that they did this, I should clarify a lot better. As a whole, workers hate engineers. It goes back to the days when engineers earned tonnes more than the workers and the workers were paid poorly in comparison. So even though these days are long gone, it is still in the nature of workers to hate engineers as a whole. I can understand though, some engineers are arrogant idiots and do treat the workers poorly so they deserve everything they get.
But it just goes to show that even though my job is about making sure that the job gets done right, there are ways of going about it and there are other ways of going about it. Phil and I went about things in two different ways; his was to come down hard and say it needs to be done properly and this is where it needs to be, mine is to say, yeah, the drawings you guys are using are pretty crap and I can see where there have been issues since I'm having trouble with them myself. But it looks like that one is supposed to go that way and cover does need to be 40mm to the outside of the cast, so it's pretty alright, just that bar needs to be moved a bit. The rest of it looks pretty good.
That way, when you do stuff up, like with the bucket, or like when I accidentally locked myself out of my room and I had all three spare keys on my keyring and asked Rohin (one of the transportables blokes) at breakfast time to break into my room, especially when after I caught up with him on site he had just copped a bollocking from one of our supervisors, and again when my venetian blind came crashing down and I had to get Andrew, Rohin's supervisor to fix it, they did it without question, just had a bit of a laugh in Rohin's case about my key and went to fix it when I asked them to.
It just makes the job go so much quicker and easier if you remember that you are no better than anyone else simply because you have 'engineer' in your title. I think one of my old bosses put it best when he said, 'These people (IT servicedesk or HR or others in similar roles) need to realise that they aren't the ones that make money for the company. It's the bloke on the end of a shovel.' And if you can stick to that principle, and treat everyone on site with the respect that they deserve, then working remote is a breeze. I know that should go without saying on any site, in any job, but I have found that working in town where everyone goes home at the end of the day, people then seem to be absolute arseholes to deal with a lot of the time because they don't have to eat tea with them that night after work.
If I could give some advice for engineers out there choosing where they want to work, do a stint remote. You will learn far more than any university degree will teach you. You will learn ten times more than working on a city site will teach you because you will properly get to know the workers you are working with and what their likes and dislikes are. You will realise that they are real people. And you will understand that despite what your company says, the people drive the project and if your workers don't want to work for you, you can forget any decent production.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
An alternate look at the locals
Ironically, after writing part of the previous post in my notebook (parts of it were written a few nights ago and I only uploaded it a couple of minutes ago) I felt the scaredest I've been out here. Now, I can see why Robert, my old boss, said not to get too complacent.
And not that I was scared shitless, but I learnt that I will not go back to the PTM camp* via the backstreets again for tea. I left here straight after putting down my notebook and started to drive into town. There were heaps of locals walking around town, and so I went off the main road.
I turned into the main side street I take, though I can't remember the name, and heaps more were down there so I slowed to around 10km/h, with my window down (that was probably my first mistake) and they were hardly moving off the road for me. So I try not to stop completely but then get told to "slow down mate", when I was going pretty slow as was. I slowed down a bit more where a bunch of kids were yelling and playing, also just off the road, and then they started throwing stuff at or in the tray of my ute.
It does scare you a bit when you are one (white at that) and they are many and clearly annoyed and I think you'd be lying if you said you weren't fussed at all by them. Then as I rounded the next bend, near the footy oval, more of them decide to either wave or give me the equivalent of the middle finger salute.
So I won't say I'm not still a bit cautious driving around but it's something to think about.
The other thing is driving back from the PTM camp. At dusk it's hard, but at night, you are seeing silhouettes and that's about it. Really, that is about it. At least first thing in the morning whilst it's dark, no one is about.
Overall it's been good though. Like earlier yesterday, after I left the office to go home sick, I had my 'Sammy' award (will speak on that later) with me and there was a young boy about 6 or 7 outside the door.
He said 'rock' and smiled, and I said, not rock, 'concrete' and then pointed at the stones and said, they are little rocks. And I said as I pointed to the aggregate in the concrete, these are little rocks too. And I pointed to my name carved into the concrete, S-A-M, and said, S, A, M. I'm Sam, and pointed to myself. And he said 'Sam'. And I said, that's me, and he repeated 'me', as he had with 'concrete'.
Little things like that make me forget the hostility of the night before.
________________________________________________________________________________
* The PTM camp is where all of us were staying when we first got here, but some are near the TDC - local subcontractor - workshop and others were at the PTM camp, now I am camping at our proper construction camp, although I wouldn't normally have got here so soon but we ran out of beds at the PTM camp. That means that we still have to eat at the PTM camp for all meals, so in other words we come home to our rooms here on one side of town and have to drive to the other side (a couple of minutes' drive) of town to eat. It's annoying, and especially since I've had a cold the last couple of days, meant I couldn't just go back to my room to rest, my room had mini excavators working literally outside my window. Today was better, I was down at the PTM camp most of the day and came back here for a couple of hours until tea time.
And not that I was scared shitless, but I learnt that I will not go back to the PTM camp* via the backstreets again for tea. I left here straight after putting down my notebook and started to drive into town. There were heaps of locals walking around town, and so I went off the main road.
I turned into the main side street I take, though I can't remember the name, and heaps more were down there so I slowed to around 10km/h, with my window down (that was probably my first mistake) and they were hardly moving off the road for me. So I try not to stop completely but then get told to "slow down mate", when I was going pretty slow as was. I slowed down a bit more where a bunch of kids were yelling and playing, also just off the road, and then they started throwing stuff at or in the tray of my ute.
It does scare you a bit when you are one (white at that) and they are many and clearly annoyed and I think you'd be lying if you said you weren't fussed at all by them. Then as I rounded the next bend, near the footy oval, more of them decide to either wave or give me the equivalent of the middle finger salute.
So I won't say I'm not still a bit cautious driving around but it's something to think about.
The other thing is driving back from the PTM camp. At dusk it's hard, but at night, you are seeing silhouettes and that's about it. Really, that is about it. At least first thing in the morning whilst it's dark, no one is about.
Overall it's been good though. Like earlier yesterday, after I left the office to go home sick, I had my 'Sammy' award (will speak on that later) with me and there was a young boy about 6 or 7 outside the door.
He said 'rock' and smiled, and I said, not rock, 'concrete' and then pointed at the stones and said, they are little rocks. And I said as I pointed to the aggregate in the concrete, these are little rocks too. And I pointed to my name carved into the concrete, S-A-M, and said, S, A, M. I'm Sam, and pointed to myself. And he said 'Sam'. And I said, that's me, and he repeated 'me', as he had with 'concrete'.
Little things like that make me forget the hostility of the night before.
________________________________________________________________________________
* The PTM camp is where all of us were staying when we first got here, but some are near the TDC - local subcontractor - workshop and others were at the PTM camp, now I am camping at our proper construction camp, although I wouldn't normally have got here so soon but we ran out of beds at the PTM camp. That means that we still have to eat at the PTM camp for all meals, so in other words we come home to our rooms here on one side of town and have to drive to the other side (a couple of minutes' drive) of town to eat. It's annoying, and especially since I've had a cold the last couple of days, meant I couldn't just go back to my room to rest, my room had mini excavators working literally outside my window. Today was better, I was down at the PTM camp most of the day and came back here for a couple of hours until tea time.
The local indigenous - a Westerner's perception
I had written down a bunch of my thoughts on things earlier in a notebook and didn't really write it well enough. So I will try to get it down a bit better now.
People have various reasons for working remote. Mostly it's money driven. I'm not going to lie; the money helps, but I won't say it's the most important thing.
That title belongs to the people I surround myself with on the job.
Be it workers, locals or blow-ins of various sorts, my job is not money driven, nor is it even having an interest to build things. It's working with people, and doing something to give benefit for others. Call it cliched, call it whatever, but it is honestly true.
So, the real reason for me to be in an area such as Wadeye is to see how indigenous people live and to involve myself as much possible. Meeting Gerald in the office was a great start. What a nice bloke! When he realised I had an interest in learning the language or even just to speak with him, as an outsider, he took the time to teach me how to say 'good morning'. It was interesting to learn it phonetically; certainly not a way I had ever learnt languages at school. But I finally got my head around it the following day, just in time to go out into the community to actually interact with the local indigenous families.
After going out into the communities the other day and seeing what work needed to be done, I discovered a few things that I had not previously thought or known. I realised the various members of the community are very humble, very proud and perhaps even quite shy. Overall, they were also quite nice, which is not to say that I thought they wouldn't be, but I guess as a blonde haired female Westerner, I was a bit apprehensive of what they would think of me.
They are very intelligent in their own way, their own culture. It actually made me wonder, why force Western ways upon them if they have a system that had worked for so long prior to Westerners? I guess that then depends on individual thoughts in the community, what they prefer, because putting it bluntly, that would mean no footy, and indigenous communities Australia wide loooooooove their footy.
All I know is that when I made an effort to speak a little to them in their houses, saying 'good morning' in the one word of Murrinh-Patha I knew, waving to the kids and pulling faces at them and making them smile, talking to the women in the house saying they are lucky to have many cooks because it was only myself and Dale at home, to see them smile and share a joke, to have the patriarch break from a stern look (given typically men and women wouldn't normally interract with one another like Westerners do anyway) into a smile when I said 'good morning' in his own language, to hear another patriarch have a joke that the women always force food down his throat after I said it smelt fantastic (because I was getting hungry by that stage), and having a chat with one of the younger men in the house about playing football for the local community, that's the sort of thing I get out of this job.
I disagreed with a lot of things I saw, but I know that they would think the same thing of things we as a Western society do as well.
So long as I continue to interact as best as possible with the local indigenous, and learn as much as possible, that is when I will feel that I have got something out of working in Wadeye.
People have various reasons for working remote. Mostly it's money driven. I'm not going to lie; the money helps, but I won't say it's the most important thing.
That title belongs to the people I surround myself with on the job.
Be it workers, locals or blow-ins of various sorts, my job is not money driven, nor is it even having an interest to build things. It's working with people, and doing something to give benefit for others. Call it cliched, call it whatever, but it is honestly true.
So, the real reason for me to be in an area such as Wadeye is to see how indigenous people live and to involve myself as much possible. Meeting Gerald in the office was a great start. What a nice bloke! When he realised I had an interest in learning the language or even just to speak with him, as an outsider, he took the time to teach me how to say 'good morning'. It was interesting to learn it phonetically; certainly not a way I had ever learnt languages at school. But I finally got my head around it the following day, just in time to go out into the community to actually interact with the local indigenous families.
After going out into the communities the other day and seeing what work needed to be done, I discovered a few things that I had not previously thought or known. I realised the various members of the community are very humble, very proud and perhaps even quite shy. Overall, they were also quite nice, which is not to say that I thought they wouldn't be, but I guess as a blonde haired female Westerner, I was a bit apprehensive of what they would think of me.
They are very intelligent in their own way, their own culture. It actually made me wonder, why force Western ways upon them if they have a system that had worked for so long prior to Westerners? I guess that then depends on individual thoughts in the community, what they prefer, because putting it bluntly, that would mean no footy, and indigenous communities Australia wide loooooooove their footy.
All I know is that when I made an effort to speak a little to them in their houses, saying 'good morning' in the one word of Murrinh-Patha I knew, waving to the kids and pulling faces at them and making them smile, talking to the women in the house saying they are lucky to have many cooks because it was only myself and Dale at home, to see them smile and share a joke, to have the patriarch break from a stern look (given typically men and women wouldn't normally interract with one another like Westerners do anyway) into a smile when I said 'good morning' in his own language, to hear another patriarch have a joke that the women always force food down his throat after I said it smelt fantastic (because I was getting hungry by that stage), and having a chat with one of the younger men in the house about playing football for the local community, that's the sort of thing I get out of this job.
I disagreed with a lot of things I saw, but I know that they would think the same thing of things we as a Western society do as well.
So long as I continue to interact as best as possible with the local indigenous, and learn as much as possible, that is when I will feel that I have got something out of working in Wadeye.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Welcome to Wadeye - an English language lesson
Please don't bring ganja into our town.
Those that smoke ganja are stupid and are losers.
Iced Earth.
Megadeth.
Judas Priest.
Lance 'Buddy' Franklin.
Pantera.
The slogans are as you are welcomed into Wadeye (or Port Keats depending who you are) and the later single or double words are what is written all over a lot of the houses, inside and out.
The thing is, for all the languages in the area, I was amazed that the graffiti is written entirely in English. Either English or some form of code of English. Even though no one speaks it amongst their own clans, it is the only form of anger expression with graffiti amongst Wadeye's young. I guess if you learn your language phonetically and it isn't used anywhere except to communicate, why would you need to write it down anywhere? English isn't used often amongst clans, but it is used in this instance.
Maybe I should explain a bit better. There are 7 different language groups, with the most common being Murrinh-Patha. The other 6 are slowly dying out with the younger generation because they are not being taught in schools, or even amongst their own clans. It is actually quite a sad state of affairs.
English is spoken well with most of the tribes but they don't speak it every day. It is more of a second, third or even fourth language for a lot of them. From what I have seen, they only speak it with white fellas, since none of us can speak any of their languages ('though I am trying).
So for them to be writing their anger on the walls of their homes in English, really dumbfounded me. It was only in thinking why that would be the case was why I had come up with what I did.
To be honest, I feel really bad for not being able to speak their language and speaking to them in English. I don't mean to, but what choice do we have when there isn't any good way of learning it? I can only keep trying to learn it little bits at a time to use at later stages, I guess.
Those that smoke ganja are stupid and are losers.
Iced Earth.
Megadeth.
Judas Priest.
Lance 'Buddy' Franklin.
Pantera.
The slogans are as you are welcomed into Wadeye (or Port Keats depending who you are) and the later single or double words are what is written all over a lot of the houses, inside and out.
The thing is, for all the languages in the area, I was amazed that the graffiti is written entirely in English. Either English or some form of code of English. Even though no one speaks it amongst their own clans, it is the only form of anger expression with graffiti amongst Wadeye's young. I guess if you learn your language phonetically and it isn't used anywhere except to communicate, why would you need to write it down anywhere? English isn't used often amongst clans, but it is used in this instance.
Maybe I should explain a bit better. There are 7 different language groups, with the most common being Murrinh-Patha. The other 6 are slowly dying out with the younger generation because they are not being taught in schools, or even amongst their own clans. It is actually quite a sad state of affairs.
English is spoken well with most of the tribes but they don't speak it every day. It is more of a second, third or even fourth language for a lot of them. From what I have seen, they only speak it with white fellas, since none of us can speak any of their languages ('though I am trying).
So for them to be writing their anger on the walls of their homes in English, really dumbfounded me. It was only in thinking why that would be the case was why I had come up with what I did.
To be honest, I feel really bad for not being able to speak their language and speaking to them in English. I don't mean to, but what choice do we have when there isn't any good way of learning it? I can only keep trying to learn it little bits at a time to use at later stages, I guess.
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