The 'Sammy' Award

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.