Since Monday the 12th June I have been working for a contractor as an assistant engineer at their Thornbury Community Centre site.

Given that this is a £3m job and the contractor is one of the largest contractors in the UK (so I am repeatedly told at work) I expected the site to be larger. With it being a relatively simple block and beam suspended floor, blockwork walled and A frame timber roof, one storey building there is not much scope for a site engineer let alone his assistant. The engineer’s work is basically setting out - be it a wall or datum or hole. Which I would call “SUR-VEY-ING.” As an assistant “engineer” I get to hold the staff. To be fair it is engineering as checking the drainage will work as designed and built or following on site alterations requires engineering type knowledge and problem solving and understanding of the consequences etc.

Other than holding a staff for occasional levelling of pipes I have been holding a staff for (what has felt like never ending) marking of a datum 1.00m above finished floor level on all internal walls by pinging a chalk line,

also I have been ordering stationary and personal protective equipment (I managed to order just a single pair of gloves, and not two dozen, so was named one glove small feet of the black tribe), recording materials delivered, filling out a few forms and giving inductions to site for new trades people.
Still it is good to be on site. My first few weeks were an eye opening experience of health and safety issues, paperwork, tea breaks, so called banter, and hand washing.

The above board with various dispensing units is found in the toilets which helpfully states “Do at least once each day.”

Step 1 start of day hand protection cream. ok
Step 2 ordinary hand wash with overly potent orange fragrance or “Deb Natural”
Step 3 restore

Such an excess in dispensers at first struck me as out of place, more fitting in a hospital, but these measures to counter the serious effects of cement induced dermatitus etcetera must be applauded. I quizzed some of the guys, both management and trades, about the Debs dispensers and got a disappointingly unenthusiastic response.

Health and safety appears everywhere nowadays. I have had lectures and tests and videos on it and designers have to design for it (safer construction and maintenance). And I know everyone’s health and safety is important but I cannot help feeling that the construction industry is inherently dangerous and that H&S is largely driven by insurance companies (of construction firms) which is in turn driven by judges decisions forming judicial law, and which I guess has something to do with Human Rights Acts. Generally H&S rules / practices are put in place because a boss has said to their staff to do so, and the boss only said so because his boss said so and so on up the chain of hierarchy eventually answering to insurance companies who set out the insurance terms and conditions. It appears to me that most people simply try to please those they answer to and cover their own arse. As 40% or reported accidents on site are cuts to hands everyone on site has to wear protective gloves - including management who merely inspect and oversee and not man handle blocks or cast concrete or change disc cutter blades.

I was issued these gloves which I immediately said felt like washing up gloves. They are marigold industrial.

Cuts to the hands! Just cuts to the hands! My mum gets cuts dead heading her roses and I bet she doesn’t wear her marigolds! For cuts deep enough to warrant a visit to A&E I doubt any gloves other than chain mail ones would have helped.

Not all H&S is a means to an end. Last week a ground worker was putting a storm drain together in a 2.5m deep excavation and the site manager ordered him out and to properly step the excavation in a genuine concern for the worker’s safety. “I don’t care” came the response and so ensued a heated exchange providing needed amusement for those bored to death holding a staff.

And then I got knocked down and crushed by the forklift…..

… only kidding. Enough of this boring H&S stuff but let me just make it clear I do value peoples health and safety and can see the need for H&S.

*sigh*

Finding myself at a loose end I asked a brickie for a go at laying some linework. Trowel. Mortar. Splat. Scrap scrap. Trowel. Mortar. Splat. Shake shake. Block. Tap tap tap tap. Needless to say my 5 blocks took ages. I also gave jointing a go, which at least I felt I could do, but still it brought up the problem that mortar (referred to as muck) just does not stick to anything. The brickies are so quick and do it all with such ease that they should be under the label artists and not trades people.

I do not know much about storm cells but we installed one on site -

The whole thing of going to such lengths to have no impact on “down stream” seems to me to be similar to the whole H&S thing in that it is just part of the “development / improvements” in our society towards a “perfect world” where noting can go wrong but when it does there is someone to blame. Look back 100yrs to schooling or terms of employment or women’s rights (and so on) and at some vague point there has been a steady change towards ‘today’ because things were wrong. Today is better. But bad, ok, good are relative –> THERE WILL ALWAYS BE THINGS WRONG! How do you know when you have had a good time? Answer: because you know what a bad time is like. Ah, what’s the point?! I digress..