I am having one of those days where I want to pull my hair out. Anyone ever work with geotech drillers? At one of the sites I manage, we are attempting to install 4 monitoring wells. We know the materials and the depths and only require split spoon sampling on 1 of the 4, so the other 3 are just straight installs. Should be easy, right? Think again! It is almost 4pm and they still have yet to START drilling! First, they showed up an hour late (supposed to be there at 10am, showed up at 11am). Then, they were all concerned they couldn’t get to the well location because of mud. You have a track mounted rig, buddy! Whatever, we move location slightly to accommodate. I have a feeling some of the problems we're experiencing with these drillers is the guy is 23 and has only been an operator for a month. Great.
Then they got their vehicles stuck in the mud going down an old logging road where they should have only taken their track mounted rig down, not their pick-up truck. So, I had to call the Township to get them to pull them out. That finally got all sorted out and they were all ready to start when they decided they didn’t feel comfortable drilling because of the presence of bears. Which I understand is a concern, there are bears in the area, but the noise of the drill rig in operation will scare away any bears! Give me a break. Well, they outright refused to start drilling unless we provided them with bear spray and an air horn. Our field staff only had 1 bear spray on them, so they ran into town to buy another one and the only store in town that sells bear spray sold the last one this morning. Perfect. So, I had to get our other field crew who was an hour away to drive to the site on their way home to drop off another bear spray. If we’re lucky, we’ll start drilling by 5pm and get maybe an hour or two at the most in today. GAH!
Just had to vent. Sometimes being a project manager is not all it’s cracked up to be. Because I spent half my day on the phone with our field staff and the client trying to get this all sorted out and in the end, it will get done, but likely severely over budget which I am accountable for!
4 comments:
Wow, frustrating! I feel your pain today.
I'm stuck fixing other peoples' reports. FIVE of them. All have to go out this week. ALL of them are overbudget now.
What is wrong with people?
How are the drillers today? Do you have any hair left or have you pulled it all out?
I'm working on report #3 of the week. Blarg...
What a pain, I just had this huge long comment and blogger lost it.
Yes, I still have some hair left... not much though!
These drillers are really pissing me off because I think they are just coming up with excuses to drag this out longer.
They have 1 hole left to do, 13 metres deep in overburden, no sampling, so that should take at most 2 hours. Well, instead of finishing it up today, they want to quit for the day and finish it tomorrow. Piss-ants.
I realize it's a long day, but I would much rather get it done in 2 days rather than 3... doesn't help that they didn't even start drilling until 5pm yesterday, but I don't want to get into that again... I'd lose it!
I'm still hopeful that they may lose the crappy attitude and finish up today, but I'm not holding my breath.
We may have to combine our upcoming zoo trip with some heavy drinking... LOL!
Here's hoping I'm done with this crap by then...
In the meantime, have a virtual vodka *passes C-dub her hip flask*
It's the only thing that gets me through... :)
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