I’ve had a lot of jobs in my lifetime, but the most satisfying was being an
ironworker on construction. To take a pile of steel beams and
columns lying on the ground and make it in to the skeleton of a commercial
building is definitely more satisfying than selling a piece of real estate or
any other job I’ve had. I started out as an ironworker and wound
up a steel erection sub-contractor.
The
number one job on any commercial building is the Superintendent.
He is the highest paid and he coordinates the subcontractors and his own
men. Superintendents normally are given a bonus if the job comes
in under bid price and that’s the reason for shoddy construction by a handful of
superintendents I have known.
One of
the costliest mistakes I’ve ever seen a superintendent make for trying to save a
few dollars was on the Missouri Bar Association Building in Jefferson City.
The superintendent ordered concrete with a couple of sacks of cement per
yard less than the specifications called for. Each time concrete
is poured, a tube-full is sent in to be tested. When it didn’t
test out, the contractor was told to tear out a whole floor of freshly poured
concrete.
The
contractor had us build an Esther Williams swimming pool on top of the slab
after a testing company installed gauges on steel posts placed under the slab to
see if the concrete would withstand pounds per square inch called for.
The contractor was trying to convince the lawyers if it would hold up the
weight of the water in the swimming pool, it should be safe. The
Bar Association made him go ahead and tear out the floor, costing well over
$100,000 back then. The superintendent not only didn’t get a
bonus, last I heard, he was still hunting another job.
Jack can be reached at
PO Box 40,
Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers@aol.com.
Visit www.jackremembers.com
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