Thursday, January 24, 2008

Enough of the deep and meaningful

I'm going to head out a little early to London so I can have a long walk and see some of the sights and take it easy rather than rushing about to get to places.

I'll enjoy an evening of getting away from it and spending some time with some old friends and laughing about some of the things we got up to and some of the good guys and some of the idiots we encountered too. We have been involved in some "hairy" jobs and deadlines and had all sorts of adventures along the way. More surreal moments have come when during a meeting two of us delivered a calm review of progress that so upset the main contractor that he stormed out of the meeting! As he walked out (and it wasn't me) my mate said "Its a bit early to be leaving. The Pub isn't open and most of your drinking chums haven't arrived into work yet!" What the chap said is not printable on here :-)

On another occasion whilst trying to get the builder to give me a clue where he was going to set out the walls so that I could start to get the services installed, when he refused again, I asked him to build the building from the roof downwards and that way I could project a line down with a plumb rule. He was nodding agreement for at least a minute before it sunk in and no one else could hold a straight face either. I got my setting out points the next day. This was the same guy who called a huge meeting to answer a list of queries we had (although we didn't realise that was what it was for until we got there). On entering the meeting there must have been 15 senior people there - architects, surveyors, engineers, consultants etc. He told the meeting that he had called the meeting to answer our queries. My colleague and I looked at each other in amazement and produced a large letter we had got from the Main Contractor himself answering all of our queries. We produced the letter at the meeting and showed him - he denied he had written it - strange indeed. we had a lot of fun going through the answers and asking everyone if they were happy with the answers we had been given. Most of them agreed that these were the answers they had given to the main contractor! It was only him who didn't acknowledge his own letter to us.

Ah, good days - enough to write a book? Perhaps :-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where did you spend your time in London??
Most of mine was working in the City of London
The last ten years in Nat West Tower which I believe was built from the top down, at least the floors were

A Dived Ref said...

I worked in the City. Worked at the Nat West Tower - interesting place - cantilevered building with a floating raft foundation. I have worked all around that area Fenchurch Street, Cannon Street, Broadgate, Finsbury Circus and Square, Moorgate, London Wall and I've probably been in 1 in 4 of all the buildings around there including the Bank of England.

My offices were in Euston, Bermondsey and Southwark. Gosh, I feel old all of a sudden :-)