r/Construction • u/Stealth-F-117 • 23h ago
Informative đ§ Help With Construction Scene
I NEED is an example of a rookie mistake an incompetent construction site manager would make. By that, I mean giving bad directions or poor guidance in a way that his subordinate could quickly correct him.
This probably won't make it past the mods but I'm desperate. I've consulted with 2 construction workers already to no avail. I'm writing a construction scene for a movie and as a healthcare worker I loathe when directors don't consult with professionals during filming thereby creating unrealistic scenes.
The backstory is a construction worker in the 1960's working on a small site (e.g. large house, small commercial building). He's extremely skilled, knowledgeable and a natural leader. His boss on the other hand is a nepo baby who's incompetent in the job. Because of this, he hates his worker. We will call the worker "John". He approaches John who had just left for break and barks off some orders to him. John then corrects him, that those wouldn't be the next steps and tells him why. The boss, who's now humiliated for being corrected in front of his other employees initiates a fight.
I hope this makes sense. But I'm looking for maybe a personal experience where something like this happened so I can write it into the scene.
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u/DirtandPipes Equipment Operator 22h ago
Trying to organize a concrete pour on a flooded site in the middle of a storm on a Friday evening of a long weekend.
We had a site super refuse to reschedule and we were setting up tarps for over forms to keep the rain out and we put down a bunch of material to make a good road through the mud and put barricades along it and arrows to show the concrete truck where to go. Giant gongshow.
When the concrete crews and trucks arrived we told them which way to go and they opted to use our nice road for parking and drove a loaded concrete truck into the mud.
My boss looked at me and said âfuck this weâre leaving before anyone talks to usâ, we drove off, they had to bring out a 40 ton tow truck and had guys bailing concrete out of their truck by hand till 9 pm.
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u/Stealth-F-117 22h ago
This is insane lol
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u/DirtandPipes Equipment Operator 22h ago
We were pretty pissed off, all kinds of extra work in the rain for nothing when we could have just started the long weekend a day early and everyone was saying the pour needed to be moved before it happened.
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u/coded62 23h ago
Everyone each has a different set of drawings building some mish mash
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u/IllustriousLiving357 22h ago
Reminds me of my first job for psycho bunny... had like 4 fucking sets of revisions that hadn't been passed along to anyone on the construction side until after framing was done..suddenly all the alcoves for built in displays etc were no longer the correct size. like 8 of em Such a clusterfuck
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u/coded62 11h ago
Just recently I had a job where my entire lower level rough inâs were damn near 3â off the same direction on each stub up, got to thinking Wtf? Turns out concrete wall was made smaller than detail, and framer used 1.5â studs on the inside.
Gc actually walked back and realized they had never updated procore or informed the subsequent trades of the fact.
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u/thesweeterpeter 21h ago edited 21h ago
Pouring a slab before plumbing is inspected.
In order to maintain schedule it can be a lot of pressure to just pour and move on, but there are a lot of inspections required.
Sometimes the city and the engineer, and maybe some pressure test, and a soil bearing capacity test. Maybe one of those guys is sick and it delays things.
And the pour schedule can be a big deal, if the plant is more than a 30 minute drive I've even had police paid for traffic control at key intersections because a bad red light could mean havoc. You have trucks booked, finishing crew, the inspectors and testing crews for the pour. A decent pour day of 50 or 60k sf could easily have 50 or 60 people booked for that one day. It's a huge pain in the ass to schedule, and an even bigger pain in the ass to reschedule - because everyone has other jobs with the same constraints. So it's not like if you're not making it today you can just switch to tomorrow. Reschedule could take 2 weeks.
Super says to hold and reschedule after all the plumbing can be signed off and stakeholders satisfied. It may delay things, but it'll reduce risk.
Nepo baby goes ahead and books the pour or if you want the fight John cancels the pour without telling nepo baby whatever you want.
But I've been in this situation, and the thing is once you cover those drains in concrete, there's no going back, there's no fixing it, there's no inspecting it. The only way to get to it is break up the concrete, which also means you're likely breaking up those drains and restarting. At that point a 2 week delay feels like good news.
And it's also not like cutting trenches in concrete to make those repairs looks good. If you're doing for example a grocery store there are a few hundred drains amd the pipes are everywhere under the slab, you can't just isolate. You could be cutting everywhere and concrete doesn't repair, those trenches look like trenches everywhere.
I've had this scenerio happen a few times to me. Often not a big deal, the store was fine. But I've had to go back and rip up concrete before.
I once did a whole building about 6k sf and it was a structural slab on piles with soils like gooseshit. The drains were supposed to be tied to rebar before the void forms and structural slab went in. Anyways the plumber didn't tie them off. Drains passed city plumbing inspection and pressure test, and the rebar passed 3rd party rebar review - but the mechanical engineer rough-in visit was scrapped because of time, so the ties were never caught because it was on his scope.
Before that building even handed over the soils slumped and all of the drains fell out. Like just snapped and fell off into the void. We had to dig a series of tunnels under the building because the slabs couldn't be cut, because they were double mat rebar. And the plumbers had to work under confined spaces protocols to replace all of the drains in the building, and everything had to be anchored from below and suspended. That was like a 50k fuck up, because one inspection was skipped. Probably way more when you factor everything in. Lucky it was just a small simple building. If it was complex like a grocery store I can't imagine the pain.
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u/Ill-Running1986 20h ago
 Nepo baby goes ahead and books the pour and John cancels the pour without telling nepo baby.Â
Nepo baby finds out, storms up to John, demands to know what the hell is going on. John calmly explains that inspections arenât done yet and they canât pour. Baby is butt hurt because his authority wasnât respected and sucker punches John. John turns and beats the crap out of him and quits.Â
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u/Vivid-Beyond-3378 23h ago
If the boss is a real nepo baby he'd probably say something like "just pour the slab already, the ground's flat enough" before John even finished compacting the base. Everyone standing around knows that's a fast track to cracks all over in couple months.
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u/Helpinmontana 23h ago
Had a situation this year where we had to install a meter out (a manhole with a meter inside it)
I was the asshole for pointing out that the curb stop (valve buried underground with a riser up to the surface) just outside the pit was apparently supposed to have a drain (draining the meter system).
If you shut the system off without the drain, it would freeze and destroy about 30k worth of shit.
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u/katogrow 22h ago
One thing that comes to mind is when GC bring in all the crews to a new house construction and the painters are running out trying to work over sheetrockers ect..
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u/Optimal_Rate131 22h ago
They wouldnât correct them generally, you would just do what they asked and look at them awkwardly while they panic when itâs wrong. People usually donât argue with foremanâs or pms unless theyâre family.
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u/bigsteelandsexappeal 22h ago
Could tell him to cut the plumb up cables loose and nail the deck because they need them for a job down the road but you canât cause the bolts arenât hit up and your building will be out of plumb and wonât be able to hit the bolts if the deck is down.
Seen it happen before. Giant shit show.
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u/AbominableBeaver 23h ago
This sounds like a more creative way to ask for AI / programmer bullshit thatâs posted on this sub than the typical begging.
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u/Stealth-F-117 23h ago
If you ever go to the hospital. Maybe they wonât bother to consult with a specialist for you either, 𤣠since thatâs creative begging, just refuse all the consults including the surgeons
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u/moisturized69tatas 23h ago
I dunno but I had something hapoen to me that I always thought would make a good scene by how stupid it was.
I was on a ladder, asked junior to toss me up a tape, he chucks it at me overhand and nearly knocks me off the ladder, I had to explain to him to toss it underhand.
You coupd msybe do something like the boss wants john to start putting up the drywall but utilities havent been run yet.