Sunday, November 09, 2008

SNAP SHOT (click me)



BUILDING 5


BUILDING 5 AND 6

Deraild a bit

Alight fair enough, I've been a little bit slack happy. Not going to lie it is time for a long over due update.

So much has happen in the past, what where those, 8-9 months it's almost overwhelming, let's see here I've been to Denver Twice, home a hand full of times, saw one of my most nearest and dearest friends get married, saw my middle school sweetheart tie the knot with a best friend from high school (whom i set up - go me!) went on a true first date, went on countless good dates, two bad dates, broke up with a boyfriend, went up to Boston, cried a whole bunch, laughed until my spleen nearly burst, gained/lost weight, moved into the city, received two raises, found a kindred spirit, saw enough red ink on my drawings to make me think that i was going color blind except for the color red, also saw those drawings get signed and sealed allowing my building to go up, called my senior superintendent cup cake, got away with it and now I am being assigned to a new project. Well there is whole lot more but let's not waste time on the details.

Even though so many different things have taken place over those past 9 months one thing has been happily consistent, my involvement with Investment Guru X (i don't like to drop names or anything fancy-schmacy like that) , phase III expansion. Phase 3 expansion consisted of two office buildings (core and shell) done by my firm with the interior design done by another local firm as well as two large garages semi-sunk below ground to prevent any grossly inappropriate obstruction of the view (chuckle).

My involvement started with a simple request to tweak some drawings for a future guard house that X was thinking about installing... however it went off the deep end from there. Soon I found my time being devoured by the project and after about a month of doing odd tasks for the behemoth of a project I was full blown team member! I realized that is was due in part to fact that the original team members were dropping like flies, leaving my firm to join new ones or start their own. Which left the project team a little ... deflated.

From October to April the team pretty much consisted of Elizabeth (in our DC office), my amazing mentor Steve and myself. That's right 3 ( 2 freshly out of college and limited construction knowledge) of us labored constantly; day in and day out- every late-night evening and weekend hour we could scrape together was taken advantage of, all to get the job done. From about the middle of March to present time another (Adam) joined our team as Elizabeth got the opportunity to work on something new. Adam probably has about 5 years of experience and was semi-helpful to me but more so to Steve. He now had someone that had experience out in the field was was comfortable getting the in the face of our contractors.

The site developed week after week into the building I had imagined it to be. It suddenly became so overwhelming to me that what I had spent months putting onto paper was what these guys were using to put it all together. Talk about a yikes/ gulp moment.

First came the site work, digging all the appropriate holes then came the concrete for foundations and column footers and then came the steel, piece by piece it was matched up with their counter parts and popped up, what seemed to be, overnight. After the steel was erected they laid the metal decking and poured the concede floors. Once that was all done lightweight steel framing was installed on all of the exterior walls and topped with exterior sheathing. The interior partitions were next, framing went up along with some duct work and pluming. As all of that was going on the brick work began, each week a new section would be covered with brick and complete with window sills and lintels of cast stone. I do have to say that it did make me a little nervous to be walking around on site watching the construction crew looking at MY drawings, ones that I said were RIGHT. Part of me wanted to rip the drawings out of their hands and just apologize for screwing up this or that, and to remind them that I was green as grass. and really had very little idea of what i was actually doing.. but I didn't; I resisted, it probably wouldn't have done well for my site cred (if you know what I mean) .

Working with the contractors has pretty much been a roller-coaster of emotions, sometimes I hate em, sometimes i love em but all of the time i respect them. I (for unknown reasons) have developed a really good working relationship with our senior superintendent Wayne, which by no means considers himself a nice guy, i suppose you could say "he's as rough as they come" because at about 55 he looks nearly two decades older, got a constant sneer of disapproval on his face and a giant stoggie hanging out of the bottom corner of his mouth were a smile might be on other humans. But somehow i managed to win him over. I'm pretty sure it all started when i went to drop some drawings off at the site, and i naturally ran into Wayne. Now the only real interaction we have is on Thursdays when we have our weekly coordination meeting out on the site. I think I usually stay quite as a church mouse with the occasional "excuse me" and "no thank you". So needless to say he pretty much saw me as innocent pray. We started talking about the project and the difference between now and the old days when Wayne was just starting out as a roof framer. Well then he dropped the bomb. "Thanks for bring those drawings out pumpkin."

... This was not the first time Wayne called me pumpkin, as he did the Thursday before and asked "Do you need a hard hat Pumpkin?" which i laughed off and said i had come prepared and didn't need one of theirs...

But this was the last time. NO ONE CALLS ME PUMPKIN. So I stood my ground and said "You know Wayne, about that Pumpkin business... if you start calling me pumpkin, I'm gonna have to start calling you some thing like... cupcake. How'd-ya like that?" He laughed and was quick to point out that he calls may others pumpkin and I wasn't alone in receiving a pet name from the man. We had a good chuckle about it and I was on my way. I didn't really think about it too much after that however, in the time I had left the site and arrived back at the office a phone call was made from Wayne to Steve. I guess he wanted to clarify that he wasn't trying to make a sexist remark and that he had all the respect in the world of me and he was hoping (and praying) that I wasn't offended. I laughed and promised Steve it was all in good fun and I didn't see anything offensive there.
So needless to say every time I meet Wayne on Thursday mornings he offers up "Good morning pumpkin" to which I respond "Good morning cupcake."