Man, yesterday was a tough day at work. I am trying to finish up my Union City Project and we can only work every other friday in that place because those are the days when there are closed on those days.
Currently, it has taken us 2 months to work on this thing because initially we ran into several problems which was caused by us using the wrong actuator. Our actuators only spin 90deg, but we needed one that could free spin more than 360 deg because the dampers that control the air are like curtains. So you can spin the curtains up in both directions. It is something that I have never seen before in the many years I have worked.
Also, what makes this project really hard also is the ceiling tiles. If you look carefully, I have to put them up in a specific order, with the “key” tile going in last. I came up with a really good way to track everything by laying down everything exactly like how it needs to go back up. So that changed the time to put up the tiles from 40 minutes, to 5minutes to put the ceiling back up.
So today, I started at 7am, and we were going to make 20 pieces of equipment work. That is when my co-worker comes in and poops on it all ….
The company just hired a new guy named “J” and he is very experienced, and another guy “L” was being carpooled by him to help me. “L” is still really new and has been working here for really only 1 year as an intern. So he is still learning, which means he needs someone to help him.
Anyways, I see “J” drive in at 7am, and he seems a little bit more quiet today. The plan was set down like this, I would pull down the ceiling tiles (I know the place) and set everyone up with what to do next, and then “J” would install the new actuators, and “L” would work with him to make sure everything is working correctly.
So I show “J” how to install the actuators, and what airflow station we want to use, and where to wire up the actuator to, while I show logan what programming changes we need to implement. Then we are ready to, and I think today will be a really good day. All of a sudden “J” as he goes up the ladder, comes down and says that he “needs a headlamp”. “L” offers him his headlamp, but “J” says “I will just buy one from home depot”, so he goes and drives off to home depot. I let him go thinking that maybe he was having a bad morning carpooling logan, and need 10 minutes to clear his mind alone.
I went to the office during this time to get my other stuff ready for the subcontractor electrician because they called me in the morning asking for more equipment so they could get things done tomorrow.
Anyways, “J” comes back from home depot, and he is still really quiet and pretty depressing sounding saying “I think we will only do 4 today”. So he starts working on the one box as I continue to open up tiles. I then talk to the UC Maintenance Guy and he goes “there must be something wrong with that guy, I haven’t and won’t say a word to him because he has something going on”.
“J” is doing work on the first box and is just frustrated because nothing is working. He has all the tools, but I think he is just working like a robot, I will just put this in and if it doesn’t work, I’m not really going to try to figure it out. Him and “L” spend maybe 2 hours trying to get the first thing working, and I think “L” is not that effective at checking things out so he is spinning “J” around in circles telling him to try this and that. I eventually come walking back and I set them both straight by just running through a checkout sequence for them. I usually manually check out all the equipment first, before I go to software. While I believe “L” was trying to check it through software first, when really the big thing was that it was just the airflow was reversed. Which would be much faster to find out by moving the VAV’s into an open and then closed position.
Anyways, it is around 11am, and they quit on the first box and go to another box to get it to work. My PM calls me and asks me how we are going and I say “we are going slow, we only have done 2 boxes”. I can hear the PM is confused, and upset that we are so slow, so he asks me why. Then I tell him “if you come here you will know why, and “J” is not feeling it today”
So the PM comes around noon time and brings us lunch. So while ‘J’ and ‘L’ are getting food, I am walking in another direction and the PM catches up to me and asks me what is happening. So I tell him that ‘J’ is so slow today and I feel like he had mailed it for work today. And the PM apologized to me and says “I have never seen this side of him”.
Around this time the electrician’s come by and help me out install the last actuator and controller in a box that is 25 feet high from the ground. We we’re worried about the safety for installing something so high, because there is no place to stand on. The electricians ended up laying on top of the duct and installing everything looking down over the side.
So the electrician’s are nice guys who are helping me on this project. They hear the UC Maintenance guy and I talking about ‘J’ and how slow and how anti-social he was today. They decide that they want to help me, so they said “we will come back from our job and will help you knock everything out”. At this time I am having the PM start to help me install stuff while “L” is doing the checkout. We are able to do 2 more before the electrician some back. So I think from 3pm through 5pm, the 2 electricians finish out 10 boxes. While ‘J’ is only able to finished 2 in that time. With him disappearing a lot to smoke and talk on a phone.
We ended up finishing everything by 7pm. Cleaning everything and putting all the stuff away. It turned out to be a very good workday after 12 hours of hard work.
Here was the cute picture I saw yesterday. Hipster Mickey.
