Dock Tales - Plan for the unexpected!

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Hey everyone. Zak here from Cape Town, South Africa. I am writing to you from home, but I have been working in the dockyard where it is usually 12 hour work shifts.

I have a few pics of the site below but before I show you those, let me tell you about the title of my post: Plan for the unexpected.

I have some serious doubts about the Polish fellow that is supposed to arrive in South Africa this weekend and spend like one whole day on site.

I do not know if the docks and sites they have in Europe work differently or if HVAC and Engineering works differently, but in my experience, you need to allow for some leeway to make up for the blank spots that pre-planning cannot account for.

When we quoted to do this work we were asked why our quote is so high and why we have allowed for so much labour.

This is because of the bone-grindingly slow pace that things sometimes happen at this site. They have a lot of safety procedures in place to ensure safety. This is because there is anything from 500 to 3000 people on site at once and if there are no controls then it is almost certain that someone will get hurt or die.

So the controls need to stay and you need to make provisions for the time that it takes to do those controls.

There is of course a permit system, a daily safety talk, a lockout process, etc, etc.

After that you need to mobilize your own crew and if you need resources from other contractors then you need to wait for THEM to mobilize and if others are also waiting for those contractors then you wait in a que...

And then of course you might have equipment failing tests and this means that you need more time so hey! We planned right by quoting the way we did!

Life lesson!

Enjoy the pics!


My container is up stairs here.


Scaffolding access is constructed and the offices or storage is stacked together to save space on the quayside.


Here is our office!


Up the stairs!


Inside my site office! We have a water cooler, fridge, cabinet and microwave oven!

Cheers!
@zakludick

Hive South Africa

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11 comments
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(Edited)

Thanks my friend for providing a tour. Looks like an interesting place to work. One would have to be very careful from those heights.. you must have a stomach of steel.

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Haha. What heights? On the container?

That's nothing.

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Yeah, the container loool. I'd imagine you gotta be very careful on those platforms/frames.

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I'm so grateful that you have a comfortable sure establishment and that this isn't one of those 3 month stints. I love you. I worry about you. And ur sucks when you're so stressed and have to work so hard ❤ I'm so grateful for everything you do for our family. I hope you know that

!luv

!hugz

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You are indeed so resilient my friend as I see it in your work. Glad to see your workplace and yes the best way is to enjoy the moment. Have a nice time!
!PIZZA

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