Chapter 19

On December 1st I was sitting in my office when Rick and Shannon came in to see me. "We are going for lunch" they told me.

We drove out to the industrial area on the south east side of the city. I was wondering where we were going as we did not have anything out in this area as far as I knew. I did not want to ask and be accused of not reading my emails as I knew I hadn't looked at them for the past week or so. Shannon drove us into a large compound with a huge warehouse in the center of it.

We all got out of the car and Rick led us inside the building through the large bay doors on the side of the building. There was a large resort like complex set up in the building; we walked around to what must have been the main entrance and I saw that it led into a foyer beside one of the dining rooms.

"Well what do you think?" Shannon asked.

That is when I realized this was the camp I had asked to have built. It looked nothing like the conceptual drawings I had seen. It was not that I had forgotten about the project but I had been busy with other things and I had heard Rick and Shannon talking about the camp a few times so I knew it was being taken care of. I had not asked to see the progress or new drawings since I had asked to have the men take a look at the plans.

I looked around the dining room there were no tables set up so the room looked huge. It had vaulted ceilings, one wall was all windows, the buffet area was set up so you could walk down both sides, and the pillars in the room had shelves and tables built around them for serving or displaying things. I walked into through the doorway into the entertainment room and although it was an empty room, I could visualize a big screen TV in the corner where the connections were in the wall, there was a fireplace in one of the walls and a large hearth in front of it. There were plug-ins all around the room for electrical things. They had put an office in one corner that had windows on three sides of the room. I walked to the door which was marked Managers office. Once inside I saw that there was a good field of view into three rooms, the dining hall, entertainment room and a third room which was a large open room with windows to the outside on two walls. There was a door to this room so I went through it.

"What is this room?" I asked.

"The men asked to have a store so they could buy cigarettes, batteries, magazines and that sort of thing. So after a discussion with the supervisors we decided to put in a full sized gas station so we could keep better track of the fuel used by our men as well as offer retail gas to others in the area." Shannon explained.

I nodded as I walked around the room and back into the camp.

I walked into the hallway to one of the sleeping rooms. The first thing I noticed was the keyed lock on the door; this was something I had noticed was missing from the camp I had visited. Once you opened the door you knew you where in someone's' room. There was a bed frame for a twin sized bed along one wall; at the head of the bed, there was a small night table built into the wall. There was a desk in the corner complete with its own lighting and electrical outlets. They had built in an entertainment center for the TV and a small closet with hangers and one row of drawers down the side. The room was about 8' by 10'. I opened the other door in the room and found myself in the bathroom; I noticed another door on the other side of the room and opened it right away to see another sleeping room there as well. The bathroom had two medicine cabinets in the wall behind the sink; a large shower area lots of towel racks.

"I am very impressed," I said to the group whom had been following me.

The group started telling me about all of the features that had been added and led me to the other end of the building to show me the offices that had been put in. Each office had a complete desk and counter set up with a small foyer, which led to an outside door. I could see that they had set up places to put photocopiers and fax machines in each office. The hallway between the offices was wider than the other hallways in the complex. I wondered about this until Rick mentioned that the supervisors suggested the bigger hallways for all of the workers coming and going first thing in the morning to get their work assignments. There was a large room at the end of the hall with several desks and places to install printers. This was a common area for our people to use for filling out their paperwork and invoices at the end of the day.

I was happy to see many network jacks through out the complex. It was nice to see that the entire company was using the networking technology we had been responsible for developing.

We walked outside through one of the office entrances and turned to look back at the camp. It appeared to be a single building with a peaked roof broken by gables throughout. This building looked like a high-class motel that belonged in a ski village somewhere. One side of the roof was covered in Solar panels.

"Who decided to put the peak roof on it?" I asked no one in particular.

Everyone looked around the group at an elder man standing behind them.

"Ah that would be me sir" he said nervously.

"You do realize this building will have to be taken apart and reassembled at least once a year don't you?" I ask him directly.

"Yes sir in fact this facility has been taken apart several times within the past week. We have made all of the components so that they can be reassembled easily with minimal supervision and or expertise." He responded with confidence.

"What is your name and job here?" I inquired of him.

"Ron Jeffereys sir I am the project head, but normally I am a Carpenter supervisor." He responded.

"So why the peaked roof Ron?"

"Here at McDonald Enterprises we do not build ordinary things. I looked at the drawings that were sent to us and inquired of Shannon if we could upgrade the concept, she agreed that it should not be a problem so I got the carpenters together and asked them to upgrade it to something they would not mind staying in for extended periods of time. After they had started to make changes I told them what Shannon had told me "Make it like a hotel" "he replied.

"Excellent you and your people should be proud of what you have accomplished with this. How many men can this house? I asked.

Shannon spoke up "250 men with a support crew of 25".

"Ok now that we have a camp where do we put it?" I asked

"As soon as we are finished here they are going to start taking it apart and moving it to the location we have picked out. The trees have already been cleared and the piles driven for the camp. The generators should be put in place today and tomorrow, the communications tower was installed yesterday along with the sewage treatment plant." Rick answered.

"Well I guess we better get out of the way then" I replied.

We went for lunch on the way back to the office and Rick explained that we would be building three camps just like that one for the different areas we were presently working in. They had already started to build the second one and it would be up and running by mid January, the third camp would be ready for the end January. Shannon told me that they had recruited half of the cooking and maintenance staff from the wives of the men that would be staying in the camps. We had hired the rest of the staff through our hotels in our various locations.

Shannon mentioned that one of the oil companies we were doing work for had asked if they could make use of our camp for their own workers, she told them that there may be room for them. She went on to explain that we would seldom have more than one hundred and fifty men in any of our camps so there was room to rent out space to others. They had built twice as many offices in the camp as we would need so there was office rental space available as well. It seemed as if these camps might be able to pay for them selves and maybe even make a small profit once they were put in place.

We all flew up to the camp location for the grand opening, we took the lear jet to the airport in High Level, the a helicopter from High Level to the camp. The clearing it was placed in had been cut out of a large spruce forest. The trees surrounding the camp had to be at least 100 feet tall. The camp itself was a series of buildings, there was the main building which we had toured at the warehouse then there were two water treatment plants for fresh potable water, two sewer treatment plants, two generator buildings, a communications building beside a tall tower, and a large Quonset hut.

The camp manager met us at the main entrance and gave us the official tour of the camp. We started the tour in the store/gas station. The shelfs were as well stocked as any convenience store in town would be. I was happy to see the pricing was pretty much the same as what we would see in Edmonton. The camp manager informed us that word had already gotten out that there was a store here and they were doing a brisk business in both fuel and off the shelf products.