Chapter 13

I woke up feeling really tired, I looked at the clock, 4:45 am, I had gotten about three hours sleep, I got up and started the coffee pot, hit the washroom and threw on a pair of coveralls so I could go out and have my smoke.

I had to walk about 100 yards in order to get to a place where I could smoke, I drank my coffee and had two smokes while I was out, I think I scared Julie when I came back in, she was bent over at the stove and she jumped pretty good, she was cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast.

"Good morning" I said.

"Good morning" she replied as she turned to get the toast out of the oven, I went over and put my bed away so we would have somewhere to sit and eat.

Julie put food in front of me just as I sat to the table; I looked at her as she set it down.

"Not used to these kinds of hours I guess?"I asked.

"No I am used to getting at least 6 hours of sleep" she replied.

"No problem, the nice part of this job is the fact that we get nap time during the day, as long as either Mark or me is available the other can grab a nap, but we have to walk around a couple of times every night so that everyone realizes that we will catch them if they are not honest with us, we will find all of the things that are not completed. We will walk the site at least five times a day to see where everyone is working and see if they are on schedule, later we will need to have one of us at a computer at all times because we will be testing everything that is installed but any of my guys that can do the checking" I explained.

I finished eating told Julie to get some sleep and grabbed a shower then made my rounds to all of the different departments morning meeting, I quickly introduced myself and handed out the schedules as moved from one meeting to the next. I arranged to be at the pipefitters meeting last, I explained to the foreman my concerns about getting all of the valves changed out and suggested he hire a couple of more crews to help out, he asked about working a couple of shifts and I told him that would be fine. I told him to take a look at the amount of work and figure out what he was going to need for manpower and hire them. Once I was done I went for a tour to see how everyone was working and to see if they were working on what they should be.

After walking through the site and answering question that were asked by the different trades I arrived back at my bed at about noon, I called Mark to make sure he was up and ready to do his part, once I filled him in on the things I thought he should check on I made up my bed and went to sleep.

I woke up at about 4:00pm Julie was sitting at the desk playing on her laptop, I could see she had some kind of spreadsheet open but I couldn't see what it was about, I got up and wandered into the washroom, after I got rid of several of my early morning coffee I came back out to get a fresh one, Julie had a cup poured for me when I sat down, she was already folding my bed up and putting my bedclothes away. I watched her as she was working; she seemed to be a little more rested and relaxed.

"So did you have a good nap?" I asked.

"Yes it was great, I can't believe how good I slept, but I think I am going to try and stay on your schedule, it is very boring sitting here by myself." She replied with a small smile.

"Good I am glad, so are you ready to go for a little walk?" I asked.

"I would love to get out of here" she said.

"Ok let's get dressed and we will go and see what is up, the first place for me to go is the smoking area, you wouldn't believe what you can find out listening to the smokers" I said as I pulled my coveralls on.

Julie got dressed in her work clothes and off we went, there were only a couple of people smoking when we got there and they took off back to work as soon as we walked up, I still had my smoke and drank my coffee. I called Mark while we were there and he updated me on what he had seen so far today, I knew everyone was just shutting down for the day so I started on side of the site and Mark started on the other documenting the jobs and what stage they were at. As we made our rounds we picked up our guys as we came across them, once we had seen the entire site we met back at the conference room, once again we all updated the system with our new information, all of us had cameras this time so we inputted all of our pictures, we now had a really good handle on what was happening out there, George and Ray were going to work half of the night shift to keep up with the electricians. Rod was going to hook up the servers in my motor home while we were in our evening meeting; all he had to do was run five cables from the MCC to the servers.

Once again Julie mark and I were the only ones to stay for the meeting, this time though Jim was the first one to the meeting, he was about fifteen minutes early, the first thing he mentioned was that people had reported seeing us everywhere all day long, he seemed impressed.

Once everyone was in place and had a cup of coffee we again went through what we knew and had each different department report on the sections as we went through them, the welders reported that they were farther along than what they were, I brought up the pictures we had of the jobs that they reported as finished that were not completed, I commented that maybe they had better get out there and see what they had actually completed instead of just taking someone else's word for it. We revised the schedule and again I told them that they would have a printed copy of the schedule for them first thing in the morning, I told them that it would be there earlier this time and just be stuck in the door.

Once the meeting was over I had a small meeting with Jim to let him know about a couple of areas in which I had some concerns over right now, he told me that he was very satisfied with what we had done so far, he liked the accountability we were requiring of everyone. I told him that the servers would be up and running with several demo modes for his operators to practice on tomorrow, anything they did wrong would be logged and we would go over the right procedures with them as we came across errors.

Jim seemed happy so I headed back to the motor home for a quick meeting with Mark before I went to bed, I would be getting back up at 2:00am to do a walk around and check things out, then I would nap until it was time for all of the crew morning meetings, I would take a walk through the different areas just to have my presence known. Once that was completed I would be installing the new programs into the PLC's so that we would be ready to test at least some of the controls that were in place already, mostly though I would be watching the operations guys and how they did with the demos I had set up for them, I would of course throw in some problems for them to deal with from time to time just to keep their interest up.

My meeting with Mark was pretty short as we both knew what was going on and what we should be watching, I asked Julie if she was going to be coming with me for my walk at 2:00am and she wanted to so it was off to bed for both of us.

I woke up at 2:00am to the smell of coffee, Julie was just putting a cup on the desk for me, "Hello sleepy head" she said as she saw I was awake.

"Good morning" I replied as I got up and walked to the bathroom to relieve some pressure.

"Do you want something for breakfast now or wait until we get back?" Julies asked.

"We can wait until we get back or maybe even wait until six or so, whenever I will leave it up to you " I answered as I walked through the bathroom door.

I came out of the bathroom into the main bedroom at the best time possible, Julie had just removed her robe and was starting to get dressed, I got a good look then went and sat down at my desk facing the open bedroom door and watched her as she finished dressing, she looked up and saw me, turned to give me a better view with a grin on her face as she pulled on a thong, she really took her time getting the thong set up right then pulled on a t shirt and grabbed her coveralls, I enjoyed the display then once it was over I rushed to get dressed so I would be ready, I opened the door stepped out then came back in for a jacket, it was cold this morning.

We carried our travel mugs and cameras over to the smoking area so I could have my smoke. Once I had enough of standing in the cold we started our tour, the first crew we came across was a pipefitting crew changing out one of a long list of valves that needed attention. We stopped and talked with the guys for a couple of minutes as they continued to work, they told me this was the third one so far tonight, I was impressed as I figured it would have been slower going. We actually helped the electricians when we got to them as they were trying to pull a piece of cable through some cable tray with a lot of bends so they were short a pair of hands so we pitched in. George came over just as we finished, "Sorry Boss, I was just helping the other crew for a couple of minutes, these guys were going to wait until I got back to help" he said.

"Not a problem George a little work won't hurt me, looks like maybe we are short a couple of guys on these crews though, should we get some more helpers?" I asked him.

"Nah, we have enough guys, I just wanted to get these really long cables pulled tonight so the day crew wouldn't be in everyone's way trying to pull these, I maybe bit off a little more than I should have but these are the last long runs so we will actually split the crews up some more to pull the other runs and terminate the cables, I am trying to make sure we don't pull anymore cable than what we can terminate." George explained.

"Ok if you are sure, good thinking having the tough ones done first, make sure they are marked right when they are terminated please." I replied.

George looked hurt by that remark, "boss it was only that one time that I screwed up, can't you just forget it and let's move on please"

I laughed and patted him on the back as we walked away.

"What was that about?" Julie asked.

"About the second job George worked with us on he left the wire marking to one of the electricians and he used the wrong wire colours, it took George a couple of hours to find the problem, the junction box with the problem was in an explosive area so it was sand filled, when I got there George was trying to get the sand back in the junction box" I replied laughing at the memory.