Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Pretending to be a real person is pretty easy, bluffing your case on a building site isn’t that hard (it helps if you’ve done it before) understanding an Irish Foreman who is as unintelligible as a Ghurka on a radio isn’t quite so easy.

I have been installed as an Assist Site Manager on the Mayflower Halls Site for Osborne in Southampton. As facebook followers will know I have discovered that this title is a little over-inflated; as such on a site that currently only has about 33 people on it there are 2 Assistant Managers (including me), a Site Manager, a Senior Site Manager, a Senior Project Manager, a Design Manager and a Construction Manager. So as an Assist Site Manager I started with less power than 2Lt ETS Officer. However, armed with nothing more sophisticated than a notebook, pencil and a 7 month crash course into how to pretend you know what you’re talking about I have already managed to avoid the other Assistant site Manager shedding the plant ticket checking folder onto my to do list and stopped a pile cap pour that was missing not only the drainage runs but the ground beams that tied into it. Being a real person isn’t that hard.

Things I have learned so far:
· Shaving is optional, even for quite senior managers.
· Civvies measure work in time not output.
· Bullshit still baffles brains. Signs, signs and more signs!
· Reinforcement drawings are nowhere near as simple as the ones they showed you in the lessons.
· Civvies find your use of ‘Roger’ quaint, look at you blankly when you say ‘Diffy’ and call you on the radio more than is really necessary because they like to laugh at your voice procedure.
· Contractors will wilfully do something that is wrong just so that they can be doing something.
· A ground worker who has done his SMSTS course suddenly becomes and expert on everything and the civilian equivalent of a barrack room lawyer.

Joking aside, there are a good many things that I just don’t ‘get’ yet, there has been a number of times I have found myself actually knowing more about stuff than those around me and fearing that I had a bit too much of the classroom about me. Osborne have so far been brilliant and very welcoming.