"Why are you still here?" She, Judith Chapman, my boss, looked at me from her side of the desk. She had called me into her office to ask me that?
"It's not knocking off time."
"No, that's not what I meant. You have been working here for the last twenty years, you're getting trampled on by all the young guys clambering up the corporate ladder to success, yet you're still here. Why?"
This is a question that I have been asking myself for years, why the fuck am I still here? It's not that I love my job, I don't hate it but let's face it, when you've been doing the same job for as long as I have, it's hard to love it. It's not as if I'll ever get a promotion to something above my present grade, I'm not young and trendy enough for that. It's not as if the other staff consider me to be a friend. Don't get me wrong, they're polite enough, especially when they're picking my brains about something, but they never ask me to join them for after work drinks.
"If you really want to know, it's because I'm a coward."
"What do you mean?"
"Because I'm scared of leaving and looking for another job. I mean, let's be real here, who in their right mind would take on an old bloke like me, I'm a dinosaur. I can't afford to be out of work."
"I would have thought that you'd be financially secure."
"I would have been except for one thing. My lovely wife wanted a divorce and took me to the cleaners in the process. The house that I had almost paid off, single handedly I might add, suddenly became hers and I was out on the streets with not enough money to start over again with a new mortgage. At my age the chances of getting a mortgage are non-existent, so I'm stuck in a rental house that takes up a large percentage of my money."
"Don't you have family, kids, that you can call on?"
"By the time she'd got through telling them what a bastard I was, they weren't even speaking to me."
"Richard, the real reason that I asked you to come in is . . . Do you know why it is that I'm in this office instead of you?"
"Because I stuffed up my interview? I don't know."
"No. If the truth be known you interviewed better than I did. When Henry resigned he recommended you as his replacement as Manager. For whatever reason, the board had other ideas, they didn't want a Henry clone in the chair, so they insisted on advertising the position. The official explanation was that there was very little difference between us as far as qualifications and experience goes, but mine was as an Office Manager, and that they were introducing what they call an 'affirmative action' policy that says that where two candidates for a position have equal claims, the job should go to the woman to even up the gender imbalance."
"I guess that's fair enough."
"No it's not. You have the right qualifications for this job, and you know more about the running of this organisation than anyone else, you should have got it. I'm not much more than a glorified bean counter."
"What if I don't want the job?"
"Are you telling me that you don't?"
"No, just what if I don't?"
"Well then I guess that you just continue to drift through life as you have done since I've been here. But let me tell you Richard, you're a better man than that. You have the potential to succeed in whatever you put your mind to, it's just a matter of you deciding to do something about it."
"What do you suggest I do? I can just about do my job with my eyes closed."
"That's just it, we need all of the staff to be as efficient as you, that way we can run our business more efficiently."
"Look, years ago I tried to tell one of the new guys how to speed up his throughput, but he told me in no uncertain terms that I was a dinosaur, and that he was top of his class at University and knew all of the latest methods."
"So, how do you do it?"
"Promise not to tell?"
"Yes."
"Quantity Surveying is knowing as much about the client as it is about the method. I work with several Architects and Builders that I've known for years. I know both the standard of designs and specifications put out by the Architects, and the standard of workmanship that the Builders insist on. At every step of the construction process each relies on the other, and that makes my life easy. Not only can I take off the exact quantities of materials straight from the drawing, but I can set out such things as timber lengths so that orders can be submitted to the suppliers to minimise handling in the assembly process. For instance," I went and got a plan that I had been working on from my desk, "From this plan I can take measurements of this stud wall and give the timber supplier exact to the millimetre lengths of the top and bottom plates, the wall studs, noggings and cross braces. These builders still use timber bracing. I can also set out the spacing of the studs so that the supplier can cut the housing joints in the plates and in the studs for the braces. Each component of each section of frame is numbered so that the First Fix Carpenters can lay it out and assemble it quickly. I know how long it takes for them to assemble each section of wall frame because I've watched them do it, so I can calculate with a high degree of accuracy, the labour cost involved. These Builders all have a reputation for quality of work with few, if any, add on costs due to unforseen problems. The other thing is that they do not use those pneumatic nail guns that modern house assemblers use."
"But if they don't use nail guns don't they spend a lot of time hammering in nails?"
"No, and this is the good part. One of the Builders used a bit of lateral thinking to come up with a device that can shoot in normal wire nails almost as fast as using a nail gun. The Carpenter feeds a nail into the machine and places the point where the nail is to go and pushes down on the machine and it bangs the nail in. Simple."
"I've never seen anything like that advertised."
"And you won't. The guy that designed it has it patented and has only built enough for the other Builders. He doesn't plan to make any more."
"It must have cost a fortune to develop, surely."
"Not as much as you'd think, the basic operation was modified from existing machines. And the other Builders helped with the development on the understanding that they would be the only ones to have one. The Architects and I helped out as well but we didn't ask for, or expect, any return on our investment apart from exclusive access to work."
"Don't you have problems if the timbers get mixed up?"
"That will never happen. Look at this wall frame," I pointed to a section of wall framing. "The top plates for the outside walls are numbered, starting from '1' in red, to tell the Carpenters which section of the wall it is, then 'TPI' or "TPO to indicate which side faces in or out. The same goes for the bottom plates, except that they are marked 'BPI' and 'BPO'. The studs are numbered from the left always and the cross brace is marked 'I' or 'O' as required. All of the components for each wall section are bundled together so that they can't get mixed up, and transported on site. The Carpenters lay the frame out on the floor, place corner clamps on each corner to ensure that the wall is square and, while one goes around with his tube of construction adhesive squirting a dollop on each joint, another follows him with the nailer. I have seen them assemble and erect a whole section of wall frame in just on twenty minutes."
"But, if the supplier does all of that cutting out, doesn't it cost more for the timber?"
"The initial cost is higher, but because the supplier has the proper machinery to do the job, we find that the added cost is more than defrayed by the on-site cost savings. Swings and roundabouts. I have been to the timber supplier's factory and watched them machining a wall section. Once the plates and studs are cut to length and marked up, the plates are clamped together in special clamps and moved along a bench that has a radial arm saw with a special cutter wheel on it that is set to the width of the housing joint. As the two plates are fed in by an off-sider, the cuts are made, each takes less than five seconds. Once that has been done, the plates are laid on the ground and the studs slotted in. It is squared up and clamped with similar clamps as those that the Carpenters use in assembly, and the cross braces marked out. The studs then go through the same process as the plates, only this time the saw is set at the correct angle for the cut. Even the noggings where the braces cross them, are cut out. All of the housing joints can be cut out in under ten minutes, and the whole process takes little more than fifteen. All the wall framing for a three bedroom house can be cut and packed in under a day. Assembly takes less than a day, so you can see why these guys are so successful, it costs little if any, more than the standard construction, but they can guarantee that every wall is plumb, every corner is square, and it ain't gunna move."
