When we think of being troubled, it generally signifies mental unrest or distress. It sometimes denotes pain, discomfort and annoyance. Any way you look at it, if you’re a contractor, you get to “enjoy” all kinds of troubles.
I recently visited a petrochemical owner’s site and observed the process of pushing product out the pipeline to the railcar or tank truck and on to the consuming public. It looked fairly easy, but don’t kid yourself; that stuff you put in your gas tank or heat your home with is more complicated to produce than most outside our industry will ever know, and it makes for all kinds of troubles for the producers.
The owner
In the 1960s, when I first began in industry, most manufacturers had their own horizontal resources to refine raw materials into consumable products. Manufacturers supplied all the labor and the means to design, produce and deliver the goods. They did this within the company workforce and resources.
In the 1970s, owners began giving the “golden handshake” to many in their workforce and began to outsource engineering, maintenance and even operations. It was a means to contain and control costs. Work increased in the refineries, chemical and manufacturing plants for the constructors because owners needed resources to replace their retiring workforce. Metal fabricators, welders, pipefitters, electricians and many other crafts were increasingly necessary. What once was provided from within had to be enhanced through third-party sources.
Contractor preparedness
With the advent of owner needs, contractors became providers of in-plant services. There was a paradigm shift after World War II; contractors, temporary workers and labor staffing became common. Two of my still-living relatives were maintenance workers in plants in the early 1950s, and they remember the shift to replacement workers prior to the contractors. Each of my relatives did an apprenticeship in a craft such as machinery, valve and/or pump repair. They each became good at troubleshooting and diagnosing problems, and they kept the motors running and the units humming. Things were good. Then, decades later, they got the gold watch and the goodbye party.
Qualified contractors have had a full plate ever since. At first, it seemed difficult to replace the plant worker skills, but before long, the contractors caught on to the needs and requirements and began to do the job of replacing the “old timers.” It was believed this replacement shift would be cost and time efficient. Since that change, very large and world-class projects have come into being. Yes, many still do maintenance in the plants, but building plants is now the job of the pre-pared contractor.
Knowing and doing
Today’s contractor is a special breed. He must know cost, schedule, quality and safety (among many other things) for even the smallest of projects. Modern contractors must be scientists, physicists, technicians, mathematicians, trainers, recruiters and also capable of providing human resources that are skilled in every required trade.
The present-day contractor/employer must be knowledgeable in multiple facets of construction. It’s more than searching for sticks and stones to make a cave; it’s not just rocks we are stacking as they did when building the Egyptian pyramids. Today you must not only build a structure that will last many decades through wet, corrosive, acidic environments, but you must place within it complex mechanical devices that combine raw materials, mix chemicals, blend gases, filter liquids and run it all through a system of pots, pans and pipes to get a desired product to market.
On top of this, the contractor must be a welcomed guest in another’s house. He must obey all manner of government regulations, host rules and conditions, industry best practices and even the contractors’ own internal policies. Who said it would be easy?
Should we go back?
It wasn’t easy then. It’s certainly not easy today despite modern technology. But we chose to be troubled, bothered and annoyed. If it were easy, we would have stayed in the cave.
For more information, contact HASC Customer Relations at (281) 476-9900, Ext. 310 or visit www.hasc.com.
