The Moose is Loose: Oh Yeah, Tobin is actually working here...

Well, everyone seems to be wondering about work. To be honest it has taken this long to blog about it because it has taken this long to know even where to begin…

So I (Tobin) have taken over the blog for a piece to try and give everyone a feel for what we are doing. First, I have to say that I am enjoying going to work, so that is great. It is in a different role than I am used to on a daily basis, so that too is good because variety is the spice of life. Our (Cobalt Construction Company – my uncle’s company) role is that of Designer & Project Engineer, managing and making sure that the work is being done according to spec and in the contract time schedule. Not pounding nails on a daily basis but walking a lot. The job is 638 hectares (~260 acres) and my only mode of transport from one side of the job to the other is my feet; look out guys who go elk hunting with me in the fall – I will be in the best shape of my life!!

The PROJECT
The job we are working on is a 45MW Solar Power “Farm”, or solar power plant. When complete it will be the largest solar plant in Europe. Just down the road is a 24MW plant finished just recently by the same companies we are working with and a 9MW currently underway by the same companies. These pictures are of “the 24” (completed) and “the 9” (under construction still).

The panels are mounted to “tracker bars” which sit on top of piers and then computers allow the panels to “track” the sun for the best efficiency. This “tracker system” requires certain tolerances in pier movement and slope. To achieve these tolerances the “fields” (think rolling hills like home) have to be prepared to have piers driven in them. The ground has to be compacted to be strong enough to hold the piers (as well as be “mud hole free” so the pier driving equipment doesn’t sink during construction), drain water in the final completed form so as not to have puddles everywhere, service roads be constructed, and the high spots cut off and the low spots filled to bring the site slopes into tolerance for the tracking system. This is the scope of our portion of the work. Prepare a “farmscape” to drive piers. Once pier driving begins on a section, our job in that section is complete. We have been brought in because the standards realized on “the 9” & “the 24” have been sub-par as far as the client is concerned.

Seems simple enough. With our usual American construction machinery, techniques, understanding, and technical know how it would be by our standards a “walk in the park”. However, if the last five weeks have taught me anything, it is that these things are as foreign here as a polar bear walking the Sahara. Not that it is bad… or wrong… just TOTALLY FOREIGN!!! We have learned that even when we think we are communicating ideas and everyone is saying ‘Si, Si!!!’ that 75% of the time we are all agreeing to different things. This has caused much confusion and misunderstanding.

The CHALLENGE
Think of it this way. You have been asked to design and then monitor/manage the making of a wedding cake for the Prince in a foreign land. You investigate the local baking instruments and ingredients and then devise a plan. Now it is time to get the job done. The wedding is coming and the schedule is fixed. You are brought onto a team consisting of the overall wedding planners plus the royal bakers plus the local baker who will actually be making the cake per your design. Each group has representatives with different understanding levels and backgrounds. Meetings abound and much paper is generated, questioned, interpreted, misunderstood, and argued about. Great sums of money are involved which only further muddies the water. Meanwhile the work has started and as 15+ “managers” are meeting trying to get the job sped up, one lowly baker’s helper is beating eggs with a butter knife. Now, your plan needs eggs beat, but the egg beater is the best tool for the job, there is one in the bakery but they are beating eggs with a butter knife… and not near fast enough to meet the schedule. So this is argued at great length by managers in meetings. Pretty soon, the arguing works and more baker’s helpers start beating eggs and so more eggs get beat(still with butter knives) and you start to see signs that egg beaters in this foreign land are the same as in your land but here they use them for frosting cakes and butter knives for beating eggs….? Hmm… Not really wrong… Just different. Then you finally communicate your point about the time too many eggs are beaten and other things need to be done but since egg beating has been “SO IMPORTANT” in continues while the adding of sugar etc. becomes the topic of misunderstanding and the beaten eggs go bad…

This goes on over each step of baking the cake while the schedule falls behind by the day because of misunderstandings and misperceptions, which leads to mistrust. After several weeks of this and much consternation on your part, you begin to realize the problem is that where you come from you make cakes from boxed mixes and these foreign people make cakes from scratch. So it becomes obvious that your plans and procedures don’t include the same info that your bakers are used to. They have been trying desperately to understand your design/plan and comply with your request but you have assumed a bunch of things (i.e. that your foreign baker bakes things the same way you do) that is not the case. They are trying but it makes NO SENSE to them so they “mess” up and you chastise them but the whole time they “thought” they were doing what you asked. Meanwhile the “wedding of the century” marches ever closer and “managers” jobs are on the line. Tensions rise. Misunderstandings abound. Futures are in jeopardy. Quality suffers. And all you care about is that the quality of the cake is better than the last wedding disasters (knowing it will never get to the quality you are used to), cost close to your budget, and get finished in time for the wedding most of all, feeling pretty sure the wedding WILL happen, WITH a cake, even if the quality is not what you have been hired to achieve and care greatly about.

And to top it all off, the normal weather patterns that should have been providing dry enough weather to dry muddy ground and allow for compaction, have been altered by a volcano in Iceland and unseasonably high rain has fallen actually making more mud instead of less. For those of you familiar with dirt work in the mud… well let’s just say that working mud is futile. And this dirt has a very high clay content so we are talking MUD/PLAYDOUGH. Sinkholes abound and many a machine has been stuck, and I mean buried stuck!!
Capito? (Understand?)

The GOOD NEWS
However, if you are about to despair, don’t. We are beginning to develop mutual respect with the head baker in the bakery and his individual bakers. Drier weather has presented itself, dirt is moving in productive ways, and we are finding ways to improve efficiency as well as reduce the size of the cake to help reduce the time frame to bake it. Understanding is getting through as well through interpreters (head baker speaks no English) and the operators (the idea of a foreman seems to be foreign here) are starting to understand soil mechanics and how to make a “strong” fill and protect each day’s work from possible rain overnight. I can’t tell you how many lago di Montalto’s (lake of Montalto) have been created and when it comes to moving dirt, lakes are the enemy!!!! Keep praying for us because only God can make this a success, know that I am learning lots, and that the experience is definitely worth the price of admission!!!

The SIDE OBSERVATION
So, it dawned on dad and I just this week. Think of the Tower of Babel and God confusing men’s speech. After the past five weeks, I totally understand God’s method of separating peoples. When the language thing doesn’t work… nothing works. And they didn’t even have an interpreter!!! I know now that in one fell swoop, God divided peoples. Just like that! I imagine it would even divide a family. Communication is SO vital to our existence as human beings and without it… well… let’s just say the “tower” project came to a SCREACHING HALT in one instant. Problem solved!!! ‘Nuff said.

Confused? So are we but God is Great, the sun is shining today, and we are making Italian friends!

Ciao a tutti!

Machines moving dirt and some brush being burned...