Efficiency....what are your methods that make jobs go easier?

[YY1]

I was one of three "first time ever" boys to take typing in 7th grade.

The real reason I took it (also at least one of the other boys), was the cornucopia of hot girls in the class.

I never got over 27 WPM and still don't type super good, but we had a LOT of fun in that class.

 

[YY1]

When I moved from OH to FL, in 1988 I brought with me what I later called "the assembly line mentality".

One of my first jobs as a newly promoted salaried employee in my county government job around 1998, was installing about 150 new computers, two servers, and several network switches in a brand new building.
I was directly responsible for the server and switches but technically only had oversight with respect to the workstations.
There was a crew of four hourly workstation "hardware techs" assigned to that job.

After the first 2 hours, I had the core switch and primary server up.
I noticed the techs were pretty much taking their own sweet time, each working on unboxing and setting up one computer.
I believe there were about six unboxed and put together, but none completely done and hooked up.

Just then, the big boss division head came in to see how it was going.
I could tell he was a little miffed, and he asked if we would be done by the end of the day.

Since I now had potential backup, I decided to exercise a little creative supervision.
I suggested we "assembly line" the process and put one guy in charge of unboxing, another in charge of placing PC's and monitors where they needed to go, another to carry cords, mice and keyboards and also hook everything up, and the last guy to go around and boot the machines and make sure they worked and could get to the HQ data page.

After the first hour, there were 25 computers operational.
The big boss left, and three weeks later I got another promotion, and skipped the mandatory three month waiting period that was company policy after any employee got a promotion.

 

[moparwacko]

Until

Works good until the grunt or ape losses a pea line then your setting up anyway. I rarely set a pole with dollies on it, seems like as soon as I do I end up going back and moving them and only pea line dollies if it a reconductor job. We usually string rope lay it up and dolly up 1 step. I can justify it because, we dig, frame and set on 1st setup.

Agree, doesn't work on reconductoring, only on wide open new stuff. Our reconductor bids always had a trip out penalty clause by the home utility. That is one of the reasons that kind of work is expensive, it has to be figured in to bidding. It's one of the variables we were very good at. Since it was processed into the bid, if we had no whoops, bonus time. We did a lot of 12 & 34.5 reconductor work early in my career, and you always have to be at least 3 steps ahead. The only other jobs that seemed to take more pre- planning were Transmission jobs.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

Take a **** before you put your rain gear on

 

[Ron H]

Ahh yes, wearing insulated Carhartt bibs, vest or jacket, safety vest over that, hardhat, sometimes a FP harness, gloves, hearing protection…in 5-degree weather, the porta-crappers are 100 yards or more, from the building, and a guy before didn’t aim his *** too well over the hole and all the others are occupied and little wonder the one I’m in wasn’t…

 

[68BabyBlue]

Ahh yes, wearing insulated Carhartt bibs, vest or jacket, safety vest over that, hardhat, sometimes a FP harness, gloves, hearing protection…in 5-degree weather, the porta-crappers are 100 yards or more, from the building, and a guy before didn’t aim his *** too well over the hole and all the others are occupied and little wonder the one I’m in wasn’t…

Mostly the same gear I wore hauling hazardous waste in winter. Add the variable of road facilities with truck parking to make life even more interesting. Learned to never eat a salad on the road…

 

[Don Frelier]

My project scope usually starts with one thing that really needs to be fixed or replaced.
They sometimes end up getting quite large in scope.

For example I had a cracked cast iron stock exhaust manifold.
Used it as an excuse to rebuild the engine and detail the engine compartment.
It ended up with .020 over KB pistons, mopar .455 cam, 906 heads shaved down a bunch and 68/69 HP manifolds.
I was really busy that summer for work and with 3 small kids at the time the short block sat in the corner for a while.
The transmission was removed as well and cleaned up externally.
It's the only time since I've had the car it didn't get driven for over a year.