Working at the DOT

May 18, 2005

Yesterday I asked Nura to lay out the Erosion Control for Lang Road. From station 588+00 to around 608+00, that is 20 stations. I gave her the instructions to lay it out in a manner that when the contractor gets on site he will know where to put the silt fence. So look at the plan and determine what you need as far as staking it out. Essentially what this task required was pounding in about 20 - 25 stakes that had "Silt Fence" written on them, so that the contractor would know where to put the silt fence. I assumed that this task would only take an hour or two at the most. I had learned yesterday at 3:30 that she had left for the day and that that is all that she did all day. So she spent the entire day pounding in 20 - 25 stakes. If you do that math, and I will be generous here, lets day it was 24 stakes, working 8 hours, that is 3 stakes an hour. Knowing all of this, in the morning I went to talk to her about her production. To me it seemed pretty simple to stake. She told me that she didn’t understand what some of the flags were. And I had told her yesterday that if she had questions to call me. So I went out to the area and I explained to her that you need to use a little common sense and in the area where the clearing and grubbing has been done, you just have the contractor put the silt fence along the tree line. I said to her “So this is all you did yesterday?” She said, “Yes.” To which I replied, “I don’t understand how this took so long.” And she replied, “I don’t understand either.” I told her that her production rate is horrible. Currently she isn’t doing any Inspector Daily Reports which she should be. She has one contractor to watch, who has been on the job only two days. And she is some how behind in her work. She is killing me.