Looking back at this very busy week, I have to mention this one thing above everything else: Keep your desk and file system clean. Because now I see what happens if you have a system which is, on one hand, logical, but on the other hand, only to yourself and nobody else. Why do I say that? Well, for some reason, some of my colleagues chose to take this year's vacation right now, and all at the same time. Which leaves me more or less alone there, being new on the project, having a full desk and calendar anyway, and now on top, subbing for two of my colleagues without having made a useful exchange of information. And now for everything I have to do, I'm digging deep in their files in order to execute simple actions, such as checking invoices, looking for delivery notes, updating flight plans for our workers, and many many more. Oh, and looking for material stored on site and not finding it and nobody knowing what happended to it is great fun too! Stuff like that really messed up my usually good mood... Worst thing of this all is that when you're done with making a foul system run properly again, you still have your own work waiting for you and it's already 5pm. And guess what - the next two weeks will be like that again!!!
However, I'm not only complaining here. I'm having my good moments almost each day when I go out on site and check the work progress. And I always get to see those absolutely interesting things that a couple years ago made me decide to become a geotechnical engineer.
The first one is that each day, there are blasting works on site, since a lot of rock material is in the ground which needs to be excavated. And I witnessed a couple of them and everytime, it is quite an event! I mean, it's not like in the movies where it always looks like the end of the world, but if you feel the pulse of the explosion under your feet, it's still somewhat impressive. One time I also took a camera to record this event. See here:
The second thing that totally rocked me in the literal sense was a site walk that I made with a colleague, which took us to the adjacent construction lot - a rock tunnel. These are also blasted into the rock (here, however, blasting is already finished) and then secured with so-called shotcrete (concrete that you apply on the fresh rock surface by spraying). When we walked through the quite complex tunnel system, there were some drilling works ongoing (which I think are done to inject rock cracks afterwards - I'm not a tunneling expert, though!). Walking through this man-made tunnel system really made me feel humble and small and really appreciate the good work that many engineers and drilling or blasting experts have done there. Have fun with the pictures - again, these are interesting for all of you, not just the engineers' section. :)
To finish, I just want to let you know here that whoever of you feels like visiting me, will get a decent site tour. Don't miss out on that one! :)
Bye and hejdå,
Stefan.
