‍ OPERATING CODE 014

FIND WHAT’S DIFFERENT

Experience is one of our greatest advantages in the field.

It can also become a liability.

The more times we perform similar work, the more familiar it becomes. Familiarity makes us faster. We recognize the drawings. We know the sequence. We know what the details usually mean and what the customer normally expects.

But familiarity can also create complacency.

The danger is not always that we do not know how to build the job.

Sometimes the danger is that we have built enough similar jobs that we think we already know.

That is when we stop looking closely.

And that is when we miss what is different.

FAMILIAR DOES NOT MEAN THE SAME

After enough years in the field, a lot of construction starts looking familiar.

The structure may be different. The customer may be different. The market may be different. But much of the work follows patterns we have seen before.

That experience should help us.

It should tell us where to look, what questions to ask, and where problems normally hide.

It should not give us permission to assume.

When I receive drawings from a new customer, I read the fine print.

I read the general notes. I look at the revisions. I read the specifications and the sections people are tempted to skip because most of the information looks familiar.

Then I read them again.

I do not trust my first review to catch everything.

I use the same approach when reviewing closeout photographs. I normally go through the entire package at least twice. The first review gives me the overall picture. The second catches things I did not see the first time.

That is not because I do not understand what I am reviewing.

It is because I know how easy it is to see what we expect to see.

LOOK FOR THE EXCEPTION

Most customers share many of the same construction standards.

But almost every customer has something they do differently.

It might be grounding.

It might be labeling.

It might be conduit, cable support, sealing, testing, restoration, commissioning, or closeout.

The graphical portion of the drawing often makes the physical work easy to understand.

The smaller notes are where we frequently find the difference.

The picture shows us what we are building. The fine print tells us how this customer expects us to build it.

Our job is not simply to recognize everything that looks familiar.

Our job is to find the exception.

NOT EVERYTHING IS ON THE DRAWING

Even a complete review of the drawings may not give us every requirement.

On one project, we needed to trench and install conduit from a utility pole to a five-gang meter enclosure.

The drawings called for three-inch conduit.

Three-inch met code.

The serving electric utility required four-inch.

They were not going to connect the service unless we installed four-inch conduit.

Why did they require four-inch?

I did not need to know why to understand the consequence.

They controlled the connection. Four-inch was their requirement.

We could have installed three-inch conduit exactly according to the drawing and still ended up with work that could not be accepted.

If we discovered the requirement after ordering material, trenching, and installing the conduit, the mistake would appear to have happened during construction.

It did not.

The mistake happened before construction when we failed to identify the requirement.

That makes finding what is different part of sequencing.

FIND IT WHILE WE STILL HAVE OPTIONS

The best time to discover a conflict is before labor and material are committed.

Before we execute familiar work, we need to understand what applies to this particular job.

·        Current drawings and revisions

·        General notes and specifications

·        Customer-specific standards

·        Utility requirements

·        AHJ and inspection requirements

·        Existing field conditions

·        Material constraints

·        Landlord or site requirements

·        Commissioning and acceptance requirements

Sometimes those requirements agree.

Sometimes they do not.

When they conflict, we want to find out while the solution is still a phone call, a clarification, or a different material order—not after something has been installed.

The drawing tells us what was designed.

The field tells us what actually exists.

The people responsible for connecting, inspecting, commissioning, or accepting the work tell us what they will accept.

We need all three.

EXPERIENCE SHOULD CHANGE WHERE WE LOOK

Experience does not mean we already have the answer.

It means we should know where answers tend to hide.

We know the fine print matters because we have been burned by fine print.

We know to check the utility because we have seen utility requirements differ from the drawings.

We know to review something twice because we have caught something on the second pass that we missed on the first.

Those lessons should make us more disciplined, not more comfortable.

Experience creates familiarity. Familiarity can create complacency. Complacency creates assumptions.

And assumptions are where familiar jobs become expensive.

So when the work looks exactly like something we have built a hundred times before, that is not the time to stop looking.

That is the time to ask:

What’s different about this one?