When I worked doing high end relocations (think Atherton, CA...yeah), a crew would be in the house. They were usually remodeling. Sometimes, it would be a situation where a house was getting rebuilt from the studs. But no matter what was going on, by the time we came on the scene, they were done and gone. This was back in the 00s.
But then after a while, when we showed up for a gig, the construction crew would be packing up and leaving. There would be a bit of overlap. After another 6 months, we'd show up to a gig, and they would still be working, and we worked around each other. Within the span of about 2 years, showing up to work in an active construction site became the norm.
That's not ideal. And that's not how the construction folks or we operated. And we'd talk about it on lunch breaks. We all agreed that something was broken, but couldn't figure out what. Estimates were always off. Timelines were super optimistic, but never acknowledged or even budged for reality. We were working for ultra high net worth folks, so the answer was always "throw more money at it."
@tsaiberia I work as admin in a construction adjacent trade and it definitely feels like this has gotten worse in the three and a half years I've been at this.
Schedules are defined not just to the day, but to the hour, and they often have to work around other trades. Last minute scheduling shifts are common.
Consequently our staff needs to be on call for anywhere between 2 to 12 hours of work on any given workday, which is hard on everyone.
@tsaiberia It feels sometimes like I'm the only one going "this can't go on indefinitely." So thanks for talking about this, because if nothing else I'm glad I'm not alone. 🙂
