What I Face Every Day as a Site Engineer

Hey everyone, as I shared before, I already have a job now as a site engineer. I have been inactive in the past few days, months, I think, after not writing anything. I don’t know why, but I just don’t feel it recently. But today, I just want to give a glimpse of how my day is going here on site, what I usually do, how I deal with people, and how much time I spend daily. To be honest, being a site engineer in this kind of setup has a huge time for any side hustle. After giving instructions to the workers, I still have time to do something in my free time as I don’t have to supervise them for the whole working hours.  What I usually do is study and learn the plan at night so I can plan the activities that can be done on site by the next day. In the morning, I walk for about 20–30 minutes to reach the site. It is actually 2.1 km, and yes, I know it is tiring, but I have no choice because my apartment is far from the site, which was unexpected. (I plan to move out next month.) Anyway, I don’t really have much work every day. The foreman already knows what they will do, so it is just like automatic and becomes a habit over time. Today, we just continued splicing rebars on columns for the second floor.  We already have three columns that are done with their first lift of concrete pouring.  We are still waiting for the plywood that we ordered to arrive so we can prepare the formworks for other columns and then proceed with concrete pouring. Since our materials aren’t ready yet, we also started CHB laying on the columns that are now ready.  Make sure that you put dowel bars for the horizontal and vertical bars for hollow blocks before pouring concrete on the slab and columns. Anyway, it has been exactly two months since I started working here, and there are lessons that I have already learned over time. Firstly, I learned construction terminologies that I would not learn if I hadn’t become a site engineer. One thing that I am thankful for is that the workers are actually kind and patient with me, knowing that this is my first job. They teach what they know and give their opinions, so I can evaluate and decide on what we shall do next. In this kind of setup, you must know how to decide quickly, and you must be firm and confident in every action that you take. I am still working on this because I don’t have much knowledge and experience yet. I know that I am still learning and there is still room for improvement, so I can’t decide better for now. I hope that soon I can become a good civil engineer. Anyway, if there are good workers, of course, there are also those who have pride and ego. They have established their foundation and have enough experience to defend their reasoning. Hence, I find it hard to fit in with them, especially if they let their ego and pride control them. One worker today just changed his mood after I corrected what they were doing. I am not sure if that was the main reason, but he already has a bad image of me since I started working here, based on my observation. He doesn’t respect me as an engineer.  What I am trying to say is that I respect everyone here, so I want the same respect for me regardless of my age and experience. One thing for sure is that he is also a close friend of our boss, so I think it has a huge impact on how he can disrespect others here, like he is the boss. But despite it, I need to be professional and patient with what they are doing. In this kind of setup, you must know how to get along with others, or you cannot stay in this kind of environment. I would admit that I need this worker so I will learn, and so someone will actually control other workers. I am still not confident in the skills that I have now, and I am afraid of committing mistakes. Committing a mistake in construction will cost you time, effort, and, of course, money—and you won’t like that. One wrong mistake can actually cause a project delay and a huge amount of money, so please avoid any inconvenience that you may cause. And that’s it! I think I have enough for this blog and update. I am still unsure if I will write every single day on my blog, but I will try to do it, knowing that I have plenty of time right now. Plus, there are different things that are actually happening on site that are worth sharing. I think it is one of the reasons why I like working on-site. You get to learn something new every single day, plus you build more network and connections with different people.