Things Learned in Construction Internship 2008

This was given to me from one of our interns this summer. It is very interesting to see what they actually "learned"



1. Most important piece of equipment on the job site: copy machine.

2. When you totally screw up in class everyone laughs at you and you fail the test. When
you totally screw up on the job, no one laughs and people die.

3. If there is a clean spot anywhere on or around your desk, you need to be assigned more work.

4. The smallest shower can turn the site into a mud hole faster than you can blink.

5. Coffee level = Productivity level

6. Desk quality is determined by distance to the copy machine.

7. It's polite to warn everyone before you send massive emails that clog the network.

8. If the architect ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

9. Never sign something unless you're damn sure it's right.

10. If you say you'll have something done by the end of the week, come hell or high water, you get it done by the end of the week.

11. The network is always clogged just after the first crack of thunder; as everyone in the office goes to weather.com at the exact same time.

13. Most everyone in construction and architecture writes in all caps, and no one really knows why.

14. Building towers before the time of computers must have really sucked.

15. Pedestrians may have the right-of-way over cars, but bulldozers have the right-of-way over everything.

16. Gasoline : Cars :: Coffee : Contractors

17. If your crane gets stuck in a muddy pit, just use your other crane to pick it up.

18. Spanglish.

19. You'd trade most of what you learned in college to know how to read a set of blue prints.

20. Anti-rain dances don't work.

21. Mixed up submittal numbers? Bad concrete pour? Rain? Just blame the intern!

22. Construction fatalities are horrifyingly common.

23. At any point in time, there are about 100 different ways to get killed on the jobsite.

24. The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

25. Never promise anything about the future until it's the past.

26. Do not, under any circumstance, let one of your sub-contractors push you around.

27. In everything you do, do it as if your going to either sue, or be sued about it.

28. Neither the Constitution or the Bill of Rights applies to interns.

29. The mere presence of a person wearing slacks and a college ring will dramatically increase productivity and safety in his immediate area.

30. If you really want to, you can keep concrete alive for 3-4 days, even in the Texas summer.

31. Rarely do accidents kill the person at fault. Instead, they normally kill someone who was doing nothing wrong.

32. Double punch Tuesdays.

33. Never delete emails; create a filing system instead.

34. Office mistakes are fixed with the "undo" button. Field mistakes are fixed with concrete chippers.

35. Lunch meetings = free food.

36. The time between 4PM and 5PM is the longest hour of the day.

37. Nothing of any substance or consequence is accomplished after lunch on Friday.

38. For the love of God, don't forget to attach the file to the email.

39. If you see someone running on a job site, follow him; He's either running to someone who needs medical attention, or away from something that's about to go catastrophically wrong.

40. Some of the scariest words a mechanical contractor can say are: "I don't think it's supposed to make that sound..."