Nothing had prepared me for this
Today it is necessary, perhaps more than ever, to learn quickly,
endure and persevere
“Walker, there is no path, the path is made by walking, blow after blow…”
Cantares, Antonio Machado, Juan Manuel Serrat
“Let the sawyer pass”
Let the sawyer pass, Jesús del Corral
As a brief introduction, I am a civil engineer, with 44 years of experience in managing construction projects in America (Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, the United States), Europe (Romania) and Asia (Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam).
This is the third writing of a reflection exercise from my experience, in the previous ones I have referred to; the importance of understanding, simplifying, intervening when necessary, and cooperating, which is the basis of what is known as “Partnering”; as well as the need to be flexible, to adapt, to be empathetic; and about communication and its decisive impact on the outcome of projects.
Today, this reflecting exercise leads me to highlight other elements: learn quickly, endure, persevere, overcome and find solutions to problems, perhaps what it’s defined as resilience.
When I just graduated, and after four months of unsuccessful job search due to ‘lack of experience’, I found a job as Resident Engineer in the company of Engineer Hernán Duarte Esguerra in the construction project of the bridge over the Rio Fundación, in El Reten, Magdalena, very close to Aracataca (where the Colombian Nobel Prize writer Gabriel García Márquez,‘El Gabo’, was born).
I did not ask a lot questions, it was too good to be true; to have a job, a salary, and accommodation in Barranquilla as well as a bonus for each completion certificate, although I had no idea what a completion certificate was.
There was no induction, no manual of functions, only a brief conversation with Hernán, “don’t worry, it’s easy, everything will turn out well, good luck”.
The main activity of the firm was the driving of piles and sheet piles and the construction of bridges; the terms, driving piles, piles and sheet piles were almost Greek to me and I had never seen a driving hammer…
The resident engineer was in charge of the technical and administrative functions, not limited to; personnel management, accounting, purchasing. Unmentioned but it was necessary for me to show face in the banks to obtain and expand the overdraft, oversee with the lawyer the problems derived from the unpaid bills, the returned checks from insufficient funds, and workers’ claims, run to a doctor or the hospital in the event of an accident at work or if a worker became ill, keep accounts of the advances that were given in cash to the staff, and a number of small and varied extras.
The organization in Barranquilla was “horizontal”; a resident engineer, the two masters of the driving hammer crews, the reinforced concrete master, the mechanic, and the truck driver. And it was also “a family”; (what organizations are so eagerly seeking today), probably out of necessity and undoubtedly because of Hernan’s commitment to his workers, for whom he was a “pater families.”; In his absence, the resident engineer assumed that role , which I, at 22 years of age, only knew the perspective of a “son”, and was actually, as the popular saying goes, “more tangled than a chicken raising ducks”. I learned quickly, not without my few set of stumbles.
I keep a fond memory of that small but efficient organization- my first practical school, with my boss Hernán, with his extraordinary emotional intelligence and strokes of genius in his solution for the reconstruction of the Rail Road Bridge over the Sogamoso River. I have appreciation as well for
Fernando, the head mechanic, who patiently explained to me the reason and the nature of the spare parts that we looked for in specialized stores with equipment catalogs, or in junkyards, where we would select by eye the pieces that would later have to be rectified in the town’s mechanical and lathe
workshops (a very particular “informal” area of Barranquilla). I learned from Roosevelt Flórez and Romero, the two masters of the diving hammer crews, and “El Maestro Mañe” who was like a character from out of one of the classical stories of his countryman “El Gabo”, who were impeccable in the construction of the formwork and the installation of reinforcing steel bars.
Already with “experience”, specifically for the driving piles work, I was hired by the multinational company SADE-CONDISA as a field engineer to carry out the piling of the Paipa 3 thermoelectric plant. But to my surprise and bewilderment, they were not driven piles (in which I was already an expert) but were bore drilled piles, with bentonite sludge and “tremie” concrete, techniques of which he had no idea. Back again, learning from scratch.
At the end of the piling, I was sent to the construction of the Cementos Paz de Rio Factory, to learn from the Italian sub-contractors the technique of building reinforced concrete structures with sliding forms. This technique is the fastest and most efficient for building structures such as silos or chimneys. And it is at the same time the most demanding since the principle is simple, it demands a logistics of maximum coordination and permanent control of the operation.
It is an example of an effective “production line” in which everything has to be planned in detail and meticulously, identifying activities, resources, execution times, the precise sequence of the flow of activities, “bottlenecks” and solving them mitigating them in a satisfactory and harmonious way with the requirements to operate the system, consider possible contingencies and the support elements that allow them to be overcome, and in the face of the almost vital need to avoid or minimize failures in any activity of the process, (failures that although they are apparently trivial, significantly affect the quality and stability of the structure and can lead to the collapse of the work), it is necessary to implement a constant control of the quality parameters and a simple protocol that allows making the decision to activate the corrective and measures that keep the construction process as planned.
The labor applied to specific and repetitive tasks translates into high performance and to a good extent, by observation, curiosity and creativity of the workers, small but important process improvements are continuously implemented; the (huge) limitation of space implies the optimization of resources.
All this is the essence of what is called “Toyota Production System”, “just-in-time”, or “LEAN management”; Of course, at that time I did not know, nor did I know for a long time. We implemented that because there was no alternative.
For the next four years, that was my main responsibility and I had the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of basic industry and infrastructure projects, thermal power plants, cement factories, the exploitation of ferronickel in Cerromatoso and coal in Cerrejón and closely observe the execution of mechanical and electrical assemblies and understand the dynamics of complex and multidisciplinary work.
Those were the schools that gave me the basis to assume roles with greater responsibilities in the direction of projects with other companies and with the time, experience, and connections, and I found small companies to carry out jobs in the construction of pipelines, roads, silos, chimneys, and other special jobs then I built a small contractor company with a presence in some projects of national relevance, including the conversion of the Boyacá Cement Factory. As an entrepreneur, learning was more painful, when I did not understand the business issue well enough and thoroughly (which happened relatively frequently), I faced economic losses and enormous stress, then the ability to
overcome adversity, fined tuned during all those years, emerged...
I perceived that something was missing and returned to the University, to a postgraduate in Business Administration, two years of an exercise sometimes frustrating, but in the end rewarding and valuable, where I found the theoretical frameworks and the discipline to rationalize my practical learning and redirect my course.
A new course that has taken me around the world for twenty years, learning daily from work I do, from cultures, from people, enriching my life with wonderful friends and experiences.
Today, faced with the new normality imposed by the pandemic, I am writing these lines, feeling myself vital, making way.
In these times of globalization and permanent technological change, it is necessary, perhaps more than ever, to learn quickly, endure and persevere.
