Week before July Shutdown- Dylan Cook

This has been a pretty hectic week for the Pontiac office getting ready for one of the busiest times of the year, July Shutdown. This week was full of putting together and submitting estimates, doing walkthroughs and getting quotes from subs, among other tasks typical to the PDPM process. I accompanied my mentor Joe to a kick off meeting at the Orion Assembly Plant converting a domestic hot water system from electric to natural gas. This had the different subs there, as well as facilities people from the plant to coordinate the schedule, when things/ areas were to be shut down, and what type of work was expected to be done over shutdown. Meetings like these are always good as an intern/student to sit through, even if you’re there not saying a word. You can learn about the cooperation that has to happen with all the different trades, as well as with the facility managers. Later that day, our office had a walkthrough for a broken drain and vent stack in one of the buildings. This was a problem, not because of water leaking, but because of the foul odor that came from the pipes and was stinking up the area. The project also involves a high level of hazardous abatement, removing asbestos in the insulation, which due to the quantity of material removed, requires a special permit through the state. There was some difficulty and trouble trying to locate the piping, which started on the first floor in an engineering/ testing area, through the 2nd floor offices and up into the penthouse on the roof. It also wasn’t that easy to get a good scope, since we didn’t have any as-built drawings so we couldn’t exactly identify the piping, some of which was capped off and abandoned. I was also a little nervous on this walkthrough as it was my first one with out a project engineer or project manager. The most important thing when doing a walkthrough is to ask a lot of questions and communicate with the owners and subs what has to be done. This week our office also had two projects put on hold by GM for some reason or another. The first one was a project that we were to install a row of electric car chargers in a parking lot close to the main entrance, mirroring a set of chargers that Ideal installed before on the other side of the lot. They put this one on hold because they wanted the location to be moved to another parking lot, to offer chargers to a different building. The second one was one of my first projects that I helped quote. The project was to furnish and install a smoking shelter outside of one of the entrances. This initially made me mad, because it was one of the first projects that I had helped with, but the next day the project was told to continue again, which was a relief. I am looking forward to,but also nervous to see the process during shut down next week and all that it entails.