Have an open Mind

Electrical contracting and being an electrician are exciting ways to spend your career, whether from the contractor's or electrician's point of view both have their challenges, faults and bonuses. Of the construction trades it is one of the more respected and interesting trades to be involved in. A problem, and I don't believe this is only to electrical contractors or electricians is that many of us have developed an attitude that this is the way I have always done it and closed our minds to any possibility of a better method. Some of us do this to avoid having to change our methods, some so as not to complete the task quicker and some of us are simply in a daze and are not thinking about what we are doing. Since starting my apprenticeship well over thirty years ago this industry has seen remarkable changes, cordless tools, improved or new material, , pagers, fax machines, computers, software to help with everything, email, cell phones to name a few. Many of these have increased productivity and have improved our trade. Some have become crutches to our trade, cell phones being high on my list. Don't take me wrong cell phones can be a very useful tool, what I see happening with cell phones is that we are creating a generation of drones that can not or will not make a decision without verification from either the office or field. Our industry is fluid and change is constant, if you stand in the same spot for long the industry will pass you by.

Being able to look at new methods to complete tasks is a valuable use of your time. Often you will not be changing the entire method that you previously used minor changes are all that are typically needed. Early in my career as an apprentice I knew nothing about the electrical trade, but I could see. We were installing a duct bank and encasing it in concrete. We installed this duct bank underneath a future free standing electrical panel where many of the duct banks conduits needed to terminate. My journeyman asked me to install a bulk head to stop the concrete that we were to pour past the location of the panel. I told him that the bulk head should be placed before the panel as we still needed to take conduits out of the panel that would continue in the duct bank. The journeyman told me to be quiet and install the bulkhead where he told me. I did what he told me to do, later our foreman, Les stopped by and I tried to tell him that the bulkhead was in the wrong spot. He told me to do what my journeyman told me to do. We poured that duct bank and while we where cleaning up the general foreman, Jack stopped by and told us what a good job we had done. My comment to him was that I was getting an education, and that I was sure looking forward to tomorrow to see how we where going to get the remaining conduits out of the panel with the concrete already poured past it. We worked till midnight getting all the concrete dug out between conduits so we could get those conduit installed. Have an open mind and listen, watch and learn.