Plan for Access Well in Advance
By Myron Ferguson
Poor planning no matter what you do for a living is important. Time lost is money lost. I know it is hard to plan everything perfectly especially when you are not in complete control. Being self-employed means I think about work too much and sometimes it gets me in trouble with the family but my excuse is I am just doing my best.
I thought I had everything settled before I went away on vacation. I had a small plastering job to do and I needed 22 sheets of blueboard along with the plaster to be delivered early on the day I was returning to work. The driveway was narrow and there was not much room in front of the garage. So I told my supplier to just bring their small flatbed truck and that they would have to unload by hand.
So I did some planning and figured everything was all set. But they showed up a large boom truck and called me saying that they could not get in the drive and wanted to know what I wanted them to do. I said put the drywall on a drywall cart and wheel it in. I tried to make things easy but things don’t always work out.
As I drive into a jobsite to measure for drywall I am already looking for wires, freshly dug ditches, accesses to upstairs windows, and the condition of the driveway and yard. If I can’t get materials where I want them I may not want the job. I may have to ask the contractor to leave a window out or a piece of plywood off to provide an access point. It is also a good idea to visit the jobsite just before the material is delivered just to make sure nothing has changed and conditions are still good for the delivery.