My foreman said I was crazy for double-checking the boom angle on a 50-ton Grove... saved a load of steel from tipping

3 comments

3 Comments

Thats the thing about safety checks, they always feel like wasted time until the one time they save your ass. Its the same pattern with checking your tires before a long trip or double checking a trailer hitch. People get comfortable and skip the small stuff then wonder why things go sideways. Good on you for catching it before it became a problem.

wesley38510d ago

Honestly, that reminds me of a buddy of mine who works on a framing crew. He told me one time they were setting a big beam on a three story townhouse, and the foreman said it was fine to just eyeball the level. My buddy double checked it anyway with his laser level and it was off by almost two inches. Would have thrown the whole deck out of square and cost them days to fix. The foreman didn't say he was crazy after that, just said "good catch" and walked off. It's always the little checks that matter, man.

diana_black10d ago

Little checks do matter, but I gotta push back a tiny bit on the idea that eyeballing a level is ever okay, even by an experienced foreman. I've seen guys who've been framing for thirty years still get it wrong when they're tired or the light hits weird, especially on a three story building where wind can mess with a tape measure read. Two inches off on a beam like that is a nightmare, my buddy saved them way more than just days of work, probably thousands in material and labor if it threw the whole floor out of square. My uncle used to say "the best carpenter is the one who checks twice and cuts once," and he'd always follow up with "but don't trust your eyeballs when a level costs twenty bucks." Safety checks like this aren't just about preventing a fall, they're about catching the small mistakes that compound into huge problems later. Good on your buddy for trusting his tool over the foreman's gut feeling.