As I am more of a morning person for breakfast I sourced my typical Aussie brekkie of weet-bix with fresh banana but Craig comes into his stride in the evening and was running late, hadn’t had time to shop so he had an orange (this was followed by a good lunch and dinner Craig’s mum I promise). I found I settled into the typical anti-social behaviour of napping on the bus quite easily however Craig is just catching on to the trend and making the most of the quiet time before we get to site.
The best part of our teamwork is bouncing ideas off each other to find the best way to tackle the numerous jobs the chippies are required for. There is a points system for who comes up with the best solution where I am currently one up but given Craig is more of an evening person he often easily makes up the ground after the dinner break so there is still time for a comeback.
Prior to Dubai we were often leading separate teams so hadn’t actually worked together much, but on site it makes life so much easier that we share a fundamental understanding of how things should work that eliminates a lot of conversation and explanation makes work pretty seamless and the house is the better for our joint craftsmanship as I think we produce better quality work and solutions because we work together so well.
Some of the tasks tacked on site include creating a box to hide some of the more technical equipment for the house such as the fire system, the phase change material and the HVAC tanks. This job was one of the last tackled before leaving Oz with Scobie and James throwing a basic frame together and enough materials in the shipping container to figure something out when we got here. We therefore became the figure it out team and have enjoyed how it is coming together as it has come up better than expected.
In addition to this and lots of other jobs big and small such as installing cornices, levelling the kitchen bases, skirting, floor boards etc. We have been working on the decks, tweaking the modular installation to work as well as we can. When things are modular they often don’t go back together again as easily as they originally did especially when the handrail in particular was cut perfectly to size so we had to pack out a few spots and shave off in others so that it works as intended. As this is one of the first impressions visitors will have of the house it was important to get this one right.
One of the greatest challenges we face – Craig in particular – in working on this project is having to compromise some of your pride in the workmanship you are putting forward because of time pressures. Often the work is 90% correct but to get it to 100% is a luxury we just don’t have on site as it would often take another day to really get it right and with only a couple of days left it is a luxury we cannot afford at this stage. One of the best examples is the time spent on correcting any major miss alignments with the second skin wall, this was important so that when people look at the house the eye is not distracted by miss matching panels, they have the opportunity to appreciate the quality workmanship and the amazing job the team have put in. This took a day to tweak all the panels after they had been installed but was well worth it.
– Craig Pickup & Mark Loomes, Design and Construction Team members aka The Fixers