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Dust Bowl
We’re all aware that NYC construction is inefficient, what with an intractable Buildings Department, half the city under scaffolding, costly construction designed around fountain alignment, streets torn up and re-covered with shoddy, impermanent asphalt jobs, and the BQE’s seemingly eternal “repair.” Then we have MTA debacles like these, and still are expected to pay more and more for shittier service.
The project at Union Square is no different, except that I have a daily window to it, so I’ll call it not merely inefficient, but wildly so.
Sure, it was irritating to watch the boys out there for two weeks merely doing setup work at the outset. Loud, jackhammering, fence-erecting, traffic-diverting setup work.
But now, it seems all they do is dig stuff up, patch it back over, dig more stuff up, and move the dirt around the site. Not one place or another permanently, but back and forth. Dirt needs to be here, dirt needs to be there. And then sometimes they’ll load up a truck with dirt and send it away. Not all the dirt, mind you, just the right amount. Other times, they’ll order another truck back to the site, hauling different dirt, and add it to the growing, moving-target piles.
As a project manager, I’m frustrated on a personal level. The kind of half-assed planning I’m looking at wouldn’t fly in the corporate world, so why should it suffice when taxpayers are funding it? (Oh, right, we’re only funding half of it, after anonymous donations.)
What’s irking me today is the constant waste. Everyday, this guy’s morning job is to water the dirt.
And then we all watch as that precious summer water evaporates in the hot sun. I understand why they wouldn’t want to work in a dust bowl, but is it really necessary to Wet the dirt, only to see it Not Wet five minutes later?
Hey, I have an idea. Maybe it wouldn’t be so dusty if they stopped moving it around.
