My boss told me to skip the drone survey for a small grading job

He said it was a waste of money on a half-acre lot in Tempe. We went off the old plot map, and guess what? We hit a buried utility line that wasn't on any of the paper records. The drone company's thermal scan would have shown the heat signature (they told me that later). Now we're two days behind and the client is furious. Has anyone else had a 'small' job blow up because someone skipped a tech step?

3 comments

3 Comments

terryscott1d ago

Yeah, that "waste of money" line is a classic. A buddy of mine had a boss who refused to pay for a proper soil test on what looked like a simple backyard patio pour. They figured it was just dirt. Turned out there was a huge pocket of super soft, wet clay about a foot down that nobody knew about. The whole slab cracked and sank in under six months. The cheap-out cost them triple in the long run to tear out and redo it.

mark_chen622d ago

Feel your pain, that exact thing happened to my crew last year.

abby_morgan181d ago

Actually happened to my crew two years back, not last year. Same soft clay story though.