OUCH… HOW MUCH SECURITY IN A CONSTRUCTION SITE!

On April 4th 2013, a Thursday afternoon, I was with a friend of mine who has been living in Canada for 5 years working in a construction company and earning something in arm wrestling competitions. We had just had a quick lunch in the Little Italy, a neighborhood in Ottawa where Italian people can feel a bit more at home.

Speeding on Queen Elizabeth dr, a scenographic road along lake Dow and the old town, we reached in just 5 minutes our final destination, a construction site located in Bank St, one of the main roads of the city. The yard looked hectic, even though the work had just begun: the material had been sent only a few weeks before, but from the street we could already see what interested me and the reason for which I had travelled so far: some structures created with one of our main products for columns in concrete, GEOTUB reusable formwork in plastics.

Unfortunately our repeated attempts to contact the site and project manager had been proven fruitless and we had very little time to spend there so… we had to do something. Immediately! We decided to talk to one of the security guards of the construction site to explain our situation. However the incorruptible guard actually seemed inflexible. Before being defeated, I decided to play our last ace and I said: “I came from Italy just for this!” Italian origins? Compassion? The fact is that unexpectedly the tactics worked and the guard authorized us into the construction site, even though for just a few minutes!

We put on our hardhats and we went fast towards our plastics formwork, knowing that the available time was very short but, after only a couple of minutes there, just long enough to take a dozen of photos, another guard – obviously not informed by his colleague of our permits – noticed us and turned to us with a disgruntled look. We tried to explain again why we were there, but the relentless security of the construction site didn’t want to listen to reason and ordered us to leave immediately, with a threatening “None shall pass!”. I didn’t want to give up after such a long journey and I tried to insist, but apparently it was not the best moment because the guard, irritated, perhaps tired, moved toward us shouting and pulling out his nightstick to drive us out. What should we do? Obviously getting in trouble was not one of the purposes of the day! We ran, got into the car and flew away without looking behind.

The adventure, however, was not over yet! A few days later I was contacted by the construction company, who apologized for the rough welcome and even thanked us because, replacing the traditional cardboard formwork with our GEOTUB reusable plastic ones, they had been able to save $ 300,000!

Will this be the end? Stay tuned for our next stories!

Eng. Davide Noro