Hi welcome to Construction Kronies my
name is Chris Konkle
and today i'm going to be telling you
exactly what to expect your first day on
a construction site
all right it's your first day on a
construction site there's certain things
that have to happen
i'm going to tell you what they are
right now! I hope that my videos so far
have helped you get the job and now i'm
going to be starting to teach you how to
deal with the job and what to do with it
The very first thing that you have to
know
is on your first day on a site there's
no need to be nervous okay
or overexcited or anything like that. As
long as you follow my advice
and just follow these steps and do these
things i'm about to tell you all the
time
you'll have a very very good career
you'll be a quality worker and you're
going to go places.
Trust me if you stick to the companies
that do the things that I tell you that
they should do
then you'll have a very good career!
Now, stay away from companies that don't
have safety programs
and stay away from the guys you know
don't have apprenticeship programs and
things like that because
you want to be able to advance in
your career. I started out as a laborer
back when i was 15 years old
that was 25 years ago and i started out
in the summer doing work between my
high school summers.
it was a really good high paying job for
somebody my age and i did well. This
video series that i'm going to be
putting
out will take you from being a laborer
and getting the job
to starting out in the trades and
working your way all the way up to the
ranks until you become your first year
or second year
becoming a journeyman and then maybe
going into estimating project management
you never know the possibilities in
construction are
endless and there's always a huge demand
for skilled laborers or skilled trades
people. There's a definite need for
qualified people who have the ability to
train other workers.
That's something that was so rare in the
field when I was going through the ranks
I had nobody really teaching me anything
I had to figure out a lot of things on
my own a lot of it was trial and error
and I made a lot of errors. I made
some mistakes and I lived through a lot
of ups and downs
and if i can help just one person not
make the same mistakes that I did
then it's been all worth it!
Because it can really have an impact on
your
family and life, these these things
that can happen. When you have an
injury or lose a lot of money
or you're not getting paid or
you're just working under real stressful
conditions
that affects your home life, that affects
your family and the most important thing
in life
is family and community so we
definitely want to support each other!
We've prepared for our first day, so we
have our gear, we've shown up on
site at 6 45 a.m
because we're there on time right, a
little bit early, because we planned out
our route ahead of time and we know how
long it's going to take to get there. We
woke up early, got a good night's sleep
and are well
rested. So we're ready to go!
Now these things i'm going to tell
you
are the steps, some advice to take with
you for the long haul. Okay, you're going
to need to have an orientation,
a site specific orientation. That's for
every new site and is done by the general
contractor.
First let me explain to you the
dynamics of a construction project.
There's an owner who needs a building
to expand so they hire the designer the
designer will design the building
and then put these designs out for
what's called a tender
and what a tender is prime contractors /
general contractors
will bid on the project, price it and bid it.
A bid is a competition and the most
qualified contractor combined with
pricing and whoever has the most
understanding of the project
requirements and a good price
will generally win that contract. A
prime contractor is a general contractor
somebody like Ledcor, PCL
or Ellis Don. They'll then take that job and
a lot of the times they will then
price the job and bid it but also have
subcontractors pricing with them. 
Subcontractors do whatever the general
contractor / prime contractor
cannot do or are not certified to do.
Then they'll have to subcontract that
portion of the bid (scope of work)
out so you're going to have 
electricians, mechanical companies,
plumbing you know hvac,
masonry, roofing, drywall and steel stud,
painting, flooring.
You know it's going to be a lot right
building envelope and cladding,
glazing (windows and
window systems) right stuff like that. So
you're going to have a lot of different
companies working under one roof
and all these different companies might
have their own days, schedules
and times.
They'll be in and out on a daily
basis so a construction site
if you can imagine is very busy
there's a lot of things going on. There's
equipment and workers
there's a lot of things going on and the
very first thing you need
to do when you go to any new
construction site is to have a site
orientation.
So once you arrive at site at 6 45 am
first thing you need to do is call your
foreman and
let them know that you're there. A good
foreman will come and meet you at the
gates
and take you into the general site
office or trailer to have your
orientation.
Once the orientation's over then he'll
come back or she'll come back
and get you, take you on site for a tour
and give you a company specific
orientation if you haven't had one
already.
they'll do the hiring package and all
these other things (i'm about to tell you)
need to be done before you do any work!
An orientation is going to bring you up
to speed with all the site specific
hazards and controls
and also company policies.
Orientation will also
tell you where to get information like
the safety manuals or the OH&S blue book
and the MSDS sheets, all these things,
the emergency exits so you're
going to be well informed
of the hazards and the controls and the
policies ahead of time and
before you start any work on that site.
Each site has their own set of rules and
procedures.
A lot of things carry over to job to
job to job and a lot of things
are law and regulated in the code, act, regulations.
But every site has its own specific,
unique, environmental hazards you need to
be
made aware of those up front. The
orientation usually takes about 45
minutes to an hour
and they're really easy. All you have to
do is listen and speak up if you have
any questions and
ask them okay. There's no such thing as a
dumb question in construction.
The only thing dumb about a question
is the one you don't ask,
then somebody gets hurt or something gets damaged.
Injury and loss prevention is huge
you need to protect yourself, you
definitely don't want to be injured
so listen to what the safety advisor
or site Superintendent has to say!
The order of things on a construction site
goes you have the site Superintendent
who's the big boss
that person will oversee all operations
and control the trades
the site Superintendent will
usually have an Assistant
site Superintendent and at least one of them will be a safety advisor or there will be other safety advisors
NCSO's or CSO's
then below them you have Foreman
lead hand, 
uh sorry, Foreman, Journeyman / journey
person, my apologies, Journey person, Lead Hand and then you
got your fifth, fourth, third, second and first
year apprentices, and then you have your
laborers.
So there's an order to things in construction and
you're going to be made aware of who's who.
A lot of times you've already done one a
company specific orientation and you've
done the hiring package up front at the
office. 
It's important to know that. It's
important to know that companies don't
actually have
offices on site they have them off-site
somewhere else
and that the sites aren't going to be
your place of work all the time
you could be going from site to site to
site. Now before you're assigned a new
task
there's what we call safe work practices
and safe job procedures (SWP's & JHA's).
These are the things that you need to
READ BEFORE you do any new tasks! They're located in the health and
safety manual and you simply read them
and review them. They're the steps of
your task and from these steps
is how you start to formulate what's
called an FLHA or a hazard assessment.
An FLHA meaning, field level hazard
assessment or JHA job
hazard analysis. We're just going to
call it a hazard assessment for now. You
have to do a hazard assessment
every single day of work, alright so it's
good to start getting good at those
right away. Somebody should be there
to teach you how to do that whether it's
a Foreman or a Lead Hand or a fellow
worker even.
Somebody needs to show you how to
properly fill out a hazard assessment
and without reading the safe work
practices and safe job procedures
for that task you're not going to be
able to write one properly.
So you need to do that (read the SWP's),
then you also need to do a physical
analysis
of your environmental hazards which are
whatever hazards are present
at that time in your work area. There's
the present hazards with the actual
tasks you need to put all of this information into a hazard
assessment BEFORE you start,
before you start any work your foreman
has to review it, not your journey person,
not your lead hand the foreman has to
somebody in management has to review
your hazard assessments
when you're a new worker and
make sure you've done it the right way
you have to be able to demonstrate that
you know it and you
have to demonstrate that you're a
competent worker
in that task before they let you on your
own to do anything.
There's a lot of things in place to
ensure that you're not just thrown
into the wolves because your safety is
priority number one always!
If you don't know something
and if you're not comfortable doing
something then don't do it. That's
very, very important okay
not to do something that you're not
comfortable with or you don't understand.
The information is there when you just ask
or if you just read about it and 
practice. You need to have
that knowledge of the task or you need to
develop your skills over time.
What I'm about to tell you is very, very
serious and i mean it. You show up
to site and it's your very very first day on a
construction site
and you're totally green and you're
you're put right to work
with somebody or on your own even or
just given a broom to sweep up and do
some cleaning.
If you're just thrown into something
like that without an orientation,
without doing doing a hazard assessment
then you're probably better off just to
leave that job immediately
and find a new place to work because
that doesn't mean you're safe and you're
not going to be
safe there. Your safety isn't going to be
priority there all right there's plenty
of companies out there
who you can work for so don't ever
compromise yourself and don't ever
compromise safety.
I mean that. It's very important that you
understand this and
you have the right to refuse anything
that's unsafe and if you
are not comfortable with doing something
or you don't understand something
or you don't know something then it's
unsafe okay.
What are you doing? Nope!
So, in order to be a top-notch quality
worker there's a couple extra things
I'm going to tell you!
Yes!! It's okay to be social but there's a
time and place for that.
When you're on site keep your cell
phone on
silent and in your pocket the whole day.
There's a time and place for that
as well. You're going to have two 15-minute
breaks and you're going to have one
30-minute break
at lunch. Those are the times when
you can check your phone,
make your calls and socialize.
Another thing about the break times
that is very
important is don't be that person who waits
for everyone else to go back
in after break you want to be on time
and keep your breaks within those
parameters
the designated times. Say you're the
first guy or
first girl back every day. Somebody's
going to take notice
and you will advance a lot quicker than
the other people. Hard workers are really
hard to come by so when you demonstrate
that you're a responsible hard-working
quality worker
you will move up these ranks really
quickly I promise that.
When you're with a journey person or a
lead hand or a fellow worker, somebody
anybody,
who is going to be teaching you
something, this is a very important to
understand
because so many people do it and it's
just so annoying and you just don't want
to be this person.
Watch what they're (your teacher) doing and listen.
Don't ever try to suggest a better way
or give advice to somebody teaching you
something. Just watch their way
first and listen to what they have to
say.
Just remember the answers are there when
you ask, you don't
do anything that you don't feel
comfortable doing and make sure that you
read the health and safety manual those
safe work practices and safe job procedures
so that you understand the tasks that
you're doing. I can't stress that enough
guys
i just cannot stress that enough. You
need to be fully trained on how to do
things you need to be trained on how to
use tools
and how to do your tasks. There's a lot
of training
a lot of learning ahead of you. To sum it
all up the things that have to happen
on your first
day on a construction site: Number One -
Orientation. A site-specific orientation
has to be done for every
single new construction project that you
work on. Number Two -  You need to have a
company
a specific orientation and complete a
employee hiring package before you start
working your first day on site.
Number Three - You need to be made
aware of the site specific hazards and
controls by actually physically walking
around
and being shown by your lead hand or
foreman. The Fourth thing that
has to happen is you must read the
safe work practices and
safe job procedures for the tasks that
you were assigned.
Then you have to be shown how to
complete a hazard assessment
and then you have to complete a hazard
assessment on your own, have that
reviewed by a foreman
and approved. Then you must
demonstrate your competency with the task
before your left on your own to do
anything. Remember
if you're not comfortable doing
something or just don't know
how to do something then just don't
do it. Nobody is going to make you
do anything,
you have the right to refuse
unsafe work and
not knowing and not feeling comfortable
is not safe! Alright guys this is Chris
bye for now.
