UNLESS WE?ARE in the roadworks business, whether for a construction company or an ancillary supplier of electricity or water, we usually never get to see what it is really like to work on a major project.
We drive by, annoyed that traffic has slowed and some youngster waving a red flag is telling us to stop or go. We quietly curse the Government for the money not flowing fast enough to get the job over with more quickly, and we find it easy to criticize the various players on site actually getting the job done for whatever inconvenience we have been suffering over the course of the project.
None of this is likely to change; it is part of the way things are. But over the past year or more, and mainly over the past several months, my family and our neighbours have also experienced what it’s like to literally have a major project going on right at your back door, not only affecting your passage through it for a few minutes in an air-conditioned vehicle every day, but up close and personal.
It hasn’t been easy. Large vehicles with “claws” taking bites out of the ground have been a daily experience, not to mention the constant earth-shaking drilling.
What has become the main negative about the experience has been the dust from the excavations. Here at Boarded Hall, St George, what were supposed to be routine digs down to bedrock have produced some odd combination of soft rock, sand and marl on the long way down, so the work has taken a lot longer and probably produced far more dust than usual.
There is a bigger story in the experience of having a roundabout being built next to where you live.
It is about the complexity of the work itself, and appreciating the efforts of those who are doing it.
A few Saturdays ago they had to close the road and shut off the water because the new bypass water pipe had to cross the road to connect with its sister pipe on the other side.
As they were excavating, they were looking out for the existing water pipe running along the north side of the road less than a hundred feet to the east.
Suddenly all hell broke loose as the pipe showed itself to be in the centre of the road and was spouting water like an oil geyser.
The whole project was set back by hours, and so, after starting before eight that morning, the connection was not completed until the sun was setting.
Although the plan had always been to connect at another time via a 45-degree-angle link to the existing pipeline, just getting the new pipe in place and the old one patched consumed the entire day.
That evening, having visited the site a couple of times during the day and been updated by Tim Wells, the construction company’s works manager on site, I took out a couple of beers and called Tim over. He appeared grateful and quickly smoked a cigarette as we chatted about the long day. Then he excused himself, saying he needed to close off things so people could go home. He had been on the job probably fourteen hours that day, and remained courteous and informative throughout.
I certainly could not do any job that kept me out in the sun, far less in dust, all day, and I was grateful to Tim for seeing the “day from hell” through, a day which had definitely not gone according to plan.
A few days later, Tim Wells had a heart attack. He was recuperating when a second one struck him last week, and he died Thursday morning.
This is not a eulogy as I did not know Tim before meeting him on the job as a representative of Black Bess Quarry Ltd, the company building the roundabout for the Government, and sometimes chatting with him during our mutual comings and goings.
Many people have died in vehicular accidents at the Boarded Hall-Frere Pilgrim crossing over the years. The new roundabout is therefore not a luxury but an essential element in improving traffic flow and in the effort to save lives.
Tim Wells’ last job on earth was managing the effort to make a dangerous crossroads much safer for every man, woman and child using it.
I am grateful to him and all of the other people who are still working hard on the project, which is expected to be completed in just a few more weeks.
May I offer, on behalf of my family, my condolences to Tim’s family and all of his co-workers at Black Bess Quarry Ltd.