How do you contact an uncontactable tradesperson?

[MikeSharp01]

1 hour ago, Brickie said:

Sounds like he should have been an architect

That sounds too hash as sociopaths exist in all walks of life in my experiance. 

[Jeremy Harris]

39 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

That sounds too hash as sociopaths exist in all walks of life in my experiance. 

 

 

After trying several jobs, all of which he left just before being sacked (one of which his colleagues, some of whom I knew well, held a party the day after he'd gone to celebrate his leaving - without his presence), the chap I mentioned earlier eventually ended up as a university lecturer, and may well still be, if they haven't sacked him yet.  He was the bane of my life for a few years, as he used to give his students my contact details, telling them I could help them with their research.  No matter how many times I told him that I just didn't do professional pro bono work, he carried on doing this, so in the end I had to take it up with the university, telling them that if another one of their students contacted me, I would bill the university for my time, sending them a copy of my Ts and Cs, plus my current rates with the letter.

[SteamyTea]

22 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

the chap I mentioned earlier eventually ended up as a university lecturer

Those that can do, those that can't teach

I liked lecturing, the worse that happens is that you have to reboot a PC.

[Construction Channel]

4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Those that can do, those that can't teach

I told my carpentry teacher that  

he couldn't do much about it as he already had me marking other students work when I completed the course just over a year early...... now he's a flat roofer,

TBF my paperwork isn't worth the paper its written on, that's also the reason I have no respect for other "tradesmen" until I have worked alongside them.

[Nickfromwales]

9 hours ago, Construction Channel said:

TBF my paperwork isn't worth the paper its written on, that's also the reason I have no respect for other "tradesmen" until I have worked alongside them.

Same here. A good few of my 'qualified' mates still ring little ol' me when something complex crops up 

[ToughButterCup]

9 hours ago, Construction Channel said:

[...]    I have no respect for other "tradesmen" until I have worked alongside them.

 

Thats the same in any walk of life. 

Professional credibility only truly shows itself for what it is when things go wrong. Beyond mere licensed competence exists expertise by experience. And generally that occurs after about 50,000 hours. Even if you have no formal qualification. 

 

I have a very loooooong way to go with this building lark. Another 45000 hours. I mean, I can't even manage to ring a tradesperson. 

[MikeSharp01]

1 minute ago, recoveringacademic said:

expertise by experience. And generally that occurs after about 50,000 hours.

Here we go again..... to close this 'how many hours does it take to be an expert issue' off I think we can rely on the 'some people never learn' and the 'how long is a piece of string' sayings of yaw that sum it up well and add "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." Eleanor Roosevelt and remember that experienced people spend most of their energy avoiding doing, or carefully managing, anything dangerous.

[ToughButterCup]

I'll dig out the research references to 50k hours sometime. The number was not conjured up out of thin air.

[Jeremy Harris]

I used to teach at a technical college, very close to where @SteamyTea lives.  Many of my C&G/ONC/HNC students were apprentices, and there were definitely a few that fell into the category of never being able to learn, no matter how much time and effort I'd put in to try and help them understand the topic.  Occasionally one of these would suddenly turn the corner, and then get better and better at being able to learn things, and, TBH, these are the students I remember.  I have a strong suspicion that a lot of the problem students may well have had little of no proper education before starting college.  That part of Cornwall was a bit notorious for having very poor educational standards at the time, possibly because there were a lot of manual labour jobs around that paid very well (tin mining was still booming, the big engineering companies, like Holman's, were always recruiting, and failing that there was always the fall back of fishing).

[MikeSharp01]

36 minutes ago, recoveringacademic said:

The number was not conjured up out of thin air.

Sorry @recoveringacademic  I am confident it was not. But having read a lot of such research it seems that its very contradictory, it all too often relies on definitions of expertise that are to say the least debatable and sometimes try to encompass the idea that anyone can become an Olympic champion and / or that such a champion is the height of expertise. Given that 50000 hours is nearly 6 years and you can only practice for 12 hours a day you would need 12 years of very solid work to make 50000 hours. Then given that the youngest Gold medal winner (female) was just 13 she would have had to start her regime at the age of 3! Furthermore, just getting into my stride, I think we might be able to conjecture that not everyone has the attributes required to be an Olympic champion which follows on from @JSHarris's post above. I guess this all means that I am happy to accept research conclusions but only in the scope of the head of the pin they attempt to dance upon and I still think you can learn 'a' skill in 3 months assuming you were ever capable of learning it - IE you have the attributes needed, in 3 months of dedicated effort. 

[Jeremy Harris]

When learning to fly, I remember being told of the three phases of competence  as a pilot after having passed all the exams, GFT, etc.  The first was that you would be a cautious pilot for a time, aware of your limitations, lack of experience and limited expertise.  You were likely to be a pretty safe pilot through that phase, that was generally estimated to be around the first 100 hours or so.  The second phase was the dangerous one, where confidence tended to exceed ability, and looking at the statistics that's where most accidents occur, in the 100 hour to 1000 hour band.  The third phase was where depth of experience tended to compensate for any over confidence, so accident probability reduced again.  This latter phase was interesting as it levelled out, in terms of competence, after around 2000 hours and then stayed level right up to the maximum most pilots are ever likely to achieve, perhaps 30,000 hours or so.  Unlike other activities, age tends not to cause a drop off, as strict medical requirements tend to filter out age-related loss of competence.

 

I pretty much fitted the pattern.  My first accident was at around 180 hours, my only other accident was at around 300 hours, and from then on I flew for another few thousand hours incident-free.

 

As for learning a skill in a given period of time, I went from non-flyer to pilot in one month at Farnborough.  That was the standard course, 4 weeks of intensive ground school and around 25 hours or so of flying training, and pretty much everyone on the course passed.  We were all pre-selected though, and had been through assessments at Boscombe Down and Biggin Hill before the course.

[Ferdinand]

Just read the story of the demise of Holman's ... a local company with a couple of thousand people asset stripped, if the account is correct.

 

Ouch.

 

F

[Ferdinand]

1 hour ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Sorry @recoveringacademic  I am confident it was not. But having read a lot of such research it seems that its very contradictory, it all too often relies on definitions of expertise that are to say the least debatable and sometimes try to encompass the idea that anyone can become an Olympic champion and / or that such a champion is the height of expertise. Given that 50000 hours is nearly 6 years and you can only practice for 12 hours a day you would need 12 years of very solid work to make 50000 hours. Then given that the youngest Gold medal winner (female) was just 13 she would have had to start her regime at the age of 3! Furthermore, just getting into my stride, I think we might be able to conjecture that not everyone has the attributes required to be an Olympic champion which follows on from @JSHarris's post above. I guess this all means that I am happy to accept research conclusions but only in the scope of the head of the pin they attempt to dance upon and I still think you can learn 'a' skill in 3 months assuming you were ever capable of learning it - IE you have the attributes needed, in 3 months of dedicated effort. 

 

I believe the more usual number has been 10000 hours.

 

That is the equivalent of 5 years full time work on that single skill.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

16 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Just read the story of the demise of Holman's ... a local company with a couple of thousand people asset stripped, if the account is correct.

 

Ouch.

 

F

 

 

The account is correct.  It was diabolical, but inevitable given the circumstances of the time.  Holmans had grown up around meeting a specific local requirement, manufacturing hard rock mining equipment (drills, compressors, rigs etc) and didn't have the foresight to diversify into other markets fast enough when the local tin mining industry collapsed and the world wide tin mining industry shifted to large open cast mines in the Far East, where hard rock mining equipment wasn't needed.  They did have some of the very best technology in the world, particularly their high capacity air compressor designs and rock drills, but that was where most of the company value was.  They were a perfect target for asset strippers, really, and there was, at that time, little or no support from outside the county - central government was focussed on monetarism and if a company effectively folded then the government didn't really intervene. 

 

The impact locally was massive.  The mining industry pumped tens of millions into the local economy and practically every family in Camborne - Redruth had someone who either worked at South Crofty mine or Holmans.  That impact is still plainly visible today, many years later, as @SteamyTea will probably verify.  When we left Cornwall in 1992 things were pretty bad in that area, with high unemployment, low wages and little or no inward investment.

[ToughButterCup]

2 hours ago, JSHarris said:

[...]

  The second phase was the dangerous one, where confidence tended to exceed ability, and looking at the statistics that's where most accidents occur, in the 100 hour to 1000 hour band.

[...]

 

Post GFT and after a few hours flying together (around 200 hours flying), Debbie bought me a copy of the book The Death Zone. It's message bears out your point completely. You need experience to fly really well.

Not long after reading it , we flew into a small farmer's strip: taxiing up to the house for a coffee, she clapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me on avoiding the electricity wires.     "Which wires?"      The hair still rises on the nape of my neck when I remember that.

 

@MikeSharp01, my information (research reading)  was entirely focussed on  competence in a professional context, 

[SteamyTea]

46 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

That impact is still plainly visible today, many years later

Yes, but there is still a romantic notion that traditional mining is going to return.  South Crofty has recently had a large investment, again.  I can't see it happening though for a number of reasons.  The main one being a world heritage site not 500 yards from the main entrance.  As if Cornwall needed another mining museum.

 

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

Just read the story of the demise of Holman's

Just about did for Broomwade too.  Only people in High Wycombe and the Met office that have ever heard of Cambourne.

Edited February 4, 2018 by SteamyTea

[MikeSharp01]

5 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Just read the story of the demise of Holman's ... a local company with a couple of thousand people asset stripped, if the account is correct.

Curious, don't you think, that HMG allow this to happen - still, anybody would think 'the people' were not important or that they do not understand that real wealth comes from creating 'stuff' rather than servicing 'stuff'.

[Jeremy Harris]

3 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Curious, don't you think, that HMG allow this to happen - still, anybody would think 'the people' were not important or that they do not understand that real wealth comes from creating 'stuff' rather than servicing 'stuff'.

 

 

You have to remember the mantra of the government of the day, which boiled down to "be as selfish and possible, grab what you can by any means, and don't give a damn about those that don't make it".

 

This was at the time when banking started to seriously go off the rails, where the financial sector was creating ever more ephemeral ways of making money by selling invisible assets and it shaped the thinking of a whole generation that went on to become some of those that ripped off millions from people less well off, by asset stripping, pension fund raiding, you name it, someone was doing it.

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

8 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

This was at the time when banking started to seriously go off the rails, where the financial sector was creating ever more ephemeral ways of making money by selling invisible assets and it shaped the thinking of a whole generation that went on to become some of those that ripped off millions from people less well off, by asset stripping, pension fund raiding, you name it, someone was doing it.

yep ... I was there!

[Ferdinand]

@MikeSharp01 @JSHarris

 

I am going respectfully to disagree with both of you.

 

If we are talking Holman Brothers  Ltd of Camborne (wikipedia link), who manufactured mining equipment, then they were merged in 1968 then eventually asset-stripped by a British conglomerate called Siebe, which became Siebe plc and then part of Invensys. I would be interested to know the timeline for the 1980s, but it seems to me to be insufficiently professional management in the 1950s and 1960s and a company that was resting on its laurels and was not ready when its market evaporated - any govt involved would arguably be "White Heat of Technology" Wilson's first administration from 1964-1970, and by the 1980s  I am not sure what any government could do, - how many employees were there in say 1985? And it was a family company anyway.

 

I am also going to disagree on service vs manufacturing - we have world-beating service industries, consider Auction Houses or Advertising or even Architects or Universities for example.

 

I think the issues are around professionalism of management, export orientation and partisan politics. I'll concede there is an issue on short term vs long term investment. The areas where our industry has struggled or evaporated are those exactly where governments *did* intervene - how are National Dock Labour scheme ports or British Leyland doing (Felixtowe is still here and Nissan Sunderland is their most productive plant worldwide)? 

 

Ferdinand

 

 

 

 

Edited February 5, 2018 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

Undoubtedly Holmans just failed to foresee the need to adapt to face changing world markets, they did indeed rest on their laurels, as they took the view that they had always been world leaders in making specialist hard rock mining equipment, and as long as they continued to design technically superb kit they would naturally stay in business.

 

In many ways their story echoes that of so many manufacturing companies in the UK that failed to adapt to the changing world market.  Engineering companies seemed to be the worst, as there was a certain arrogance, that may well have stemmed from the Industrial Revolution.  I know that from within my wife's family this is what happened, in that Guest, Keen and Nettlefold (she's a Nettlefold on her father's side) went from being the worlds largest manufacturer of fasteners to just being a part of a global corporation in the space of a few years (not helped by her great uncle Archie spending water like money on things like Burgh Island).

 

Our motorcycle and car industries went the same way.  Who can forget the appallingly dated and shoddily manufactured cars produced by BMC, for example?  I am not convinced that BMC failed wholly because of government intervention, I think it was well on the route to failure long before that.

[Ferdinand]

On manufacturing vs services, we still do it and our manufacturing sector is almost exactly ... give or take currency fluctuations ... the same size as the French one in both turnover and percent of economy terms.

 

There has recently been an amusing media meme about how we no longer manufacture, for example, to some extent by commentators bewailing Brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/06/the-legacy-of-leaving-old-industrial-britain-to-rot-is-becoming-clear

 

But companies still manufacture. TRiumph  Motorcyles now turn over half a billion and I have a pair of 100m turnover window companies ... Synseal and Euronics ... manufacturing within 4 miles of my desk. WHat we need is hundreds more similar operations.

 

They have escaped short termism by being privately or private equity held, or by luck, and done long term investment.

 

Both Euronics and Synseal have grown from small companies since the 1970s.

 

One of my favourite manufacturing stories is how the best selling pizza sold in shops in Italy is made in Leyland, Lancashire. @recoveringacademic will like that.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/21/how-good-dr-oetkers-pizza

 

The one thing that will wreck them is if some demented politician decides they know best and interferes.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited February 5, 2018 by Ferdinand

[ToughButterCup]

Lads, I'm just guessing here, but you have no technique for contacting an oft-uncontactable tradesperson then,  have you?

[Ferdinand]

You want us on topic? Boo.

 

I find that a different method may work for different tradespeople .. some email, some text message, some voice call to the mobile or the landline.

 

One or two the best way I have is to go and knock on the door at home on a Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon can be unpopular due to football. IF they get regular work from me, a visit at home will be acceptable.

 

Or they may answer the phone whilst doing somebody else's job 

 

Recently to me my phone failed entirely except for text messages since it had switched itself into deaf person mode where all sounds, including voice, were turned off.

 

F

Edited February 5, 2018 by Ferdinand

[ToughButterCup]

16 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

You want us on topic? Boo.

[...]

F

 

Being an Admin doesn't get any tougher mate!