INDUSTRIAL TRAINING LOG

Good afternoon my fellow steemians, today I'd like to tell you all how my experience so far has been during the course of my industrial training. So before I start I'd just like to re introduce my self and drop a little knowledge of what surrounds me. My name is sebastian osita obasi and I attend the university of Nigeria enugu campus and I am a student of the dept of architecture. Currently I'm a already a few weeks into my Industrial training placement, so if you're looking for some helpful info and tips for either your self or loved ones who might like to venture into this line of work. I hope you're blessed as you view this.

DAY 1
The site in which we were assigned to for a renovation job was the National institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development located at idu-karmo in Abuja FCT.

Upon arrival at the site I was greeted by the contractor and given a tour/ orientation of what renovations needed to be done and why.
The client company had complained about leakages through their roof and ceilings which in turn affected their work and that they also needed more spaces in certain labs to accomodate the new equipment being expected. So as such we were tasked with the work of providing a new ceiling and roof structure for them as well as the development of a partition wall to properly demarcate certain spaces.
I was assigned the task of monitoring the progress of these projects to take notes measurements and other things of what was going on.
So I took it with pride and decided to get started and to my greatest surprise I was asked to climb the roof structure while it was still being erected i.e in it's carcass phase and seeing as I'm not a skilled ninja or carpenter with superior balance skills (which for some reason they all seemed to have here) I climbed and as I matched the ceiling board (because I didn't know better) I almost fell through the ceiling.

What a roofing carcass or truss system( for the picky ones) looks like

Not to my surprise they all began to laugh and I decided to join them actually ( it won't be me these guys would embarrass like this) they proceeded to tell me that I should only walk on the walls and noggins (struts i.e pieces of wood placed to give the frame work rigidity fixed within joints most times) so as to avoid my untimely death or serious injury.
Any ways after mastering the art and skill of balancing myself to walking on the walls I got around and asked questions concerning the work ongoing something like why they do this like this or that ( I won't want to go too deep into the details) but yeah.
After asking my questions I was puzzled with the grueling task of getting myself back to the ground which for some reason was worse than going up but eventually your boy did it( Superman has nothing on me at this point honestly). I then proceeded to where the Mason's who were doing the block work for the partion walls were and they more than happy to welcome me. They all started to call me oga( Nigerian slang for boss) and I began asking them questions

Now that's all the jist there is to it on my first day.
But before I go I'd like to state a few things that one might need to lookout for if they ever found themselves in such a situation as this
1 observe how they place the purlins on the roof : Its no surprise to this in the construction industry that most times artisans i.e Mason's and carpenters can sometimes choose to do things the way they see fit rather than the way the architect specified it to be. Now this is important because at the time I was there I didn't know better I saw something that was inconsistent which was the way they placed two succeeding purlins together

This was what they did.

And when I asked they told me it was for strength, where as what the architect had specified was different

What the architect asked for

Now if you notice what we wanted was that that be placed head to head and not on top eachother. Well it was soon corrected afterwards

Another to take note of is
2 the way in which they lay their blocks bad set up the walls: before now I hadn't realised that they were actually different techniques to block laying you can find out more here
As well as things involved to ensuring the wall is straight like ; attaching to parallel lines to the course ends and laying the blocks between them as this enusres they are straight horizontally
And the use of plumbs i.e metal rods fixed to the ends of the walls to ensure that they are straight.
I really hope you enjoyed my little update today and I hope it guides you on your own path while working. God bless you all and have a wonderful day.