I am getting numerous reports from DMOB’d electricians so I am going to make this short and sweet. If you are being asked to sign off on inspection reports that you didn’t complete, that aren’t accurate, that were never done………DON’T DO IT!! DON’T DO IT!! DON’T DO IT!!
Yes I suspect KBR may threaten to fire or transfer you. But, if someone is killed or injured on that system your signature is on that paperwork! You will be the one that KBR and the CID blame.
If this is happening get in touch with Task Force Safe or the DCMA. If you need help getting in touch with them email me and I will do what I can.
Next time you are asked to sign off on paperwork that is not accurate, ask yourself these questions.
“Do I have any professional ethics?”
“How would I feel if my actions or inaction led to the injury or death of another person?”
“Does my family think this job is worth possibly going to prison just to pull KBR’s butt out of the fire?”
“Am I just too “purdy” to go to prison?”
DON’T DO IT!!
(added 2/07/2009) I also recommend you keep a daily hand written journal of everything that is going on, what is said, where you were working and what you were doing. This is to protect you.
On a side note: I would like to welcome to my blog, the distinguished and consistent visitors from the law offices of K&L Gates and McKenna Long & Aldridge. They would appear to be KBR’s attorney’s in the SSG Ryan Maseth wrongful death lawsuit and between the two of them, hit my site daily for a total of several hundred hits a month. Thanks for reading.
Ms Sparky
Hi,
I knew you were being “visited”. By just how many KBR looking to turn over rocks, I don’t know.
What you have said about not signing is very correct, KBR is looking for people to hang these things on.
One thing you might think about is this:
Are you a qualified inspector who has a current inspectors license?
Do you know the NEC? Frontwards and backwards?
I know my supervisors don’t and it doesn’t matter to KBR or the Task Force Safety team. Of which TFS is only pointing out major issues and not the finer points we would see in the states.
I will not sign any document pertaining to this mess, I did in the beginning, but not now. There are NO qualified electrical inspectors here that I am aware of, just Masters and Journeymen.
The new thing is making electricians QA/QC qualified for TDY to sign off on the SOR’s after repair and testing.
Mismanagement has always been KBR and mgmt is looking for some one to lay the blame on.
Guy LaBoa was here and went on about quality and how we should do quality work. PM Poe was negative at the all hands meeting and had to be interrupted by LaBoa.
Be warned, mgmt is looking for someone to pin their sweep it under the rug mgmt style on.
It was the same in the past here in Iraq and it would be the same today if the DoD weren’t on their butts about doing something right.
In kuwait a team of brits was bought in to sort out G&B. QAQC are telling new recruits to fail a building a day or loose there jobs.For some reason the brits aint liked but they have done a great job i think.
looks like they might be getting set up
Ms Sparky’s Response:
Why? If it’s right it passes if it isn’t it doesn’t!! What the hell?
I worked with those Brits in Kuwait and they’re awesome electricians. They may do things differently here in the states but those guys know there shit. That grounding & bonding is a joke with the material we’re forced to work with. With that cheap crap is there really any wonder why things are failing? If you don’t have a quality product (like most that are made here in the states) then you’re asking for trouble. QAQC is a bunch of dicks, bar one guy that I went to Kuwait with. The rest of them are so fucking smug it’s unreal. All a bunch know-nothing pricks who’ve watched a video or spoken to an electrician once or twice. Sorry fellas, doesn’t qualify you to tell us our work fails. They rushed a few of us through that joke of a QA/QC training class because they knew they weren’t qualified to even look at electrical work. Oh well, the contract is going away hopefully their jobs will follow.
Ms Sparky’s Response:
Hopefully the ones that need to lose there jobs will. We can only hope!
They put in SOR’s for buildings from Oct to Jan, O+M sat on them, nothing was done. They come back in March and find all the work is still to do.They are having to re test and repair as they go, Shack is putting pressure to do more buildings a day.
They are saying if its not right it wont pass.They wont take bullshit from above
Ms Sparky’s Response:
I think the client (soldiers) will pay the ultimate price for KBR deferring technical inspections and service orders.
They’re wanting us to pencil whip again and the push is on. Undersized bonding jumpers, fake parts. Never had a split bolt fail the way these do. They say Burndey on them, but they don’t perform.
Resets are being done on buildings that were done last year. Still had the readings on the old SOR.
The procedure is to document and write up service request orders for the work to repair the system….
Some of it we do, but a lot gets passed on and we all know how long it takes a P4 to get taken care of, don’t we?
Ms Sparky’s Response:
Send me a failed split bolt. I will have it verified with “Burndy” and send it to the DCMA or Congress or both whichever. If KBR is buying counterfeit parts the DCMA needs to know about it. You know damn well they are charging top dollar! That damn pencil whipping is going to get someone killed!
What I have seen since I have been in theatre is a lot of very good electricians who are truly desiring and even trying to do their jobs being pushed with their intentions into a box of management’s creation. The electricians on the ground right now are electricians and most do know a fair amount about grounding, bonding and the differences between them.
Management appears to be complicating the reality of the grounding and bonding process by entangling the issues with a LOT of words that all mean… in relative terms… the same things that we already understand. Just different words.
Do they mean to confuse the issues? That is anybody’s guess. I do know that good field electricians are being swept into dust-clouds of never-ending entanglements of terminology BS.
The management that I far too often see “In Charge” of the G&B verifications at the 3rd and 4th levels are either not qualified to manage such an operation or they are management people who have not one single credential to enable them a role in the decision making process of a qualified electrician regarding life health and safety.
It is my belief that NO ELECTRICIAN worth the paper his license is written on should EVER bend to favor the decisions of a mere manager, or mere safety representative. An electrician must be given the room to make electrical decisions, especially if he or she is to sign for the electrical work in any given structure.
I have seen a couple “electricians” in the field in theater that were not really qualified to be left un-supervised, that is true. Most if not all of the real problems though are a result of managerial people pushing trades-people too far into bad decisions and inferior finished product.
The boots on the ground electricians KBR has in theater right now CAN do the job, I know this to be true, but they must have room between themselves and the managegerial people whose agendas are different than those of the professional electrician.
I know a lot of electricians here and some have told me that the had marked a building down as failing G&B bu saw the computer entry was marked as passed even though no work had been don on the building to get it incompliance. Some electricians are more than happy to pencil whip and look good for the open positions and new company but if the DCMA would get off their fat useless ass and look a the paperwork and how many some are doing compared to the rest of the crew I am sure they would see some are doing more than anyone could possibly do in a day.
I knew 1 electrician who had ALL the keys for a row of CHU’s and was doing some G&B checks around back, he came up to the rest of the crew, carpenter, electrician and HVAC and they all had theit TI forms done before he opened the first door for inspection, they went to the trucks and just hung out for the rest of the day. TI forms prefilled by managers and staff told to just sign them because the building passed inspection last month, others mass signing TI packets without even seeing the buildings they are verifying.
If the DCMA were worthy of representing the troops then they would have real electricians taking random packets and going into the field and calling the fakes out to answer for the things they wrote as OK when they were not no once again it falls to choices and lack of true protection for the troops by those who are hired to ensure safety is upheld.
In response to the DCMA getting off of thier fat usless asses, I dont really know how the DCMA works. But when I visited C-Sites recently, it seemed that the DCMA inspectors only inspected where the KBR Safety told him to.
hi there, im an electrician in england and have applied for a job in Afghanistan but havnt heard anything. does anyone know if any companies are hiring. cheers!
hi im an electrician from england and would love to find out some contacts to find work in iraq or afghanistan and would be grateful for any co-operation thanks,could do with a decent job to hlp pull me and my family out the shit
Hi my name is Chris, Journeyman electrician from U.S I have applyed for electrical job in Afganistan through KBR but get no reply. Can someone Please help me get electrical job. I have been out of work for more than a year now with 4 children, thank you.