Hit 500,000 square feet of tilt-up panels today without realizing it

I was looking through my old job logs this morning and added up all the tilt-up concrete panels I've helped set over the last 15 years. Turns out I passed 500,000 square feet somewhere on my last job last month. That number hit me harder than I expected. When I started out in 2008 we were doing maybe 60,000 feet a year with a small crew and a single crane. Now our company does that in a couple months and the tolerances are way tighter than they used to be. It's not just the volume that changed either the bracing systems and lifting inserts are completely different from what we used back then. Has anyone else stopped to count their own totals and got surprised by how much work they've actually done?

2 comments

2 Comments

dakota_taylor3912d ago

A buddy of mine from way back in the trade told me a similar story last year. He was just cleaning out his truck and found an old notebook with all his job numbers scribbled in it from 2005 to 2010. He sat there and added it all up and realized he'd personally helped brace over 200,000 feet of panels in those five years alone. He texted me a picture of the page and said it made him feel old but proud at the same time. He even said the tolerances back then were "good enough" but now people get real picky about a quarter inch. It's crazy how much the little details change over a career.

the_daniel12d ago

Nodding hard at this. I did the same thing last spring when I found an old binder in my dad's garage with all his job logs from the 80s. Saw he individually nailed over 300,000 shingles on just one subdivision project, which blew my mind considering we use nail guns for everything now. Makes you realize how much the labor side of things has shifted even if the end product looks the same!