End Game

I have spent the last three or four weeks waiting for the rain.

The local meteorologists have yet to mention drought, but it shows in the hillsides, where brown grasses and sparse trees are the dominant vegetation. For the benefit of the folks living adjacent to this highway are actual paved surfaces, shocking in their recent appearance, which replace the marl surfaces, the dust of which had collected on everything within two hundred meters of the roadway. There is still a mess of dust, though, from the continuing shoulder works and unvegetated embankments.

Even in town, there is the aforementioned mess of marl dust, as well as the ash from the burning cane fields, which settles everywhere, leaving a black oily film from the soot. This is a dirty island sometimes, and seasonal rains are all that keeps it clean.

Over the last week, the relative humidity has risen noticeably. The air is muggy. The view out to sea is fuzzy towards the horizon. Any slight sprinkle whets the appetite for more, but instead leaves the air just a bit muggier and accentuates the dirt on my vehicle.

From a road construction point of view, rain is generally bad. It saturates the grades, leaves puddles to be dewatered, and slows down the work.

Rain would be a nice change, nonetheless, but one must be careful what is wished for.

[Dramatic pause]

Being more of a cricket fan, I rarely watch football. To me, there is something about huge scoring during the better part of a week that has appeal over a zero zero draw after ninety minute. Or ninety-two minutes. Or ninety-four minutes seventeen seconds. You never really knows with football. The game officials will extend the time limits of the game to account for play stoppages that occur during the course of the competition. It seems to me that this makes the strategy of the end game less than clear. In American Football terminology, how can you play an effective two minute offence when the last two minutes might last for ten? Or less than two, for all it matters.

And this is where I am today. The project should have been completed by now, but it lingers on due to various, sundry, and monstrously inexcusable delays that occurred during the process. The actual time extension caused by these delays is still unclear. Consequently, the total game time is an unknown.

As is my fate in the Tropics.

This cannot be nearly as bad for me as it is for our local staff. While some of our inspectors have and will transfer to the next segment of the North Coast Highway (from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios), half of them will not, and will find that their services here are no longer required. In the next week or so (we are not exactly sure), we will start to pull them in to make them redundant. Why we use the term “make redundant” instead of “lay off” is one further unknown to add to the stack. It is not the Company that makes them excessive, but the state of the Works. Regardless, what is known is that even one staffer sitting on his rass is redundant. So, once there is no advancing construction to inspect, the inspection staff will be superfluous, and will be let go, one by one.

In worse straits are the hundreds of local laborers, who earned far less than our technical staff, and may not see steady work again for years. Many of the contractors have already made large portions of their labor force redundant. As a result, the project looks mostly abandoned and predominantly incomplete, as there is a heap and a bunch of minor works remaining. It is the seemingly little stuff that remains, stuff not associated with mainline paving operations, so it can be stretched out indefinitely.

As this is no longer an engineering project, but a political project, the actual highway is perceived to be a thin mat of asphalt cement concrete two lanes wide. Anything beyond the limits of the driving surface is redundant, and definitely not a high priority to the Client.

The big question for me, then, is “how long will it take to complete the little stuff, if we do complete the little stuff?” Little stuff, of course, meaning guardrail, pavement marking, signage, erosion protection, clean up – general safety and environmental matters. Why, with the mainline pavement in place, what need is there for the other amenities?

I imagine that we will be fighting this question for the next few months, as the financially strapped Client looks for any way to save a buck or two. He will make some lame suggestion or another, that we delete the guardrail extruder terminals or soon to be ignored speed limit signs, and we will respond that they are a necessary safety feature, and this will happen a lot. Simultaneously, the Contractors will grouse about the need for them to clean up their messes, grade the ditches appropriately, and to perform all of the tasks on their punch lists. I have a feeling that one of our bastard children (as I am wont to call them) may even abandon his retainage instead of performing the balance of his work, but this adventure I will just have to wait out.

And wait I shall, performing my daily drudgery until such time as the final project documentation is complete, some eighteen months from now,… maybe. However, the Client may only want me to wait around until the bulk of the claims are processed, some eight months from now,… maybe. But then again, the Company may get sick and tired of incessantly bugging the Client and waiting for the promised payments that they owe and yank us tomorrow,… maybe.

The likely scenario is eight more months,… maybe.