#1: Harbor Contracting, LLC. | intershipportfolio

Clemson University

Department of Construction Science Management

Internship Portfolio of Carson Porcher

Internship

Experience No. 1

HARBOR CONTRACTING, LLC

Foundational

Information:

Contact Information
- Carson Porcher
- 1550 Terns Nest Road Charleston, SC 29412
- cporche@g.clemson.edu
- (843) 814-7618

Company Information
- Harbor Contracting, LLC
- 1147 Pleasant Oak Dr. Mount Pleasant, SC 29464
- (843) 884-3434

Owner/Head Project Manager's Contact
- Peter McKellar
- pmckellar@harborcontracting.net

Company Overview

Harbor Contracting, LLC is a general contractor based out of Mount Pleasant, SC that has been a respected commercial contractor in the Charleston area for over 30 years. Harbor is a commercial contractor which specializes in constructing facilities for business offices, dental, healthcare, resorts, retail, educational, industrial, and government facilites. The company employs around 15 people, most of which are in project management or superintendent positions, and utilizes these employees to maximize efficiency and profit.

Weekly Reports

Week 1: May 16 - May 20

Total Hours Worked: 40

This week was my first week working for Harbor Contracting, LLC. At the beginning of the week I spent a small amount of time at the office meeting the owner of the company and a few superintendents that I will be working with throughout the summer. Throughout the week I was sent to three different job sites. The first was a three-story self-storage facility in Mount Pleasant which is in the middle stages of construction; the frame of the building is up and subcontractors are working to finish the roof and finish putting up the interior sheet metal walls. For the most part I assisted with site clean up to familiarize myself with what was going on around the project while making it a little safer and cleaner at the same time. The second job site I went to was a renovation on a dental office in North Charleston. This main focus of this job is to add four more patient rooms to this office in the back. While I was there I assisted the superintendent in taking measurements for the cabinets and sink countertops, these measurements had to be very precise because the pipes for the water, vaccum and all the other dentist tools were already installed through the floor so the cabinets had to fit over them perfectly. The final job I visited this week was a wholesale electric company's new building in North Charleston. This building was in the finishing stages, there is a warehouse, offices, and a storefront at this site. While there I helped install hardware on doors and in bathrooms and stripped the stucco off of the drip plates atop the windows.

Week 2: May 23 - May 27

Total Hours Worked: 40

This week I spent a couple days at the wholesale electric site in North Charleston cleaning floors, rafters, windows, etc. getting the site clean since the company is moving into the building in the near future. On Tuesday and Wednesday one of our superintendents was on vacation so I was sent to his job in Summerville to oversee things and coordinate with subcontractors if any questions/problems arose in the superintendents absence. This was a great learning experience for me considering I have never been in a management role on a contruction site. At this site there were two different jobs going on simultaneously. One was a renovation of a doctor's office that was in the closing stages, at this job the floor subs were there to install the floorings and baseboard and the glass subs were there to take measurements for the storefront window at the receptionist's desk in the lobby of the doctor's office. The second job at this site was also a renovation of a doctor's office but this job was in the early stages, I was there to make sure the subs that were demoing the floor were up to date on which floors needed to be demoed and which were staying. While I was on both of these jobs I had time to look at the plans and relate them to what was actually being done at both of the sites.

Week 3: May 30 - May Jun 3

Total Hours Worked: 32

This week I was at the wholesale electric site for the entirety of the week. The building is set to open within the next couple of weeks so we spent the week tying up all the loose ends of the project. The focus was to prepare the site to open, cleaning floors, windows, countertops, controlling soil runoff in the parking lot, etc. Throughout the week the electricians were testing all of their wiring, the painters were touching up, and the landscapers were sodding the yard and planting all the trees and shrubs. Overall this week was full of some very tedious work but it was interesting to see how a job site is handled in the closing stages of the project.

Week 4: Jun 6 - Jun 12

Total Hours Worked: 52

This week I went back to the self-storage facility in Mount Pleasant. The metal frame and sheeting was up on this site now and the roof was mostly finished so the main focus for me this week was installing insulation on the front side of the building. To do this we had to use a lift to get to the second and third floors to install the insulation, this was a great experience for me because I had never operated any heavy machinery in my previous jobs so this was a first for me. The insulation was installed on the exterior of the building and then covered with plastic to protect it from teh weather until the gypsum board could be installed. Early in the week we got ahead of ourselves and installed too much insulation before covering it and got stuck in the rain rushing to cover it before it was all ruined. This was a learning experience because it taught me to keep an eye on the weather when working with something that could be affected by rain. Luckily we got it covered without any of the insulation getting damaged in the process. I also worked the weekend this week, over the weekend we had to go behind the roofing subcontractor because they did not correctly tie the plywood to the overhangs of the building, so we spent Saturday and Sunday in the lift driving screws through the wood and into the metal rafters.

Week 5: Jun 13 - Jun 18

Total Hours Worked: 48

This week I started out back in Summerville at the doctor's offices that were getting renovated. While I was there I poured some concrete into a few openings in the floor from the previous owner's machinery. After doing this, I assisted the superintendent in waterproofing areas on the roof around where the HVAC system exhaust pipes were. For the last couple days of the week I was at the self-storage site where I continued to install insulation on the front side of the building.

Week 6: Jun 20 - Jun 24

Total Hours Worked: 40

I was at the self-storage facility for the entirety of this week. I continued to install insulation on the perimeter of the building, doing this with two people and one lift is extremely tedious work. Cutting the insulation to length and having to go up and down in the lift to retrieve more insulation is much slower with only two people. While we were waiting on the subs to catch up covering the insulation with gypsum board I had to remove water from the interior of the building. The building will not be watertight until we finish installing the gypsum board and waterproof it. Until then all the rain water that we have been getting is running straight into the building, water control inside is a extremely tedious but necessary part of the job.

Week 7: Jun 27 - July 1

Hours Worked: 32

This week I was in Summerville at the doctors' offices again. The last of the two renovations had its final inspection this week so I was there to get it ready for inspection and finish up the last few things on the check list that needed to be down before inspection. I fireproofed all the areas necessary about the ceiling where pipes/ducts passed through walls. The site did not pass inspection because it was missing a bathroom sign outside of the unisex bathroom and the contractor and subcontractor signs were still up infront of the building. The inspector knew there were trivial things that needed to be done so he just told the superintendent to call him when the tasks were done and he would file the paperwork. This was a good learning experience because it showed me that even the smallest of details can cause a site to not pass inspection but also if you have a good relationship with the inspector they will look out for you and help you out in situations like this.

Week 8: July 5 - July 10

Total Hours Worked: 40

This week I started out at a job that I had not been to yet. I was working at a small church in West Ashley that we were renovating the bathrooms outside the sanctuary at. This project was in the very early stages. The partitions in each bathroom had been taken out along with all the toilet and sink fixtures and countertops. I was there to demo the tile and durarock so the tile company could get in there and replace it. The reason we are renovating it is because the floor is unlevel in both of the bathrooms so we are stripping all the tile and leveling out the floor, then replacing the tile. I also went to another job in Mount Pleasant this week in which the company is renovating an old salon into a veterinary office. This job is in the early stages, the interior was recently gutted and all of the framing is exposed. While I was there I was removing debris and walkboards from the attic space. The framing is still in good condition so I spent some time removing all the old nails/screws from the framing so it we ready to use when the drywall is installed.

Week 9: July 11 -July 15

Total Hours Worked: 32

This week I was at the self-storage facility for the entirety of the week. The insulation has been completely installed now so I was glad to not be doing that anymore. I spent a couple days this week installing hardware on the doors and door frames throughout the building. There were an assortment of subcontractors on site this week, electricians, HVAC, stucco, site work, roofers, security, etc. so the rest of the week I spent on site clean up due to all the trash and waste that was being generated from all of these subcontractors being on site.

Week 10: July 18 - July 22

Total Hours Worked: 40

I spent this week back at the storage facility again. The metal framing for the storefront was installed so I spent a couple days wrapping it with a protective covering so it will not get scratched up between now and the completion of the project. I also spent some time on site clean up and sediment control.

Week 11: July 25 - July 30

Total Hours Worked: 18

Due to vacation I was limited to only working 18 hours this week at the self storage facility. The masons finished up some of the exterior brick columns this week so when I got back I spent some time learning how to install flashing at the top of these columns which was a good experience because I have never worked with flashing and it really taught me a lot abou the purpose of flashing and how it is installed in the real world. Along with installing flashing, I also did some site clean up work to make the site look more presentable for meeting that the owner was having with the project manager and superintendent.

Week 12: Aug 1 - 5

Total Hours Worked: 40

This week I was sent to a job that was new to me for a couple of days. This job was a dental office that was being built from the ground up. All the framing and roofing is done on the building but the building is still exposed. I was taking measurements and marking where blocking was needed throughout the building for bathroom fixtures, televisions, dental equipment, etc. This was a good experience for me because I had to look at the plans to find all these measurements and get them exactly right so when the dry wall was installed and the fixtures were being installed there would be a piece of blocking there for them to be anchored to. Also while I was there I helped to install flashing on the perimeter of the windows. This was interesting because I had never seen flashing applied like this, it was a think adhesive tape that was applied to the whole exterior of the window and it will be covered by a drip plate in the future.

Week 13: Aug 8 - Aug 11

Total Hours Worked: 32

This was my last week with the company and I spent it at the storage unit facility in Mount Pleasant. My company began to hire temporary labor at this job site to handle site clean up and things of that matter. I was faced with the challenge of managing this temporary labor throughout the week and making sure they were doing what they were supposed when they were supposed to do it. To an experienced superintendent this would be a breeze but to a 22 year old who is still in college this is not an easy task. The guys that I was being asked to look over were almost double my age in some cases and have been working for years. This taught me that when managing people you always have to be respectful while demanding respect or people will try to walk over you. Overall I handled the challenge well and did not have any major problems with the temporary laborers.

End of Internship Report

A. General Information

Start Date: May 16

End Date: Aug 11

Total Hours Worked: 486 Hours

For the summer of 2016 I worked as a field intern for Harbor Contracting, LLC which is located in Mount Pleasant, SC and does work all around the Charleston, SC area. I worked at an assortment of locations and projects throughout the summer, ranging from a small bathroom renovation to a new dental office to a multi million dollar self-storage facility. The majority of my time was spent at the self storage facility. This was my first experience working for a company in the commercial industry and the jobs I was on were on a much larger scale than I had previously experienced so this opened my eyes to a whole new branch of the industy and how things operate on larger job sites. For the majority of the summer I was working as a laborer to complete tasks that our company did not sub out to other companies, this gave me the opportunity to learn how to complete an assortment of tasks like insulation installation, window flashing, roofing, etc. I was also given the opportunity to manage a job site for a few days and manage a crew of temporary laborers which were great experiences that will benefit me in the future.

B. Relationship of Work Experience to CSM Curriculum

Working as a laborer over the summer gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with many of the things that were covered in CSM 2030 and 2050, Materials and Methods in Construction I and II. Being on a variety of sites and seeing a broad spectrum of projects and project stages gave me the opportunity to see and perform first hand a lot of different tasks that I learned about in these two classes. Performing these tasks in the field gave me a greater understanding of them and will benefit me in future because I will know how to perform them correctly and I will be able to assess if an employee or sub-contractor performs them correctly on one of my jobs.

I also applied the knowledge I gained from taking CSM 2040 and 2041 while working for Harbor this summer. There were many occassions where I had to read plans and be familiar with the terminology being used in the plans and on the jobsite to perform the tasks I was assigned to do. Without taking these classes I would have been oblivious on how to read drawings and would have taken more time to complete them which would have costed my company more money. There were a couple cases where I would have trouble interpreting drawings but once explained to me by a superior I would catch on quickly.

There were a couple instances in which I was on sites that were in the foundation and framing stages so I got to use the knowledge I gained in CSM 2010 and 2020. I was not performing any of the concrete pours or anything but being on site while things of this nature were good because I could relate my previous knowledge from class to the projects and ask questions to superintendents concerning why things were done certain ways in different cases.

C. Problem and Solution:

Throughout the summer at the self-storage facility I spent most of the summer working at there was an issue with water control inside the building. The building was not watertight and we were getting a excess amount of rain in Charleston so the building was letting in a lot of water on the second and third floors expecially. As the project progress this became more and more of a problem because it held us up on getting permanent power and the less exposed the building became the harder it was to remove the water. The water kept coming in after each rain but the cause of it getting in was unknown.

Step 1: What are the signals that a problem exists?

The rain water kept flowing into the building and the cause could not be found so more and more rain water got into building and this held up certain projects on the site from being performed because labor was being used day in and day out to remove the water.

Step 2: Determine what you know or assume you know about the problem situation.

What is the difference between the way things are and the way you want them to be?

rainwater was still pouring into the building on every rain and I wanted to limit the amount of water getting in as much as possible until the building is completely watertight and no rain water gets in

Where is the difference observed?

In the interior of the building on the second and third floors and part of the first floor

When does the difference occur? When is it visible? When is it observed?

the difference occurs after every rain and is evident until all the rainwater is removed from the building

Who is involved?

the superintendent, my crew, and the sub-contractors on site that were affected or that effected the problem

To what extent: How many? How far? How much? How long?

The problem existed for how ever long it took to make the building water tight on the roof and exterior

Step 3: Interpret what you know or assume you know

Facts: rainwater is freely entering the building is large quantities and is affecting the progress of the time and limiting time employees can spent on different projects

Assumptions: There are things that can be done to slow the water inflow down until the building is completely water tight

Expression of Frustration: Time is money and time was being wasted for people on site to be constantly having to remove water while there were other projects they could have been working on at this site or another site

Step 4: State the problem.

Rainwater is freely entering the building in large quantities, thus hendering employees ability to focus on more important aspects of the project

Step 5: State the objectives that will eliminate the problem.

Find the most efficient way to remove the rainwater from the building.

Identify potential entry points and attempt to fix them until waterproofing is applied.

Make the building completely water tight.

Step 6: Develope alternative solutions - keep in mind that below are only some of the possible alternate solutions

Find temporary fixes that will slow the water inflow until the building becomes watertight.

Divert extra attention to making the building watertight so labor is not wasted for too long removing water.

Step 7: Sequence in order of first, second, etc., and evaluate each of the alternative solutions

Alternative 2 would be my first choice because the sooner the building becomes watertight the less time workers will have to spend removing water, which in turn saves the company money that would be spent on this labor.

Alternative 1 would be my last choice because it would only be a temporary solution and rainwater would still get in the building no matter how good these temporary fixes may be.

Step 8: Develop the action plan to implement the best solution(s).

The most efficient way to correct the problem would be to combine the solutions described in steps 6 and 7. For any water that gets into the building, find the best way possible to remove that water so that minimal time and labor is used to do so. Also it would help to identify the problem areas in which water may be entering the building and try to make them as water tight as possible until the waterproofing can be applied to the exterior. I would talk with the subcontractors applying the gypsum, waterproofing and stucco and try to push them to move as quickly as possible to make the building watertight to prevent the inflow of rainwater inside the building as well.

Step 9: Follow-Up

In the future when the roofing is being done make sure that the corners of the building are covered well enough initially to prevent rainwater inflow in areas where the roofing material may be peel back or become exposed until the waterproofing and flashing is applied.

D. Ethical Situation

I did not run into many ethical issues while working Harbor. The only thing that I can remember is a day when I was at a site in which we were in the finishing stages of a doctor's office renovation. There were only a few people on site each day and this particular day it was myself, the superintendent, and two electricians. While the superintendent were putting down some RAM board throughout the building to prevent scratching the floor one of the electricians shocked himself while working on the wiring. He then proceeded to take a break so he could settle his nerves from being shocked, which is completely understandable. While he is on a break, his boss comes on site to do a walk through with the superintendent. During the walk through the boss and superintendent get to the back corner of the building and while walking past one of the rooms they smell the stench of marijuana, so they proceed to find where it is coming from. They enter a room to find the electrician that had been shocked smoking marijuana on site inside the building. This is obviously illegal and in no way acceptable on the job so as soon as they saw him in the act his boss immediately kicked him off the site and fired him. All of us were in awe that the electrician found this somehow to be acceptable and the superintendent completely backed the electrician's boss's decision. The boss threatened to call the cops but the situation did not escalate that far because the guy was compliant and after collecting his things he immediately left the site.

This was a good learning experience for me in a weird way because it showed me how to handle a negative situation and that having a no tolerance policy is the best way to do things because a boss that runs a company like that does not have to worry about employees doing things that will negatively portray his company or potentially hinder the safety of a job site.

Three possible positions that could have been taken in result of finding the electrician smoking marijuana are as follows.

The electrician's boss could have suspended the worker and not sent him back out to our job site when he allowed him to return to work. The consequences for the electrician in this case would have been missing work and not getting paid for the work missed. This would be punishment for drug consumption on site.
The electrician could have been removed from the job site for the rest of the day and put on work probation for a certain time period. This would result in the worker not losing his job, but being put on thin ice so he will be discouraged to continue in the actions which got him on probation. If the electrician repeated the offense then he would be fired immediately.
The superintendent could have called the cops and got the electrician arrested for drug possession and use on his job site. This would have resulted in the worst consequences for the electrician, he would have lost his job, source of income, and received a legal ticket or potential jail time depending on his record.