On Wednesday November 14, 2007 the Davies construction shop students went on a field trip to one of the Gilbain construction site reviews in Providence Rhode Island.

There were many different types of workers there, bricklayers, plumbers, insulators, electricians, and even carpenters. They all had to work in unison to get this project done correctly. If they don’t have the walls set up, you can’t put up doors. Overall this trip taught me a lot about the real life trade.

First of all there were so many different types of workers. In one floor they would be setting up insulation, at another some electrical wires. Some levels they were putting wood flooring down, and at others they were setting up doors. It amazed me at how many different kind of jobs there are in one building, and how many different trades did those jobs. On one floor there were at least 10 jobs going on at once, ranging from putting down floors to plastering the walls.

I liked the trip a lot, and the amount of things I learned. I learned that It doesn’t just consist of carpenters and one type of construction career, but instead you can be a plumber and still go and work in these huge jobs for huge companies. I also learned that you can’t use machines that you don’t know how to use, because if you don’t know how to use or you don’t understand a machine, you should stand back and watch to learn how. This tip I learned from a man working on a wet-saw.

Although the trip was great and I learned a lot, there were some things that I didn’t like about it. One thing was the amount of time we went through. If we had more time to go through the building, we could see from the beginning of a room to the finished product. That would help me understand more about the process it takes to build rooms and buildings. Another thing was the amount of people that we could talk to. We talked to a few people working but other than that we didn’t learn everything that went on in the building process. This all was overwhelmed with the things that we learned from the rest of the people we talked to.

This field trip tied into my career because it gave me some insight about what different jobs you can do in the construction field. It could range from working with the steel and making the mainframe of the building to putting in floors for the building and doing all of the finish work. It also showed me how much effort it takes to actually do most of the work in the building. Even making the countertops took a lot of effort, with tons of different grit sandpapers and buffers to make granite countertops ready for use. Even the little things like insulating pipes looked like a big job, with different things to insulate and different techniques to be used. In the end it changed my outlook at the construction career.

Overall I liked this field trip the most. I learned more about the construction trade than I have anywhere else, and that is because I haven’t had the chance to see what its like in a construction site. I also liked how I learned about the different jobs there, and that has really changed my outlook in my career. I learned a lot about construction and I would like to learn more sometime. Gilbain did a great job on these condo’s and I think that the completed building would look amazing.