 Tom here from Lawrence Systems, and I am joined by VP of Lawrence Systems Brett Shitum We're gonna talk about the worst wiring job ever and we're gonna do some lessons learned We're not just gonna rant although that was certainly what happened when the project was going on and in my I've been in business since 2003 which makes that a rough it was like 18 years now hands down worst job ever is always going back to this Now my indoctrination into Lawrence Yeah, Brett got to be involved in this project because this is one Brett was working as a contractor before he had a full-time position here And this was like what did I get myself into type situation right Brett? At four in the morning. I was thinking that oh Yeah, we had a couple late nights at four in the morning to try to keep the project on schedule now a couple of these You want to talk about on this particular project one the question comes up. How do you get projects and that is done by Brett? Well, it's a it's a relationship thing right most of the projects we get are built on the relationships We have with other ID companies. Yep This is where you make the assumption that because someone's website says they do the same things you do you probably shouldn't talk to them They're your competitor But in reality is you'll find that if you actually reach out talks of the IT companies They can actually be a good source of leads. Maybe you have a proficiency They don't have and vice versa where you can lean on each other's skills And this is one of those where a IT company that is within my geographical region that I've went to lunch with the CEO Owner of that company quite a few times. We've some have become friends We chat every now and then good good acquaintances. Well, you know, I don't hang out with them that much but either way the Job came up and they said we don't do wiring and cabling but you guys do so we gave them a finders fee for Getting us this project, which was common case you're wondering how that works from technical background, but that relationship we have with them brought us this job, but I I don't know if I want to thank him for this mess But don't worry we have visuals we're gonna cut to a few times to talk about this to help jog our memories of disaster Now Yeah, there'd be some fun in it And one of the things we want to do here is we're pre-facing this because I also want to make sure we say our goal Is to not just rant about this but also educate and talk about like what warning signs we seen in the early parts of this project ways we mitigated a risk and ways that we you know made sure that this particular Project stayed on track despite Crazy people being involved and what did we learn? That we're not gonna do that particular company again, not the IT company We continue to this day to do business with them We didn't care much for some of the behaviors of the general contractor, but then we also as we dug deeper into project learn the GC was being dealt with in a crazy way by the people that actually hired them. So, right We'll walk you through some of those steps right there but one of the Let's go a couple of things in case you're not familiar with this type of work your general contractor How would you describe a GC right your general contractor is the person that really? He's heading up the whole job. He's the one hiring the wiring guys He's the one hiring the plumbers the electricians the the people that are actually gonna do the work He's kind of coordinating the whole thing and one of the things we learned later was they weren't the original GC for the project So you have the client that actually wants the work done They want this building built and then you have the GC they hired now They apparently fired the other GC and the other GC had also had some missteps So we didn't we weren't aware of we get in with the second GC then the next thing is We came in the GC that we dealt with had also fired the electricians and brought in another electrical crew So we seen some things there when we did the walk-through that were other warning signs Like why are you guys tearing up brand new electrical boxes? Well, they were all put in wrong Who put them in wrong the other people and then for whatever reasons that we are never clear on there Was another wiring vendor who came in and they bid it but then somehow and we don't know really why we know they Couldn't do it or wouldn't do it. We don't we never got it. That's why we were there So someone else is not someone else did it, but they also seen our price and said that's more than the other people I'm like this is what it's gonna cost for what you want, right? This is I mean this this project was in the $200,000 range roughly in terms of wiring it was just a lot of infrastructure to build It was a lot of rooms. It was roughly 300 or so drops that had to be put in but it's also the structure I'm we're talking like TV mounts and everything. There's a lot of it wasn't just cabling It's it's kind of the whole gamut of things, right Now first step is contract they People say Tom do you have a template and it's actually the opposite the general contractor has their contract They give you and what do you think of when you first reviewed it Brett where some of the dates a little Mystical well they it was funny because of having the the old General contractor that was fired their dates were set on those previous Contractor agreements and they were they'd written those into our contract and we were gonna have to meet those dates It was gonna be impossible. So the first thing we had to do is Restructure the dates we would be able to complete certain tasks and one of the ways you get paid on jobs like this is there's the Mobilization fee is what they will call it mobilization fee means the deposit and the deposit doesn't necessarily mean half Now a general rule will last for like a 50% down or on when we're doing a cabling type project or some variation But in this particular case they wanted it done right away So we asked for a really high mobilization fee now This is often in construction broken up based on accomplishments like as you build out You may have several payments to go across the job because especially with new construction The job may take multiple months because you have floors being put in walls being put up So you may build a rough structure and then as the next structure gets built come in and do it And then you put some stuff in the walls then the drywall people come in then you do it So you may get paid incrementally But one of the things is with these unrealistic which we did change in a contract We asked for a very large deposit on this We actually got I think 70% of the money up front or 60% up front I think is what we wanted just to start it And by the way where the job started in the quote and where it ended It didn't start as a $200,000 project. It was a little less than that and they just kept adding on It was all the changes to the scope creep as a lot of people would call it So the scope of the work kept changing It was it was interesting. I think I think part of also what we learned in this Was the communication factor too So we had that contract and that started the whole communication process of setting the right expectations I think people need to understand you need to first set the right expectation Yeah, and then you've got to communicate throughout the whole entire project And I there were issues we would have when we would go to meetings where not all the people And not all the players were there to actually have the right communication I mean there was one point where someone pretty much said hey, yeah, you can use those wires They were our wires for something else and they used them. Yes So that was part of it now one of the ways you mitigate this and don't worry We're getting to the photos for those you just things your time index. You just want to see the gore The one of the ways you mitigate that is when you have meetings and this is the the reality is the default way humans work Frequently is hey while you're here. Can you just do this or can you just do that? people will do and respond very well to verbal commands the problem is the Question may come up who told you to do that. I'm not paying you for that So one of the things you have to do and we were especially doing they would have changes Where they would tell us to literally put something on a different wall them was on the different drawings The drawings were very mismatched So we had to actually start taking the drawings and sketching on them where we were told Then we would always to do the cya We would cover our butts by emailing them and say I know you asked me to do this I want to confirm. This is the way it's going to be done. Now. This is actually happening here in the office in real time The general contractor says I don't got time for emails He was kind of being angry and saying get this over there No problem Just is the people on site would let us know in the office and then us in the office would then reiterate these emails Hey just confirming you've told us now to Put 12 more drops on this particular wall that didn't exist before by the way So we would draw the where the wall is and we're just confirming you want to do that Sometimes they'd reply sometimes they wouldn't but either way we always sent those type of messages Because this later came up on the back end for the billing of all the different overages that were charged for We had them all in writing that were done No one could argue with well your guys just chose to do them on their own without actually listening to the gc These are important little factors that come in there now what we did learn This is where a lot of the problems come in and we'll throw on some visuals here They actually had moved an entire wall And that was where some of these problems that come in we took pictures like this wall didn't exist But do you notice if you uh, I think we can probably zoom in this one's kind of blurry All these little drops in that wall There's another picture of it. Um That was all added. This was not like some of this was not original And these were some of the problems that had come in we learned that there was just a lot of craziness going on with the contractor they were we were here in detroit the Company that actually wanted this building. This was a new location for them here in the detroit area But but the what would happen is they would fly in And point and change where things would go just on the fly people who are doing the Um h-track system cut a bunch of our wires that were waiting to be installed so we come into that There were so many changes happening so often it was It was kind of a level of insanity that was really hard to deal with we also realized this was part of the insanity of We put this ladder rack up And the this wall wasn't there right the ladder rack was supposed to go through to the next room But then the wall was put up instead So yes, I remember that I was I was there that night Yeah, we we we were doing working later in the day And so you're not tripping over some of the other contractors and it was just insane to go that wall was not here Nor is it on any of the drawings we have who decided a wall and we'd find out that the the guy who The people the company and their team would fly in Point and tell people to build a wall and leave And then we're like there's a wall So this was so crazy watching this happen um So this is some of the things that that led to was this much wasted cable We wasted so many spools of cable because they would cut stuff And it was a bunch of half cut cable and a lot of these runs were really long. So it was just like, uh It was such a mess Trying to sort all of this out because we're like, you know, they moved an entire room I think it's this this is one of them This room was uh, you can see how there's like a space behind it The wires all originally ran to the wall They decided to move the room There's about a 15 foot or 20 foot gap because they wanted a closet behind it for another one of the rooms They tore our it room after we ran the wires and pulled it back This is kind of what looks like towards the end But it was just one of those things like We ended up with an extra cable because we ran it 15 more feet So many all these runs that are now Put into cable falls here, but they just decided the room was going to be elsewhere That's actually why some of these come back from over further as opposed to there But that's just that's an actually an exterior wall on the other side. Yeah, that was I remember they I was crazy Yeah, it was so Many things that happened in there and that's why we had like this This is another when we were pulling back all the extra and then we had to cut all these It was some of the most wasted cable this caused a absolute ton of overages on there. Uh, it was It was a lot of that now one of the things that we also had that had us there late was They kept upping the schedule because they wanted an open date to get right open um I don't know if I should have said yes. There's that whole Entrepreneurs said yes, but Brett said we should say yes So we we actually agreed But for a price to get it done So we brought a team in to finish we brought a team in so we had the original contractors and Quick clarification the way we work here at loren systems is you can say time on your website You only have a handful of people. There's no way you handle projects as big. Yes, there is We coordinate with a lot of different vendors and a lot of different contractors. We have a pretty good list Brett is uh taken over that burden from me of Managing all the contractors in in some ways we act like a gc because we have other parties that get involved when we need Projects we use contractors and we you know maintain great relationships with them By the way, this is one of the burdens you have to bear who who has to get paid first me or the contractors us Well, you'd think so We try to do that that way But the way you maintain good relationship with your contractors is they get paid even when you don't So but that's not the way it's always done. That's the way you have chosen to do it Yeah, but it does keep a better relationship with these vendors. Um, they know when they work for me They're going to get paid even when they see disaster strikes. So when we told them, hey, we need these extras They're like, we're gonna need money And my reputation is i'll pay them I'm the one that had not gotten paid all the way into Into late 2020 before they finalized the final overages to actually approve and pay them But all my vendors we actually use them for projects even after this and because they continue to get paid They're like and someone felt bad like they're like, wow you still haven't got paid on that uh that disaster job No, not yet That sucks They're but they also don't want to say it glad you paid me Yeah, exactly because we still need to keep these relationships going This is one of those little things that when we we actually To financially maybe we'll talk about this we self fund all of our own projects to be able to do this It does require keeping a few dollars on hand, but it does allow you to Uh maintain good relationship with vendors because we've got so many wiring projects We've done after this that with the same vendors with the same teams But we did decide to stay till 4 a.m A bunch of nights with the crew that we were paying a lot of money each Everybody got paid matter of fact we had anyone that knew how cable ends went on Even if you loosely knew how cable ends come I learned how cable ends go on That's where I learned how to punch down Then we had more lifts we had so many now The lifts there's a few in there. We did only put people on lifts that knew how to operate them and Actually, one of the cool things there's that one photo of the penny Let me find the penny photo I think we still have that in here That was kind of a fun thing was if you want to know how good these people are at operating the lifts a little bit farther There we go Yeah, well, this is the distance and we had to get these wires up and over this right here If you want to know how precise They are and they're driving it up and down. That's how close not once every time those wheels stop from that wall Without leaving a scuff or a mark on it. Yeah, it's kind of it's an art watching these Contractors who really know how to operate the lift so we put the your high end people as far as boots on the ground We had to test and label all these it turns out that That's easy. I stuck hard hat on anyone any friends I had that go Hey, want to make a few bucks grab a hard hat because this was a complete Compliance with osha everyone had to have hard hats full time during the construction project And visibility vests on there. That's why you see us wearing them But um, yeah, it was like run around stick test stick test it right does this one label printing labels and things like that We had so many people involved But yeah, let's just uh, let's just walk through some of the photos and you comment Brett on where Where you want to have a laugh here, but this was some of the extra wire that was Wasted this is all I remember walking into that and and looking at that going I'm going to have to Take that and do something with it and that wire doesn't isn't it weighs a lot It does that's cat 6a plenum. By the way, that was part of the requirements here. Everything was cat 6a plenum Everything was black. Everything cat 6a plenum one color wire Um, there's some of the rooms of spools we had just stacking up everywhere That was thousands of thousands of dollars of wasted wire. Oh, yeah There was so much of it wasted on there and that's why we're taking pictures of just random things that were done Up there the electricians they were some of them were beside themselves too because they had put stuff in take stuff out Um, they moved where things were right This one like they wanted this uh set up and those actually Uh cabling that we pulled through on here And I'm not even sure why we put network jacks sometimes on the outside like that It was we questioned it. We're like, are you sure it goes here? They're like, yes So some cabling now some of this is electrical, but then on It's just really confusing because this that's electrical, but right here Which in the end there's garbage cans. This is where we ran it on this outside This is what i'm talking about these ones are electrical But this little middle part is actually uh data that we're not sure why it was put there And we laugh because they they built a garbage can. I don't know if I have a picture They built a garbage can in front of it Like yeah bolted, uh the slide out garbage can systems We mounted all these tvs. I think we did did we do these ones too? It was a another contractor did some tvs. It was confusing. Um, I actually I don't remember on this one I think I think this was somebody else So, uh, yeah, this one was a bowling alley. This is where it gets interesting because um, the bowling alley These are the bowling alley stuff and this is like a family fun center Right, um, but the bowling alley when they put this in we had to deal with getting wire over there But they were we were supposed to put the wire, but no one told us where the wires go So we kept asking and then one day we came in and they put the bowling alley floor in And you can't drive a lift on it. So it became rather tricky to get the wire over there The tricky situation boom lifts came into play Yeah, we had to hang with boom lifts to get over this. So bigger bigger equipment had to be brought in to, um Get some of that stuff done Oh, yeah And they had uh There's more pictures of that this Split unit's kind of funny because you're like, hey, that's a really big split unit for a very small server room Yeah, the split unit was supposed to be for the full server room uh Insert mystery well that came up one day and the h-track people are like we were told to put it here In spec it for a room x that's this size But then they cut the room in half and they cut it in half. So the split unit was on this side And you're like, I don't know. I guess that's where it goes now It was a calamity of errors. It was such a calamity of things going on And people Then uh, oh the reason I took a picture of this They moved the ceiling on us after some of the stuff was in so what you're seeing here is kind of funny the When you put in the fire suppression Um, it has to be at roughly the height of your drop ceiling So you know how the drop ceiling has the little fire suppression things that pop through they move the ceiling height And then all the stuff had to be taken back out Drained and cut because they'd already done some of the testing on it As I understood at least that's what I was told. I mean, I'm not I'm not an expert on that All I know is there was a lot of angry people that had to come back and cut everything They had they'd already left like their part of the job was done. We ran the fire suppression Now they're back cutting and moving the fire suppression up a little bit each one They had to recut and rethread all those pipes I remember seeing some of those guys coming out of the building not very happy Yeah, no one likes redoing work and that was a big part of what It's it's one of the things like yes, I was paid for it But it's like I ran that wire you guys cut it told me to run it somewhere else There's like this defeatedness that this job kind of gave you the sinking feeling Even it's not about money at that point. It's not about getting paid on it's like really I just ran that and now you cut it You decided a wall arbitrarily needed to be moved x amount of feet over and Yeah, they also had a very large space. Yeah big space They had the go-kart track which was interesting because no one thought about how to get the Go-kart track hooked up. We asked that question and someone says oh, I guess it probably does need wiring So we sometimes would ask the vendors who were there like the people installing the go-kart track and say hey What needs to be done here and then it would turn into Yeah, no one ever thought about that But then you had to then put it in writing that we heard from the go-kart people and tell the general contractor Who would then have to authorize the change for us to get paid? This is one of those things you have to be constantly like Brett said communicate communicate communicate in order to get this We know what needed to be done. We're being nice. We could have just played dumb and threw our hands up in here and go No, I don't know um Not my problem, but right being a little bit more you've never done that. No never Ever done that we maintain despite all of this a really good relationship with uh, everybody involved here to get this done and We even uh one off a contractor we never used before he was actually there installing something else I think he was the audio guy, uh, but he said he knew how to punch cables. So i'm like What are you doing later? Hey guy, what are you doing? He's like a bunch of wires for you. I'm like you like money I'll pay you this. What do you want to do this? This is and then he started just going through and punching lots and lots of wires Um and helped us with the testing and things like that Oh, this happened too You had the drywall people and then you had the people building cabinets This is actually the cabinet cutouts that went over like where you have the cabinet spotted up Um, it created all like this is what that's like an inside look at what some of these were So much of a mess, right? Oh, yeah. Well, and that's why I mean if you're wondering why there's so many photos And there's a lot more photos. It was about documentation. Yes, and that's why tom mentioned earlier Email he he responded in any change. There was an email Written of that change so that we could document it That's that was the most important part of what not that what we learned But what we did to be able to finally get paid on this and this is what protected us overall There was never any um Lawyers or anything involved that got involved at the end even though it took them a long time to pay We were persistent. We referred to our documentation. We referred to emails. We kept logs of what was changed I had everybody contributing photos We set up a shared google photos album in case you're looking for an easy way to do it And we still use it because it's just so easy to do Then everyone just shares within those photos and if you see something Take a picture of it if you see something questionable you talk to the other vendors Matter of fact feel free sometimes we made a series of quick videos where hey We don't know who did this but this wasn't like this when we left yesterday But just to let you guys know and that's because of the wall moving things like that So it really comes down to the same principles of documentation that covers you following up going especially whenever there's so much flying by Verbally that you come back and reply with hey, this is what I think you asked me to do I went ahead and did it just wanted to let you know and then at the same time you're updating your billing system So to speak any little time making those notes of all right What we quoted and what happened are two different things and once that exceeded matter of fact We had a series of uh to help cover some of the overages We actually asked them for a couple more times to pay us like right. This is just a lot of overages but in the end we did it um they it was uh Boy, that's a walk down memory lane of that day It was so many times we stayed non-stop because we have worked here Kind of at the officering today and we would spend the rest of the afternoon in the final push We were there a couple times till 4 a.m. We were like Non-stop I also bought a lot of I bought food and pizza for not just my team I would come in there and I was because it wasn't just us by the way We had the other people we had artists putting wall art up. We had people installing like the bowling alley We had there was that place didn't stop It was almost like this constant shift after shift of people So I was sometimes the guy that came in with a bunch of pizzas and things like that because Be friendly with everybody Sometimes you need their boom lift because your battery died and if you're cool with them You're like, yeah, that guy brought me pizza. He can use my lift today. So we did some swapping of things like that. It was We kept the environment as friendly as possible forthcoming um Because you know, we're all trying to reach a goal We're all trying to get this project done whether you're an electrician a plumber and the the plumber people They I remember they had problems because getting the soda machines hooked up They used our tubes that were buried to pull wire so We had to coordinate with them because some of the wires not by choice, but there's no way around it There are the the soda tubes also have some cat six wire in it Yeah, do you remember that they're coming up out of the same hole for the cash furniture? We're like This was ours and then some people like no, it's ours and we're like, well, there's only There's one for electrical. We can't use that one and there's one for us. So, uh, that's how that tube got shared Yeah Uh, well, hopefully you were either entertained or uh, we're just looking for you know What we did to mitigate this or whatever happened on it But it was uh, definitely a fun project in some ways that looking back. I'm smiling I was certainly not smiling at 4 a.m. Not not not in the least um, but it's These things happen. This is a really odd one and we do so many wearing projects. This is the only one in Since 2003 that I've been in business even when I worked in corporate I've never seen such a crazy amount of changes It was crazy. But you know, and this shouldn't shy anybody away from doing projects like this either because Things are gonna have exception. Yeah, you just you need to learn how to document You need to learn how to make sure you're you set the correct and and the right expectations with the general contractor Because the expectation is everything right? Um that customer experience Um, the way the way things are handled the time in the time frame. They should be handled Don't shy away from projects like this Embrace them. Yeah everything's a lesson learned and um You know in in the big picture We did make money when we break it all down and we divvied up the piles and we paid all the contractors Even though I got paid later, even if I calculate some interest on that and things like that in the end We made money on it. So ultimately that part was, you know, that's the goal to be profitable on things So we that that goal was met. Um, I don't know if it really was enough for some of the mental issues I had dealing with it like just the oh my gosh, are we gonna complete this project? But yeah, whatever we did. So here we are here. We are smiling about it years later making a YouTube video So hopefully you found this insightful. Let me know in the comments down below We can always have a more in-depth discussion on the forum on this But yeah, that's that's it. This is going to be my simple reply when hey time. What's the worst wiring project ever? It's this one. Here it is. This is this one. All right. Thanks And thank you for making it to the end of this video. If you enjoyed this content Please give it a thumbs up if you like to see more content from this channel Hit the subscribe button and the bell icon to hire a sure project head over to laurance systems.com And click on the highest button right at the top to help this channel out in other ways There's a join button here for youtube and a patreon page where your support is greatly appreciated For deals discounts and offers check out our affiliate links in the descriptions of all of our videos Including a link to our shirt store where we have a wide variety of shirts and new designs come out well randomly So check back frequently And finally our forums forums.laurancesystems.com is where you can have a more in-depth discussion about this video And other tech topics covered on this channel Thank you again, and we look forward to hearing from you. In the meantime, check out some of our other videos