Site Works

by Robert Davidson

  Although not geographically distant the communities of Ness and Struie are separated by a range of relatively low hills. They have a combined population of around 1000 people that is more than doubled in the middle third of the year by summer residents and tourists. Both are served by septic tanks which have been the subject of complaints from the local Community Councils over many years.

  * * *

  The septic tank for the coastal village of Ness has its outfall directly into the North Sea. Given that it is considerably undersized for the summer population, and its location renders access for the Authority’s tankers virtually impossible, it is never emptied and there is frequent contamination of the shore by gross solids.

  The septic tank for the inland village of Struie discharges its effluent into a slow moving stream that has its lowest flow in the months of highest usage. This leads to a very considerable odour nuisance with, it is claimed, an effect on tourism and the local economy. The Environment Agency has written to the Authority’s Chief Executive threatening fines if these conditions are not addressed within the next financial year.

  The Authority’s Operations and Maintenance Department has stipulated a single Works rather than the Consultant’s preferred option of two. Predictive calculations indicate that the additional costs involved will be justified over a forty year lifespan.

  The Authority has retained the services of the Consultant Engineer used for the Black Isle (Beauly Firth) Project, The Russell Partnership of Glasgow, with Sir Graham Russell designated as the ‘Engineer for the Works’.

  * * *

  The Russell Partnership’s strategy for meeting these requirements entails the construction of a new sewage treatment plant on the coast approximately four hundred metres south of Ness, where any odour nuisance will effectively be removed from the village. The Works will consist of a collection chamber close to the A9, two circular concrete settlement tanks and an outfall to sea for treated effluent.

  The flow from Ness will be taken by a new concrete pipeline to the collection chamber and the existing septic tank demolished.

  The flow from the inland village of Struie will be pumped uphill in a 150mm diameter uPVC flexible pipe where, at the top, it will enter a new, reinforced concrete culvert which will be two metres in section, large enough for any future increase in flow should the Planning Department’s plans for future housing development be realised. At the east side of the hill the flow will enter another new concrete pipeline to flow downhill and under the A9 to the new collection chamber where it will join with the flow from Ness and enter the new sewage treatment plant.

  The culvert and pipelines will all be underground with top surfaces reinstated to the satisfaction of both the landowners and the Environment Agency.

  * * *

  Our Consultant proposes to supervise the Contract with a permanent Resident Engineer and Clerk Of Works. Costs for these necessary positions have already been built into the Overall Project Estimate.

  The Allowable Contract Period will be six months beginning on 1st January. This should lead to least disruption of tourist activities as well as conform to the Authority’s planned spending profile and work will run on from the Black Isle (Beauly Firth) Project.

  * * *

  The recommended tender has been placed by Strath Construction Ltd. However, the company has been purchased by Syme Atwood (Contractors) Leicester, and is now their wholly owned subsidiary. Strath Construction is well known to this Authority and has carried out many Contracts of this scale and approximate value.

  In purchasing Strath Construction, then in the course of completing the Black Isle/Beauly Firth Project, Syme Atwood acquired the local base necessary to meet the Authority’s stipulated requirements. It is likely that the acquisition will bring economies of scale that will ultimately be to the Authority’s advantage.

  * * *

  The Contract duration will be eight months. The Contractor has committed to employ locally.

  3

  Commitment is the name of the game

  Mac hung up as quietly as he could and checked the clock. 6:35am.

  Five minutes on the phone had seemed like ten. So much, too much, was going on. So much happening at once, there was so much to keep a grip of at once, his hand had that slight tremor it began when his marriage was breaking up. It rested on the phone as he looked through the window into the street below, as though to prevent it leaping up against his ear to command his time and attention and fill his mind.

  A fighting east wind hurled big raindrops against the hotel opposite his flat. The executioner’s wind his General Foreman called it, the one that cuts through you. Water filled the drainage channels at the road’s edge and swirled over the gratings before disappearing through the gully frames and away. It was black as pitch outside the cones of the streetlights.

  Paul’s mother had answered and called him to the phone. Mac had diverted him from the site on the Black Isle to the new job in Ness, East Sutherland. From the Williamson house in Dingwall it would take him just over an hour to get to the site. The new sub-agent, Trevor Sharp, was staying in the hotel there until he found digs. If the weather up north was as bad as here in Inverness, if it continued through the day, nothing much would be done on the ground but at least they would get to know each other. They could take refuge in one of the huts and go over the drawings. The sub-agent/engineer relationship, one of the most important on site, would begin to be established. Paul wasn’t required on the Black Isle job any more, not really. So Mac made the decision at four in the morning when he would have been better asleep.

  Today he, Mac, would not be able to make a start before 8:30, desperately late at a time when he was vulnerable. He was still quantifying materials for the buyer, which would have been done, done, if Alan Syme had not paid off his site agent after the Syme Atwood take-over. Now his workload was huge. The job was so tightly priced even a few per cent saved on materials here and there would make a difference. Syme’s first visit to the office three months before, its tone and force, had shaken him. The new order wasn’t properly established then, but the old one was certainly destroyed.

  Syme had spent six hours grilling him about Strath Construction’s operational set-up. There had been no preliminary conversation, no exploring of any social overlap. On the second day Syme had laid down the law about the immediate future, downgraded him from Contracts Manager to Site Agent and introduced him to his new boss, James Swann. Swann had told him he would be spending all his time out on the sites, not to come in to the office unless he was told. Angrily, wearily remembering, Mac shook his head. He had to prove himself again.

  ‘Dad!’

  Alison was in the doorway, wide-awake, bare-foot, cleaning her glasses on the hem of her pyjama top. She was fourteen. When she stayed in his flat, those too few occasions, it always surprised him how grown up she was, the big advance from last time. Soon there would be boys. Oh yes, there would be boys.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sorry, Ali. Did I waken you?’

  ‘I’m worried about you. There’s something on your mind.’

  ‘Just work, Sweetheart. Changes happening. Remember I told you? It’s not pleasant. I’ll come through.’

  ‘You wouldn’t lie, would you? It’s not about Mum and you?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t lie to you, not after all we’ve been through. It’s not about Mum and me.’

  Her eyes behind her glasses were bright, alert to every nuance in his voice.

  ‘You’re not going back to sleep, are you – want some tea?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it. You sit down, Dad.’

  Alison went through to the kitchen and made tea. When she came back she sat opposite him, on the floor with her back against the other chair.

  ‘So what’s happening?’ she asked.

  ‘The new owners aren’t happy about the way things have been run. My old boss is gone. They’ve put a new man in his place. My Agent has been sacked as
well.’

  ‘Mr Matheson is gone? I liked him.’

  ‘We all did. The new man isn’t like him. He has to get results quickly. We’ve been losing money; that’s how Syme and Atwood could buy us. He has to turn that round.’

  ‘You must want that too.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s in everybody’s interest to turn it round.’

  ‘Could he sack you too?’

  ‘No, Sweetheart. I have a contract.’

  He was half lying to her. More likely they would try to sicken him off. There would be compensations but they would not be so very great and he couldn’t afford not to earn. Where he would go afterwards he didn’t know, nowhere in the Highlands. There was war damage to be repaired in the Middle East where he had worked before, although that was in a time of peace. He had already put out feelers and some opportunity might come up, but the sand and the flies would mean being away from Alison, losing what little of her teenage years he was entitled to.

  ‘But he could make it – difficult for you?’

  Mac hesitated too long. Alison pushed herself across the floor and leaned half against his chair, half against his leg. She rested her head against him and he put his hand on her shoulder, looked down at her hair that was so like Patricia’s hair.

  ‘I’ll survive. Commitment is the name of the game.’

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ she said. ‘You’re strong.’

  He squeezed her shoulder. ‘You’re encouraging me. Don’t you know it’s supposed to be the other way round? How are you getting on with Ronnie?’

  She squeezed his leg in return. ‘Mum asked me not to talk about that.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘He’s all right. We don’t have much in common. He’s not remotely like you. He likes football.’

  ‘Ugh! Listen, if you ever hear them up to anything at night I want you to bang on the wall and shout through that you’re trying to sleep.’

  ‘Dad, that’s really embarrassing! What time are you leaving in the morning?’

  ‘I’ll take you into the Academy. Then go straight to Ness.’

  ‘Will the new man be there, the one who got your real job?’

  ‘Did Mum tell you that?’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘His name’s James Swann. You can call him James.’

  ‘I’d rather call him Mr Swann. I don’t like him.’

  ‘You haven’t met him. He’s a bit younger than me; thirty-eight or nine, sandy hair, gets angry easily. He’s got a nervous tic that gets worse when he’s excited. Wait till you see; the men will give him some nickname.’

  ‘Blinky Jimmy!’

  He put his hand on her head and shook. ‘You’ll get me into trouble, you. The partner flew back down to Leicester last night. Who knows what’s in their minds down there? They’re extending their Scottish operation. Actually they call it ‘North,’ meaning from the north of England up. They’ll have longer term plans.’

  ‘Will you be part of them?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. If not, just another couple of years.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘You’ll be old enough to leave school. You can get a job, move in here and look after me.’

  ‘You’re terrible.’

  ‘Don’t monopolise the shower this morning,’ he told her, but she did.

  As usual she tried his patience in the morning. It was the headspace she took up when his mind wanted to range through site deliveries, human resource, plant locations and returns, storage of materials, programmes, progress, valuations, the overall consumption of Strath Construction by Syme Atwood, the future – what future? – the end of his career in the Highlands. They needed a Scottish base to bid for the string of coastal sewage treatment plants the Authority was obliged to build and already they had two. Their methods worked.

  With Ewan Matheson gone he was the firm’s oldest hand. At 44! Damnation, but he could see the future only too well. Big Swannie was the new Contracts Manager. Trevor Sharp was young, bright, an Honours Graduate, recently Chartered, uncontaminated by Strath Construction thinking. He would be the Agent who finished this job. It was written in the stars. Mac would be lucky to survive. Swann was a Contracts Manager looking for a Directorship. He would want Mac out and Trevor remade in his own image.

  Alison was Mac’s priority. He had to remember that and give her his full attention. Getting into the car he realised they had hardly spoken since that early morning cup of tea.

  ‘We’ve hardly spoken,’ he observed, driving off.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she told him. ‘If we were together all the time we probably wouldn’t speak at all.’

  How did it happen, the development that occurred in the big leaps of time they were apart? The brassiere had appeared from nowhere. That was Mum’s business anyway, but she could have given him some kind of warning, some kind of discussion, about the sudden alteration in shape. She knew about sex, sometimes he felt she knew more than him. They joked about it. Of course, the break up had primed her early. Soon she would be experimenting with boys, perhaps already was. Time apart from her went by in great soaring leaps with brief, longed for, touchdowns and painful pushoffs.

  She kissed him on the cheek and stepped out into the rain.

  Her ears were pierced! He noticed as she leaned out of the car. How could he have missed it? Why hadn’t she said? No one told him these things. There was no preparation.

  ‘When will you be home?’ she asked. ‘Must run.’

  ‘8:00. No, 7:00. Make that 6:30pm.’

  Driving out of town and across the Kessock Bridge the rain eased and by Tain he had driven out of it. His heart lightened. Paul and Trevor would be, at least should be, setting-out the wayleave fences over the hill. He broke the speed limit to get to site by 10:25, smashing his record, rounding the bend that revealed the new site establishment beside the A9 dual carriageway, the hill to his left between it and the works in Glen Struie. Eventually the pipeline would come down there and cross the road. What a hell of sliding mud it would turn into if it rained, he reflected.

  He turned carefully off the road and into the new compound. The compound fence was complete, the first fence to be established. Looking beyond it, down past where the settlement tanks would go, and the outfall, the oil rigs seem surprisingly close to shore.

  He parked where he could and entered his hut. The desk was in place, a seat, drawing board and empty filing cabinet but it was still icy cold. John Kelly hadn’t turned the electric heater on. These plasterboard boxes didn’t retain the heat. They needed a constant supply of energy. He went back to his car for his coat and, inside again, put it on and stood by the window.

  The troops were working on the other compound huts and laying out materials. Beyond them were the shoreline and the North Sea. His own hut, which he would share with Trevor, was the first of four to be complete. Paul would share with the General Foreman, John Kelly. Beside that would be Stores and beside that again, the mess. The greater part of the area would be given over to larger items that wouldn’t fit in to the Stores hut, reinforcement steel, shuttering frames, diesel tank, huge segmented chamber covers that would be cast onto the underground pumping stations. The concrete batcher was also up, but had no sand or aggregate in its bins yet.

  The car park had been scraped down and roughly levelled by a JCB, arisings piled in a heap of frost-bound lumps at the far end of the compound. The same machine was standing by a pile of road stone, the driver waiting while a layer of geotextile was rolled out before starting to spread. There wasn’t nearly enough space, but there never was. They would get by. Meantime he was chilled to the marrow. At the door he called to John Kelly and pointed to the generator.

  Kelly checked the fuel level and mouthed the word ‘okay’. He inserted the starting handle and took it in both hands, his shoulder muscles bunching under his shirt as he pressed metal against cold metal and the handle slowly, reluctantly, turned. The man was as strong as an ox. Another turn, another, and
he threw the switch. The genny coughed and shuddered and shivered into life, the hut light went on and, in a minute, the metal front of the heater expanded and boomed outward.

  John Kelly’s dark face was weather beaten and seamed and ancient and looked like it had been carved from bogwood somewhere in ancient Ireland. His was the way of the shortcut and speedy finishing but they understood each other and, usually, made it work.

  Mac used his mobile phone to call Paul. As expected, he and Trevor were on the other side of the hill. He was thinking about driving round, giving the hut time to properly warm when James Swann’s car pulled up. Swann climbed out of the car with his briefcase under his arm, scowling at Kelly and the troops as he locked the car door. Something between anxiety and challenge went through Mac but he knew it would be better not to confront him. The man was always energised and restless, always on the cusp of anger. He could do violence; at least he gave that impression. If it came to blows Mac would probably come off best, or so he felt, although Swann was a couple of years younger and half a head shorter and broader in the shoulder. But, there would be no winning that one. One blow and he would be down the road.

  If it was only that simple, he thought – but the name of the game was commitment, even when it was reduced to humiliation and endurance. There could be no resolution other than one that came through events and, for the present, he would have to absorb, simply absorb. Already, since the takeover, he had it down to a fine art. Swann inside dropped his briefcase on Mac’s desk, eyes ranging, blinking, around the four bare walls.

  ‘Where’s Trevor?’

  Mac decided not to give a ‘good morning’ either. ‘Round at Struie, with Paul.’

  Swann looked out of the window.

  ‘Joiners. These are the eight we carry on the books?’