The first machine, on our own ground.
Every trade on this site is a place where a person runs a machine better than the next person. The excavator comes first because it is the machine our own crews sit in, on ground we own, doing work that is often blind. If the instrument cannot carry a skill here, it cannot carry one anywhere.
An excavator cab, units on both joysticks · The group's own photograph
Our own crews run it, on our own ground.
We said our own people and our own ground come first. On this machine it is a fact of the yard rather than a preference.
Our own seat
The crews are ours, the ground is ours, and the work is real work with a real bottom to it. Nothing has to be staged for a recording, and nobody has to be asked to work in front of a stranger. When something goes wrong it goes wrong on our own site, at our own cost, with our own people deciding what to do about it.
Levers and pedals
The operator acts through levers and pedals. They are a fixed surface, they stay where they are while the work moves, and the record can sit on them without changing how they feel. A control that does not behave as it did before is not fit to record, and it is checked before any kit is fitted.
Blind work
Much of it is done without seeing the thing being worked on. The bottom is under water or under the bucket. The mat moves when you load it. The face is not what the drawing said. How a person deals with it is where the skill is, and on this machine it is on show every day.
Iron we already know by its habits.
The machines are in our yard, and the crews know every one of them: which stick is slow to settle, which swing brake grabs, which one wants a warm-up before it will feather. A first recording needs a machine the crews know that well, so a surprise in the record is a surprise in the work and not in the iron.
Dig, lift, swing, dump, return.
In plain words the cycle is a few moves, and anybody can learn the moves in a week. The technique lives in the joins between them, and in the pass where the ground does not do what it did last time.
Dig
The bucket goes into the face and comes back full. The technique is the break-away: the teeth are in, the load has to come free, and it has to come free without stalling the machine or lifting the tracks.
Lift
Before the bucket comes up it finds the bottom. On a grade you cannot see, under water or under spoil, the bucket is feathered along the bottom until it reads right through the levers, because nothing else on the machine can read it.
Swing
A full bucket at the end of a long stick wants to keep going. Easing the swing so the load does not throw the machine, and the machine does not throw the load, is where a good operator looks slow and is not.
Dump
The setting down. Spoil placed where it will not run back into the cut, a load eased onto a truck rather than dropped into it, a rock set on the slope rather than let go above it.
Return
Back to the face, and a look at what changed while the bucket was away. Water coming in, a wall that moved, a mat that walked. The next dig starts with that look, not with the levers.
Read only the headings and you have a machine anybody can run. Read what sits between them and you have the reason certain people are asked for by name.
Most of the work is done on something you cannot see.
A drawing shows a bottom, a slope and a line. The ground shows you a bucket of what it is actually made of, one pass at a time.
A bottom you cannot see
Under water, under mud, under the bucket itself. The grade is found by what comes back through the levers and by what the last bucket brought up, and it is found again on every pass because the ground under it changes.
Wet ground
Ground that carried the machine this morning may not carry it after lunch. Water comes into a cut from the side you were not watching, and a firm bottom goes soft under the tracks while you are looking at the face.
Mats that move when you load them
On soft ground the machine sits on mats, and a mat moves when you swing a full bucket over it. The seat tells you before anything else does, and the answer is in the swing, not in the mat.
A face that is not what the drawing said
Rock where the drawing said clay. A lens of sand where the wall was supposed to stand. An old line nobody marked. The drawing was a plan, the face is a fact, and the person in the seat finds out first.
Because the ground is half the story, the record carries what the ground did as well. Everything else about the record is on the page that describes it.
The routine is not where the skill is.
Off a berm with the boom over the water, every pass is a correction. The record is for the pass that stopped being routine.
An excavator working from a berm at the water's edge, boom over open water · The group's own photograph
A number would rank the best operator last.
Everything you could count on this machine turns on you the moment the ground goes bad.
Buckets an hour rewards the operator who does not stop to look. The careful one works slower, right up until the quick one is in the water. A count of corrections reads the skill as its absence: feeling for a bottom you cannot see takes constant small movement, so the person doing it best looks the busiest and the least sure. Fuel, cycle time, idle time, every one of them measures the routine, and the routine is the part anybody can do.
The skill shows in the moments the routine breaks and a person recovers. A wall starts to go and the bucket is already there. The mat shifts and the swing is already easing. The face comes up rock and the plan changes before the next pass. None of it shows on a timesheet, because the result of it is that nothing happened.
Nobody is picked from a ranking. People are asked for by name, and on this machine the name is the measure that holds when the ground does not.
The best operators are known for what does not happen.
Ask a crew who they want on the wet job and they will not give you a number. They will give you a list of things that did not go wrong.
- 01The machine that did not go inWorking off a berm or a mat at the edge of water, the machine stayed on top, because the person in the seat felt it start to go and stopped before it did.
- 02The trench wall that did not slumpA wall that stands does not get noticed. It stands because the cut was made in the right order, the spoil was set back, and the water was watched.
- 03The line that did not get undercutThe old line nobody marked is still in the ground, because the bucket went in slow where the ground felt wrong and the operator stopped to look.
- 04The bucket that did not come up emptyA face that would not break for the last operator broke for this one. The break-away is a feel, and the person who has it fills the truck in fewer passes than the person who does not.
- 05The day that did not stopThe job kept going when the ground changed, because the person in the seat changed the plan with it instead of waiting for someone to come and look.
Nothing to see, and everything to feel.
On pontoons the bottom is a rumour. The bucket goes down until the levers say it has arrived, the load comes up until the machine says it is enough, and the swing is eased because the platform moves with it. A person who can do that is asked for by name, and there is no number anybody could put beside it.
The person the crew wants on the wet job.
Every crew already knows who this is. The one the foreman puts on the pond job. The one whose trench the inspector does not argue with. The one who is sent to look at the ground before anyone is sent to dig it. The one the owner calls when the drawing and the site have stopped agreeing. None of them got there by a score, and none of them keeps the name by one.
If that person is you, your page says what stays yours, what you are paid, how you check the count, and how you end it. What sits in the seat with you while you work, and what does not, is on the page about the record. The trades that come after this one, and why, are listed together.
Talk to us.
If you run an excavator and people ask for you by name, or you own the machines and know who they ask for, write to us.