I snapped my phone shut and swore under my breath. It was 6:30 in the morning and the electrician had just bailed on me the day of my final inspection. There wasn’t much left to do, but there was an inspector coming to my jobsite between ten and noon according to the County Email. I was a rookie project manager and I was terrified of inspectors. If I was not ready for him, he was likely to start picking apart my project with a fine-tooth comb, finding every possible reason to mark my project as inadequate for occupancy.
I engaged the only solution I could think of; I stopped by Home Depot, bought a voltmeter, a couple of plugs, wire nuts, and cover plates, and beat it to the jobsite as fast as I could. The work I was about to do was the latest addition to a punch list on my yellow pad that I had been fighting for over a week. We were in the final days of work on a beautiful pool house nestled in the oak woods of rural Central Coast, and that final list of tasks seemed to grow at a pace that matched or exceeded the pace at which I worked to eliminate it.
This was my first project as a foreman and frankly I had no business being there. To date, my construction experience consisted of one summer as a laborer, and about a year and a half of apprentice carpentry. I enjoyed the work, and while I believed that carpentry was not what I wanted to do in perpetuity, I felt I was where I needed to be in this stage of my life and was ready and available to learn and work hard. Circumstances quickly took me way out of my comfort zone and put me in a manager’s chair. My boss fell ill under a relentless auto-immune disease, and in the disorder that flowed in the vacuum created by his absence, two project managers quit to look for better and easier work. This left my boss with mounds of work and no one to do it. I found myself yanked from running baseboard and hanging doors, to making phone calls and scheduling subcontractors.
I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily, the one remaining project manager was a friend and a great guy, the design team was always available to answer questions, and the boss was able to meet with me for a short amount of time each week to offload critical information. Still, I spent four months in a fully immersive crash course on how to build a pool-house… and of course this was no ordinary pool house. Built in the style of the California missions, it had a distressed beam ceiling, thick adobe-like walls, a fully custom kitchenette, outdoor shower with mosaic stonework, thousands of square feet of Saltillo tile, and an indoor/outdoor firepit. It was really a miniature high-dollar luxury home that belonged in a design magazine.
Looking back on it, I think the building process went as smoothly as I could hope for. Even in their limited state, my supervisors had set me up with their best subcontractors, so I had excellent help along the way; but at times there was no escaping the truth that I was woefully unprepared for the task at hand. Despite hours spent off the clock researching materials, methods, and practices; despite the best advice of my subs, vendors, and mentors; and despite the best common sense I could muster: there were still many times I had no idea what should come next on the schedule, I found myself missing a material I didn’t even know existed, or I found myself needing an expert that I didn’t know how to find. There was no way out but through, so I resigned myself to being the guy who had to ask dumb questions and soldiered forward to the best of my ability.
After three and a half months of this slogging mindset, it seemed like I was finally on my last punch list. Instead of large line items like ‘roofing, tile, and cabinetry’, I was looking at tasks more on the order of ‘replace the kitchen outlets, change out the flush lever on the toilet, and figure out some kind of doorstop for the custom wrought iron doors.
But I wasn’t quite done yet. The email from the County Building Department told me I had an inspector coming between ten and noon, and I still had about eight things that needed to be done before he arrived. Fighting the quite familiar urge to panic, I kept my worldview small and ignored my watch as I moved from task to task as smooth and steady as I could. On about task number six, I took the liberty of glancing at my watch. It was nine o’clock and I felt a surge of excitement and relief. I only had two objectives left and an hour of time! I could make it and probably even get a sweep of the floor in before the inspector showed. I hunched into the corner where I could reach the outlet that needed my attention and got down to it.
It seemed like only a moment later when the voice of the inspector startled me out of my focus: “You want to get final on this thing?”
I slowly stood up, and it seemed all the optimism and excitement from seconds before washed down my limbs and out my toes, replaced by the aches in my knees and back that had been so recently vanquished by hope. I glanced at my watch, and sure enough, it was only 9:15. He was early, and inspectors are government officials - they are never early. I fought down my feelings of frustration.
“Yeah, I had a few guys not show this morning, so we aren’t quite as done as I’d hoped we would be by the time you showed, but we are real close.”
He looked me over, and I wonder what he saw. I felt defeated. Sure, this wasn’t the biggest setback; even if he didn’t sign off the project, I would just finish the list and schedule him back for tomorrow. But then the work we had tomorrow would get pushed back to the next day, and then that would push the next thing, and so on, and so on. And even yet, scheduling messes happen all the time in construction. I would deal with it and life would move on. But still, it felt as though just a few minutes ago I was in the final hundred yards of a marathon and I was sprinting into the finish line. Now, just twenty-five yards before the tape, I hit a detour sign that added another ten miles to the race.
His face unreadable, he said, “well… show me what you’ve got.”
We walked through the project, and I showed him the last few items that I knew needed completion before we were ready for a final signoff. We walked slowly, and along the way he asked about different finishes, the fixtures we used, and certain materials and processes. We got to the end of our walkthrough, and to my surprise, the inspector asked for the permit card. Confused, I handed him the packet and tentatively asked, “To write us a correction notice?”
“No, I’m signing you off. You guys have done great work, and I have no doubts that you will wrap up those last few details today. Here’s your certificate of occupancy. Have a nice day”
“Thanks” I stammered as he shoved the permit package back into my hand and brusquely walked to his government car. I stood there stupidly frozen and watched him open the door and drive away.
As his car crested the hill and disappeared, I finally broke the trance and stumbled over to the counter and set the package down. I was awash with more emotions than I could completely understand, so I slipped around the corner and into the beautiful mosaic outdoor shower, put my back against the tile and sank down onto my heels, and wept.
I still don’t know fully why I was so affected by that moment. There was certainly a large amount of relief that the marathon was in fact, finally over. There was exhaustion and a little bit of sorrow in the seeming injustice that had placed me in the position of running this project in the first place. Sorrow that my boss was sick and alone, sorrow that I was also alone, with no one to join me in celebrating this moment - the completion of my first project with me. Humility that despite not deserving a final signoff, the inspector had seen fit to show mercy and award it to me anyways.
Slowly, over an unknown span of time, all of that emotion resolved to a quiet sense of peace. I had just completed something hard; something that tested my mind, my will, and my character. It was not a feeling of pride or great glory. It was a quiet victory reserved for me and my God.