It’s always good to work alongside familiar faces, and when these familiar faces are also hardworking and honest people it makes it even better and also easier to be away from home away from your family.
Out here these are my Boilermaker brothers, the guys that have my back as I have theirs. And don’t let their faces fool you, they are actually pretty good at what they do, lol kidding.
A good foreman seems to have three special abilities: finding a problem before anyone else notices it, knowing exactly who was supposed to fix it, and appearing out of nowhere the moment someone says, “It should be good enough.”
They keep track of the equipment, the crews, the schedule, the safety requirements, the paperwork, and about a hundred problems nobody warned them about. They answer questions that should have been answered before the shift started, solve issues that were “not supposed to happen,” and somehow keep the job moving when the plan changes for the fifth time before lunch.
The truth is, foremen work hard. They are often the first ones in, the last ones out, and the people carrying the responsibility when things go wrong. They may look calm on the outside, but inside they are probably running a full shutdown, three backup plans, and a conversation with maintenance—all at the same time.
So here’s to the foremen looking after the CNRL equipment this year. May the machines start when they are supposed to, the parts arrive before they are needed, and nobody ever say, “I thought someone else was taking care of that.”
They keep the equipment working, the crews organized, and the rest of us honest—and that is no small job.
