Construction Jobs In Iraq

Construction jobs in Iraq come in many types, forms and pay ranges.

There is work in the oil industry, the infrastructure rebuilding Iraq/Afghanistan, and there is construction work for the military on their bases.

The best way to find out about these jobs is to go to a list I have compiled for Jobs in Iraq.

During one of my construction jobs in Iraq, there was a change of personnel and I found myself promoted to camp manager.

The camp was in a mess and had lost that “professional” look. I was thinking that with our camp looking like this, why would anyone hire us to do any work for them?

So I made a list and had the labor crew start fixing the problems. One was the labor crew's bathroom/shower unit or AB unit for short. It was in bad repair and very dirty. I asked for a volunteer to care for this every day. This would be his job, to keep the AB unit clean as well as the camp.

We had truck drivers on our camp who were delivering water to another camp called Camp Korea. Their AB unit was also a mess. This volunteer took care of both AB units. He did a lot of fixing and cleaning and it seemed to me that morale improved.

Another necessity that goes along with construction jobs in Iraq is the laundry. There was laundry in the form of socks and underwear hanging all over the camp. My thinking was why was there laundry all over the place when we have a laundry with a worker washing the clothes? Upon investigating, I found out that the laundry guy did not want to wash socks and underwear.

I got him a box of exam gloves and told him that he was to do all the laundry.

This improved morale some more and made the camp look a lot better without all the clotheslines hanging everywhere.

There was also a lot of cleaning up that needed to be done in our storage area. A lot of the items were brought to our store to sell and the rest organized. I was feeling really proud of the work our people were doing.

Our company was awarded a contract to build two buildings. When I became the site manager, I inherited a disaster. One building was way behind schedule and the work was stalled. The other building was behind and the materials for the roof on it had disappeared.

What I found out was our company had hired a carpenter from another company to build the roof for the first building. This guy was to build it with a 16-20” pitch. What he did was to put on a 60” pitch which used up all the wood for both buildings. He also did a poor job and it looked pretty bad. Anyway we bartered for the materials we needed and got the first building done.

When it came time to start the roof on the second building, Chandran, the labor foreman told me he needed a carpenter. I said, “I know what your abilities are and those of your workers. I know you can do this roof. I want you to do the roof.” He said "Okay." And they did the roof. They did a much better job than the guy who was hired to do the first one.

So what I have learned is to set the expectation high on construction jobs in Iraq and the labor force will strive to meet it.

When it was time for me to leave, the entire labor force showed up to say good-bye. I was surprised. They gave me a watch that they had bought. And there was not a dry eye in the group.

This surprised me because I thought they would be happy I was leaving and they could return back to their old habits. The last word I received was they were following the same standards I had set.

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