A superintendent's day: protecting time to walk the site
You reach mid-afternoon without leaving the office. The phone, deliveries and email all seemed urgent. A walk finally reveals that the next workface was never released, and the foreman has been waiting for a decision you could have made in the morning.
Protect purposeful site walks in your daily routine, then arrange calls, decisions and reporting around the work you need to see. Give each walk a different purpose and leave time to act on what it reveals. A calendar block is useful only if the team knows how to reach you for urgent issues. The goal is a workable routine, not a timetable that ignores changing site conditions.
- Identify the decisions that need your direct observation each day: readiness, critical interfaces and the next shift's constraints. Build the first walk around those areas rather than wandering through whatever is closest.
- Choose walk times that fit the crew's start and the work sequence. Tell the team when you will be available and which urgent issues should interrupt the routine immediately.
- Group routine calls and office follow-up into a planned period. Ask the coordinator to prepare the facts you need so the period produces decisions rather than another round of information requests.
- Use the later walk to verify agreed actions and prepare tomorrow's work. Check whether a morning decision actually reached the foreman and whether the next area can be released.
- Write the daily report and close personal commitments while the day's facts are fresh. Keep a short remaining-action list instead of relying on an evening memory search.
- Review the routine when it repeatedly breaks. Decide whether meetings, delegated tasks or walk coverage need changing; do not simply squeeze every missed task into a longer day.
Common mistakes
- Calling a walk complete after visiting only the same familiar area.
- Returning to the office with observations but no assigned follow-up.
- Treating every routine call as an emergency interruption.
- Holding the timetable rigidly when a critical event changes the day's needs.
Checklist
Set up tomorrow's routine
- First walk purpose
- Later walk and next-day readiness
- Urgent contact arrangements
- Routine call period
- Time to close decisions
- Report before facts fade
Check your understanding
Your morning walk repeatedly slips because of a recurring meeting. What should you change?
Show the answer
Review the meeting's timing, attendance and purpose, then arrange a routine that still covers the decisions you need to see. If another person can handle part of the meeting, make that handover explicit. Repeatedly missing the same walk is a planning problem to resolve, not a reason to abandon site observation.
