Hello everyone,
I’m asking on behalf of my brother, who lives in Nigeria. He has experience operating heavy equipment and is currently looking for job opportunities in Qatar or Saudi Arabia.
For anyone who works in the heavy equipment/construction industry in either country:
Is this a viable career path for someone coming from Nigeria?

Is there currently demand for experienced heavy equipment operators?

What is the usual process for getting a job and work visa?

Is it better to apply directly to companies or go through a recruitment agency?

What should he be careful about when looking for jobs from Nigeria?

Would you recommend that he pursue this opportunity? Any advice or personal experience would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!

Can't imagine sitting up there for long enough to wait for Sunbelt to find that lift to pull from another job site then load it up and deliver.

I work for a commercial construction business (in the trades) and I am hoping to help streamline operations and create efficiencies. What kind of subcontractor-specific technology have you had success with or what should I be researching/considering?

It's a small business with revenue between $2M-$7M/year, where we primarily work with GCs and a few direct projects. We have between 50-75 projects per year and it's a lean operation of 4-5 office workers and 3 field crews. 

Currently we do not have a centralized CRM or project management software. We had Contractor Foreman but it was clunky and we got zero adoption from the team. Procore seems too expensive for our size. Has anyone had success using a non construction specific option like Monday.com for project management?

I feel like digital time cards are an obvious thing to adopt but there is concern that some of the laborers don't have the ability to download an app and that if something needs to be changed, it will be hard to do (not to mention I doubt the team would love the geo fencing option). I've heard apps like Buddy Punch have a "group punch" option which could work on the foreman's ipad or phone and I'm wondering if anyone has had a good experience with them or other competitors.

Below are some of our current processes:

• Photos from job walks and project progress: Company Cam
• Bid Management: tracked in Excel
• Estimating and proposals: Combination of PlanSwift and Claude AI 
• Project files: Saved in folders on our shared drive (Microsoft One Drive)
• Tasks related to each project: ie file a prelim, contact the fire department, etc. no formal process, just in our heads
• Time Cards, Dailies, etc: All on paper, physically turned in, scanned and inputted manually
• Accounting: Quickbooks Enterprise
• Safety and certification renewals: tracked in Excel

Right now it feels like everything is a bit all over the place but I don't want to add new technology or software just to do it. The team is older and adoption is difficult so I don't want to spend a lot of time with a big onboarding process if it's overly complicated. Are other subs this size using one software to help with a lot of these use cases or are you cobbling together a variety of different solutions to try to get you what you need? Would that be Procore and thus should I push our team to buy it despite the high price tag? Or based on our size, am I overcomplicating things when our current systems seem to get us by?

Hey all, quick question while I'm on lunch break. I'm working on a detached garage project and we're deciding whether to go with a 4" or 6" concrete slab. It's in a region where we get some freeze-thaw cycles, but nothing too extreme. The garage is for two cars—nothing too heavy, but we may store some equipment.

4" seems solid and cost-effective, but 6" could potentially offer more durability for the long haul. What are your thoughts or experiences with slab thickness in this situation? Trying to balance longevity with budget!

Some utility company showed up, unanounced, dug up the storm culvert …. Hugely I might add. They left asphalt boulders in my yard, divets, spoil piles, then called it a day and parked their shit. Normally this may fly. But I, sir! …I happen to be a suburban living construction worker myself. Hide and seek

I will do my best to keep this short and simple. This is a job being done in a campground in New Jersey. A customer wants a 3 season room put onto their camper and The contractor who is constructing the room wants me to handle the deck portion, but insists he isn’t going to be getting any permits for the room because, well, he doesn’t do permits. I obviously need to acquire permits for the deck and now he wants me to get the permits required for the construction of the room, even though I will have nothing to do with it. My wife doesn’t trust him and wants me to do the deck and walk away, leaving the room and permits in his hands but, he said if I don’t combine both permits, he won’t do the job which means I’ll lose out on a big job for myself, and possibly any other decks he would farm out to me…

How would you guys go about handling this situation? Basically, if I don’t get the permits for everything, I lose out on my portion of the job because the customer will walk but, if I do and he screws something up, I’m on the hook for it, right? Can the customer pull the room permits on the contractors behalf or is that not a thing? Thanks in advance for any insight or advice…

Hey this is for my CEI Inspectors or senior inspectors that inspect or are certified by DOTD what’s the most you’ve heard of a senior inspector making per hour?

Types of inspector I’m talking about is structural concrete, concrete, base course/embankment, can also take density tests and test materials.

Most I’ve heard of someone making is $40 an hour in Louisiana

I live in New York and I recently worked on a Prevailing wage job which the department of labor states is 44.63 an hour. The supplemental benefits aswell are 30.98. My employer is non union and does PROVIDE benefits, however I am not receiving them. My company is paying me only 40.50 an hour, I am almost positive I am being stolen from by not receiving the $30.98 an hour. I have a meeting with my boss In 2 hours to discuss this. Yes, i have already been in contact with the Department of labor and they told me that I was correct and My company should be paying the 30.98$. does anybody know If I am correct or am I being gaslit that I am not owed benefits. Thank you

How many guy are going out of their mind, because the pre drill size stated on the pack is incorrect.
Correct pre drill size for 19/64” is 1/4” but the case says 3/16” less

I work at a rather prominent institution doing demolition and hazardous materials abatement. We often sub-contract work out as we are a relatively small in-house crew.

We have a job of removing a busted sewer line in a small dirt floor pipe space...the space was filled with sewage and tons of cockroaches. We tried to sub the work out but nobody seemed to want to take it.

It fell on me to do it.. and I just couldn't motivate myself to literally shovel shit and have live cockroaches all over me... after a week of making little to no progress my supervisor put the job on hiatus.

I was talking to the department head (bosses boss) he wanted to know what was going wrong and he understood completely... He said he didnt know what to do as nobody would put a reasonable bid on it... i jokingly said if I could borrow some equipment I'd do it over the weekend for a reasonably large lump sum of money.

He actually said he wouldn't be opposed to it. I came in amd did the job over the weekend. On Monday I came in and was given the check for the agreed upon amount. My boss however called me into his office and proceeded to absolutely flip the fuck out about how I went over his head and how when I was clearly able to do the job, but I chose not to unless there was more money involved.

He sent me home, and now it looks like i might not have a job anymore, has anyone dealt with something similar and is there any way to rectify this situation? Other than this one instance I really like this job and dont want to lose it.

I run a mid-sized general contracting business and we do great work, but our online presence is basically a digital ghost town.

For the last five years, our site has just been a static landing page my nephew threw together. It has our phone number and a couple of blurry photos of past jobs, and that is about it.

Lately, I am losing bids to newer competitors who have less experience on the ground but look way more professional online. Clients want to see case studies, licensing info, and clear contact forms before they even pick up the phone.

I tried using one of those drag-and-drop builders on the weekend to modernize it, but I just do not have the time or the eye for design. It ended up looking like a mess, and the mobile version was completely broken.

I know I need to bite the bullet and pay for proper website development services so we can actually showcase our portfolio and look legitimate to higher-end clients.

But how do you guys find someone who actually understands the construction industry? I do not want a flashy tech startup site, I just want a rock-solid, trustworthy digital storefront that brings in leads without costing as much as a new skid steer.

Hey all, I'm a Civil Engineering Technician working in Civil 3D on land development projects grading, drainage, pipe networks, road design, site plans and subdivisions. I've been supporting firms remotely across the US, Canada, and Australia, and I'm currently taking on new work.

If your firm (or one you know) ever needs extra drafting/design capacity, feel free to reach out happy to send my portfolio and chat about fit.

Anyone finding that their supers, especially younger ones are pretty much allergic to paperwork? They claim they are “RUNNING THE WORK AND THE MEN” yet almost throw a tantrum anytime they have to do more than turn in receipts for all the tools they bought? Show up early, sit in truck, check on guys, buy tools. Leave early and hand off everything to someone else. Older supers don’t mind the paperwork and kind of accept it as coming with the territory. Younger ones balk and look for the closest engineer to pass it off to.

How realistic is it to go from super to PM after 8-10 years. I’m still in school but have been thinking about this. I like being in the field/onsite getting hands on experience while my young. Please let me know

I am looking for equipment for water detection and mineral exploration; do you have any good recommendations?

I'm 17, going into my senior year in hs, and I started plumbing 5 months ago in multi family homes as an apprentice. I wanted to know if I should try and switch to hvac after hs due to being told that hvac makes more money.

When Powerpro/ service diesel mechanics say it’s good till you see the foam 🫠

Hey guys, so one of my workers just got off a call with my customer that demanded a full breakdown of every material for a simple roof patch and repaint we did. To be honest we've gotten messy with receipts recently so they're probably long gone, but even if we had them I don't think it makes sense to send them the full details.

Like, do they expect me to charge them a percentage of the sealant that I've bought previously? The guy even said we should just send them a screenshot of our corp card's transaction history from the place we bought our materials at lmao, just makes no sense to me. We've told them the set cost beforehand, and thankfully they've paid already but it was just a bit annoying seeing this guy get stuck in this back and forth.

Anyways yeah, in case it happens again, what do you guys say when it comes to this? Also, some advice for tracking receipts that's not "just don't be reckless and lazy" would be nice I guess, thanks.

Good evening!

We're building a pergola with some dimensional lumber and wanted to avoid the usual surface mounted beams that are bolted on and spend a zillion dollars on connection plates/hardware.. So the posts (8x8x14) have been cut to accommodate for the beams (4x12x16) to rest on and have cut the beams to interlock when they intersect. The plan is to use dowels as a fastener/lock instead of the typical massive bolt.

What's the best exterior glue out there that will stand the range of -40* C to +40*C?

Thanks in advance!