I was in the construction field for about 10 years before coming to Cairo. All I have to say is "WOW!" The things they do here are crazy, no regulations are in place obviously by what I have seen. Don't get me wrong I and plenty of others I worked with bent the rules here and there but not as bad as it is here. I would NEVER and mean EVER do construction here in Egypt. I have framed plenty of houses in my years in construction or service something that might have been on a roof. But I always was safe about it, we were required by one company that if we even placed a single foot on a roof we had to be tied off. Here not so much. The pictures below show you what I am talking about.
The first two picture are of an Egyptian man climbing the antenna tower where most of the mobile dishes are for cell phones and a couple dishes for TV. However he climbed this antenna with no kind of safety equipment whatsoever. He was also alone, so if he fell who knows how long he would be on that roof before some one found him. We live on the 9th and he was above the height of our floor, the top of the antenna is probably 5 stories from the roof. The second two photos are of two men servicing a AC unit. This was right in front of my building too. The first picture shows how high off the street he is. He is eight floors up from the ground. The man with him is only standing there I thought he was at least holding onto the other guys belt loop but after I put the photo on my computer i realized he was just holding the wall up. Again no harness, no safety whatsoever.
These are some of the examples I have taken pictures of since I have been here. But the list of things goes on forever. Their scaffolding here is just timber tied by rope. No nuts and bolts or anything like what we used back home in the States. I have seen men climbing ropes to the roof or floor of building they are working on because there is no elevator installed yet. Even though there are stairs going to where they need to be they choose the most direct path. They work in flip flops here doing major construction, I am not sure they even know what steel toed boots are here. Manual labor is a must if you want to do construction here. I have watched on many occasions men unloading well over 500 bricks from a truck by hand, this taking a full 8 hour day to get done.
The one thing that I will say however, is that I have a new appreciation for the resources I have back home to do construction. Back home you very rarely had to hand drive a nail, cut a piece of wood by hand unless it was finish work or even hand tighten a screw. Here there is no power tools except for tile saws which are not wet tiles saws. So they make cuts with a dry tile saw and again no safety they don't even wear eye protection. Watching these men build something is exhausting to even watch. Day in, day out hand driving framing, cutting wood by hand, everything is tightened by hand. It makes me have new respect for the people that did construction before all the glory of power tools in the States. I think many of us in the construction field would only work half a day if you took our power saw, compressors and cordless drills away from us.
The only other thing that baffles me is how much rebar the use in their concrete work. They use probably quadruple the amount that we do back home. That being said it is understandable seeing that all their building here are made out of concrete and brick. They first start off with their base slab and then go from there. The do floor by floor of concrete pillars and the floor. After they complete those steps they go back and fill in the openings that make the wall with brick. The use no wood for framing here except on the top floor units. They use wood to frame out the windows but then remove it after the brick has set. As they do the brick the run their conduit for electric, phone/cable and also water. After all those steps they then add a stucco to the exterior and interior walls. They use different custom concrete finishing tools to make crown molding on the inside and outside details of the buildings. That's where the biggest thing I noticed that is different, their finish work is flawless, perfectly level tile floors, perfectly textured walls and straight that can be expected. Seeing I don't think I have ever seen a level being used.
Even though I would love to learn from a seasoned "finish carpenter" here I could never get passed the fact that everyday I would go to work, I would literally wonder if I would make it home without a broken bone, a laceration or even worse. In all what I have seen they really could use someone to come here and teach some onsite safety training to get rid of the many onsite injuries here. Would I ever do construction work in Egypt?? No! They couldn't pay enough for me to even except a supervisor position where I don't even do any hands on labor. I wouldn't want to live with the burden of someone being severely injured or dieing. The culture of work safety here is nonexistent!
These are some of the examples I have taken pictures of since I have been here. But the list of things goes on forever. Their scaffolding here is just timber tied by rope. No nuts and bolts or anything like what we used back home in the States. I have seen men climbing ropes to the roof or floor of building they are working on because there is no elevator installed yet. Even though there are stairs going to where they need to be they choose the most direct path. They work in flip flops here doing major construction, I am not sure they even know what steel toed boots are here. Manual labor is a must if you want to do construction here. I have watched on many occasions men unloading well over 500 bricks from a truck by hand, this taking a full 8 hour day to get done.
The one thing that I will say however, is that I have a new appreciation for the resources I have back home to do construction. Back home you very rarely had to hand drive a nail, cut a piece of wood by hand unless it was finish work or even hand tighten a screw. Here there is no power tools except for tile saws which are not wet tiles saws. So they make cuts with a dry tile saw and again no safety they don't even wear eye protection. Watching these men build something is exhausting to even watch. Day in, day out hand driving framing, cutting wood by hand, everything is tightened by hand. It makes me have new respect for the people that did construction before all the glory of power tools in the States. I think many of us in the construction field would only work half a day if you took our power saw, compressors and cordless drills away from us.
The only other thing that baffles me is how much rebar the use in their concrete work. They use probably quadruple the amount that we do back home. That being said it is understandable seeing that all their building here are made out of concrete and brick. They first start off with their base slab and then go from there. The do floor by floor of concrete pillars and the floor. After they complete those steps they go back and fill in the openings that make the wall with brick. The use no wood for framing here except on the top floor units. They use wood to frame out the windows but then remove it after the brick has set. As they do the brick the run their conduit for electric, phone/cable and also water. After all those steps they then add a stucco to the exterior and interior walls. They use different custom concrete finishing tools to make crown molding on the inside and outside details of the buildings. That's where the biggest thing I noticed that is different, their finish work is flawless, perfectly level tile floors, perfectly textured walls and straight that can be expected. Seeing I don't think I have ever seen a level being used.
Even though I would love to learn from a seasoned "finish carpenter" here I could never get passed the fact that everyday I would go to work, I would literally wonder if I would make it home without a broken bone, a laceration or even worse. In all what I have seen they really could use someone to come here and teach some onsite safety training to get rid of the many onsite injuries here. Would I ever do construction work in Egypt?? No! They couldn't pay enough for me to even except a supervisor position where I don't even do any hands on labor. I wouldn't want to live with the burden of someone being severely injured or dieing. The culture of work safety here is nonexistent!
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