Just bitchin'

[Wrecker]

So, I work in a place where you don't do a fucking thing without a permit.

You go to the permit office, you tell them what you're doing, they issue you a permit, and you follow everything outlined on it. Plain and simple, cut and dry. You happen to be doing work that isn't outlined on your permit? See ya, fired, gonzo, fuck off and have a nice day.

There's kind of a easy way out to getting a permit, and that's a thing they call an access permit on site. An access permit covers you for everywhere in the field and plant, you can go anywhere you want and all you have to do is get in touch with the operator for the area you're going into on the radio, tell them "hey I'm so and so working for such and such, I have an access permit to enter your area, is it cool if I go in?" and they will pretty well always say yup go ahead, so long as there isn't some kind of upset going on in their area.

Problem with these access permits is they don't cover you for fuck all. If you go up on a scaffold, you're not covered. If you open up a tape measure, you're not covered. If you do anything more than just eyeballing future work, you're not covered, and every access permit says it in caps-lock print "THIS PERMIT IS NOT VALID IF -reason reason reason reason-."

I don't fuck around with permitting, it's another round of legal measures that will fuck you over if anything ever goes awry. If you happen to be in a building up on a scaffold doing something as seemingly harmless as measuring things when the shit hits the fan and let's say maybe a PSV lets go into you or your buddy's face under steam service, then you're fucked. Your permit didn't cover you to be up on that scaffold or measuring shit, and you're already in a bad way with half your face blown off. Maybe that operator you got a hold of knew something about the system you were measuring, knew that the control room was getting some weird shit coming back from their instruments and that things weren't going that great, but figured as long as you're on the ground just looking at stuff it wouldn't ever be a problem to you yadda yadda. Permitting has its place. That's why it's there in the first place.

The people I work for just love these access permits for meaningless work. Just pull an access, just pull an access... No!

The work sometimes is meaningless, you barely need to be permitted for it, yes, but fuck that! Rules are rules, and the client does do random audits, and like fuck if I'm going to get caught without a valid permit when I know damn well what I'm supposed to be covered for. I've worked for a pile of companies, and this is probably the best client I've ever worked for, fuck my company, the client is wicked. The guys in the permit office are awesome to deal with, they don't fuck you around (the permit guys are all client people), and if you have any kind of question, they figure it out right there. There was even a time I was waiting for a lockout to be finished and put into their system (operations shuts down the equipment you're working on, "locks it out," with actual locks to prevent other people from tampering with and attempting to restart it while you and others are working on it), and the guy was decent enough to tell me who to talk to figure out where they were at in getting everything ready to work on. That's pretty cool, because these lockouts go through several different divisions of the client's company, and he pretty well told me who exactly to get in touch with to figure out if everything was ready to work on or not.

It's so easy to pull a proper permit for the exact work you're performing that there's no need for this access permit bullshit unless you're doing basically nothing. It fucking bothers me when people try and tell me to pull one of them, because it's fucking pointless. I could see it if you were looking at another two hours worth of work just to get permitted, but it's not like that. The only difference between an access permit and a work permit is you have to physically meet the area operator and have them sign onto your permit. It's fuck all.

You radio the operator, tell them where you are, ask them to meet you to sign on your permit, they sign it, and you're done. It's another 5 minutes.

So fuck off, I'm not working without a valid permit.

[DrGravitas]

I do think I can complain about bureaucracy at my job anymore o.O Still, it was pretty cool learning about how things operate over there!

[Strongbob]

Permitting is a necessary evil, emphasis on the evil.  It always reminds me of Brazil. 

 

[Pignog]

agreed permits arf insanely bad what were they thingking??? permit everything especially weed ahaha just a little joke thaere bud