u/smallon12

Not sure what this is, if its a moan, or a vent or a question but it's been stewing in me for a few days now and it's really sickening me at this stage.

Some background about myself.

I'm Irish and working for a smallish civils sub contractor in the UK and have around 8 years experience in management.

I come from an agricultural background and worked with family members in groundworks when I was in school, I went to university done a different degree but ended up working in a geotechnical company on civils projects writing reports and assessments of ground in reconstruction and construciton phases of projects, sick of that so i used the experience of working on civils projects to then basically get into site supervision and project management.

I do however have a stutter and can be forgetful at times (some hints of ADHD but I don't want to use that as a crutch for myself) and i suppose this has really impacted my self confidence at times.

My childhood and young adult background ln working in agriculture really gave me a "can do attitude" where I'm not afraid to get dirty, do the pig ignorant type of work and not really complain, I also would view myself as a people pleaser and will do anything for everyone else and I suppose this can be the detriment to myself at times.

The company has a core type of work (RC works, groundworks, enabling works etc) mostly averaging around £1m -£2m, all nice work and for good clients.

They also take on some smaller or random jobs, to try and get in with other companies or to try and get in on a project to start with, think something along the lines of demolishing a wall and making a path or piping temporary toilets at the start of a project with the hope that it would help during tendering stages of bigger parts of the projects.

It's all nice and good steady work.

I view myself as a Site Manager / Project Manager, I write all the RAMS for projects I'm involved with, I keep allocation / time sheets. I'm decent on excel, recording mark ups of works complete, organising deliveries and collections, I am an appointed person and write all the lift plans for our projects also.

I work closely with an old fashioned Irish contracts manager and we really compliment each other, he isn't IT savvy so I do everything computer related on our projects and he is involved in making the phone calls, high end meetings etc.

However this is where my gripe begins, I constantly feel like I'm not progressing as I should be. When I look at what I'm doing now compared to 3 or 4 years ago I can't massively see difference, in fact I nearly feel like I've gone backwards if anything

We've had difficulty getting reliable site supervisors on some of our projects, so I've been asked to go out and do more of a site supervisor role over most of the last 18 months. Being out on site directing dumpers, diggers, labourers, getting places ready for concrete etc.

I've also been sent to some of these "newer" jobs trying to get in on projects, they are client facing, working directly with a construction manager but in essence I'm in a trench or putting down paving or supervising labourers/ ground workers.

For 4 months last year I was 30m down a sewer on a one off job for one of our clients, again I was managing the works to a degree but I was still 30m down a sewer smelling of shit.

Likewise I've just been put on a project where we have men on day works with a client, the client only wanted workers but I was put in to keep our guys right, deal with issues they might have and liaise between the client and our office

In reality I'm slinging materials, in trenches, digging under pipes. I'm coming out at the end of the day you'd think I never heard of a shower or clean water in my life.

As I said, I'm a people pleaser and I do what's best for others but also at the same time I've aways been used to doing that real ignorant type work - there is actually a bit of me thinks that I'm more suited to that type of work than doing the computer work.

But deep down i know I'm "better" than that, that I'm not utilising the skills that I have to the best of my ability. I'm frustrated because I didn't go to university to lie at the bottom of a trench jack hammering under a pipe or to fight with a labourer who has taken too many smoke breaks.

I look around and I know you shouldn't compare yourself to other people but I see other people in a similar age to me and they are further on ahead in their career than I am, or I look at senior project managers and you just know that they didn't do what I'm doing in their earlier careers.

When I mention this to the directors of the company or contract managers they say either "the work wouldn't have been done if I wasn't there to make sure it was done" or "you need to understand the work to manage it properly" which again i understand that way of thinking because if the work wasn't done or done wrong the company wouldn't be about much Longer, at the end of the day it's doing the work on site which brings the money in, and If you know the work intricately then you can manage it more effectively in years to come, people wouldn't be able to pull the wool over your eyes etc and you can programme work better etc.

But again, people i know who are more senior aren't doing the dogged work that I am doing currently

There has to be a happy medium somewhere and I seem to be nowhere near that balance. Like a "project manager" shouldn't be in a trench up to his eyes in dirt and muck every day like that.

What am I doing wrong? Like why don't i seem to be progressing in a career as easily as other people?

As I said I have a bit of a stutter and because of this I can come across a bit hesitant or jitterry at times, I have also ADHD, I can be forgetfull at times or can be a bit late getting work done etc, it would always get done however and it never caused any sort of disruption on site, delayed works etc.

Is this holding me back more than I have realised and I've actually hit my ceiling in what I am capable off and this is what I'm to expect for the rest of my career? How would someone find their ceiling or know they've hit it?

Or am I just being a people pleaser and doing what's best for other people, making their lives easier and putting myself out / holding myself back?

I honestly feel like I've so much potential but I can't seem to realise that potential at all and it's incredibly frustrating for me :(

Sorry for the vent 😅

Before anyone mentions- I have manually updated the elevation both with DEM and GPS.

This is an issue which has happened for a long time but I don't particularly need elevation data, its just annoying me when I look and its massively out.

For instance, i was on top of a large mountain yesterday- the guide had mentioned we were 2800m above sea level, the watch was reading 2680m

I calibrated the watch twice on the mountain and it still read 2680m

Today I was on pier at the coast and, my watch was reading 65m above sea level - I downloaded an elevation app just to see and it was reading 1m above sea level

I recalibrated it with the GPS and it changed to 3m - I'm not worried by a metre or 2 difference.

I've just checked the elevation app for where I'm currently at and it reads 17m - my watch read -1m (minus 1 metre)

I've recalibrated again and its back to 10m so theres a 7m discrepancy

Ive cleaned the ports and sensors out on a regular basis and as I've said theres always a difference/ inaccuracy

Cna anyone help me understand this?

We are getting married in Buti with guests staying in various locations within close proximity to the venue (max 8km away, with some in Pisa)

Can anyone recommend companies that offer taxis / transfers for guests from their hotels to the venue and back again?

TIA :)

We are getting married in a small wedding ceremony in a couple of weeks and we have an idea for a first dance

Its basically mixing 2 versions of a song (original is slow and the cover is faster but with a different rythm)

I have a basic understanding of music so I downloaded some dj software to try and do the mash up but I couldnt get it to work right at all - the frustration I have a strong idea that it would work and I feel like its relatively easily to do it but I just dont have the technical abililty to make it right.

Could anyone in this fine community be able to help me produce this?

Many thanks 😀

I come from a small, rural irish village. In fact its not even a village, its just countryside.

I live around the corner from where my mother was born, that house has been in the family for matbe 200 years at this point.

We have a strong oral history in our family and we can trace our family pack to the 1870s which I have been able to verify through marriage and baptism records (my direct linage on my mothers side have all come from the same parish as well).

My father comes from the same parish, his father the same and my grandmother was from the next parish over.

Again with the oral history I know for a fact that all my family are from the same general area (within a 20 / 30 square mile radius)

All the surnames associated with myself are names which are synonymous with the local area (in ireland it is very common for surnames to be found in a particular area and not be found anywhere else in the country and this is true for all sides of my family)

When I done a DNA test in 2023 it recognised that my lineage was in the local area and hadn't really expanded out of that range.

I forgot all about this and signed in to ancestry today and it has given me a totally different reading, for example its saying I have 50% of my ancestry linked to a county about 60 miles away from me, I live in the North and its also got a sizeable percentage of dna in the very south of the country.

As i said I can visibly trace my ancestry within such a small area.

Why has ancestry changed all of a sudden and given such an invalidate response?

I'm interested in going to South America for 5 weeks next August with my partner (both in 30s).

I totally understand that the continent is huge and 5 weeks is nowhere near enough time to see the whole continent but coming from Europe I want to see as much of it as possible but I don't want to make it a trip where I'm rushing to see something, get the picture and go to the next place either. This will more than likely be our only chance to get to this part of the world so I really want it to be a trip of a lifetime.

I really like hikes, scenery, natural wonders, mountains, volcanoes, waterfalls, wildlife etc. with a nice sprinkling of architecture, history and culture.

Things that I'd be interested in doing / seeing would be:

• Rainforests / cloud forests
• Volcanoes (particularly if its erupting)
• Machu Pichu
• Salt Flats
• Galapagos
• Hiking in Patagonia
• Iguazu Falls

My partner is a massive foodie so I'm trying to get a good balance of natural wonders and cities to make it as appealing as possible for herself.

Cities like Bogota / Medellín, Rio De Janeiro look like cool places and may satisfy her taste buds and give a nice bit of architecture for the trip.

I know it will be hard (maybe impossible) to see and do everything but can someone suggest a decent itinerary that would possibly suit the both of us considering the time of year we would be going?

TIA :)

Hi,

I have a question about PCNS and return visits to the same area.

A street I was parked on has a 1hr maximum stay and a "no return within 1 hr" policy.

I was parked in the morning from 08:30 to 09:40 and had paid for the hour - although I was in the vehicle at 09:30.

I left and returned to the same street (different parking space) at 15:35 and paid for the hour. Although I was about 10 minutes late returning the car.

I had a ticket when I got back to the car - fair enough I was late and wasn't surprised to see the ticket as they are quite strict in my area.

However - on looking at the notes on the PCN it mentions that my vehicle was identified from 09:40 - 16:41.

Do I have any grounds to lodge an appeal as I was not actually on the street for that duration?

Hi all,

I know a similar question to this has been asked a few times here but I want some advice on my own personal circumstances - I have tried to ask my mortgage advisor but he has been of absolutely no help to me and I'm seriously considering changing when my current deal is up (but thats a seperate matter)

Basically, I have a property in Northern Ireland, the property is next door to my home house. The couple who lived in the house were very good neighbours of ours and I spent a lot of time in the house at weekends, evening times after school if my parents were out etc. etc. following the deaths of the couple the family put the house up for sale and had offered me the first refusal on account of being such a close family friend and I purchased the property 4 years ago so I have some quite personal reasons to want to keep the house.

As I said, my parents live next door and they manage several rental properties in our town so I am well aware of the rental traps that are out there and the dangers of renting a property - they are also in good health and are more than capable of managing this property for me.

I have been working in London quite frequently over the last number of years, flying over and back on a regular basis and I have a partner in London - we are engaged and are discussing buying a property together in London - we both see our 5 - 10 year future in London together however we have said that we will move back to NI whenever (hopefully) children come on the scene - with the plan being to use my property as our home.

I've spoken with my accountant and he told me that if I can move this property into a Ltd. company and rent out before purchasing a house in London that I can save over 30k on stamp duty etc. - I'm aware that I will still have to pay Stamp duty and taxes on this but it is significantly lower than what would be the case due to lower property values in NI.

I currently have 73% LTV on my house and my current deal expires in September. Which is the reason I am triyng to do some research on the topic now.

How achievable is this?

I know I can create a ltd. company relatively easily, but is it doable transferring a mortgaged property into a ltd. company?

If I can - how does a deposit work? Can the equity I have in the house be used as the deposit? Or will I have to come up with a 25% cash deposit to begin with prior to the process starting?

If I want to make overpayments on the mortgage can these still be done within a ltd. company?

My partner will be bringing considerably more capital to a future house purchase than myself - I was thinking of doing something like making her a director of the company to "balance the books" / gesture of good will / intent / using it as a way of increasing my portion of a purchase - but I really, really don't know how wise this is??

I know the property will technically be the Ltd. Company but can I live in the property again if I was to return home?

TIA 😄

A question for the cultchies in the room.

Can someone please explain land entitlements / subsidies to me please

I keep an eye on land for sale around home just for noseyness and I keep seeing pockets of land for sale often saying

"There are no land entitlements with this sale"

Or else something similar.

These are all working farms, decent pockets of land that are being cut for sillage or capable of grazing good animals.

Why aren't the entitlements sold with the land? Or what exactly does that mean?

If one was to buy land surely they should own what ever subsidies etc. That would be attached to the land?