Gaining experience

My dad recently got a small renovation job, since I don't have anything to do lately, and I've really not been doing much at home, my father asked me to go over and look at how the renovation is going on, look at the steps they take to renovate a house. How the form work is done, tiling, plastering, carpentry, hacking, plumbing, brickwork and all that sort of thing, so I can get a general idea of how everything is done, that way if I ever want to renovate I won't get cheated, or at least that's the reason my dad gave me.

It's been a pretty good experience for me, I've learned slightly on how to deal with the workers. I've begun to have a basic grasp on just what there is to do, and how it is done. It's really a matter of knowing what to do, a lot of the things that are done during construction, my father learned on the job, and his teaching me a lot of this right now, I suppose a lot of this knowledge is not taught in books, and if someone new were to come out and try and do this, a lot of problems might occur, just because they didn't know some simple things. Sometimes it's just a matter of whether you know how to do it or not.

Something about the renovation job... The clients for this job, a retired couple, Mr and Mrs Ng, they come and check the work every single day. Their retired so they have plenty of time, but I really can't understand how they find so much time to come every single day. I've been pushing the work a long time, and it's moving at a ridiculous speed, this work was probably going to take around an excess of 1 month to complete, I'm gunning for 2 weeks, and my dad tells me if I can keep this pace up there will be no problem. Although I think I'm pushing the workers too hard, I hope their not going to go on strike, then my dad will kill me.

Just something that I've been thinking about. I tend to get this feeling when I'm talking about qualifications and the like with some people, I was talking to the client and I mentioned that one of the reasons many people have said to me is that with only a diploma, I might get looked down upon, and there is this really uncomfortable short silence. I didn't realize until later that maybe they were thinking that I was referring to my father... Although my father is currently working as a contractor, he studied in the UK and came back with a civil engineering degree, his recognized by the BEM(Board of Engineers) as a consultant, at one point he was working in JKR(Jabatan Kerja Raya) and was the temporary head of JKR. What he is, is an overqualified constructor, but his dealing with high end banglo jobs these days. My family isn't really rich, but we aren't struggling either.

The only gripe I have is that I have to be at the site at anywhere from 8 ~ 9AM until minimum 6PM, and sometimes even 8PM. That's 10 to 12 hours a day. I don't have much to do there, and it's eating up my time like crazy.

edit: Board of Engineers Malaysia is BEM, not BOE.