I am British and did installation work for a company in Sweden. I had worked for them in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and more. I have OK or good memories of all of them. Then I was asked to supervise a massive machinery installation in a steel works in India.

When I discovered the details it was a job I was aware of that should have been completed eleven years before !!

On my first visit I found so much of the machinery had been stripped and stolen that all I could do was make a list of maybe £50,000 of missing parts and wait for replacements. After a month of waiting to get parts cleared Indian customs I returned to UK saying phone me when they have cleared. It took another three months.

Forward two years and many trips and the installation was moving forwards slowly but I could not see an end to it so I advised the company in Sweden I had enough and went back to UK. The Swedish company tried telling me it would only be another 3. – 4 weeks work.

I knew better. It was another two years before I had a call from Sweden to say the job was finished and asked me if would go back to supervise acceptance tests.

I agreed to go back for two weeks as the tests only specified a one week production period anyway but after a production stopped and the works had no more raw materials so I came. back home vowing to never go back to India whatever I was paid and whatever promises were made plus my innards have never recovered from the gut issues I suffered on one visit.

Reading this back bought memories of a side issue on this job. I won’t state the main contractor building the steelworks. Only that it was a major European engineering company. The success of the job was important to the government concerned as they wanted further business so there was pressure one the contractor not to upset the customer. I was not under any such obligation!!

After many promises from the customer to provide the heavy lifting labour I needed to move the job forward I went, with the main contractor’s manager, to a meeting with the customer’s engineering chief. More promises that he would look into it and he should be able to help “tomorrow”.

I had heard these promises many times and lost my temper. The chief was sitting back behind a huge bare desk apart from a telephone and his tea cup and clearly had little or nothing to do. I asked him if the telephone worked and he looked at me strangely saying that of course it did.

I then said that instead of making promises he had no intention of keeping pick the bloody phone up and arrange for the labour to report to me the following morning. If they were not there I was on my way to the airport. I think the chief was so shocked that he did it and I did get some limited help the next day,

After that incident the main contractor’s manager asked me to accompany him to a meeting a couple of times and briefed me to ask the difficult questions his company could not raise!