Life as an Insulator

After two tours (4 weeks total), I have almost started feeling somehwat more comfortable with this insulation business. Slapping some Styrofoam on a bunch of pipe sounds easy enough, but ensuring the right joint compound, glue, tape, and other materials are used along with following the proper procedures to apply all of these can be quite daunting. Luckily for me, the job specs were written clearly and an 11 year insulation veteran was sent in to help out. The insulators aren't your typical group of guys since they are three boys (19 years old) from West Virginia. Just to give you an idea, one of the guys came back from one weekend without one of his front teeth due to a mud bogging accident! They are admittedly straight redneck country boys. Hard workers and fun to hang out with.
There have been a lot of issues with supervising the insulation portion of this job especially since I have no experience with it. The biggest thing that I have run into is receiving the incorrect materials whether they are the wrong size, color, or type. There tends to be a lot of gray areas between using the given materials and modifying them to complete the job or incur a delay and reorder the correct items. For instance, the picture to the right shows a couple valves that don't quite match up with the styro that was ordered for it. Instead of making a case about the issue and sending it back, we simply modified the material by cropping out part of the center section and recreating the mold. From what I am learning, all that matters is that the job gets done. I would like to take it a step further and add that the job gets done ... correctly.