The dog days of summer are drawing to a close as the controls team at Pendant approaches the Labor Day break. As kids, summer seemed eternal, and Labor Day brought a mix of excitement and dread as the new school year started. For the Pendant team, Labor Day weekend 2018 brings a brief respite from what has been a record June through August. (I was going to make a “working like dogs” reference but…well, I guess I just did!)

Rob usually sends out a calendar reminder of upcoming holidays, often adding amusing commentary.  This year’s Labor Day entry went out a few days ago. The screenshot in the featured image shows that Pendant is closed but we’re “working from home”.  The funny thing is that the entire controls team worked hard this summer, but nobody thinks it was “too hard”.

Summer 2018

In addition to working on multiple large projects at the same time, Pendant moved into a new panel shop. We broke in the new shop quickly, out of necessity. Simultaneously, a complete renovation of the old shop is underway to add office space for the engineering and project management team. The old main office, upstairs from the old panel shop, is being redone, too.

We worked a lot of long days, and our startup and commissioning teams traveled plenty. There were times when individual team members had to slog through their day.  Occasionally some team members deployed Death Wish Coffee for an added lift.  But at the end, we have a lot to show for a summer that now seems like a blur.

Long Days

In January 2013, Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh borrowed a quote from Gretchen Rubin as the Ravens were heading to New England to play the Patriots in the AFC Championship game.  A year earlier, the Ravens lost the AFC Championship to the Patriots in a devastating way, first by dropping a game-winning touchdown pass and then missing an easy field goal that would have tied the game. Harbaugh commented on how it seemed like just yesterday they were in the same position. He talked about all the effort that went into getting back to the AFC Championship, and then he remarked on something I think we all identify with. He said, “The days are long but the years are short.” (Rubin captures the feeling precisely in this post and video: Gretchen Rubin. For the record, the Ravens won the game in that return trip and then won the Super Bowl.)

We think it’s probably going to be the same for our controls team. The work was hard and the days were long. But we will miss the pulling together, the accomplishments, the fun, the challenges, and the growth that were a part of the long days in this one summer. As we grow, we’ll have more summers like this, and autumns, winters, and springs, too. And one day we will realize how short the years were.

I’d like to make your days even longer