Building sites...Well I spent a "good" 25 years on the buggers. From the Channel tunnel to Canary Wharf with hospitals and universities in between.
Ever site is different. Some will be fantastic, well managed plenty of hought going into co-operation betwen the trades, Nicely thought out scedules so that trades are not clashing and competeing for space. Nor are trades being held up by each other on well run sites.
On badly run sites the reverse is true. Trades just doing their job but to hell with everyone else. Everybody gets in each others way, Arguments break out and the whole vibe of the site plummets.
Other considerations, Facilities....You could be going to toilet in a portaloo with 100 other grizzlies, or you could have showering facilities with humane conditions.
Your breaks will be sort of timed basically you have your 30 mins or whatever and the chargehand will give the nod, or give a grunt/shout and you get back to it.
Work. You get given a drawing and get on with it......But in the setting you are looking at you will get given a task and a small part drawing and you will also get a detailed description of the work. EG "Right this is to be done in 25mm Galv conduit. There's the drawings. The drawings "should" be to scale and off ya go....On bad sites you get very bad detail and you find yourself chasing people for "descisions".
Hours - Well 20 years ago the standard was a 10 hour day. 7.30-5.30....but often the reality was 8-5 with the extra hour given as a "reward" for being bloody brilliant lol....Well it worked well for me and my team.
But also some sites get the hump with you if you don't do every hour and day they offer you. We want you to do 7x10 hours ....No we don't care if your suffering from burnout, If you don't do ever late then you are not doing the weekend, If you don't do the weekend then we will let you go (unless you were special like us...) and get someone else.
I have had sites where it's 100 mph go go go, I have had other sites where we were ordered to hide up or even go home and come back to clock out...site politics and companies being paid by numbers, I have had sites where I was not allowed to so much as collect a bundle of conduit because that was the labourers job and under no circumstances was I "allowed" to get my own stuff from the stores even if it meant twiddling my thums for 9 hours....big shout out of Canary Wharf for that one...I left after a week as I can't just stand around all day prior to playing games on my phone/youtube. I honestly can't think of much worse than to be stuck on a cold darkish building site doing nothing waiting for 10 hours to pass before home time...Give me a price or at least a target and im happy as a sandboy.
Reflecting - I wouldn't change a thing, im glad I did it, I had a small team of 5 of us...a Car full if you like. We all got on really well. One of the gang was a labourer..we took him EVERYWHERE with us. But essentially we all looked after each other. Any of us got on a job that was good paying and good terms/conditions then we got the others on...It worked well for us anyway.
Got to be honest though, im not sure i would be looking to do it in the later part of my career as opposed to the early part..it could be claimed it is a young guys game, but that is just opinion, ther were plenty of 50+ people thriving on building sites.