Probably the hardest thing to teach is professionalism.
Inspectors, as far as I am concerned, are useless, or irrellevant. I don't mean that as disrespect for inspectors, though....what I mean is that "right" is "right," whether an inspector will see it or not.
To see it all as a game, with the goal of slipping as much as possible past the inspector, is simply childish. As professionals, there are plenty of times where we have to use our judgement. This is not something to do lightly.
Nor does it matter what "everyone else does." Where there are no men, try to be a man.
The crew is YOUR crew. They look to you for guidance, for leadership. In return, they owe you their fidelity- that is, you have to be able to trust them to follow directions whether you (or an inspector) are there to catch them, or not.
The biggest problem I see at a lot of places is that they give their leadership positions to the "best performer," without any training in how to lead. Leadership isn't learned overnight.
Some folks have encountered these sorts of situations before. Just how do you "internally motivate" a crew? Two suggestions stand out:
-Let the guys doing the work have some say in how it's done; and,
-Set up competing crews, with performance criteria spelled out in advance. Winner gets a bonus, prize, whatever.
