It's dawning on the trainees that there's more to building than turning up and starting work. Enthusiasm and effort are great. But they also have to do things properly and work to the required standards.

They can't get away with assumptions and guesstimates in a job where every millimetre counts. Mistakes cost time and money. The trainees found this out the hard way - a demoralising and expensive experience.

You can't avoid standards. All industries have them. So what are they?

Common Sense Rules
Basic standards are common sense rules. You'll find them wherever you work. Things like:

• being punctual - turning up on time, or ringing to say why you're going to be late
• telling people if you're going to be absent - so that there's time to find someone else to do your work
• working safely - wearing the right clothes, using the right equipment, following instructions, obeying health and safety rules
• behaving sensibly - not being drunk or drugged up, only smoking in allocated areas, leaving banned or dangerous things at home
• respecting other people - being considerate, co-operative, polite and non-threatening
• being honest - giving the right personal details, owning up to mistakes, not stealing things

Industry Standards
Other standards are only for certain jobs. They're about safety and quality. So bending them, or pretending that they don't exist, is a sure-fire way to disaster.

Would you be happy in a newly built house that's about to collapse? Or with a pilot who has no licence? Do you want to live next to a factory that's pumping toxic waste into your water supply? Or get salmonella from a chicken pie that's been kept too long?

Of course not. So meeting industry standards is an essential. It's not an added bonus. If you have to work to industry standards, it's a good idea to:

• pay attention - a couple of seconds daydreaming when someone's giving instructions is all it takes to miss something vital
• be honest - people won't expect you to know everything so ask questions if you don't understand or need more information
• double check instructions - if you find that you're making assumptions, it normally means that you don't know exactly what you have to do or how. Ask someone. People want the job done properly the first time round so they won't mind telling you again
• concentrate on accuracy - it doesn't matter if you've missed a train or a bus by a couple of seconds or by a few minutes. You've missed it. The same is true of standards. You either do something accurately or you make a mistake
• keep checking your work - it's easy to get into the swing of things only to find out much later that you've been doing it wrong. Ask someone to check the first couple of bits so that you can correct mistakes before they cost an arm and a leg
• learn from your mistakes - it's normal to make mistakes but it's important to learn from them. People usually understand the first time round but tempers are likely to fray if you keeping getting it wrong!