I was Plans Officer at the Naval Telecommunications Station in Bahrain, responsible for a $20 Million upgrade in our telecom capability to the Middle East warfighter. I had the Pentagon sending me emails! I had a DoD customer; a British contractor; a Bahraini subcontractor and Pakistani laborers. Not only did I have to translate UK wiring colors red/yellow/blue to US colors red/white/black, I had to be an ambassador to all these different people and cultures.
One of the trickiest aspects was the waveguide run carrying the
high-powered radio energy to a massive dish inside a geodesic dome (to keep the humidity below 15% - if you stayed in it more than a half hour you'd get a nosebleed from the dry air). It could have no more than (classified) turns in the waveguide: so we had to place the transmitter in our new building in perfect alignment with the dish, way out there in the dome. If there were any deviations, it would reflect that
high-powered radio energy back into the transmitter and burn it up (you radio folks understand how bad excessive VSWR is).
The waveguide would be buried for protection and only pop up from its six inch depth at both ends. The Pakistanis were hand digging this long waveguide trench from the dome back to the building (at least two hundred feet). In the heat of the day in Bahrain. All day, every day. My team and I were measuring from precisely where this transmitter was going to go (in a building only partially constructed) all the way out to the dome and the dish's planned emitter input port. I discovered that, just at the brick base of the building, their trench was off alignment by three inches. I pointed that out to the Pakistani foreman and he simply nodded his head, side to side in common Indian subcontinent fashion, saying "no problem, no problem"... while I was responding with "yes, problem!"
After pointing this out to the Bahraini boss and explaining how critical this alignment was, the poor Pakistanis, working in the heat of the day, had to re-dig that trench... just three inches over. No wonder I drank so much! The Pakistanis probably went home every night thinking, "oh, that American!"
(The good news is that all projects were finished ahead of schedule and under budget)