Kinda desperate for a solution to the sheer shit show I'm facing.
I work in a court in the UK as the maintenance guy/handyman, you can probably guess who I work for from that. I have a job where the isolation valve on a pipe is leaking. Fairly badly in the closed position and a steady stream in the open position, it's already causing damage to the basement and slowly flooding it.
There's no isolation that I can find and none of the hmcts gremlins in the office can give me a plan for the piping. I tried to install a aladdin isolator onto the pipe but while it installed fine something bound up and it's pretty much useless.
Now they want me to install a standard 15mm isolation valve onto a live pipe with no backup plan, I'm the only person permanently on site so all the responsibility, consequences and shouting end squarely with me.
I'm not a qualified plumber, is there anything else I can try or should I give them the offer of "hire a plumber from the contractor list or take my resignation with immediate effect"?
I'd run the whole situation by Copilot/ChatGPT with enough details of where you are located and what your contract officially is as the maintenance guy/handyman and see what it spouts out.
Leave off on the technical side of the isolation valve and your ideas for solving it. Just leave it as an open question as to public sector plumbing and the appropriate people required to maintain it.
When replying to the email that wants you to install a standard 15mm isolate vale onto a live pipe with no backup plan you should have enough information at your disposal to make sure the person who asked you to do it knows that they will be personally responsible for that action.
You could even has ChatGPT/Copilot write up the email for you (Check for em dashes and Oxford commas, those are giveaways that an AI/LLM helped you draught it) and that will keep it neutral in tone and exact to the law regarding the task.
Just make sure that all communications between you and those asking are in email form (Or documented at the very least). No email means they didn't ask and have no means of showing that they have.