What's insane? I assume he is implying everyone is trying to go too fast?
On renovation work, there is always pressure from the club to set the start date back too far [so as not to disrupt late-summer and early-fall play], and then rush to do the work in the wrong season, and then to set a re-opening date before you see how the weather holds up the work.
But, in general, I prefer to work fast, and I don't think the quality of our shaping work suffers much at all when we go really fast. I am at Dismal River a week on this trip and with two great shapers working on it, we'll knock out six greens and a number of tees and a few greenside bunkers, and then hopefully get them irrigated just as quickly.
It's the finish work you have to allow plenty of time for. You rarely have a crew with as much experience as your shapers, and because the hole has already been pronounced "done" by the architect [for shaping and irrigation], everyone thinks it's just a matter of polishing it up and planting the grass.