2000 amp 120/208 panel working live

Sanity check please. My foreman wants JW and me to install a new circuit on a 2000amp 120/208 cabinet at a customers building. We ran the wires and wires up the sub panel two weeks ago and were waiting for a shutdown. Then yesterday our foreman informed us that doing a shutdown would be "too hard and take too many steps and the customer doesn't want the inconvenience", so here's an arc suit and have at it. I am a first year so I won't be touching any of it but it seems to me that this is a huge and unnecessary risk considering the customer is not a hospital or something critical. They are a random NGO that won't have anyone working in the building on the day.

The cabinet is very tight and among other hairy stuff, the job requires drilling into the ground and neutral busses to install lugs. That's within a foot of the hot bus, barely enough room to get a drill in.

When I brought my concerns to my foreman and JW, the foreman told me that if we open up the panel and dont feel comfortable, they'll go to the customer and do a shutdown. My JW (who is a very good electrician and a good friend but also a "special" person) freaked the fuck out, told me that I shouldn't be saying that thing are dangerous bc it's fucking with his head and he doesn't want me in the job site.

Am I nuts? For context, if he fucks it up, his mother will blame me. Any time he fucks anything up, she blames me. So I may be biased and off base.

Would you agree to do this job and take on the risk for no good reason?