Tag: Project manager

Hand in your badge and gun

28012009312

A project manager mate of mine arrived at his site office last Friday. He was greeted with the normal scene: union delegates arguing about subcontractors having the audacity to employ people who are not 100% unionised; subcontractors with not enough resources; and emails from the client’s representative refusing perfectly valid variations. He had made a decision which would upset head office and may make him a pariah as far as future promotion was concerned. He was taking Saturday off to have a full weekend with his wife.

Although his annual salary far exceeds the “average Australian” if it is divided by the number of hours he works, his hourly rate is less than a site labourer. But he has a passion for construction. That passion cost him his first marriage, drove him to the occasional drink, and evolved him into a dad his children did not know or particularly like. But his passion was a major factor in driving him to deliver project after project for his employer.

As Friday wore on, and the normal dramas of the day were crossed off the to do list, he decided it was time for his daily “walk about. However, as he reached for his hard hat, he received a text from his operations manager. Not a personal visit or a phone call, just a text which read verbatim: “Company ceased trading, get everyone off site, lock the gates, take only personal belongings report to head office immediately”. Yes the company had gone broke.

This has happened to many of us in the construction industry, we end up with broken relationships, heart attacks through stress, and the stigma that goes with having been the PM on “that job, for “that mob” who screwed their subcontractors. Sometimes the bloke delivering the project gets screwed as well.

Now he has to wait and see if he will get his entitlements, find a job, and still keep his passion for his next employer. His comment to me “Well at least I have finished paying child support, I think it is time for a spot of fishing”

So if you are reading this mate, go easy on the Johnny Walker, enjoy the fishing and it may be a good idea to take your wife with you or you might get made redundant there as well, then you will be looking for wife number 3.

by Gerry Keating

https://gkeating.com/

The jungle is dense and the river is deep

This little gem of advice was given to me some years back up in the farthest reaches of Kalimantan (Borneo as we used to call it). I was PM on my first resources project, building new infrastructure on a brand new open cut coal mine.

The team consisted of me,  my resident engineer, a contracts manager and 750 locals. The project included all buildings, plant maintenance facilities, barge loading, purchase of all mine plant, and a 45 Klm haul road. Total value about $US100m. All carried out through virgin rain forest with the only access by sea or helicopter. That was the construction side, but the other part of the project was to set up a cost structure for getting the coal out of the ground, taking it to the river, loading barges and delivering it to coal ships moored in deep water. A cost structure that would accurately manage costs and report/forecast on the profitability of the business.

The mine was Indonesian owned and the owners had a very simple philosophy. They knew how much they could sell a tonne of coal for, so they simply wanted to know the cost of getting it out of the ground and delivered to their clients’ ships.

The way it had been set up was haphazard with all subcontractors charging on a cost plus basis. One of my tasks was simply to stop this and get everyone working on fixed price lump sum term contracts. Maybe easy to do in sunny Brisbane but a bit more challenging in deepest Kalimantan. So I set about the task by working out what it was costing, the average selling price of coal project over the next three years, discounted cash flows, capital investment, the normal run of the mill spreadsheet heaven.

I called a meeting of about 100 subcontractors, all locals. They turned up in pretty much the same uniform of shorts, ripped off tee shirts, and many with ubiquitous parangs (you call that a knife, a parang is a big bloody knife). So with my interpreter I commence my spiel, being ultra careful not to point, raise my feet to expose the soles etc etc. After about twenty minutes of extolling the virtues of the certainties of fixed price arrangements, the win win relationship plus all sorts of similar management speak, a small figure at the back stood up. Not only did the audience go quite, my Indonesian interpreter went visibly pail. The interlocutor spoke firmly for ten seconds and the room if it were possible went even quieter. My interpreter was reluctant to speak but after physically prodding him for the translation, he whispered to me, a feat in itself as I was two foot taller than him, that the firm spoken speaker had said, “The rivers are deep and the jungle is dense”.

I was baffled and asked him what does he mean. My diminutive friend responded in his best interpretation of my scouse accent, “Er keep this up mate and you won’t be going home in a box ‘cos they won’t find yer body pal”

I ditched fixed price negotiations immediately and from that point on we were all friends. The infrastructure was completed, the price of coal to China went up, the subbies made money, the client smiled (or was it wind) and I flew home a year later business class.

Communication for Project Managers

Project Management Knowledge Areas
Image via Wikipedia

OK you have your first project as PM. There is nowhere to hide, nobody to blame, it is down to you, as we say in Australia “sh*t or bust.

I remember the day I was given my first project, and I mean real project ie tower cranes and unions. I had a mentor at the time and he said once I had delivered the project I should treat myself, and I did. I bought a Tag Heuer watch which I still wear every day. At the time it cost as much as a small car but every time I look at the watch it reminds me of my mentor and how I got my first “real” project under my belt.

I could bleat on about project management, the watch was 16 years ago, but what my current issue is communication and systems. There is  information we store for future use if needed and there is communication which  (I hate to use  IT geek speak) involves workflows.

So what is a workflow and what do we store for the future, workflow is communication that requires response, action, follow-ups and can cost you dollars, storage is what we keep if we have to prove the workflow.

Currently Sharepoint is well used as the storage facility or document repository.

The following quote whose source I have omitted for his personal reasons is seminal:

“In a panel discussion on SharePoint as a social platform, the consensus was that SharePoint contains many of the ingredients of a social application, but by itself doesn’t get you all the way there–not without extensive customization or the addition of a third-party product such as NewsGator Social Sites.”

Unfortunately some misguided IT professional believe Sharepoint can manage workflow as well, and in tandem with being a document repository. They are wrong and out of touch. Project Managers need information in real time and there are many proprietary software packages that will give them the information they need.

I am looking forward to the day when we bury Sharepoint as a workflow engine and linked spreadsheets developed in house to satisfy needs which can be met by software which is already available.

Related articles

Strengths and Weaknesses

Trajan's Column - Roman Soldiers Building a Fo...

All the successful project managers I have known have had a common thread. They have certain traits that distinguish them from other PMs or other members of the project team.

I decided to hit the keyboard on the subject as I have been talking with perspective employers about the next project. Invariably the question they all ask is what are your strengths? (easy peasy) but you know what is next – what are your weaknesses?

Now I have hire many staff over the years from Project Directors on $2billion projects to site clerks, and I have asked the same questions. The hard part is divorcing the kind of person you want as the employer and deciding on the right person for the project. I have hired people who could be the most difficult, recalcitrant and plain bloody minded but they were right for the job. I have also hired people that I thought at interview were marvelous people, and they were, but you would not put them in charge of a free bar.

Now when I am asked about my strengths I admit that I trot out the normal stuff. I will use one word for each: team, relationships, example, foresight, leadership, tenacious, focussed, driven, professional, experience etc etc. I usually add a few others that satisfied clients have used about some completed projects: the shark, hit-the-ground-running, and my favorite which I was described as by a very influential Arab developer – Mr Wolf

So how to respond to the “Weakness” question. You need to be honest. I have had people become more humble than Uriah Heap and advise them to try social work not project management. I have had some who have no weaknesses (next candidate please). The secret is be prepared for the question as it always gets asked.

But returning to the common thread and PM’s traits there is one weakness that does surface in many of us. That is we take over a team member’s critical tasks sometimes if that person is struggling. Yes as good leaders we know that people make mistakes and we council, train, “mother hen” them. We don’t let them go under. But the response during the interview is usually on the lines:

“some people may see it as a weakness but when a team member is struggling with a critical task I go out of my way to help them achieve the goal they are striving for”

My response is as Mr Wolf “I solve problems”

Give us the resources to do the job

The picture explains what the project managers...
Image via Wikipedia

Construction project managers have similar issues the world over, no matter the size or complexity of the projects they manage – resources. The way it should work is a budget is given to the PM to manage, he is responsible so let him get on with it.

But in many companies project teams are invariably understaffed, under funded, and micro managed by head office bean counters.

For example, the chief accountant discovers coloured photocopies discarded by the photocopier shared by 30 staff and is apoplectic with rage. “These cost 18 cents each, use black and white only” he screams, but when asked to get an IT person in to change the default network setting it just never happens. The change setting is simple but it is the levels of security to go through that are the issue. We cannot have project managers who deliver multi million dollar buildings changing print settings, that spells the end of civilization as we know it.

Thousands of dollars are spent on document management systems, we move to cloud storage, and expect our concrete subcontractor to not only download and print the drawings, but to join the project electronic communication merry go round. But ask for a part time document controller and you are sure to be disappointed. Then someone has the shear temerity to point out that with electronic issuing of drawings nobody is actually reviewing the drawing changes. Thousands of dollars of design changes are being left unclaimed. Who is responsible, yes the project manager, but if they had the resources…………………