In the early history of ForeRunner, our administrative assistant brought up the idea of naming our conference rooms. I suggested that we name them after historical events. Nobody said no, so I gave them the names of different battles. No one ever asked why, simply writing it off to one of my many eccentricities. The battles chosen were never asked about either. As it happens, they are all from US history, but not the most well known. It may well be that today ForeRunner employees think the names simply obscure places on the map.
As it happens, they are all battles. To me they represent management lessons. They are metaphors for ideas and situations that I believed, at the time some 6-7 years ago, were important for me to remember. Many times as I have sat in those conference rooms, or walked by them, I have meditated on the lesson that I saw exemplified by the name on that room.
Over the years, things change. My perceptions of the way people work together and a company is managed have grown more nuanced. If you think on things over time, your thinking on that subject becomes more complex as well. A case in point is our smallest conference room. Its name is Monongahela, quite a mouthful unless you are from Pittsburgh.
The Battle of Monongahela took place in July of the year 1755 near the banks of that difficult to pronounce river. A large force of British and Colonial soldiers were marching from the Colony of Maryland to evict the French from what we now call Pittsburgh. Moving through the wilderness of the Pennsylvania forest, they had spent most of their march building a road to get them where they wanted to go. The British column had just crossed the river when they ran into a combined force of French and Indians. Though the British outnumbered the French and Indians by at least two to one, the British were routed and suffered what could only be described as a massacre.
Moving along a narrow road through the forest, the British were ambushed by their enemy firing from behind trees and rocks. British officers responded by attempting to form their men into line where they could fire in unison per the approved drills they had been taught. The officers out in the open were of course prime targets for those shooting at them from behind trees and were soon casualties. Firing lines of British soldiers waited for their dead officers and sergeants to issue orders to load their weapons. The choking clouds of dark grey smoke from the guns firing hid everything. Groups of Indian warriors crept up behind them with tomahawks intent on taking scalps. The heat and humidity of a Pennsylvania forest in July completed the hell for those British soldiers in their bright - red - woolen uniform coats.
I must admit that the situation always reminded me of a project. Moving from the ordered world of an engineering or design office, I would go to the job site. The behaviors and reasoning that served me well in an engineering office often failed completely in the very different environment of actually building what had been designed on paper. Monongahela was always a very personal warning to me about the dangers of being an "engineer" in the field or on a startup. I must be careful to take off my bright red woolen uniform and replace it with the buckskins of the French and Indians when I went on site.
Having learned to wear buckskins and face paint while on site over the years, I was often in a position to watch engineering companies on projects. Well versed in the parade ground drill of providing engineering packages, they ran afoul of the realities of client organizational politics or construction contractor/client alliances. Just as the lined up red coated soldiers of General Braddock were tomahawked from behind and scalped at Monongahela, so too were the engineers and designers of engineering companies ambushed by the non-technical realities of projects.
That is as far as my thinking went then. Heeding the implied lesson of Monongahela, we created an organization that was able to move from the engineering office to the field, and back again. We stressed a flat flexible organization that could move among the trees and rocks of our project fields as the French and Indians at Monongahela did. We focused on people that could operate in the smoke of an ongoing project. No parade ground drill for us. We were going to wear buckskin, not bright red woolen uniforms.
But we grew and our clients changed. Loose groups of savvy individuals work well until the project becomes more complex with higher standards of performance required. The French and Indians handled the ambush well, but only the British could build a road through the wilderness from Maryland to Pittsburgh in 1755. Being flexible was no longer enough. We needed to be able to handle the parade ground drill, and all that it implies, as well as the flexibility to deal with the unexpected.
It is useful to look at the British after Monongahela. They did win the war. After all, we speak English, not French. The British learned painful lessons there, but they learned how to maintain their organization and win in the forests of America. They didn't abandon their well drilled infantry in the bright red uniforms, but instead learned how to utilize tactical innovations like skirmish lines. They added elite forces like Rogers Rangers to scout and keep the French off balance. It was the British who captured Montreal on the Plain of Abraham to end the war, the French and Indians never came near New York or Boston.
So that is why we have a Monongahela Conference Room. It is a metaphor for where ForeRunner came from, and where it is going. We still wear buckskin. If you want to see bright red woolen uniforms, go to Buckingham Palace (or Jacobs or CH2MHill or Washington Group). But we can do the parade drill of engineering packages as well as anyone.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Tales from the Front
Recently we got one of those phone calls. On a Friday afternoon, the client, normally a nice guy and generally inclined to spend a large part of his conversation on pleasantries about what's on ESPN, spoke to us over the telephone in a tense voice. We needed to be at a meeting the following week to talk about "the project". Our questions met evasive answers by an individual who obviously wanted to cut the telephone call short.
After the initial flood of depression, we checked with our accounting department. Our suspicions were confirmed. This client had stopped paying their invoices nearly four months before. Just as surely as thunder follows lightning, clients not paying their bills means they are going to take us to task. What had looked to be an upcoming pleasant weekend now looked to be time spent in worry.
The meeting at the client facility passed as you might imagine. With no forewarning of what was to be talked about, we found out that we were seriously deficient as engineers, designers and professionals. Not only did the client project people chastise us, but a spreadsheet wizard from corporate headquarters added that ominous cloud of unspoken power which corporate projects so well. While we were not accused of moral turpitude, the accusation of sloppy work is close enough to it for people in our profession.
In defense of our client, they are in a bit of a sticky wicket. As a business, their margins are under very serious pressure and their stock price is suffering badly. They are in the middle of a very large expansion on multiple fronts of which we are a very minute part. And similar to most everyone else's large capital projects, the news on the cost and schedule front is uniformly bad.
So here we are. A productive relationship, nearly 5 years in length, is at risk. The client now owes us a substantial sum of money. Any question about settling this matter is stonewalled by the client. They have our work product and are using it for the purpose it was intended. They are talking about all the future work coming up and their need for our services. We have been here before.
How do we proceed? We have looked in detail at the "shoddy work". Its hard to see what the uproar is about. The client and contractor are demonstrably deviating from the construction drawings with predictable results. But are we being objective? Reasonable people need to sit down and deal with the issues.
From long experience, I know that the client has no intention of doing so until the project is over. At that point, the client has a functioning facility and has our money. The client is then the sole arbiter of right and wrong, as well as the consequences that accrue from that determination. We may then stand humbly before their desk with our hat in hand to receive what they choose to hand out, or pursue the nuclear option.
A good businessman reading this will wonder how we let our client get so far behind in paying his bills. A good question. Going back to our accounting department, we did ask the question. We have been diligent in calling the client accounts payable group on a regular basis. We have been regularly told that the invoices in question were lost or had been incorrectly code, additionally the client is in the midst of an accounting system upgrade. Such problems are so common with large clients that we did not suspect a problem, given the length and closeness of the relationship with the client. You may draw your own conclusions about the truth of those statements.
Business often makes me feel dirty. When I operate as a project professional, I can see myself making the world a better place. I can do what is "right" without stopping to count the cost. There is little gray in the world of the professional, there is simply black and white. Of course that is not true, but when I am in my professional world, I can fool myself that it is so. But there is always a cost and somebody has to count it. And pay it. That is the job of the business person. The world is a very gray place and there are consequences to everything, both good and bad.
Yet there is something about business. Business seems to allow us to forget those things our mother's (and father's) taught us about the way to live in the world. As I said, business hardly ever makes me feel good.
After the initial flood of depression, we checked with our accounting department. Our suspicions were confirmed. This client had stopped paying their invoices nearly four months before. Just as surely as thunder follows lightning, clients not paying their bills means they are going to take us to task. What had looked to be an upcoming pleasant weekend now looked to be time spent in worry.
The meeting at the client facility passed as you might imagine. With no forewarning of what was to be talked about, we found out that we were seriously deficient as engineers, designers and professionals. Not only did the client project people chastise us, but a spreadsheet wizard from corporate headquarters added that ominous cloud of unspoken power which corporate projects so well. While we were not accused of moral turpitude, the accusation of sloppy work is close enough to it for people in our profession.
In defense of our client, they are in a bit of a sticky wicket. As a business, their margins are under very serious pressure and their stock price is suffering badly. They are in the middle of a very large expansion on multiple fronts of which we are a very minute part. And similar to most everyone else's large capital projects, the news on the cost and schedule front is uniformly bad.
So here we are. A productive relationship, nearly 5 years in length, is at risk. The client now owes us a substantial sum of money. Any question about settling this matter is stonewalled by the client. They have our work product and are using it for the purpose it was intended. They are talking about all the future work coming up and their need for our services. We have been here before.
How do we proceed? We have looked in detail at the "shoddy work". Its hard to see what the uproar is about. The client and contractor are demonstrably deviating from the construction drawings with predictable results. But are we being objective? Reasonable people need to sit down and deal with the issues.
From long experience, I know that the client has no intention of doing so until the project is over. At that point, the client has a functioning facility and has our money. The client is then the sole arbiter of right and wrong, as well as the consequences that accrue from that determination. We may then stand humbly before their desk with our hat in hand to receive what they choose to hand out, or pursue the nuclear option.
A good businessman reading this will wonder how we let our client get so far behind in paying his bills. A good question. Going back to our accounting department, we did ask the question. We have been diligent in calling the client accounts payable group on a regular basis. We have been regularly told that the invoices in question were lost or had been incorrectly code, additionally the client is in the midst of an accounting system upgrade. Such problems are so common with large clients that we did not suspect a problem, given the length and closeness of the relationship with the client. You may draw your own conclusions about the truth of those statements.
Business often makes me feel dirty. When I operate as a project professional, I can see myself making the world a better place. I can do what is "right" without stopping to count the cost. There is little gray in the world of the professional, there is simply black and white. Of course that is not true, but when I am in my professional world, I can fool myself that it is so. But there is always a cost and somebody has to count it. And pay it. That is the job of the business person. The world is a very gray place and there are consequences to everything, both good and bad.
Yet there is something about business. Business seems to allow us to forget those things our mother's (and father's) taught us about the way to live in the world. As I said, business hardly ever makes me feel good.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Update on the House
As many of you know, I am building a house in the mountains. I say that because the subject of "how the house is coming", is usually what people ask about when they meet me. I am not a chatty guy and I suspect that most people struggle with what to talk about when they meet me in a situation where conversation is required. The truth is I struggle with what to talk about too. The well known pitfalls of building houses is a safe topic for both sides.
Safe at least conversationally. In other respects it is a perilous course indeed. As with any project, you don't know what you don't know, at least until you know it. And then, you knock yourself on the side of the head for not seeing the obvious. But then I am used to being thumped for missing the obvious. Not only have I been married for 34 years, but I have long acquaintance with clients.
The latest drama revolves around where the house is located. We have it located with precision on the drawing, to multiple decimal points in fact. We have designed it around the topography of the site. It is one with the land. On paper.
Actually the house will go on a spot of land that until late last fall was trackless forest. Of course being a professional with years of engineering under my belt, I brought in a surveyor to create a drawing of the site and its topography. Locating the shapeless box of the undesigned house on the created drawing, I engaged a contractor to cut down the trees for the driveway as well as the house site last October. Desiring to pour concrete for the house foundations as early as possible the next spring, the trees needed to come down last fall to accommodate our expected schedule. We needed to move fast to get this house built.
Over the winter months, design did not proceed with the dispatch assumed. And the footprint did change. Needless to say, we didn't pour concrete early this spring. Virtually all the assumptions about time and money driving my decisions last fall were wrong.
Since my wife is not an engineer, it often helps her to see things rather than just look at them on paper. In an effort to make the house more real to her, I took her and the drawings to the site in late May. We marked off the location of the house with stakes and string. To my surprise, the house was not exactly where I thought it was. To my surprise, there were a fair number of trees that need to be cut down.
But it seemed a fairly manageable number of trees to be removed. Since I anticipated construction to begin in a few weeks, we needed a contractor to begin work removing the trees in short order. As an engineer I know that only foolish general contractors do not require hard dollar subcontracts but not having the time to define the work scope exactly, I engaged a willing contractor to remove the trees on a $/tree basis. Since I had estimated the number of trees to be removed at around 30-40, I agreed on a generous figure per tree with the contractor. It also helped that he was my youngest son earning money for his last semester in college.
But remembering how the last contractor had mistakenly cut down trees that were marked to remain standing, I determined this time that I would mark all trees to be cut down with a large orange "X" spray painted on the trunk. Surprisingly enough, when I did this I found that I needed to cut down 85 trees rather than the estimated 30-40. My budget had just doubled. The contractor was very unwilling to renegotiate the rate. After all, he anticipated no repeat business from me.
About halfway through the work, a design change occurred, necessitating a small reroute of the driveway. With trepidation in my heart, I took my can of orange spray paint and the revised drawing to the site. Some time later the number of trees to be removed had grown to 180. Again the contractor proved unreceptive to renegotiation on the basic rate per tree. When I proposed that we withhold payment for the work already done to encourage our reluctant contractor's price discounting, my wife didn't think that would be nice. Telling her that my client's did it all the time in similar situations had little effect on her, and thus my, position.
Yesterday my son finished the job. As I sit here writing this I am anticipating his arrival and request for final payment. He is of course quite happy about the 450% overrun. Contemplating the resulting negative variance in my budget, I simply hit myself on the side of the head for missing the obvious.
Safe at least conversationally. In other respects it is a perilous course indeed. As with any project, you don't know what you don't know, at least until you know it. And then, you knock yourself on the side of the head for not seeing the obvious. But then I am used to being thumped for missing the obvious. Not only have I been married for 34 years, but I have long acquaintance with clients.
The latest drama revolves around where the house is located. We have it located with precision on the drawing, to multiple decimal points in fact. We have designed it around the topography of the site. It is one with the land. On paper.
Actually the house will go on a spot of land that until late last fall was trackless forest. Of course being a professional with years of engineering under my belt, I brought in a surveyor to create a drawing of the site and its topography. Locating the shapeless box of the undesigned house on the created drawing, I engaged a contractor to cut down the trees for the driveway as well as the house site last October. Desiring to pour concrete for the house foundations as early as possible the next spring, the trees needed to come down last fall to accommodate our expected schedule. We needed to move fast to get this house built.
Over the winter months, design did not proceed with the dispatch assumed. And the footprint did change. Needless to say, we didn't pour concrete early this spring. Virtually all the assumptions about time and money driving my decisions last fall were wrong.
Since my wife is not an engineer, it often helps her to see things rather than just look at them on paper. In an effort to make the house more real to her, I took her and the drawings to the site in late May. We marked off the location of the house with stakes and string. To my surprise, the house was not exactly where I thought it was. To my surprise, there were a fair number of trees that need to be cut down.
But it seemed a fairly manageable number of trees to be removed. Since I anticipated construction to begin in a few weeks, we needed a contractor to begin work removing the trees in short order. As an engineer I know that only foolish general contractors do not require hard dollar subcontracts but not having the time to define the work scope exactly, I engaged a willing contractor to remove the trees on a $/tree basis. Since I had estimated the number of trees to be removed at around 30-40, I agreed on a generous figure per tree with the contractor. It also helped that he was my youngest son earning money for his last semester in college.
But remembering how the last contractor had mistakenly cut down trees that were marked to remain standing, I determined this time that I would mark all trees to be cut down with a large orange "X" spray painted on the trunk. Surprisingly enough, when I did this I found that I needed to cut down 85 trees rather than the estimated 30-40. My budget had just doubled. The contractor was very unwilling to renegotiate the rate. After all, he anticipated no repeat business from me.
About halfway through the work, a design change occurred, necessitating a small reroute of the driveway. With trepidation in my heart, I took my can of orange spray paint and the revised drawing to the site. Some time later the number of trees to be removed had grown to 180. Again the contractor proved unreceptive to renegotiation on the basic rate per tree. When I proposed that we withhold payment for the work already done to encourage our reluctant contractor's price discounting, my wife didn't think that would be nice. Telling her that my client's did it all the time in similar situations had little effect on her, and thus my, position.
Yesterday my son finished the job. As I sit here writing this I am anticipating his arrival and request for final payment. He is of course quite happy about the 450% overrun. Contemplating the resulting negative variance in my budget, I simply hit myself on the side of the head for missing the obvious.
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