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.