If the sins of the father are visited on the children – my dad was bad!
My company pulled together significant sums of money for the construction of infrastructure. Feeling ill-equipped for the task I shopped around for good project managers. Enter Bob and Bob’s flunky aka BFF. No not my best friend forever, but Bob’s flunky forever!
The relationship between Bob and me was non-negotiable and in accordance with the standard industry documentation, Bob told me. It was in the final account a very unequal relationship. It effectively required me to give Bob, and as it turns out his genius nee flunky of choice my wallet, let him make all my decisions relating to the construction company and professional team, and bind me legally without any consequence for him. In short, when Bob and his BFF made a bad decision, the best I could do was rap myself on the knuckles, all the time staring at myself in the mirror muttering, “what a silly decision I made. Oh dear now I must bleed copiously while Bob, his BFF, and the builder laugh all the way to the bank. That will teach me to be silly”.
My concerns were met with, “don’t worry we’ve done this before thousands of times, we can handle it”. Any new ideas I had were parried with, “this is not how it is done in the industry”. Most impressive of all was that the Bob and BFF could calculate to the cent what the impact of my decisions would be on the tendered price over at least 5 years.
Loosely translated what I was being told was, “We have no idea what you are talking about so we won’t go there. Hopefully we will work it out before it goes pear-shaped but if we don’t we will find a convenient scapegoat – more than likely you or some other unsuspecting idiot professional. Mostly, we just don’t like it when girls could be right so we will speak really loudly over you and try to drown you out”.
I had endless arguments with BFF about the tender documents and the drawings. The contract was my biggest source of anxiety because it didn’t make English, or any other language including legalese. BFF told me not to worry so; the focus on Cambridge English usage was misspent time and energy. I persisted with much screaming and foul language to get what I wanted.
BFF also told me to begin construction without a signed contract. “Standard industry practice – you only need the contract if something goes wrong, which is seldom, and if the builder refuses to sign we can just rely on the court interpretation”. This contract was one of those seldom instances. Luckily I insisted on it being signed before work started and the Cambridge English contract I fought so hard for, though not perfect, stood me in good stead.
BFF’s great achievements didn’t end there. They included signing off on work which had not been done or had been done very poorly. Being a doubting Thomas, I went out with him to take a look. At the first building I discovered the walls (internal, external and feature) were skew to the naked eye. The reception counters were about eye-brow height, and the external doors opened against them making them inaccessible. The reasons ranged from “if I knew you wanted 5-star finishes I would have insisted on straight walls” to “staff shouldn’t sit because they fall asleep”. It was also pointed out to me that I was at fault for the doors blocking access to the counters because when I asked for the counters to be relocated I forgot to tell them to review the entire design. The pièce de résistance of course was the bubble in the concrete floor, “We just make a little hole in it and the trapped air will seep out and the concrete will settle. Voila, no more bubble”. Oh fool me! The horrors of the day grew. On the outside chance that I didn’t find the reasons he gave me for the mess-ups compelling enough, BFF found a scapegoat. Yep you got it, the other professionals – the architect, the electrical engineer, the civil engineer, anyone but him.
In the final account, I had to ask him to leave, I believe he now has a permanent post in Vietnam – not far enough if you ask me, and I met the CEO of the building company only to make a grown man cry. Too little too late I’m afraid. The builder went into liquidation and I have been left with peeling paint-work, non-functional conduits, rusting galvanised steel, leaking ceilings, and the like.
All I can say is that the term good project manager is a misnomer. So if you want to do reference checks call a friend, I cannot protect the guilty!