Finally, after all the training and effort, your company is running like a well-tuned machine. Finally your Project Managers have grasped that Accounting needs details in order to keep track of the project’s expenses. And your Accountants have accepted that the Project Managers will never give them all the details, so they will need to double check the account codes before they post. Everything is perfect, and then…
Category Archives: Communication
Quick Decisions or Considered Decisions?
Recently we moved to a new house. Although we’ve moved quite a few times in the past, this move was different. In prior moves, we moved from one location to a new location—e.g. from Valencia, CA to Portland OR then to Coral Springs FL, etc. But this move was different because we moved from one condo to another condo in the same complex. Moving from the house in Virginia to the condo in Indiana was a challenging move and prompted us to discard, donate, or distribute to relatives a lot of our “stuff.” But this move was different. It was the first time our “stuff’ wasn’t loaded into a van and moved miles away.
This time, we patiently watched as the new place was being built. This time we were selecting flooring, faucets, tiles, you name it… And this is where all the problems started.
TweetFace Your Challenges
Glenn Ebersole once wrote an article entitled “Viewpoint: Construction industry faces financial challenges in 2015.” I’m not sure how many of these challenges were specific to 2015—it seems to me these challenges have been part of the construction industry for a long time—but perhaps it is telling that these challenges remain even today. The challenges he enumerates are:
Are You Well Connected?
When I was a child, there was a sticker on the telephone at the house of an old relative. Yes, I mean the telephone (there was just the one). The official looking AT&T sticker read “wait for dial tone.” When we visited, I’d wait for no one to be looking so I could pick up the phone and listen. Sure enough, there was always a dial tone–the days of waiting for an operator or mechanical switch to connect a circuit were already gone (I’m not that old). Things were connected!
Jazz Group or Big Band?
Every day I speak to owners or project managers at construction companies of various sizes. It’s my job to speak to these people and discover some of their pain points and issues regarding their project management system–if they even have one. On many occasions, I wind up speaking to small companies that do rather small projects. Most of the time, these companies either have no system in place or are using a series of stand-alone documents, emails and spreadsheets stored on a server so everyone has access. Since these are small companies, most of their projects get done, but not with real efficiency, nor without problems and mistakes.