Middle Management Blues

Expectations are a terrible thing.  The gulag, my last place of work, was/is a Fortune 500 company and a very large manufacturing entity in the region, and the #1 taxpayer in its county.  Most people in this thriving midget metropolis know where it is and what it does.  If you sell something, it is the #1 stop to make, because if you can make it there (albeit temporarily unless you are a huge BKL ), you can make it anywhere.  As the place is populated by whiskers and tails in the management ranks, and sometimes below that, if something goes wrong they always (and I mean always) look for someone to blame.  It’s most convenient to blame the vendors and the contractors, since by their very nature they are transient.  If we ran one of them off, whether it was their fault or not, there was always another willing to take their place.  And there really wasn’t any point for them to make a fuss about it, because they become nobody really quickly. In these lit...

In which I can’t stop bitching about our EPC… Maybe because I’ve always been on the owner’s side of the equation, I have an owner’s outlook on how a consulting engineer (or in this case an EPC) should perform.  It goes something like this: Dude, I’m paying you to make my life easier.  If I had the time I would do it myself.  I can forgive the odd mistake or two because I am not perfect.  I’m not infinitely patient, though.  I’ll give you plenty of feedback along the way.  If your calculations show I need four bolts to hold something together, I want four bolts; not five, not six, not eight; four.  If I tell you I want the design done on Thursday, I don’t want it delivered on the following Wednesday, but if I’m being unreasonable I want to know about it.  Don’t blow me off.  If a vendor screws you over, tell me and then figure out what it will mean down the road.  I want all the documentation the vendor sends to you.  If y...

I got into an argument with my boss this afternoon.  He gets his Sports Illustrated delivered to work for a reason I have not been able to fathom, and he was reviewing their list of the fifty highest-paid athletes.  I have admitted that I generally don’t read SI until it has been sitting on the coffee table for a week because it often hypes the athletes in ways that defy reality.  But anyway, this was a straight-up list of who makes how much - salary, incentives and endorsements.  The second jock listed was LeBron James.  He made $56 million last year.  For “playing a dam game,” as my boss pointed out.  Now I must admit that I am not a James fan in the slightest.  I certainly appreciate his gifts and how he has made himself into the best basketball player in the world.  Without him his team would be good, but not so good they’d be marching toward their second straight title in June.  Does that make him worth $56 MM?  Bill Simmon...

Click here for part 1 New liaison, new priority.  Screw doing it right - we need to save money.  Thus... “I know the pipe spec calls for 316 stainless, but we can save some money if we…” “I know the pump spec is for [insert good pump manufacturer] but we can save money if we…” “I know the design called for a redundant spare, but we can save money if we…” “The DCS vendor wants too much money.  Let’s go with these other guys…” “Nobody told us we would have to interface our PLC with your DCS…” I just picked five at random.  There were many more.  Let’s focus on the second one for giggles.  The difference in purchase price between the pumps was $1000.  Great – we saved a grand.  BUT.  Now the EPC writes an ECN (Engineering Change Notice), re-designs the piping or the base or even the electrical, and now your $1000 savings might have only saved $200 and now you are stuck with a sh_tty pump (since start up I've already had to...

As you might remember from previous posts, our plant is nearly brand new.  We had the usual start-up issues but we’ve also had a ton of duh issues owing to a half-assed project management, both from us and from our design engineering firm.  We should have done better but the company was worried about money; the design firm should have done better but they were more focused on taking our cash. I do have some bona fides for this sort of thing.  I started life as a design engineer and quickly determined my interests swayed more toward project management.  The nice thing about the switch was that I had enough design experience that I could divide my time between directing the design and actually running the project.  I had always thought that design and management were nearly one and the same but they aren’t.  The designer is the pilot and the PM is the air-traffic controller.  If the pilots are flying around on their own without much direction you ...

It’s looking like our dear little start-up is going to survive.  According to the latest AP reports (that would be Anonymous Perceptions, not the other), all that’s left is for the lawyers to nod and the checks to clear.  Which would be a relief to my family and many others… I’ve taken advantage of our hiatus by catching up on all the “nice-to-dos” that I did not have time to complete when I was playing all the parts on Sgt. Pepper’s at the same time.  We hope you will enjoy the show.  I feel a little guilty about it, but it looks like things will ramp up to 11 again soon. Those of us who survived the purge sat down and reviewed all the tasks necessary to get the plant back up and running.  Towards the end of the bogsat we discussed the changes we thought we needed to make to ensure things go more smoothly than before.  We’d like to take you home with us; we’d love to take you home.  The longer it went, the madder I got. If you have ever read b...