Middle Management Blues

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 ...