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...