Tweet
One of our clients is giving us a hard time about our bills; specifically, the time spent. It only takes 5 minutes to hang a picture, ten minutes to install a keyboard tray, why did it take 8 hours to handle 15 such items. Well, here's why:
Here's the typical start to my day. They have a policy where contractors need to have daily authorization to enter the building. My contact (Dave) has forgotten about this ten of the past ten times since this policy was put in place. No problem, just call him. One problem, he never answers his phone or checks his messages. I've got to send him a text message to get him to call security. My days only started and already 15-30 minutes have been burned.
Now I'm in the building and I've got to go see Dave to get my task list for the day. I've been booked for days or weeks in advance, he knows I'm coming, he should be ready for me, but he's not. He's got a couple more finishing touches to put on the list, wait a bit for him. The fifteen minutes or so burnt here means that I've been on the clock for 30-45 minutes and have done absolutely nothing.
Finally I get the list and off to work I go. Not so fast. First I have to skim the list and find his errors. I need name, workstation #, building #, and requested task. As many as half of the items on the list are missing, a name here, a workstation there, some missing 3, some missing all 4 (I find out about this the next time in when he asks why item # 88 wasn't done). So once again I'm waiting for him to correct the list and give me a proper copy. 45-60 minutes in with no tangible work done.
So there goes the first hour, but now I'm off to the races. Here's where we hit impedence # 1, the buildings themselves. There are two buildings, five floors each, 500-1500 people per building. Problem #1 is courtesy of the designer; he decided to mix things up on each floor. A hallway that leads to a workstation area on 2 leads to a dead end supply room on 3. The way through on 4 is a dead end private office on 5. Navigating the floors is a constant challenge because of these changes floor by floor. The main problem however is just finding the right station. For various reasons ranging from non-aesthetically pleasing to inconvenience to update, they refuse to put workstation numbers on the workstations. As such, I have to carry around ten cumbersome 48"x36" floor plans, find it on the map, then follow the map to the location. To put this in perspective, imagine finding a house in a large neighbourhood with no street names or numbers on houses, all you've got is a bird's eye view map of the area. I need to find a landmark to find where I am on the map, count out the number of workstations on the map, then count them on the floor. Oh, and did I even mention the idiotic numbering they've got. Okay, so I'm looking for 2121, I find the 2100's on the map... okay 2118, 2119, 2120.... 2122, 2123.... WTF?!? Oh, 2121 is on the other side of the building for some idiotic reason. There are dozens of such examples scattered through the buildings. This, along with the sheer size of the buildings, means it 5-10 minutes just to get to the workstation.
So I've listed a couple of time wasters, but these pale in comparison to the biggest time waster of them all - the list; specifically, errors in the list. I noted how I skim the list to find the immediate errors, well, what I didn't notice was a few unclear instructions. Item 72: re-configure station. Okay, this can mean a five second swap of panel tiles, a five hour complete re-design, or anything in between. Phone Dave, get no answer, hunt him down, 15-30 minutes wasted. Item 77: install keyboard tray. No problem, except that he didn't bother to check it out to find out that the keyboard tray he gave me won't work. Item 83: install 72" whiteboard. No problem, except that the wall they want it on is only 60". My point here is that there are a number of items that lead to questions, questions that I can't get answered by phone, so I've got to waste 15-30 minutes on each one just trying to find Dave and get an answer. Then there's the mistakes that I couldn't have known about. Dave is famous for transposing numbers, I track down 3152, and it's the wrong person; I need 3512, 10 minutes wasted to realize this mistake, 15 minutes to track down Dave, 10 minutes to find the right station, 5 minutes to handle the item. 40 minutes spent on a 5 minute job. When I'm in the second building, these errors can take more than an hour because I've got to go back to building 1 to get my answer, then back to building 2 to do the work.
I've had a couple of frank discussions with all parties involved. I pulled no punches talking to my boss, and I was professionally impolite in my discussion with Dave and his boss. I showed Dave's boss one of my workorders from him, she couldn't figure out what all the lines, arrows, cross-outs, and write ins were about. I explained how those are all questions, errors, unclear items, etc. All stuff that is supposed to be cleared up before I'm handed the list. I've kept a copy of each one, so there's no disputing the problems I've had due to Dave's incompetence.
So I told them that I'll give a minute by minute account of my day the next time in just so they can see exactly where the time goes. Dave has promised to clean up his act, and the tenth time is always the charm, but with his boss on his ass maybe he finally will. If he does it may look bad on me to finish quicker, but on the other hand, I can explain that this is how quick I'd always be if I were always given a proper list.
Here's the typical start to my day. They have a policy where contractors need to have daily authorization to enter the building. My contact (Dave) has forgotten about this ten of the past ten times since this policy was put in place. No problem, just call him. One problem, he never answers his phone or checks his messages. I've got to send him a text message to get him to call security. My days only started and already 15-30 minutes have been burned.
Now I'm in the building and I've got to go see Dave to get my task list for the day. I've been booked for days or weeks in advance, he knows I'm coming, he should be ready for me, but he's not. He's got a couple more finishing touches to put on the list, wait a bit for him. The fifteen minutes or so burnt here means that I've been on the clock for 30-45 minutes and have done absolutely nothing.
Finally I get the list and off to work I go. Not so fast. First I have to skim the list and find his errors. I need name, workstation #, building #, and requested task. As many as half of the items on the list are missing, a name here, a workstation there, some missing 3, some missing all 4 (I find out about this the next time in when he asks why item # 88 wasn't done). So once again I'm waiting for him to correct the list and give me a proper copy. 45-60 minutes in with no tangible work done.
So there goes the first hour, but now I'm off to the races. Here's where we hit impedence # 1, the buildings themselves. There are two buildings, five floors each, 500-1500 people per building. Problem #1 is courtesy of the designer; he decided to mix things up on each floor. A hallway that leads to a workstation area on 2 leads to a dead end supply room on 3. The way through on 4 is a dead end private office on 5. Navigating the floors is a constant challenge because of these changes floor by floor. The main problem however is just finding the right station. For various reasons ranging from non-aesthetically pleasing to inconvenience to update, they refuse to put workstation numbers on the workstations. As such, I have to carry around ten cumbersome 48"x36" floor plans, find it on the map, then follow the map to the location. To put this in perspective, imagine finding a house in a large neighbourhood with no street names or numbers on houses, all you've got is a bird's eye view map of the area. I need to find a landmark to find where I am on the map, count out the number of workstations on the map, then count them on the floor. Oh, and did I even mention the idiotic numbering they've got. Okay, so I'm looking for 2121, I find the 2100's on the map... okay 2118, 2119, 2120.... 2122, 2123.... WTF?!? Oh, 2121 is on the other side of the building for some idiotic reason. There are dozens of such examples scattered through the buildings. This, along with the sheer size of the buildings, means it 5-10 minutes just to get to the workstation.
So I've listed a couple of time wasters, but these pale in comparison to the biggest time waster of them all - the list; specifically, errors in the list. I noted how I skim the list to find the immediate errors, well, what I didn't notice was a few unclear instructions. Item 72: re-configure station. Okay, this can mean a five second swap of panel tiles, a five hour complete re-design, or anything in between. Phone Dave, get no answer, hunt him down, 15-30 minutes wasted. Item 77: install keyboard tray. No problem, except that he didn't bother to check it out to find out that the keyboard tray he gave me won't work. Item 83: install 72" whiteboard. No problem, except that the wall they want it on is only 60". My point here is that there are a number of items that lead to questions, questions that I can't get answered by phone, so I've got to waste 15-30 minutes on each one just trying to find Dave and get an answer. Then there's the mistakes that I couldn't have known about. Dave is famous for transposing numbers, I track down 3152, and it's the wrong person; I need 3512, 10 minutes wasted to realize this mistake, 15 minutes to track down Dave, 10 minutes to find the right station, 5 minutes to handle the item. 40 minutes spent on a 5 minute job. When I'm in the second building, these errors can take more than an hour because I've got to go back to building 1 to get my answer, then back to building 2 to do the work.
I've had a couple of frank discussions with all parties involved. I pulled no punches talking to my boss, and I was professionally impolite in my discussion with Dave and his boss. I showed Dave's boss one of my workorders from him, she couldn't figure out what all the lines, arrows, cross-outs, and write ins were about. I explained how those are all questions, errors, unclear items, etc. All stuff that is supposed to be cleared up before I'm handed the list. I've kept a copy of each one, so there's no disputing the problems I've had due to Dave's incompetence.
So I told them that I'll give a minute by minute account of my day the next time in just so they can see exactly where the time goes. Dave has promised to clean up his act, and the tenth time is always the charm, but with his boss on his ass maybe he finally will. If he does it may look bad on me to finish quicker, but on the other hand, I can explain that this is how quick I'd always be if I were always given a proper list.
Comment