A very soft opening
Singapore 1st August 2011
Back in Singapore after a long day and along night with little sleep. After working Saturday night till the early morning hours I had another full on day Sunday in Goa before heading straight to the airport for my connecting flight to Mumbai and onwards overnight to Singapore. On arrival in Mumbai it was pandemonium as it was raining heavily and with no taxi’s available there was a monster queue for the international transfer shuttle, some having waited in line for nearly 2 hrs. Luckily I was not on a tight schedule and with some clever “manoeuvering” managed to cut my waiting about 30 mins only…but still.
Meanwhile the hotel has soft opened today in Goa with a major function with about 1000 delegates this coming weekend! Just before I left I had a last peptalk meeting with the site team and sub contractors to make sure every one was on the same page and left them with a long “to-do-list” to follow up on. In my long career I have commissioned many hotels and have come across many challenges but I must say this one is surely one of the biggests and toughests. I can write a book about it and already shared some experiences in my blog over the last few days.
To recap some of the issues that are affecting the progress and end result. First I found out that the drawings used on site are not our final construction drawings in some case they were working of 50% DD drawings! Don’t have to spell out what that means… Further in procurement some short cuts were take to safe as much as possible with as result alternative or stripped down light fixtures to deal with, obvioulsy not really helpful in achieving the desired lighting effects. Some one decided that energy saving was important and had all the decoratve fixtures such as chandeliers,pendants and wall sconces fitted with compact fluoresent lamps! Not really helpful if all these circuits are wired to our dimmig system. All that of course without any consultation with us. I already blogged about the covelights and the wiring mess…
But it is not all doom and gloom, in Light Watch today some nice mood pictures from the site. It will look stunning when completed but we still have some road to travel to get there. As the designers we know each and everydetail and know how it could look like, perfectionists as we are. But newly arriving hotel guests don’t and those who already came in were full of praise…
Light Watch 133:
Tea lounge and reception area at night
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