Milestones

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Perth, 19^th November 2013

10 Ten more to go…
From today onwards I am counting down to my 1000^th blog post! Can you believe it! It has been quite a journey that started way back in 2009. I would like to take this opportunity to ask all my readers to sent in your wishes, comments and feedbacks on how you have experienced the blog, what you have learned from the blog, what you like about the blog, how it has helped you in your life and so on, it does not matter anything you would like to say; all things that I will then feature in my 1000^th blog as a thank you to all of you out there that have supported me and have taken the time to read my blog, some I know nearly every day. Let’s hear it from you.

As it happens today was also a day of milestones. First of all it is my son’s birthday (Happy Birthday Ingmar!), secondly I had hefty discussions with one of my project clients about project milestones and more precisely the tender process. Setting out a time schedule is one thing, but making sure everyone follows in line is another one. What most people who create time schedules seem to forget or include is the time it takes to coordinate and approve the design and specifications. Origin of today’s discussion was the fact that I had reacted on a preliminary drawing issue intended for tender. The reason I had reacted (as was requested by the issuer, being the lead designer) was that here were clearly some coordination issues (I looked at lighting only) not being properly referenced and detailed in the drawings. Normal procedure; I comment and reply with any missing info which is then integrated in the final issue. My feedback however was seen as still being in design stage, which of course was not the case, I had just sketched up what needed still to be included as missing info.

The point being that the client was under the impression that all the final tender document was being issued while we were actually in the midst of doing the final coordination. Coordination is not something that happens simultaneously, it is often a step by step process or integration, checking and approving…that takes time. Issuing milestone dates therefore need to be realistic taking all these difficult to quantify times into consideration.

Light Watch 4-198: Many projects can be regarded as mile stones in one way or another. Cities from the older days were mostly built with stones as modern building materials did not exist. Venice is such old city and a report about some new lighting in Venice recently caught my eye…