The Impossible...

Certainly, miracles, well they take a little longer!

One of our site based surveyors came in to see me on Friday about the assignment he was working on and I couldn’t resist sharing his story with you.

Apparently the site surveyor working for our contractor client has been off sick for at least three months now. No surveyor has worked on the scheme for the last 2 months until they requested our involvement around four weeks ago. The reason: The client wanted some action from the contractor as variations were being missed! Great client.

So, we arrive as usual with a request to put things in order as quickly as possible. The task: To get on top of the compensation events. In excess of 100 of them!

GFP: When do you need us to get on top of it all by?

Client: Ah, well as soon as possible please.

GFP: What resources can you give us to help, what are your systems, and what do we need to adhere to?

Client: Oh we don’t know. We’ll tell you next week.

[Two weeks later...]

Client: Didn’t I tell you I was going on holiday now? What have you done in the meantime then?

GFP: Well, I’ve struggled to work my way round your systems. I’ve begged and borrowed from others to find out about your systems and have dealt with all sorts of subcontractors. After the first week, I managed to get a computer so I can log into your systems, I’ve put the files in order, read and understood the contract too (oh by the way, you didn’t tell us that there are five separate contracts, as there are five separate sites to control, each about £1M, all in different geographical locations…) So quite a bit I think!

Client: Huh, no progress on the compensation events then?

GFP: Well, errr, no actually not, but I’ve gone a long way to understanding your issues. But what I do need is the input from your site team to help me with understanding the resources you used on these issues as, remember, they all happened before I was here.

Client: Oh that’s mere detail, I’ll make the team available. Get on with the job won’t you!

And so the story goes…

All sound familiar?

Just a few days in the life of a professional quantity surveying support service!

I’ll keep you posted!