How to Save A Project With A Yellow Legal Pad
R is one of those people whose potential just shines through right from the first time you meet him. He is one of those cheerful and good hearted people who is liked by everyone and has a great attitude about his work. At the time this story took place, R wasn’t the most experienced or battle tested. But it was obvious even back then that he was going places, and since then he has.
We were working in the project management equivalent of a sweat shop–unglamorous work, poor conditions and management that is focused on squashing dissent. The people and the work were both organized by difficulty, with the ground-up “new build” projects being the most challenging assignments.
R had been moved onto new build team mostly because he was up for the challenge. Remember, this was a heads down kind of place, filled with people who were either hanging on to the title of project manager by their fingernails or who had been beaten down so much they were afraid to do anything. At that time, R was succeeding because he was a good guy that everyone wanted to help, even contractors. He had completed a few projects, not all of them easy or perfect. But he was still that unjaded young soldier eager for the experience of war. He hadn’t yet developed the instinct or command that comes from fighting bloody battle after battle.
I knew all of this when he first shared his concerns about two new builds in the Tampa area. We had taken what we believed was a tolerable risk by giving both projects to the same general contractor, Acme. They assured us before award that they had the bandwidth and staff to handle both projects at the same time, and now they were failing on both. The client’s schedule was very rigid–when they are holding you to a strict 15-week schedule there is simply no room for error. If the GC gets behind by a week, its almost impossible to recover.
I drove from Fort Lauderdale straight across Alligator Alley and straight to the first jobsite. We didn’t have the roof on and we were supposed to deliver a move-in ready bank branch in 5 weeks. And this was over the Christmas holiday. I already hated my job and was already well into planning my exit. But I loved R and I wanted to see him succeed–or at least not get absolutely decimated on something where he was in way over his head. So I dug in.
We walked the project, we talked to as many subcontractors as we could on site. We realized quickly that there was no organization and no plan. Everyone was just aggravated and running wild on the project–as they usually will when there is no schedule and no supervision. So next we marveled at how fucked we were. We went on to the second project where we didn’t even have roof joists set. It was even further behind but it would be delivered a few weeks later. So we focused on the immediate threat–the Christmas baby.
It was late by this time and we checked into a hotel with our heads spinning. R and I agreed to meet for dinner and figure out what could be done. I brought a yellow legal pad and we got to work. Honestly, this is all I know how to do in a situation like this. We listed and grouped activities. We ran scenarios and timelines. We compressed and overlapped and started over. After a couple of hours we had the masterpiece in the photo above. That is a picture of the actual schedule, the actual pieces of paper that we carried into Acme’s office the following day.
During our “oh fuck we’re fucked” tour that day, we of course called an emergency meeting with Acme. Going in they were not particularly concerned and had the attitude of “well, we’ve always delivered for you before so we’ll find a way to deliver for you this time.” But it was super obvious that they didn’t actually have a plan or even a clue of how bad things were or what it would take to recover. To this day, I have no idea how we managed what happened next. I’m not sure if it was as simple as them gritting their teeth because they couldn’t afford to lose us as a client. Or if there was some unspoken energy coming from me that said, “buckle up boys, we’re doing this.” I think we started the meeting at about 9 am. I presented my yellow legal pad schedule. There were initially several attempts to find flaws in the plan or mansplain their way out of it. By about 11 am I think they started to realize that we were right and I knew I had them by 11:30 when they offered to order in lunch for all of us so that we could continue going through the plan. They bought in. Somehow. The project got done and delivered.
