The Merry Month : Robert Merry weighs it up
Robert Merry, an independent Stone Consultant and Project Manager who ran his own company for 17 years and now also runs training courses on project management, gives his personal slant on the stone industry this month.
I’ve been thinking about the notion of ‘balance’. My childhood bestist mate’s Dad died last week and I went to his funeral. He was 90. A good innings on a good wicket.
On the other hand, one of the contractors’ manager’s on the project I am working on had a week off to look after his wife and their newly born baby boy, 3.99kilos (8lbs 8oz to you imperialists). Clearly a future hod carrier in the making (only joking – Managing Director at 21 – multi millionaire at 25, no doubt – lots of money in bricks!). For every death there is a birth?
A magazine I regularly read headlined with ‘Beginning of 2011 sees first rise in insolvencies for five years’. Then on the next page the headline read: ‘Contracts at five-year high’. An article followed explaining that order books have not been this full since 2007. Balanced reporting?
On the building site I am working on, similar extremes exist. At one moment the focus of attention of the whole project management team is on the stone company. “You promised this would be finished this morning.”
At 2pm there is an unscheduled project manager walkabout. A brief text summons us to the room where marble is being fixed. Our site manager, Shane, explains that the grout selection process is flawed and that if we had finished this morning, the grout would have had to come out. No comment from client.
The client moves to another room. “When are you finished in here?”
We reply: “End of the week.”
He responds “But the programme says… blah… blah… blah.”
We explain that there have been delays due to other trades. We wait for the contracts manager to take over. Eventually he does, and the heat moves from us and on to someone else.
In contrast to this, two days go by without any hassle.
We assist the main contractors. They assist us. We jolly along, not on programme but not far behind, with good intentions, smiles and collective effort. Hope emerges.
On day three, the client summons us again. More questions. More probing. And more disappointed faces. ‘Hope’ takes a good kicking and our faces drop to our boots.
And so it goes on. Around and around. Or, more accurately, up and down. A few days when you feel on top of it all followed by sharp reminders of why you are not. A balance of sorts.
Two contracts managers in the site office started hurling abuse at one another last week. There was no physical contact. It was a strange affair to witness. As the insults grew more aggressive and bluer they moved further apart until one of them eventually left the room grumbling a final salvo, unrepeatable here.
The next day I asked one of them if it was all resolved. “Yes,” he said. “We’ve reached an agreement… as long as he stays out of my way.”
From war to working truce, if a little wobbly. Balance restored.
There is balance in most things. And among all this human angst about life, meeting deadlines, falling out and making up, the stone sits – admired by some, snagged and criticised by others, but ageless, anchored and always perfectly in balance.