Time Management: When clients miss deadlines, the snowball effect

Meeting deadlines is challenging enough, but what about when your client misses their deadline, which results in you struggling to meet your deadline? Over the past 16 years we have experienced a change in the way people interact in business, no, not quite right… a change in the way people interact in general. I am not complaining, I am trying to understand and hoping to help others understand what we are doing to each other.

There was a time when your word was as good as a signed document and a signed document was as good as money in the bank. But now it seems that people have a hard time keeping their word, as a result of outside pressure or personal logic, and signed contracts are in a constant state of negotiation, so how does this effect everyone involved?

When one party misses a deadline, it snowballs into problems for everyone down the line and pushes stress levels to the max. We recently had this happen, again, at the Nigro Firm. We are sure that everyone has to deal with these kind of delays and frustrations, but this is what it is like for us.

Signed contract = resources and time allocated to complete the review
When we are in contract negotiations with our clients we try to meet their needs and work with them to find solutions that are the best for everyone. Once this is accomplished we join in an agreement… and sign a contract. In this agreement is a strict time schedule. You can imagine that in the construction world time is a valuable commodity.

When we get a signed contract back from a client, we look at the start and completion dates and allocate resources to do the review work. The thing to realize, though, is that those resources are living, breathing human beings who have lives and care about their work and doing the best job possible.

Project shipped to us late = a review team stuck in limbo land
When a project just doesn’t show up, the entire review team is now adrift… in limbo land until we can learn what has happened and get a new schedule. While in limbo, we can’t do anything else… we can’t just decide to take the day off and go do something fun, or something on our honey-do list. Maybe the drawings will show up in a half hour. No, we have to hover around the phone, waiting impatiently until we know what’s up! It is extremely frustrating, the sense of not knowing what’s happening… of being lost and anxious. It is unsettling and does not set a good mood for the start of a project.

Delayed start date = compromised resources and schedule for everyone
A week delay in receiving the drawings may not just be as simple as pushing the completion date out by a week. That week may already be allocated to another project. Now what are we going to do? Shift work? Work overtime and weekends? Or perhaps, even worse, tell the client we can't do the job?

Challenged resources and tight schedule = stress for everyone
When all the breathing room is used up in our schedule (or anyone's schedule ) unpleasant things begin to happen...we either have to work evenings and weekends to get the job done by the original due date (even with the late start), or we are already doing that due to some other scheduling slips previously encountered (from another client) and we must then shift the completion date out much further than a week, or cut back on some of the review we can perform in the now shorter time frame. Typically everyone winds up unhappy… the reviewers get stressed and overworked, and the clients either don't get the review they want or must wait longer for it to be done and/or pay more. And none of these solutions are fun for anyone.

One party misses a deadline = everyone misses a deadline = everyone unhappy
When the project is late, what does that really mean? I can’t really say for sure, but I am going to imagine. It means the project manager who signed a contract with us has to find a way to say he/she couldn’t keep their word. Whether their fault or not, they have to accept they didn’t do what they said they would do. This can often put the project manager in a negative mood. From here on tensions rise, after all who can trust, believe or even count on the other one.

Over the years this problem of folks not doing what they say is happening more and more. Where does it begin and with who? It can happen anywhere along a long path of events, but when one person fails to do what they say, then the path falls apart and is broken. Anytime you do not do what you say, or promise, or agree upon in writing, you can be negatively effecting one, ten, a hundred, or thousands of other people. It snowballs.

However, flip side, what one person does can effect others in a positive way too. So, though we have been venting for a bit about what happens when one person makes a mistake, we also know how powerful one person can be with a positive action as well.

At the Nigro Firm, we do everything in our power to complete our coordination reviews by the date we have promised… and with over 16 years of business and over 200 projects reviewed, we have never been late. We hope we can keep saying that for many years to come.

Author: Shirley Nigro

Time Management: How to know when your team is working too many hours

Sometimes our reviewers take on tons of work and work many hours to meet their deadlines, which we greatly appreciate. But how do you know if your team is working too much?

Often an overworked team will display signs of stress, such as short tempers, mistakes in routine tasks, fatigue and impatience.

However, every team is unique and may display it's own unique side effects of working too many hours. Our team is no exception, please have fun with us and read our top ten list.

Top 10 Signs that the Nigro Firm Team is Working Too Much

10. Extra toothbrushes and other toiletries appear in the guest bath. We have a guest room for our team members that work late and don't want to drive home or for when one our team members gets stranded by a bad snow storm.

9. Both refrigerators are full of food, all three meals. We have two refrigerators at the office and when they are full of everything from eggs and bacon to steaks for the grill, we know that our team members have basically moved in and spend more time at the office than at home.

8. The dogs are working overtime. We have two beagles who work in the office as stress reducers and morale boosters and when they are working all of the time, the team is working around the clock as well. However, they are usually much better at taking exercise breaks and naps than the other team members.

7. Supplies dwindle. When everything from toilet paper to Diet Pepsi is running low and we have to make extra trips to Costco to resupply, we know our team is working a lot (and eating way too many M&M's).

6. The SEO consultant is cooking. When our SEO consultant walks into a room of hungry, scowling faces, she knows just what to do - feed them. Often when people are working tons of hours the first thing that goes out the window is healthy eating, so she will cook the team a home cooked meal.

5. Everything is funny. When our team is tired they laugh a lot and at very trivial and seemingly unfunny things. But since laughter is a great stress reducer, why not?

4. They can no longer speak English. When your team members start to refer to the bathroom as the room with the water and start calling Mountain Dew, Dr. Dew, you know they need a break.

3. They dream about architectural drawings. Remember that old Windows screen saver with the repeating, growing pipes? One of our team members actually dreamed that all night after checking plumbing drawings.

2. The Rangpur Gin is gone. When our supply of gin is gone or the scotch is getting low, we know the stress is high and people are settling in for the night...or celebrating?

1. A team member becomes spontaneously illiterate. This really happened, after days and days of checking drawings one of our reviewers walked into the room and said, "I can't check drawings anymore, I am illiterate."

Author: Pamela S. Stevens (SEO consultant and team cook)

Time Management: Construction project management

One way to save time is to start with good, clean construction drawings before groundbreaking.

Think about it- how much time do you spend submitting RFI's? How long does it take to deal with one change order? Or ten? Or 100? Do your jobs often involve lots of rework? Is your crew sitting around too much? You get the picture, document errors can be costly and they use up a lot of valuable time.

One of the projects we reviewed recently was to be built in a rather prestigious community and there were severe limits as to when actual construction could be occurring… and there was a strict deadline by which the project had to be complete (or there’d be kids sitting out on the street instead of in school!).

So not only did the project have to be completed on time, but strict noise ordinances limited the available construction hours.

This is a perfect scenario to benefit from a coordination review. Things can’t be fixed just by pushing more work hours in each day… it’s not an option. In this case, the project has to run smoothly according to its schedule. So every little bit helps and if we can can help you limit your RFI's and change orders, it may make the difference between you meeting or not meeting your completion date.

Author: Natalie Nigro