Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Week 6.  7^th – 11^th May 2012

Bank Holiday weekend – well, I took the Monday morning off (recovery from a 125 mile bike ride in the snow, and a 20 mile run up some mountains), so that was nice!

But what else, I hear you say?  Well, the week was very much focussed around my Runcorn study into Distributed Engineering which has changed with time as my research developed.  What began with an investigation into methods of Cost Reporting and Cost Estimates – these being the much heralded excuse for delays from PSN’s Runcorn Design House, my recommendations came back saying that:

• Communications between Project Managers is excellent
• Current Cost Reporting methods are suitable; delays are inevitable and this can be relieved by a few more Cost Engineers in Runcorn

But more surprisingly (and damningly),

• The leadership from the PSN Aberdeen Delivery Manager and his Delivery Focal Points is weak
• The Delivery Manager in Runcorn needs to play his part as a leader better, and get himself a Project Services team ASAP
• If they don’t start working on morale, and make the (Runcorn) team feel like part of the Focus Project, they’re going to lose them, fast!

We sometimes forget how good people management is in the Army (compared with PSN, anyway!) 

Some context…  BP contract most of their design work to Wood Group PSN (abbreviated to PSN), who work alongside us (BP’s Projects and Mods Team) in Aberdeen as part of the Focus Project (fully integrated etc etc).  Because there is such a huge demand for work, they have a ‘third floor’ of the building situated in Runcorn, Cheshire, which currently employ 72 staff (compared to ~130 in Aberdeen).  A bunch of us from BP and PSN visited for a conference on Tuesday and frankly I was shocked.  The BP staff all got there on the red-eye flight, met the PSN guys in their office and put faces to the voices we’d been dealing with on the phone; really good stuff and great for cementing relationships that you can’t do by email.  The PSN guys rocked up late for the meeting, and didn’t even meet the main part of the team in their office, just the key management in the conference room.  And then were all out of there the next day at lunch, cutting a meeting short to do so!  We (BP) were there til mid-Wednesday afternoon and so could chat through all the bits and pieces; or use the wireless to crack on with routine work otherwise.  With this being the first conference of its type in Runcorn (the office was established in June 2011), most of the PSN (ABZ) contingent had never been there and seen the offices.

So one of my Programme Managers asked me my opinion, and I told it was all pretty piss-poor and bad mannered really; we’re all supposed to be the Focus Team, but PSN (ABZ) clearly didn’t give a flying fook about their staff in the South, who it transpired were kept massively in the dark on the big picture and thought it was all doom and gloom on the forecast (it’s not, its booming and they’ll be expanding!).  And clearly, that’s no way to run a team.  I continued to say that unless they bucked their ideas up they’d be haemorrhaging staff when better options come along (which is likely as there’s a big engineering boom around there).  Oh, and also that the presentations were pretty lame, there was no clear aims of agenda, the IT broke down (at one point their Plans man was talking with an A3 graph held up in front of his face) and they should be embarrassed.  So guess who gets to lead the next one!  Me and my big mouth…

The weekend – TMR writing and a bit of open water swimming at Loch Morlich – bloody freezing, but good training for the CELTMAN!!!!  See www.justgiving.com/chriswarner for more information 🙂