Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

A few weeks ago whilst setting up for my weekly commissioning mtg I noticed that the projector wasn’t working. This is one of only two projectors JHG have in K Block (project office) and they pretty much get hammered all week; so no surprises that one would give up the ghost at some point.

However, two things struck me as a surprise, firstly was that the projector had clearly not been working prior to my mtg and so had broken on ‘someone else’s’ watch; the assumption being, that particular ‘someone else’ had reported it in order to get it fixed/replaced – sadly not the case. This is a clear example of bad admin/slopping the shoulder, so when I asked one of the services co-ordinators to report it, it was the first HR at heard of it.

The second surprise was much more shocking. After HR had put a request in to the IT dept, which were apparently absolutely useless, all they could come back with was ‘we cannot provide you with a spare and suggest you might be able to borrow one from Head Office but they have no spare either’. So how about purchasing a new one? Accounts won’t approve purchasing another one this late into the project – really, really!

A quick google search for a similar standard model of projector found this for $800 approx. £400:

And there are cheaper ones at around $600.

I could think of lots of examples where this project is wasting that sort of money and it’s not even like it has to be purely associated to the project as it can be reused for subsequent projects to come.

So What?

Does this mean Friday beers and pizza will be stopping????

We will just have to make-do with the one we have, although it has already caused issues and what happens when that one decides to break?

I may approach our services director and see if he can purchase one independantly thus circumventing the IT dept.

In Other News

It’s the Aussie Footie League (AFL) grand final this weekend with the local Perth team, the West Coast Eagles, well up for it – Come on the Eagles!