Silver Spoon, Wooden Spoon
My design attachment has been very different from what I expected (I blogged about this a few weeks ago).
It seemed as though I had been given the silver spoon with the design manager job for the Calder Highway Overtaking Lanes (CHOTL). It doesn’t give me quite as much depth as I was hoping for, but the breadth is there in terms of attribute achievement. But it would seem that with my silver came a wooden one too…
I don’t have much else to focus on in the office (anything, in fact). Managing the CHOTL project has busy days and quiet days. As a Contractor seconded to GHD, I have to fill in a weekly timesheet that charges to whatever job I am working on. I was ‘sold’ to GHD by JHG, promising 40 hours per week for them to do with me what they will.
The issue I raised this end yesterday is that I am here until the middle/end of June. The estimate for the CHOTL project only allows 150 hours of my time (3.5 weeks full time). So the more time I invest in my project (or charge to it, at least), the greater my chance of going over budget. If I clock in fewer hours then GHD is ‘not getting their money’s worth’. Seems a little short sighted sticking me on a modest lump-sum agreement project with a 12 week timeline and when I can only apply myself for a third of it.
If I was GHD, I would be frantically trying to find a bigger project with a bigger Client to charge me to.
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
Sorry Daz, I’m a bit confused. Do GHD pay JHG for your time?
Rich, the agreement between PEW and JHG stands. JHG had no design work going and could not offer me a worthwhile Ph3 attachment. I’m basically being sub-contracted to GHD. JHG pay the usual costs (rent etc.) and pass the bill to GHD. ‘Work’ costs have nothing to do with JHG. Does that make sense?
Makes complete sense.
So GHD are expecting to earn income from 40 hours of charged out time per week to offset the cost of having your ugly mug to enjoy/endure. Presumably there are a number of hours offset per week for training/CPD (which you will take to complete academic work) and a proportionate balance for non-costed/bid time against design and close out hours i.e. a senior partner might do 60% of his week on client management, executive admin etc and only 40% on fee earning (bookable) whereas a junior engineer, fresh in, would be expected to complete 95% fee earning and 5% unattributable time. The norm in the consultancies I was with was that senior engineers would look after the juniors by using them to complete checking work. They were cheaper (but slower) and learnt through seeing how others dealt with design and laid out their calcs. The more you used a junior engineer the more useful they became, and the more they could be trusted to take on thereby freeing up the senior engineer to pick up on other projects at earlier stages. My favourite consultancy took on work from Mrs Miggins beam through to Austin Reed’s Regents Street store, which meant there was always ‘bread and butter’ work to feed in around the bigger jobs. Are GHD a ‘only jobs of this size’ organisation or is there a broad mix of work? Have you looked at how they structure their charge out rates to cover local and central admin & profit?
Richard, the process you describe of juniors leaching off seniors is exactly what I expected to be doing until they trusted me. Unfortunately the modest size of my project does not lend itself to this.
‘My’ project is a lump sum agreement with the Client to deliver a detailed (geometric) design. Having studied the estimate, it was crudely put together using bottom-up estimating on retail rates applied at 80%. Within the estimate; we have subcontracted the drawings element of the works to the POC (Philippines Operating Centre) to save money through cheap labour. The surveying is also lump sum. The lump sum sub-contracts have ‘fat’ on them for what I view as easy money (30% for the drawings and 10% for the survey). That totals the contingency. The risk is therefore Australian dollar man-hours.
This is a small job for GHD, and a market they are looking to break into which suggests times are tough and the company’s risk appetite is rising. The kick-off meeting with the Client was very telling of how desperate GHD is for work and how happy the Client is that supply exceeds demand.
I am expected to deliver the design just as any experienced GHD employee would do, and this is fine considering the relative simplicity of the job and breadth of experience I’m being exposed to for CPR. My gripe is that I’m expected to clock 8 hours per day on a job that takes less than a quarter of that.
I did raise the point that the attachment is an enabler to me passing PET and that I would spend any spare time during office hours chipping away at WCW. This was not well received. Perhaps a result of me being mis-sold to GHD?
Does this answer your questions?
Thanks Daz,
I think I’m probably misreading this. My reading is that GHD want you to book 8hrs a day to a small job that doesn’t have the budget to carry your charge out rate but you believe you can deliver in less time, thereby saving that project but leaving you nowhere to book your ‘spare’ hours? If I’ve got this all wrong still It’ll wait until a beer one evening!
Daz, my situation is literally the complete opposite to you. I don’t declare my time on any project. My company are using me to increase working capacity in areas that they are running over budget on (out of paid hours).
As a minor side issue, the auditing system records the work you do (project and task code) and references the person you submit your output to (team lead, PM, contractor, etc). This causes problems when CAD Techs do work for me as I’m not declared. This is an in-house issue generated by the level of detail the BIM database records and presents to the client (DIO). The work around has been that my PM has counter signed everything connected to me extending his workload.
Oli, that sounds like a sensible approach.
You benefit by getting your fingers in many pies at no expense to anyone. My volunteering to do menial jobs shadowing seniors in the hope of some exposure was shunned at the risk of me charging hours to those jobs.
I guess that risk could be managed by comprehensive contracts between the RSME and whoever takes us on.