May
13
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Completion

 
Rochester & Associates Ltd - Blog Post

There are few feelings quite like a difficult project coming to fruition!

After our recent employee left the company, we were left with a couple of difficult projects that were running badly, mainly through poor management and communication.

Two of these we’ve completed already – a 3rd completed today.

In our line of work it’s a necessity to keep all parties in the loop to maintain the project integrity – there’s too much ‘one upmanship’ between the egos of some of the protagonists and so things can go south rather quickly. :devil:

It’s imperative that all interested parties know who is doing what and the point at which they are at doing it.

Marking a huge deviation in the processes we have developed over the years for managing exactly the issues raised above, I am still at a loss as to why these procedures were not followed!
In this case though, the problems stemmed from two major issues:

  1. Lack of communication (within R&A and with the client)
  2. Lack of documentation

In the first instance the client communicated his ideas, preferences and needs to us via our previous employee, who neglected to communicate that to the rest of the team.

This was compounded by the second instance as there was no record of any of these being discussed or planned beforehand.

Marking a huge deviation in the processes we have developed over the years for managing exactly the issues raised above, I am still at a loss as to why these procedures were not followed!

This resulted in much unhappiness all round ~ both we, and the client were not happy.
Furthermore this almost began the first salvos of a legal case! :cwy:

Not good…

Well, today we finally completed the project :D

After long discussions (and the patience of the client who took the time to explain things a second time – and I duly documented them!), things were finally put to bed.

The end result was a happy client (eventually) – a reduced bill from us (we took responsibility for some of the problems) and a much reduced stress level!

Just a couple of minor bugs and we are home and dry!

YEAH!!!!!!  :biggrin:


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May
5
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Joiners

 
Rochester & Associates Ltd Blog Post

Why is it so hard to find a good tradesman in these difficult economic times?

Please bear with me on this one – it’s a bit of a personal rant..! :tongue:

I have, for the past few weeks, needed some joinery work doing on my home ~ nothing too complex you understand, just a door re-hanging and some simple boxing in of pipes.

WHY THEN, IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO FIND SOMEONE TO DO IT!!!! :???:

I have recently been through 3 joiners, trying desperately to get them to at least give me a quote.

The 1st guy, left me hanging for about 2 weeks, and then was mysteriously ill for a couple of days – coincidentally when he was supposed to be doing the job – when I told him to forget it he didn’t miss a beat despite having needed to buy some stuff to do the job.

The 2nd guy was at best uninterested and gave me a ballpark quote of “about £xxx”, about £100 more than the first guy AND didn’t bother to leave any other details…

The 3rd guy has let me down this evening; not even getting to the quote stage.

Apparently he’s ‘Not in my area’ – HE ONLY LIVES ABOUT 3 MILES AWAY!

If I ran my business like these idiots I’d not be doing it much longer – that I can tell you.

I am seriously unimpressed by tradesmen at the moment – I’d have thought that tough times in the business world would mean people are more keen to provide good service – it seems that I’m sadly wrong in this :(

Suffice to say I’m not my usual chicken of happiness
Grr…  :angry:


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