Project Management

One of the dangers of doing a restoration is that it might never finish.  You know, you just keep on doing jobs and bits, and never quite reach the end.  I really would like to avoid the feeling, in five or ten years time, of still having jobs which have been outstanding all that time!  However, I have no intention of actually having a project plan as, after all, I'm retired and would like to take it slightly easy!  (Also, I have memories of project managers who couldn't manage, or who seemed to think that a plan on MS Project was the answer to everything... don't get me started.)  Therefore, here are my thoughts on how I will manage the jobs that are left; these fall into at least three four categories:

1. The really important ones which affect our ability to live in the house.  The completion of the extension falls into this category, as we can't tidy up the main house until we have the extension to put things in!
2. The major ones which are awaiting some suitable opportunity (e.g. jobs that need good weather, like refurbishing sash windows), need some item to be bought (when I find it at a reclamation yard) or need some special information (i.e. require internet research)
3. The quite important ones which just need to be done somewhen soon, like finish the bathroom and the bedroom wardrobe (both left from last July when we moved in).
4. The rest, which are mostly small tasks scattered around the entire estate, but which includes ones like the toilet roll holder and towel rail in the new loo.

The temptation is to concentrate on the last category as they are relatively easy and quite satisfying, so the trick is to decide on a Sunday evening which tasks in the first three categories will get my attentionin the following week.  I will also pick off a few of the easy ones just to keep those ticking over so that they don't become more important and move up the list!  One of my techniques as an engineering manager in the RAF was to try to make sure that once a week - often Friday afternoons - I spent two or three hours doing all the routine things (unless a crisis came along). This is how I shall manage the minor jobs here.

In the RAF nearly all of my job was management in some form or other.  As an engineer I once worked at a headquarters where I managed two aircraft fleets  - servicing schedules, technical defects, modifications, that sort of thing.  Some people in similar jobs used to thrive on crises, and in fact only ever seemed to attend to one crisis after another - all routine stuff was ignored as being of no consequence.  They would work long hours (they said) or even go in at weekends.  Of course, one day, that neglected routine stuff would become a new crisis and so the circle continued.  The really annoying thing was that lots of these people got promoted for doing crisis management well, which rather ignored the fact that most of these crises were of their own making.  The high priced help never really looked at the whole job you were doing, just the really visible parts of it (i.e. the crises), so those of us who were able to make sure that crises occurred less often by doing our job properly were not rewarded for doing the job well as we hardly ever had a crisis to shine in!  You can start to see why I was delighted to leave...