*Written 17 November 2003 as a project update while I was unassigned and waiting for my next project.
De Beers - A diamond is for forever, but the project is for a few days
After days and days on the beach, and yet somehow, still without a tan, I was finally reassigned to a project – the De Beers project – along with about 112 other project team members from the Deloitte Consulting Alliance. I arrived on the Monday, and by Friday, the wheels had already come off. It was one of those “been there, done that, and didn’t want the t-shirt” experiences.
There are currently only a few who understand what it means to have been “back in Nam”, and at the end of this project, there should have been hordes more, unfortunately, that was not to happen. The Director of Operations issued a brief just recently, detailing in suitably vague terms, the reasons for stopping the project. Small parts of the project are to continue, and the scope is still to be defined, but essentially, of the 112 consultants, 56 left the project by the end of the next week, leaving a very few of us at the site to continue.
Used to this type of change from all quarters, the DCA consultants simply put their Aries paraphernalia on the pile with their Braxton stuff, and carried on about their business.
The Anaconda
As a final goodbye and team unbuilding exercise, we all went and had a braai at a place in Gold Reef City. Of course, a few of us went and rode the Anaconda first. Not a quiet ride! I found that as I got off the ride to walk away down the exit path, my legs were wobbly. Perhaps I am getting a bit old, but it was still great fun. Certain people who were with us did not want to go on it, claiming they had been before. Perhaps if I had gone before I would also have chosen not to go, but then again, who knows?
Some teams organised a “ready, steady, stop” lunch, where they met to plan where they would be going after the De Beers work, or to commiserate about their upcoming lack of utilisation.
Who do you know?
As far as team work goes, all’s fair in love and war. And going onto other projects. People were asking each other which projects they were likely to go onto, and most said they did not know, even though the rumours had already started to circulate about who was going where. Now is the time to see who knows who, who will be the first onto other projects after all saying they were also not able to find billable work anywhere. Watch this space…
Trading cards
Not only do we have collector’s items of Aries shirts, pens, and note pads (unfortunately no diamonds), but we also have an additional access card which will be obsolete within one month. At De Beers, the security is incredibly well streamlined, and our access cards even have different coloured backgrounds depending on the nature of the work we do. Yellow was for the Aries project, but it will now be disbanded, and the Fast Track project which will go ahead will be renamed something else.
Of course, the consultants will probably be given more t-shirts and pens, and the cycle will continue once again. Let’s hope they don’t ask for the coffee mugs back…
Bets are doing the rounds for the new project name, but no names have been leaked yet.
The economics of projects
In my opinion, you can tell how well funded a project is by looking at three basic elements:
1. Where do the consultants sit (I have actually worked in a basement 4 floors underground before),
2. What type of chairs do they sit on, and
3. Is there hot chocolate freely available?
De Beers scores very highly on these criteria.
One of the sad things about leaving the De Beers project will be the fact that every office has windows, due to the setup and layout of the physical building. I’ll never forget this project because we all got to sit by a window and breathe real air, not the canned type.
A close second was the chairs. Normally we get the chairs that no one else wants that have been lying around for years (except at Billiton where we had the best chairs I have ever seen on a project), and scientific studies show that is one of the reasons most consultants have bad backs. It’s true.
Thirdly – not only was there hot chocolate available at the coffee stations, but water coolers, Milo, and even different flavours of herbal tea. They even have quilted double ply toilette paper here. I can honestly say I have never seen that before on a project of any kind, not even back at the beach.
The only thing that would have made this the richest project in the history of the world would be if there were full-colour printed training manuals. Time will tell on the last point, but I am not holding my breath.
Counting your eggs before they turn into chickens
In fact, there is a meeting going on at this very moment that will determine whether the DCA consultants stay on at all, and then we will all leave for the distant shores of the beach.
As ever, the life of a consultant is a changeable one. Remember that email that went around a few years back: you know you are a consultant when you have sat at the same desk for 2 years and worked for 7 different companies? Well, the reverse is also true. You know you are a true consultant when you have worked for DC at least a year during which you have sat at no less than 10 different desks, and have never stayed anywhere long enough to set up a pile of junk that had to be cleared out when you left.
Last one in the water is a rotten egg…
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