Well this isn't exactly how Alberto phrased it, at this weeks telecon, but he should have, as it took me the best part of an hour grinding through other points before we got onto the schedule, and after a couple of leading questions he finally blurted out that maybe the job would take an extra month!
An extra month? this is the man, that on the first time we met said we would be in by Xmas, and the same man that insisted to put an end-date of 31st March in the contract, even when we questioned the sensibility of it. Now don't get me wrong, as sure as Alberto was to hitting this target, I was also sure it was the one thing (of the 3 basics) that I was willing to compromise on, but only upto a point. I would therefore have hoped for him to opt for an interim 1 or even 2 week delay, but no, straight in with an 18% overrun to programme, which means that he's used up all his lives in one go, as end of April is already almost Summer (well if you don't take into account summer 2008 in Tuscany, which was very late coming), and we definitely want to be 'making hay' in Italy this summer.
Apart from putting the Margarita's back on ice for another month, what else does a time delay usually mean? you got it, more money, as more time on the job, means more people on the job, and those guys need to be paid, QED. Of course, if this was fixed price contract then extra time wouldn't be a problem (well actually it would if you had to pay financing charges on a loan), but it seems that fixed price (a corpo in Italian), is not how things are done in Italy, as only 2 of our 29 jobs in the contract are fixed, totalling a measly 2% of the scope, and according to the latest Contabilita, they've even invoiced me a higher price for a supposed fixed price job (that's my first question to Alberto at our next session).
As Chicken House project is not my day job, I've been tinkering with a project schedule (in MS Project software), not the easiest of tools for a novice, nor the cheapest, but if you use it regularly as I do, its not rocket science. So, of late, I've been updating the schedule more frequently, but retrospectively from seeing progress in photo's, definitely not ideal, and not something they teach in project manager school (today we are going to do 20/20 hindsight planning, not), but I was hoping that sooner rather than later Alberto was going to hit me with his plan, even a hand drawn one would be good, but no. So I think this Monday's chat is the time to unveil my plan, and get him to pin down on some dates for the remaining work, er, lets start with the windows. To help this go more smoothly, I've even put the plan into Italian, I hope it works.
And what about Quality? well that's one thing I won't compromise on, especially as I have heard so many tales of how good workmanship in Tuscany is. So even if they overrun that extra month, we are not going to give an inch on Quality. Ciao




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