15th March - Ides of March

Misty chilly morning but the sun is burning through it as I go into the office. It gets better as the day goes on. Bit of a shame as I'm stuck in the office. Still, i notice what a glorious day it is outside.

I get a message to call the head of Planning to discuss the nesting bird! When I speak to her it transpires that the shithead from Landscapes who called me to tell me about the bird didn't think I was treating it seriously enough so had escalted to her manager. I explainto Tessa what we were doing about it, the fact that its probably going to cost us £5k, delay the programme by two weeks and mean a delay to finishing off the courtyard as we can't do work in there until the scaffolding is gone. And I'm not treating it seriously! She takes the point.

We have a progress meeting with the construction company. None of my colleagues turn up. They all seem to have given up on this - even my director has stopped coming! They're busy, bored or feel that I can cope or a combination of all the above. The programme is still on target to be later than planned! The architect and M&E engineer are both in attendance so we visit the second floor to check out the teapoints and the platform for the solar panels machinery.

Whilst we're up there I notice that the new fire alarm panel is being fitted in the server room as well as the new windows all going in there. Quite busy in the area.

I spend some time going through the fire officers recommendations for the doors. The shitbag has waited until now to condemn the doors. We haven't touched their makeup or structure but he has now decided that they fail the fire standards. Pile of shit really as they are the same as last year and the regulations haven't changed so he has been screwing up in his role for some time now. I don't actually have to do anything here but have said that I'll screw the budget to get the doors upgraded and now want to make sure that there's a proper job done on them. Discuss my thoughts with Steve and he sets up a meeting with the door man for the next week to go through the quote and to check out some of the other doors that I think have been overlooked.

Back at my desk I'm reminded that our customer survey for my team hasn't been published as yet. With Trudy away I'd completely forgotten it. I put some words together and zap the request for people to complete it out to the staff in the council. I hope that they'll do it right away but give them a couple of weeks to respond. Here's hoping!