8th March

As i walk into the building I find Steve the Site Manager in discussion with Debbie the receptionist. She has apparently given a parking permit to one of the contractors and now the rest of them are asking if they cab have one! He's pissed off and feels that its undermining him. I agree that we won't do this in future and that no contractors will be provided with parking. I've noticed that he is getting more crotchety.I'll have to keep an eye on him. I discuss the problem with the Receptionist's supervisor and agree the way forward. It later transpires that Steve had been shouting at Debbie and that she had only been helping out one of the contractors who needed to park to drop some kit off. I'll definitely have to speak to Steve.

I go to the project board and give my report on where we are. This includes the finances. I started with a budget of £3.5m and have about £700k left but £400k is already spoken for! It's gonna be close! Especially since we've got 3 months to go and I still don't know if I have to do anything on the roof as the roofer has only just started surveying it.

I get an update on the lights from the team which has been finding problems and go and visit them. They have moved two people and four of them are now happy but four of them are not and one of the other people on a different set of desks has started complaining. I think she's getting jealous of the attention that the others are getting and is feeling left out. Poor dear!

I also visit another team where one of the women is complaining about the light. She only works on Weds to Fris so I couldn't go and see them before. I think they should get her in to work on the weekend when she could set the lights at whatever level she wanted. When I get there it turns out that as its sunny today there is no real problem so I promise to go back on a cloudy day!

I speak to the fire alarm guys about the problem we're facing with the panel on the server room.the panel appears to be faulty and is tripping out the air conditioning whenever it thinks there's a fire. Our air conditioning doesn't bring in fresh air it just recylcles. It is therefore not a danger if there is a real fire. When the air conditioning kicks out the server room gets too hot and we have to call our guys out to attend the building. We need to stop this happening as its not good for the servers and it costs us a fortune in call outs. I agree with the that we'll disconnect the air condition trip out from the system.

Trudy is due to go on leave for two weeks so I spend some time with her going through her workload to see what I need to keep on top of whilst she's away. There are three or four major pieces of work that i need to keep an eye on: our new remote access system, the collation of information for the new ICT contract management, the Town Hall network links to our building and the questionnaire we're about to send round the rest of the building.

I'd written an email to my cousin Keith to say happy birthday - I'd missed his 60th but was hoping to get in for his 61st. I send a message to an old email and he actually responds. He's in London and still painting. He sends a pic of his latest work. Looks like a life-size collage depicting a benab (Amerindian building). I reply suggesting a get-together. I'm not sure where he's living or on what. He says that he as just moved out of a rent-free, bill-free studio but doesn't say where he's one to.

I also draft a letter to send to Audi asking them what they intend to do to support us in fixing our ABS problem. I don't think we're going to get anywhere but Phil thinks its worth a try before we try to do anything to fix it.