1st May

The fifth month of the year already! I don't know where the time is going but life certainly seems to be flying past at the moment!

More rain! Becoming the norm now.

In the office I meet with Steve and a lift engineer to review the lifts and to get a specification of what can be done to re-furbish them. We've got a goods lift and a people lift. In act they're identical with only the lining being different. Oh! And the good lift also goes to the basement whilst the passenger one doesn't. The engineer looks at them, gives us an idea of what can be done and we tell him what we would like to see included. He promises to get the spec and price back to us in the following mid-week.

I have to look at refurbishing our print room and our post room. They had not been included in the original specification. It looks like I'll have money left over to do them but I need to get a full costing from the construction company. I plan to move the people out of the post room first into the IT training room, refurbish their area, move them back then do the same for the print room. The whole thing will take about 2 months. I run through the plan with Steve and he points out a couple of things o be included. He will run it past the guys in his company and get prices from the sub-contractors.

I meet with John to discuss the instructions for setting up the committee area for meetings with projectors, the sound system, the lighting system and the air conditioning. He wants to produce something basic but I have an idea for producing a comprehensive user guide with pictures and full instructions. We work out what we'll cover and what pictures we need. The camera in my phone is not man enough so he'll get the guys from reprographics to get some pics.

After lunch, I meet with my team. This is a monthly one. There are 6 of us in the team. I give them five minutes each to run through their own work area - what they're doing and what's coming next. I then give feedback from any management meetings I've attended plus any items I've picked up from the grapevine plus any general gossip they may have.  We cover any major issues within the team in the individual sessions. I take them down the pub every once in a while. I had wanted to do it for this meeting but our area is quite crowded with guests at the moment so I decide that it might not be politic to do that right now.

I write up my monthly reports, bring the project info up to date and work through paperwork in general for the rest of the afternoon.

No one from British Gas has been in touch about the lake under the solar panel so I phone and leave a stroppy note for the guy who came and inspected and send a curt email to the project manager in British Gas. I need the scaffolding out and they are holding me up.