Remember when I was all excited and stuff about my new promotion? Yeah, me neither…

Actually, that is not true. I’m still excited about it, but things are not going as planned.

See, I am now doing the job of three people. They have yet to fill my now vacant position and a lady who handles all the paper work, filing, forms, calls, etc. related to plan review is out do to back surgery. (I just returned from the hospital, she has taken a turn for the worse and is on life support in the ICU. Join me in praying for her healing)

Anyway, I am a bit overloaded. As a result, my new duties have kind of been regulated to the back burner. That is until last week.

The section I now head is responsible for Project Management for other departments projects. If the Recreation Department has a project to put up new lights at the little league field (and they do), then my section assists them. We help write the RFP/RFQ for engineering/architectural support and then assist them during construction by providing inspection and administration support.

Sounds easy no?

Well, it usually is, but I have walked into a hornets nest.

It seems that one department is very upset with us. After digging into the history of the project, I can sort of see his side of it, but still, I think we have done a pretty good job. As I wrote previously, I’m a Fixer, so naturally, the first thing I encounter with my new position is having to fix something.

I am meeting with the department head this Friday. My one goal is to make him happy. I can’t change the past but I can work on our future working relationship. Normally I would be a bit more confident in my abilities as a Fixer, but yesterday I walked into work to find a gem of an e-mail from this guy. It seems one of my guys scheduled a meeting and then only notified the director on Friday when the meeting was to be on Monday. Yes, there are areas we can improve our customer service and it is tops on my agenda, but see my earlier points about doing 3 jobs:

Here are a few snippets for your enjoyment:

It is also unfortunate that you planned a meeting of this importance and did not give the XXXX team any more advance notice than an e.mail on a Friday morning before a Monday meeting is scheduled.
—-
This is not the first time your office has made plans without advising the XXXX, i.e. the roofing materials were delivered to the XXXX without notice to our venue team until they were actually unloading the product in the parking lot with no notice given to us in advance.

The continued lack of planning and the failure of advance written (e.mail or memo) notice for meetings or timelines established by your department is no longer acceptable or appropriate when dealing with this department.
—-
I respectfully request that you brief your immediate supervisor, (Me), about this late invitation to an important pre-construction meeting as it mirrors the type of internal customer service levels I have been experiencing from your department on several SPLOST projects coordinated by the Engineering Department project managers.

Nice huh?

Like I said, he has a point, but that is the purpose of our meeting this Friday. There is very little I can do until I have a chance to sit down with him to see what I can do to make his life easier. I did not mind the email as much as you might think, but I was upset that he sent it to everybody and their brother. He should have simply addressed the email to me and I would have called him, which I did anyway.

Oh well. In his eyes we suck.

It is now my job to change his perspective.

I will let you know how the meeting goes on Friday. I am expecting good things.