The Occasional Joke


Nurse: Patient's name?

Centurion: Marcus Licinius Crassus

Nurse: And his date of birth?

Centurion: 115 BC.

Nurse: All right. And what is he here for?

Centurion: Cataphract surgery.


Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Shocked, shocked I am ...

That the estimate of a Spring start date for the Stadium Bridge repair was unreal. Now we're looking at "Fall." Using my PMI-trained, highly honed abilities as a Project Management Professional, my personal estimate is still "Spring ..." of 2012. Seriously. If the work can't begin until Fall of 2011, in what sounds like a best-case scenario, any slip will take it into the bad weather season, and then ... you know how it goes.

The Mayor and the city's project management head, Homayoon Pirooz, are blaming it on jumping through hoops for the various sources of funding, hoops that I would have thought could have been identified and taken into consideration earlier -- for example, at the time we applied for them. What little comment there is in the Ann Arbor .com article makes it sound as though all the paperwork and process comes as a surprise -- seems odd, since clearly the one question Mr. Random Citizen would have, once he or she knew we had the grants, was "How soon?" Anybody who's run projects knows that. "Don't bother me with the details, when can I ship it?"

In fact, it probably wasn't a surprise, but rather confused communicating, something apparently inherent in civic government. Makes me wish Rahm Emanuel had won here instead of in Chicago. At least it would be more fun.

1 comment:

  1. OK, I had avoided creating a blog ID, but the sheep thing made me. I just can't not comment on it. It is way cool.

    Watch out the flood gates have opened! :-)

    ReplyDelete