I've been working on a number of surveys for a host of new wireless sites over the last few months for a client. I'm just a cog in the wheel delivering what's needed to keep the various projects moving ahead and the same problem seems to keep popping up over and over where by I become the defacto 'Point of Contact' for the various entities involved and I finally just had to put my foot down after a request this morning from a clearing contractor for a site by a name I've never heard of. Everybody needs to go through 'The Client' for their marching orders. I'm just the surveyor and I'm not privy to all the latest agreements and goings on and I'm pretty sure that when there's a hose up in the communications and something goes south, the fingers are going to be wagging in my direction. No Sir. Just the surveyor. Not project manager. You contact 'The Client' and they can contact me if they need something.
Toggle: 'Rant off'.
Carry on.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
Sounds like an opportunity for someone, though, if the client doesn't have a project manager. I'll bet it pays better than surveying, too.
Kent McMillan, post: 370295, member: 3 wrote: Sounds like an opportunity for someone, though, if the client doesn't have a project manager. I'll bet it pays better than surveying, too.
They have a project manager. Apparently I'm just a lot easier to get ahold of and the manager seems perfectly willing to 'delegate' any responsibility he can get away with my way, minus the pay.
I like to call it the power of 'No'.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
Interestingly, I just had three calls from Alaska contractors asking me when you were going to have the sites in Chugiak, Palmer, and Wasilla finished because they were ready to go and would have to pull off onto other jobs if you couldn't get them out in the next two days. I told them I just read about stuff like this.
Williwaw, post: 370300, member: 7066 wrote: They have a project manager. Apparently I'm just a lot easier to get ahold of and the manager seems perfectly willing to 'delegate' any responsibility he can get away with my way, minus the pay.
I like to call it the power of 'No'.
I had this problem a LOT with the internal project managers at a company for which I used to work. The clients would call me and ask various questions. The survey and mapping related ones I could answer (and was happy to do so). But most others, I couldn't and had to direct them to the project managers. And for some specific project managers, I'd hear the same thing from all of the clients, "That guy never returns my calls, though. You're the only person I can actually get through to!"
Teach them through experience that nobody has any business fielding calls through the surveyor....Tell all of them the project manager fired the whole lot and was in the process of getting new subcontractors....then deny it when the project manager finally gets a hold of you.
Williwaw, post: 370292, member: 7066 wrote: ... and the same problem seems to keep popping up over and over where by I become the defacto 'Point of Contact' for the various entities involved and I finally just had to put my foot down after a request this morning from a clearing contractor for a site by a name I've never heard of...
I use to run a number of field crews for a large residential development company. The development company constantly owed money to the engineer (that had prepared all the site plans) so the engineer was never available for their "questions". The development company would hire idiots for "site supervision" that couldn't find their nutsack with both hands...and were never on site anyway. Of course, my crews got a constant barrage of questions from the grading, paving and sewer contractors that were on site...and they always gave them MY phone number.
One grading contractors called me up and asked if he could stockpile his topsoil (around 3000 c.y., a good sized pile) on an adjacent area. I told him, "It's OK with me...". Trouble is that property wasn't even owned by the developer, but a local farmer that had about inch high alfalfa on it at the time.
By the time the scrapers had made their haul road and grubbed all the topsoil over into their pile, they had made a mess of the alfalfa field. The owner's attorneys made life miserable for both the developer and the excavation contractor, eventually suing the pants off of them for tearing up the hay field. When I finally talked with the dirt foreman that had originally called me for "permission" he wanted to whip my ass something fierce.
When he said, "I thought you said it was OK to move that dirt over there?!"...I told him it was still OK with me if he put it over there, but he should really ask the owner of the property first.
And things like that never changed the whole time I was doing their staking. Thank God the economy tanked and I got out of the business of staking baby farms.