I was assigned to lead an offshore oil rig equipment design, build, test, and installation project. The project was to last one year from the start of design to final installation and acceptance on-site in the North Sea. I had a team of eight design and manufacturing engineers. Our customer was in England. I had a two- week vaca- tion preplanned after the third week into the project. I left the project team in the hands of a senior engineer and left for my fam- ily vacation. I had a heart- to- heart discussion with my replace- ment before I left for him to check on the engineers daily and to
take care of their needs so that the schedule would not slip. We had on the contract a 5% of total cost penalty for each week of late acceptance on-site. Everyone on my team was very well aware of our tight schedule and of the late acceptance penalty. No one had any slack time for his or her assigned tasks.
I came back after two weeks from my vacation and got a brief- ing from my replacement project manager regarding the status of all current and completed tasks. I saw that we were behind about a week to two weeks in several tasks. I went around and discussed task- delaying reasons and the issues in detail with every engineer on my team. I saw a relaxed atmosphere in the whole team. They all were behaving like they were on a honeymoon. It was sum- mertime and excessive heat, beaches, surfing, sailing, and outdoor barbecues were giving them all a cozy feeling. My replacement project manager did not do a good job of monitoring and putting adequate pressure on the team members. They all said to me we would catch up eventually and not to worry. I heard the emer- gency bells ringing in my head. I went to my office to evaluate the whole project task by task and to decide on my course of action.
The next day I called an emergency team meeting. During the meeting, I went over every task with my team. I showed them on the schedule that with the present pace we would be at least one week and at most three weeks late for the acceptance of on-site comple- tion. I emphasized that the progress we had made was not acceptable to our customer nor to our company. I asked everyone for his or her input as to how to catch up and not delay the project by even one day.
There were some great suggestions from the team. I thought the whole team woke up from a summer honeymoon dream. There were six critical tasks that fell behind. Six engineers that fell behind offered to work some extra hours to catch up during the next two weeks. At the same time, other engineers and I were going to give them an extra hand in several minor tasks. I was going to meet with every engineer daily for 15 minutes to discuss the condition of his or her tasks.
The stress levels on the team members were high for the next four weeks. We finally caught up to the critical task on the sched- ule, which was the internal design review meeting. At the begin- ning of the internal design review meeting, I praised all my team members for giving extra effort in order to catch up to the sched- ule. I invited them to a team beach barbecue with their families on Friday afternoon. They all accepted my invitation. We all had
a great time at the beach after roller coaster stress levels at work for the last three months.
During the course of a project, stress levels go up and down for every team member. A good project manager has to keep these stress levels as normal as possible without burning out his or her people. It is normal for the stress levels to go up before a criti- cal design review meeting, before a regulatory agency inspection, after an unexpected malfunction of your product, before a final product acceptance event, and so on. However, as the project manager, your important task is to smooth out these stress levels during the course of a project.
I have seen many project teams go through a honeymoon period at the beginning or at the middle of a project. You have to watch for the slacking signs from every team member and take the necessary action to keep the pressure cooker at a constant stress level. It is also a good idea for the project manager not to go on a vacation during the course of a project that has no slack time on its schedule and that has performance penalties in its contract.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM THIS PROJECT EVENT
• A project manager’s replacement during his or her absence from a project can have adverse effects on team members. • It is always difficult to shake off a honeymoon period’s
relaxed atmosphere in a team environment.
• As project managers, we might have to delay our vaca- tions to after the completion of a project.