The Richard Cranium Award
In the Open Standard
Mike TestroMember for 20 years 10 months
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Ladies & Gentlemen
I propose that an award be made to the planner that admits to the most inspired mistake.
The prize will be to wear a barbie pink helmet on site.
I will start the thing off with three admissions of my own.
I once sent a team of decorators off to repaint the wrong fire station. Not so much a problem as we had only just finished redecorating it two months ago.
I sent off a tender for a refurbishment project with the words - "We have now included for any decoration works"
When I should have said "We have not included for any decoration works"
And finally I admit I have upset Carmen Arape with my blokish sense of humour. Sorry darling but that is how I am - much respect nevertheless.
Best regards
Mike Testro
I propose that an award be made to the planner that admits to the most inspired mistake.
The prize will be to wear a barbie pink helmet on site.
I will start the thing off with three admissions of my own.
I once sent a team of decorators off to repaint the wrong fire station. Not so much a problem as we had only just finished redecorating it two months ago.
I sent off a tender for a refurbishment project with the words - "We have now included for any decoration works"
When I should have said "We have not included for any decoration works"
And finally I admit I have upset Carmen Arape with my blokish sense of humour. Sorry darling but that is how I am - much respect nevertheless.
Best regards
Mike Testro
18 replies
Oldest first- 0Anoon Iimos ·Mike,
I believe that in Planning Works, you need to do it right the first time (I am not considering clerical errors as mistakes - it can easily be rectified).
A Planner’s mistake is vital, if there’s a mistake in the Plan, it is not only for the Planner, it is for the Whole Team (but not all really understands that), and the shock absorber is always the Planner.
Now, are you going to admit that the Plan you made is rubbish!?
cheers!
- 0Mike Testro ·Hi All
I think we need to move this on a bit - not what was the daftest thing YOU ever did but what was the most inspired mistake you have ever witnessed.
I will start the ball rolling again. I know of an office block in the UK that was built Upside Down.
A steel frame structure where the camber beams were fixed top down. It’s still there but it wobbles a bit when the trains go past.
Can anyone match that.
Best regards
Mike Testro - 0Gordon Blair ·I know of a certain process building in the north west (which shall remain nameless) which was built and installed to the cost of £250M before they realised that the process involved would cause the plant to set itself on fire. Over 10 years later, the organisation in question is on it’s 3rd attempt to get some use out of what is now a £400M, and counting, White Elephant
- 0Samer Zawaydeh ·Hi Mike,
We were excavating a small retaining wall along the Dead Sea using a Medium Excavator because "it was available at site" and because the soil is mostly mud, the machine sank into the mud up to the operator level. We had to bring a D10 Bulldozer to pull it out.
Cost: 2 days without progress, cost of D10, downtine of Excavator, repair of excavator.
Better solution: use lighter equipment of course.
Thank you,
Samer - 0Samer Zawaydeh ·Dear all,
After completing the installation of a 4 story Glass Sphere at the top of a sky scraper at 270m, it was noticed that the Glass did not come with a mechanism to clean it.
Since this was a Restaurant and people would be coming up to see the view, it was important to keep the Glass windows of the sphere clean.
After numerous solution, we ended up installing a 24 meter mono rail above the doom in each direction. A person would hang down the rail and clean the windows. Having a permanent sticks on top of the sphere in the 4 direction.
The good think is that you will not notice the rails from the ground. It is shown in the link below.
http://www.travel-images.com/view.shtml?saudi-arabia90.jpg
Have a nice day,
Samer - 0Nigel Winkley ·Dear All
I had an old Open Plan project that I had to convert to P3. No original Open Plan software just the data files. Not too bad I suppose...
So I converted the DB files from Open Plan to Excel and then imported them 1000 activities at a times into P3. Did this 57 times (yup 57 000 activities).
Did the same with the successors...
Hit schedule...only to find that Open Plan gave me the predecessors not successors.
Start was at the end of the job, finish was the start milestone!
Just as I was telling the boss what a genius I was using all this software as well.
Not one of my better acheivements
Have fun
Nige - 0Gwen Blair ·Hmmm. . . . I worked on a site with a very sexist Site Supervisor (Cruelty Mannie) and his side kick (Wicked Weasil). Once we manned up, supervision was stretched especially as lots of fag breaks were reducing productivity. CM & WW crossed me (another story for another day)so I hinted that there was one particular crew who did no work all day and just cruised the site smoking, drinking tea and having a bit of craic. Guess their inspired mistake was to spend time trying to hunt down this non existent crew. We did, however, howl with laughter from the Engineering Building.
- 0Roger Booth ·Following on from Gordon Blairs reply. I worked on the original build of that white elephant and got it to the stage where they were trying to commission it. 10 years later I find myself back in this field and I am working on the 3rd attempt trying to sort out what the building can be used for. Who was it that first said "It was alright when I left it"
- 0J B ·
I like to think I'm an
I like to think I'm an intelligent and well read person. Having said that I'd like to point out that I just locked my keys in the ute. The house keys are on that key-ring so now I'm locked out of the house.
O.K. I start climbing through the unlocked kitchen window and go splat face first into the kitchen sink. Blood and water everywhere. Stagger down to the back door and it was unlocked the whole time.
Unless someone comes up with a better effort i'm claiming the Richard Cranium award for this year.
J.
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