Dangerous Encounters

Chapter 10 Liz takes control of the takeover

I arrived at the York office on  Monday morning still reeling from the emotional turmoil of the previous days with Ruth.  

It was a huge modern warehouse which held our contractor's plant, maintenance workshop, an  store of immediate materials, and the administration offices, all under one metal clad roof. 

It was bright, modern, efficient and without soul. 

A CCTV camera lens surveyed me, as the PIR set off the entry alarm. A screen showed Julie in the general office who had been allocated the part time task of visitor reception. 

"Good morning. Oh, Mr Wisheart, there'll be a lot of folk pleased to see you. Come in. Ms Norton asked me to send you straight to her in Mr Wil- the MD's office." 

I passed through the open-plan estimating purchasing and accounts office, which we had automated with direct data transfer to and from the sites, and then to the sales and design office, again computer based. I knew the systems and most of the people, because Mark Wilcox and I had set up the horizontal management structure with its machine-based method of working. 

Executive country was small. We had a board room, and three offices and a single secretary. There were, or had been only three directors, Mark himself, a marketing man Bernard Gresley, and the commercial director William Edwards. 

Betty Longford their secretary, rose from her chair as I approached. We had known each a long time. 

"Graham. Thank goodness. It's been hell over the last weeks. We keep building the jobs, the computers keep us straight, but everyone's full of questions and no-one has any answers. Potential clients ring up for Bernard, and suppliers and current and past clients for Mark or William. And there isn't someone to say whether we should tender for a job or sign one we've finished. I've gone out on so many limbs doing what I thought the three of them might might do, signing pp. I'm scared witless I've bombed the company but I felt we had to keep it going." 

Liz silently came out of the office behind Betty. 

I took Betty's hand. "Whatever you have done is bound to be right. Don't worry. We'll try and get everything screwed together, but take-overs are never comfortable. Now calm down, take a deep breath, and please come and help Liz and me do some necessary first tasks." 

"Good morning, Liz." 

"Hi. You're prompt." 

"Let's get started," I said. 

"Don't I get to call the shots?" asked Liz with a grin. 

"After we've done some damage limitation. Our clients, our suppliers and the staff have not been properly informed.

"If you want to retain something of value, we will do this first, otherwise all you'll have is a bunch of computers spread over the UK talking to each other about cement that's not being supplied or poured or reinforced, and bricks that stay in piles where they happen to get left. 

"Just first answer some questions. Are we going to honour existing contracts? Beware, because if the answer is no, I'm off." 

Liz smiled, "Told you you were MD material. The answer is yes of course." 

"Are we tendering for new work?" 

"Yes except where Foot and we here are in competition." 

"Bad decision," I said, "how much does it cost Foot's to do a million pounds worth of bidding?" 

"I don't have that statistic." 

"Well think about it, they have a totally manual system and an estimating department of ten people. Ours is three and a bunch of programs and the tendering output is roughly the same."