Dangerous Encounters

Chapter 12 A day at the office promises future confrontations

We arrived at the office, and Liz organised coffee in the boardroom, and opened a polystyrene box she'd carefully carried from the hotel. The smell of bacon and egg butties filled the room. "Breakfast," she grinned, "you must eat - I'm sure it'd be doctors orders." 

I laughed, "He wasn't very enthusiastic about fried breakfasts, but did say eat in the morning. You're a quality woman Liz." 

"Now, carry on with the contracts." 

We had achieved another hour further when Betty interrupted saying she had Steve on the phone for me. Liz was using the speaker phone. 

Liz said, "Put him through. 'Morning Steve, Liz here, how are you?" 

"'Morning Liz, fine. Congratulations on your appointment. We got your letters this morning on the 'Net. Thanks. It's saved a lot of questions. Unfortunately we have a problem, and I think we need Graham's help to solve it. How necessary is he to you up there?" 

"Essential, but then sacrifices can be made. Talk to him." 

"'Morning Steve. Is it the cables?" 

"Well, that's some of it. How does an admin. block, gatehouse, road system, emergency generator house, HT switchyard, and a four articulated-truck secure-store grab you? Oh, and by the way we're in for street-lighting, drains, water services, and telephone and optical fibre trenches." 

I banged my fist on the boardroom table in frustration. "Oh holy shit. We can't fit that lot in the same time frame as the rest, besides it must, what double the cost?" 

"Boss we haven't the time to do an estimate of that size down here, we have a site to run, and without you we don't stand a earthly. There's thirty four drawings and twenty sheets of specifications." 

"No, of course not. Steve, how did the paperwork arrive?" 

"Whirlybird dropped in. U.S. Army Sergeant, polite, said 'Don't ask me what's in it, I'm just doing the U.P.S. bit', and went back north west. Letter inside from Carlton, addressed to you saying 'Drawings enclosed required to complete your contract.' No reference to costs or schedule. 

"Now, I've had another talk with my friend who did the aerial foundations at Harrogate. What we were given with the bid documents were prefix U drawings. They are universal to every site of this kind. What we were not given were SS drawings. Those are Site Specific - things that are unique to each site. Someone goofed at bidding stage on their side and didn't tell us the full story." 

"Look. Steve, this is way out of the scope of an ordinary site alteration. Get the whole lot couriered up here, and I'll deal with it. What you have to do is get as much done as you can of our current work so it's obvious to the meanest intelligence that we were up to, or ahead of programme when this was dropped on us." 

"Oh, we are." 

"Well, just ensure we keep it that way. Oh, and and take a full set of digital photographs of the whole site today whether there's something on it or not." 

"OK. Will do. See you." 

Liz asked, "What's it all mean?" 

"When we get the drawings we'll be able to see better, but it sounds as if we've started building the big bits on the site and there's now to be a lot of detail to be put in between, which is going to cause nightmares because it will interfere with site traffic, and we'll need more site staff so we'll need more offices, and so on and so on. It will all have a major impact on what we are doing now, and it will require much thinking to get it into a coherent programme of works, particularly as we are now looking at a continually moving target. All in all, it will be very difficult and costly.