Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management

14.1. Coping with Delays

"You didn't listen to my advice did you, Willie?" She blew a smoke ring my way and rocked back in her chair. Hadn't I been listening to all of her advice? I tried to recall something she had told me that I'd decided to ignore. I came up blank.

"Martha, as far as I know, I've been doing everything you've told me to do. And," I added, partly as proof of this statement, and partly to try and soften the old girl up with a little praise, "things have been going extremely well because of it."

Martha took her pipe out of her mouth.With the stem she tapped the Gantt chart that lay on the little table between us. "This is your schedule for your detailed design, is it?" I nodded. "Let me ask you a question then, Willie. What happens to your finish date if this task takes two weeks longer than you expect?" She was pointing to a tasklabeled "Geotechnical assessment of base stability".

I pretended to cough to give myself time to think. The task was supposed to start in three days and run for a week, but what was it? I tried to remember our detailed design planning session. I seemed to recall that Sheila said something about the soil under one of the building expansions being a little unstable because it was close to the edge of the lake. Yes, that was it! And in order to design the foundation properly, there had to be some kind of soil assessment. I felt relieved. I hated looking stupid in front of Martha. My relief was short lived however. I knew what the task was, ...