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I spot Noah shooting me a knowing look but, before I can open my mouth and tell John exactly what I think of his attitude, the door bangs open again and we’re joined by the rest of the team. Noah introduces me, but the names and roles quickly blur into one another. I’m going to have to ask him to draw me an organisation chart so I can learn who everyone is, I realise. Thankfully, they all seem friendly enough, unlike John, who scowls every time his eyes meet mine. What’s interesting is that they all refer to Noah as Michael; I’d love to find out the story behind that.
‘Right, guys. Usual format. I’ll go round each of the trades and get an update. John, why don’t you go first?’
‘Usual fucking disaster,’ John growls. ‘The roof trusses for plot eight came on Friday, but they’re completely the wrong size and they’re not the attic-style ones we need. They’d probably be OK if you were putting a roof on a bloody dolls’ house, but they’re fuck-all use to us. We’ll have to put in a new order, which will cost us another week at least.’
‘Do we know why they were too short?’ I ask. ‘Have we checked the original order?’
‘What are you suggesting?’ John demands.
‘Nothing,’ I say as soothingly as I can. ‘But if the mistake is on their end, can’t we put pressure on the supplier to get the replacement trusses to us faster than that?’
‘Hah. Good luck with that one, darlin’,’ he harrumphs, and I realise that I may have been here for less than half an hour, but he’s already written me off. Great.
The rest of the meeting has a similar tone; the wrong items have been sent or, more often than not, items just haven’t arrived at all. After turning Andy’s gibberish into a coherent project plan, I’m going to have to think of a way to tackle the supplier, otherwise Noah’s predictions about me failing to hit a single milestone are definitely going to come true.
‘Right. Let me show you what I’ve done,’ I say to Noah once the meeting is over and he’s pulled up a chair next to me. ‘The top level of the plan is each plot. I think I’ve managed to match up the plot numbers with the type of house, but if you can just check it, that would be great. The next level down are the stages – foundation, superstructure and so on. So, what I’d like us to do is fill in the details below that, try to get some names assigned and put together a general picture of the overall flow of the project and the critical path. Once that’s done, I should be able to go through the paperwork I found in the filing cabinet and work out what orders need to be placed when.’
‘When were you in the filing cabinet?’ he asks, and I blush a little as I realise my mistake.
‘Umm, I had a bit of free time yesterday,’ I admit.
‘I thought as much. This office has never looked so clean. You need to get out more, you know that? You can’t be coming in to work on a Sunday. The boys will never let you live it down. You know they’ll have a nickname for you before the week is out, don’t you?’
‘I was going to ask about that. Why do they call you Michael?’
‘John likes to come up with nicknames for people, but the references are always a bit obscure. So, for me, he took inspiration from the story of Noah, famous in the Bible for predicting the great flood and building an Ark.’
‘I know the story. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any Michaels in it.’
‘No, but it means Noah was the original weather forecaster, wasn’t he? So that extrapolates to Michael Fish, the weather forecaster who was equally famous for failing to predict the great storm of 1987. Most of us either hadn’t been born or were tiny, so he had to explain it. Anyway, that’s how I became Michael.’
‘That’s a bit convoluted.’
‘That’s how he likes them and, to be honest, I’m happier being named after Michael Fish than Helen Young. He also picks things that remind him of his youth. So, if he found out you were sneaking into the office on a Sunday, you’d probably end up with a name like Eleanor.’
‘Do I want to know why?’
‘Eleanor Rigby from the Beatles song – “All the lonely people…” That’s probably a bit obvious for him, but it would be something like that.’
‘I doubt he’ll be making up any nicknames for me. He obviously hates me.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about him. He growls at everyone until he knows them. He’s a dinosaur but he knows his stuff, and his team will do anything for him.’
‘Hm. He’d better not make a habit of referring to me as a “bird”, otherwise we will have a major falling-out.’
Noah laughs. ‘I think I’ll leave that little battle to you. Shall we fill this in then?’
By lunchtime, we’ve got a pretty comprehensive-looking plan on the screen. We’ve taken the least developed houses of each style and filled in all the blanks, and then copied that up the chain, deleting the stages that have already been done. The hardest part was figuring out the dependencies, both in terms of tasks and people, but those are all in, and I get the impression Noah is actually quite impressed.
‘You’ve got to admit, it’s a lot better than whatever that was,’ I tell him, indicating Andy’s panel of random scribbles. ‘We’ve also shaved a month off, which isn’t too shabby.’
Noah sits and stares at it for a while, chewing his bottom lip as he does so. Every so often, he scrolls to look at a different section, or opens up a task to look at the subtasks underneath it. I feel a little like a schoolgirl, watching while the teacher marks my homework.
‘It’s good,’ he professes at last. ‘I like it. There’s just one thing.’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t take the weather into account. If we get torrential rain, for example, that will really set us back. What happens to all of this then? You’ll be completely out of whack.’
