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Some people live in hell and call it normal
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Some people are working in a disaster project. But they don’t know it. Because they have never seen a good one. They think delays are normal. Claims are normal. Meetings with 23 people and zero decisions are normal. A contractor sending 17 notices before breakfast is normal. A client changing its mind every Thursday is normal. 50 notices being exchanged at 4:50pm on Friday is normal. A SPV board asking “where are we with this?” every month is normal. No, my friend. That is not normal. That is just the infrastructure version of living inside a dumpster and saying: “Well, at least it’s warm.” And the opposite also happens. Some people are in a great project… and they don’t know it either. Because they have only seen chaos. So when things work… when risks are clear… when the client behaves like an adult… when the contractor actually builds… when the SPV does not look like a psychiatric experiment… they think: “This is boring.” No. That is not boring. That is what good looks like. That is why I created two lessons. One from a project that went very well. One from a project that went very badly. Because both teach you. The good one shows you what to copy. The bad one shows you what to avoid before your career becomes a Netflix documentary. Both are inside The Room. And yes. You probably need them. Especially if your current project smells like smoke… and everyone is still arguing about the colour of the curtains. Click below. Learn before the project teaches you the expensive way. ​THE ROOM: 15 Great Lessons of a Successful PPP Project​​THE ROOM: The 15 Top Lessons of a PPP Project Nightmare​PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
A few days ago, I talked about the smallest PPP in the world. It’s in Poland. 12.000€. Probably quite unknown. There are another one… this time famous. Small building. Small investment. Small transaction costs. Sorry. That last one was a joke. Scotland. 2002 Audit Scotland reviewed six school PFI projects. For Glasgow, it reported around £12 million in combined public and private sector set-up and advisory costs. Against £212 million in construction. For West Lothian? Around £2 million....
Before you tell a difficult public client: “You can’t do this without me.” Consider a small building in Sydney. White roof. Quite photogenic. You may have seen it. February 1966. Jørn Utzon, the architect of the small building, met the NSW Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes. There were unpaid fees. A dispute over funding for prototypes. And a relationship that had already gone thoroughly to hell. Utzon threatened to quit. Hughes replied: “You are always threatening to quit...” And both...
Now that it’s time of elections… let’s talk about important meetings. Well… maybe you remember who was Schabowski. Some people leave a meeting with action items. Günter Schabowski left one with a border crisis. Berlin. 9 November 1989. Schabowski was giving a press conference about new travel rules for East Germans. He had received the document shortly beforehand. He hadn’t read it carefully. Excellent preparation… that I truly recommend for you. Then came a perfectly reasonable question:...