Cadalyst - January/February 2009 - (Page 38) cadmanager By Robert Green Redefine Priorities to Survive Tough Times Weather the recession with hard work and sharp skills. he new year is upon us, and all indications are that it’s going to be a tough one. I think it’s important to examine CAD management priorities now so you can survive and even thrive during the rough times. In this installment of “CAD Manager,” I’ll share some insight and recommend some strategies that I’ve found useful in down economies. No matter which CAD tools you manage or what kind of company you work in, these tips can help you improve your CAD operation and protect your own position through the downturn. T Manage Projects and Deadlines When your company isn’t as busy as management would prefer, you’ll want to do an extra good job on the projects you do have, right? Therefore, hitting deadlines or even bringing projects in early becomes critical in a down economy. CAD managers who understand this concept and work diligently to meet deadlines will be valued even more than they are in good times. Conversely, when your company isn’t busy and something in the CAD environment causes a deadline delay, there’s almost no forgiveness. It seems that the more I think ahead and head off problems, the easier everything becomes and the more impressed management is. And although senior managers won’t fully understand all the technical issues you fix, they will remember that the deadline was met without problems. Recommendations. Talk with all key project team members to make sure you know their deadlines. Anticipate any potential CAD issues related to project standards, filing, plotting, and so forth that could adversely affect deadlines and work to alleviate those issues before they become problems. Manage your daily task list to ensure that tackling potential problems is at the top, with the most severe issues at the highest level of priority. with fewer people will magnify any equipment or software problems — especially as deadlines loom. Many of these production kinks aren’t really problems per se as much as they are annoyances or inefficiencies. These annoying productivity issues should come next on your list of priorities. In all my years of CAD management, I’ve never met a CAD user who complained about networks being too fast or plotters being set up too logically, so all efforts to facilitate production do pay off. Recommendations. Ask your users to suggest small improvements that you could make in their production environment. Ask project managers what they see as obstacles in your current CAD production environment and what they would recommend doing to fix them. Choose which ideas to pursue based on your priorities and available time. Be Versatile Obviously, the more you know, the more you can do, and the more valuable you’ll be to your company. One of the things you can do to be more versatile is to maintain good CAD production skills so you can hop into project work when you’re needed. Even if you’re an engineer or architect who hasn’t done CAD production work for a while, it still pays to have the skills when budgets are tight. Being able to step in and assist is not a demotion; it’s a demonstration of versatility that will be appreciated in a down economy. www.cadalyst.com cadalyst January/February 2009 Make Production Easy When budgets are tight, staffing is watched closely and every dollar counts. Management wants to make sure the company is running as lean as possible. Trying to do more 38 http://www.cadalyst.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.