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Last week in one of my thousands of meetings that I seemed to have, I found myself on a building site in the porta cabin meeting room with 11 other people.

The first thing on the agenda is electrical charging points for the car parks for the different buildings.

In the design and build contract (the huge volumes of paper that the builders have to build, on time, for a set price), it specified that we will have “post mounted electrical charging points”.

What the builders are suggesting is charging points that have a facility to be post mounted, should we desire but if we want them on a post, we have to pay extra.

This is the thin end of the wedge but actually more like the straw that is about to break the camel’s back.

I have a pretty good relationship with the team in this porta cabin although it has been, from time to time, “fractious” but right now is a time to pick a battle.

It was important for me at that moment to explain that the builders have done extremely well out of the contract that they have had from me and I have been, in general, a very amenable client.

If they try to p**s me off by entering into financial semantics and they set those as the rules, I will play them back with their own rules.

Just deliver the charging points on the posts that we want, for the money that we agreed.

If you find these types of conversations hard to believe, it is probably better that you’re not sat in the middle of this project where I am.

I learned on Thursday that there are 50 (yes fifty) sub-contracting companies on the site at the present time.

Roll on February.

Blog Post Number - 2186