To first days....

Many colleagues are surprised I haven't started blogging earlier. It is because I am an engineer and I guess change is difficult for slow people like me! I believe 'engineer' is becoming synonymous with 'luddite'. This is the first day of blogging, maybe I will crack open the champagne for finally stop talking about it and actually doing it.

Well, I will settle for a beer. The first day for doing new-style spreadsheets belongs in Holland, circa May 1997. I was creating a spreadsheet for a material take off estimate of civil/structural items on a large Saudi Arabian project. I saw so much repetition of various structural types that I decided to set up a spreadsheet preformed with sketches for each structure. The format and layout would be consistent. The only thing that would change was the sketching of the structural concept and the key assumptions. I learned to draw using Excel and discovered some neat tricks with the shift and control keys, I was getting hooked. My boss was a garrulous and fearsome Dutchman Martin Ouwe who flipped when he saw me drawing. He said I was wasting time, doodling, playing around and blah blah blah. When he finally calmed down, I showed him I had nearly finished the job; he harrumphed and said he over-estimated the hours then. He was not a man for compliments! Over the next two years, I repeated the exercise for a number of projects, in Sweden, Norway, Russia and Africa; changing and tweaking the spreadsheets for specific needs. I think Martin Ouwe became my first fan.

Last year, 2007, I finished an estimate spreadsheet/database for a huge project in Canada, capturing all the piles, steel and concrete drawings. We were originally given ten months to complete it but by the time we had useful information, we only had two months left on the clock! All engineers on the team (+20) knew from experience endless filing of paper, unreferenced numbers and superseded plot plans - lost in time, lost in space. Panic was visible. In spite of the crunched time, it was not a problem. I had used the waiting time to plan the database and plan how the critical information would be handled. I showed five engineers how a plot plan could be captured into Excel and used to track and monitor quantities. It was a vast improvement on what I started ten years ago; I loved it. It was the first day for these five engineers; they were blown away by the method. Four of them have since moved on to other projects enthusiastically bringing 'first days' to others. The last one was my boss, full of enthusiasm and pride; he saw the light from the first day we were teamed up. It was the first day for the client too, who would say they cannot see how it could have been done any other way. I enjoy doing spreadsheet development and showing engineers how to do it. I still find better ways to do what I do, all the time.

When I look at what ten years has shown me, I am still proud of how I got started and those first days. Maybe I will have champagne; I might get a taste for it. To first days.....