There are times within every project where something (or many things) can gum up the works and slow your group’s productivity.  The question is how prepared you are tor them in advance and how you react when they do happen.  When you hit a snag and one or more team members end up spending hours doing repetitive tasks, do you dare bill for all that time?

Some think it logical that it was a necessary part of completing the project and bill for the inefficient time anyway (we’ll call them the grinders).  But what they are not considering is how that large client (that they want to keep) is actually comparing their bills to other groups doing comparably sized projects.  In comparison another group may have invested in productivity add-ons and have their staff already accustomed to all the shortcuts it can provide (we’ll call them the runners).

After all, you are using CAD to be more efficient than the previous generation drafting board, pens and leroy sets.  Consider just the time to enter a perfectly centered title block in CAD compared to the double draw process of leroy lettering.  The grinders bought  CAD and considered themselves done, complete with all they need.  The runners realize the CAD engine does a lot, but has holes that can be filled with professional add-ons.

So when managers of large organizations distribute work, don’t ignore the fact that they are reviewing  the efficiency of those that receive it.  When the subsequent round of projects get distributed, it’s the runners that get the lions share (if not all) of the work because they have proven they can get more done in less time.

We’ve seen grinders posting to forums on how to handle a new grind they are up against.  Often times the work around kings (every forum has them) will describe lengthy processes, basically hoops to jump through, using this free download and export to a CSV, open in Excel, do more work, export to something and finally import to CAD.  Anything to avoid spending a dime on refined add-ons products.  The grinders and the work around kings do not realize that every wasted hour is a another hour that should not be billable, and to chance billing means to run the risk of losing clients.

So if you would rather be a runner than a grinder, evaluate the efficiency of your group, research ways of being more productive, and become a runner.   Then when you find your amount of work grows, you can afford to hire more people and take on even more work.

Once saw a signature on a forum post “The only thing worse than training people and having them leave is not training them and having them stay”.

In your quest for being as productive as you can, consider that DotSoft has over 30 years experience doing one thing, that is increasing the productivity of CAD users in the areas of generic productivity and the Civil/Survey & GIS arenas.

To answer the question the post’s title “Who Pays for Inefficiencies”, it’s the grinders themselves who lose out on work because of their inefficiencies.

Become a runner today … before it’s too late.

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