Constriction of Having No Control – Trails of a New CAD Manager

Trial Two:  The Constriction of Having No Control

Trial number two is related to number one (The Authority Challenge) but it relates to not having control.  You have no control over key areas that impact your success. This relates to people and projects.

Symptoms of this Trial: 

The existing workforce that you have to work with is in place.  They may need training or support and you have no control over the budget to get them what they need.  New hires come into the company and you have no control to interview them and provide input during the hiring process of how well they know CAD or BIM.

New Project start in CAD any you are not informed.  You have no control to prevent users from just opening CAD and starting a new project from scratch or by copying an old project that may contain terrible files.  The project kickoff does not include a brief discussion of CAD issues and the team runs ahead of you and does whatever they want.

When this Trial comes your way:

There is not much you can do if you inherit a user base that is not what you might hope in production and software understanding.  You get what you get.  But moving them toward a better understanding of the tools and processes must include training.  Work toward getting a budget and start free lunch and learn sessions that will instruct them on the proper way of getting things done.  Create a new hire checklist that includes some form of testing (written test) or evaluation (there are tools out there for that) and press for it to be adopted.  Evaluation and education are life long efforts.  Get them started as soon as you can.  Little by little you can move mountains

Create a Project Kickoff checklist that includes all of the needed functions one or two pages.    Add things like project folder structure, standard symbol and block locations, where to get the proper border, etc.  The list can be used by anyone, but if needed you can step in and offer to create the project for them.  It may take a couple of hours, but getting the team going in the right direction will reap benefits.