Overrunner Thought

THE time has come for QS to do over runner report to senior management. Over runner mean those projects which cannot be done in the time frame of preceding year and we have to estimate the balance amount to be done in following year. This is part of year end report from the series of several form of reports. First in my 5 years service, I have seen very less number of projects have been estimated for over runner report for year 2013. It is not good sign for a company to see less projects in running list. It can destroy the hope of employees to get year end bonus indeed. Understandable that how do we expect to get bonus while business is not doing well.

Some site workers are allowed to take unpaid leaves as an attempt of offsetting headcount. Fortunately, QS are usually busy when we have less project by chasing tenders. As a sole QS who does tender calculation, I have some relief from being retrenched. Meanwhile, less service junior my fellow citizen QS feel some kind of heat with the less jobs. Given turnover, our company is big enough to run about 15 projects simultaneously. However, this new year had seen a handful of projects only that worry us considerably. As a result, some PM and PE are being deployed to the same project to keep them alive. The global economy trend is not so good as well and it affect republic's economy for sure. The government is trying to save industries by introducing several big government projects, at least for a short term. But it is not easy task for a tiny island like Singapore if they cannot find a sustainable solution.

We came to work and doing less things this time. We sometime feel betrayed as we pretend working in front of computer with standby mode only. In fact, everybody is in the same condition and understand each other. I luckily able to involve in tender team which is the busiest department during difficult time. We used to drag and complain when we got busy time. I think, busying at job is better than nothing to do at work because it can build up our esteem and hard working earn other respect. More importantly we could able to feel that our jobs are more secured when the company is doing well. Since we are paid for work, we may not fulfill our obligation when jobs are fly away from us. Let us hope the jobs will come us sooner than later in this new year 2013.