signage

Signage

By David Verveer

Signage means by definition, symbols or words whose function it is to provide directions, identification, information, orientation, warnings, regulations, or restrictions. Any development project, irrelevant to its size requires signage, which advises the people inside and outside the project, the direction to go, how to behave during emergencies such as fire, explosions, etc. in short, what in the past was a logical development, today is considered a science, as size, color, form and picture, clear enough to give the reader an instant message how to behave, might very well save his and other lives. And like many other subjects, it is taught at universities, and obligatory readings for engineers and architects. But when I learned engineering, signage did not yet receive the attention it really deserves, and when I was asked to manage the signage installation at a huge high tech factory, I really did not know what I am getting into.

Signage, like any other engineering, is based on logic rules and comprehension how one should behave during emergencies, and if one includes also some basic understanding of the process and possible mishaps using this type of raw materials, one really realizes that signage is a serious subject, worthwhile doing it correctly.

The Americans and Europeans developed a safety code, in which the signage plays an important role, we Israelis, who are used to improvise think we don't need strict rules and codes, we will manage ("everything will be all right, we will manage") is our favorite expression.

The Israeli behavior is of course not acceptable to the owners of the project (Americans), and even less so to the project managers, a European firm. The "lack a daisy attitude" of the Israeli worries them terribly and caused them to insist on a much stricter management than really is required for. I have full understanding for their attitude, but even though, their excessive pressure of execution by the word, of foreign signage for local population causes frictions and stupid mistakes, which might lead to catastrophic results, precisely those they intended to prevent, on the first hand.

One of the major mistakes is those caused by absolute ignorance of the Hebrew language by most of the Owners and Project Managers, and their ruling that English is the only acceptable language for the correspondence. Let us assume that about 20% of the Owners and Project Managers are English spoken as mother tongue, the remainder learned some basic English, but insufficient to write or comprehend it. I can tell you numerous jokes and mistakes in instruction sentences I received from the project managers, from using a English Hebrew dictionary phonetically, to choosing expressions which somehow, after research, have by accident, in a special combination, the same meaning as the word intended by the writer. The letters seem to be translated by a bad computer translation program.

The problem is that besides the hilarious letters, we (the contractors) receive, the contents are non-comprehensible, and don't provide the results required by the writer, but of course most of the contractors never studied Shakespeare, and the daily meetings are more or less, like the tower of Babylon.

The project managers (especially in the lower ranks) are Israelis, some but not too many, are professionals who due to the high salaries paid by foreign firms, were willing to take on a project for a limited period of time, and are likely to be fired from one day to the other, based on a computerized management program which ignores the leadership of humans. The remainder is a bunch of misfits, who were able to get their jobs due to absolute lack of knowledge of the Israeli by the management team, composing their work team.

Those Israelis (the latter described bunch) are the contractors greatest problem, because the don't understand the reason for any command, but need to oblige their masters, in order to be kept on for some more days, as the project is nearing its end, and the factory already started trials in production, etc.

They use any legal and illegal excuse in putting the blame of failure on somebody else, specially the contractors, who are continuously threatened with stoppage of payment for their performed and contracted functions, installations and activities.

In signage this is mostly evident in signage which has been forgotten for some reason by the management, and suddenly has to be installed next day. The system of daily published SPR's, (list of complains) by the project manager, in which the contractor is accused of failures (divided in critical and non critical observations by the inspection teams), as far as signage, those observers failed to read or comprehend the designs, nor do they have a notion, who, why and which contractor has to install the missing signage, which resulted in my case last week, by being publicly humiliated, without allowing me to respond and to explain what, and what not was executed by us, and why the list included parts which are outside our package, but that is the way when the expression;" the client is always right", rules the waves.

Based on common sense, the signage application should be the absolute last contractor activity in the execution of the project, in order to minimize the damage and theft of the signs, however, in our case, this logical approach does not apply to the project management wisdom resulting, besides the damage done by the contractors, a mixture of sectors which could not yet receive signage, as they were not ready, not yet installed or where the signage would obstruct the projects at hand. Of course, in this case, we automatically get spots which are not completed, and somehow forgotten between the thousands of signs applied. Outside signposts were erected one day and next day flattened by the trucks and heavy equipment working in the area, which means, we have to remove the installed asphalt or paving, dig up the foundations, reinstalling the entire signpost, and all this has to be finished inside the tight time schedule dictated by the manager / owner. Look at the money, the sweat and input wasted on serious mismanagement, of which we warned the project management in the beginning of the project.

If I would have been ten years younger, I would have resigned from the job, a long time ago, but I don't like to end my career with a failure, thus I keep on until the bitter end. On my answer to the above mentioned SPR's, I failed to erase the Cc's (all other contractors) one of the large contractors wrote to me the following, I quote:

"Good for you, I enjoyed reading your reply to what is a very frustrating team of managers, this is the worst run project I have ever been involved with. Good luck."

As you noticed, I did not mention the name of the project, nor the project managers, as I don't want to get anybody in trouble, as truth is not something allowed in our modern business world, and the only reason I wrote this was to relief me of cropped up anger and frustration, and my gratitude that most projects I have been involved with were more satisfactory. I don't think I will add this project to my résumé, as I am most certainly not proud on what I managed to accomplish.