Work Frustrations

Earlier I puzzled about whether a blog required a theme. Certainly the most followed ones have a common thread. I had intended to focus on hobbies I have several of them and wanted to share what I was working on and where I was focused. However, it seems that blogging sometimes happens at work, and if it does happen at work it is a direct result of work frustruations. This post is no exception.

I am a government contractor and I recently transitioned from an old contract to a new one. I am still working in the same place, and for the same office, but for a variety of reasons, I now have a new employer. Also for a variety of reasons, the ostensible tasks have changed, although in reality I am still doing the same type of work I was doing before with some new work added.

This afternoon we had a two-hour meeting to discuss the new work, a series of case studies intended to create a longitudinal evaluation of project execution over the next five years. The Statement of Work (SOW) that served as the basis for the contract identified and described the case studies and the types of questions that they were intended to answer. The meeting was the first of many planned with the Federal customers and intended to receive their input on the execution of the case studies. Instead, the team was subjected to an extensive tirade by one of the Feds (the one responsible for drafting the SOW) on the importance of connecting all the case studies to National Benefits and focusing on the engineering and technological aspects of the project and whether those support National agendas.

The previous case studies were going to be challenging, but I believed we could execute them well. This assignment? Well is it really the responsibility of a team of contractors to determine if the Office has successfully met the National targets and provided benefits for taxpayer dollars. Seems to me that is the task of the Office, the Inspector General, and Congress. I don't want to touch the assignment with a ten-foot pole!