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The Design

A couple of months later as S&P commenced their preliminary designs and raised questions and issues for decision, Moneysworth found he needed assistance to cope with the paper work. John Carpenter suggested he use Ian Leadbetter, a bright young mechanical engineer who had specialized in programming semi-automatic manufacturing machinery. Moneysworth realized that this knowledge would be an asset to the project and gave Leadbetter responsibility for running the project. Ian was keen to demonstrate his software skills to his friend John Carpenter. So, while he lacked project management training and experience (especially any understanding of "project life-cycle" and "control concepts") he readily accepted the responsibility.

During the initial phases of the mechanical design, Ian Leadbetter made good progress on developing the necessary production line control software program. However, early in design EID suggested that Woody's should take over the procurement of the production train directly, since they were more knowledgeable of their requirements. Miles Faster jumped at the opportunity to get involved and decided to change the production train specification to increase capacity. Because of this, the software program had to be mostly rewritten, severely limiting Leadbetter's time for managing the project. It also resulted in errors requiring increased debugging at startup.

Neither Moneysworth nor Leadbetter was conscious of the need for any review and approval procedures for specifications and shop drawings submitted directly by either S&P or by Eddie Forgot of Piecemeal Corporation, the suppliers of the production train. In one two-week period, during which both Faster and Leadbetter were on vacation, the manufacturing drawings for this critical long-lead equipment sat in a junior clerk's in-tray awaiting approval. For this reason alone, the delivery schedule slipped two weeks, contributing to a later construction schedule conflict in tying-in the new services.

Planning  Planning

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