A year of work in progress – day 50

Day 50 – 18 March 2014

I had a day off yesterday, the last of this year’s.  I’ve timed it quite well as there are only eleven more days left of this fiscal year.  Holidays have always presented a small problem for us as the year in which you an accrue them and take them is the same as the council’s business year.  This means that, because of circumstances or just bad planning, there is always a residue of time off to be taken during March which happens to be one of our busiest months.  We’re doing something about it by changing the holiday year but I’m not sure when this will kick in.

What’s worse though is that Pam is off.  It’s much worse as she’s off for a whole fortnight.  We, the SMT, offered to buy back her holiday and I think she thought we were kidding but really we were very serious.  Fortunately she sorted everything for the next two weeks before she went off and so I’ll try and survive.

Only three meetings today to ease me back in after the long weekend.  The first was sort of where this blog all began with a visit to Holy Trinity Rosehill School in Stockton to see (the ORRsome) Rachel Orr.  I was interested to know her impressions having moved from one local authority area to another.  It was interesting to hear the similarities and the differences between the services on offer and there were a couple of areas in which we might be able to help.  We talked from dual factor authentication to virtual learning environments and ballet to football.  We also got some useful contacts for our upcoming conference in October.  Good stuff.

Back at County Hall we had our monthly Customer Focus board where things have really taken off with some exciting projects to deliver.  This was another paperless challenge as the documents were distributed through SharePoint.  I still have a little way to go to get a grip on how to handle this application when in a meeting but progress is good.  Sixteen days now without it and I’m coping well.  People are getting more used to me tapping away during a meeting. 

I’ve started to carry an extension lead as power is king.

Speaking of exciting projects, after lunch I travelled to Easington for a quarterly update with East Durham Homes.  All fingers were crossed as we’re expecting a big announcement from central government this week.  Who knows it may even be around the budget statement.  More will be revealed once the outcome is known.

Learning points for today:   The easy bits are always the most difficult; I can’t spell Tchaikovsky but I can whistle a good tune and; people live in homes not houses.

Today’s enjoyment rating  9/10 – Lots of big things moving.