It's been a busy week in the office, with preparations to make for to organising the software upgrading of the 240 digital radios belonging to the City Centre radio network. This involves checking their specific identities and locations to which they are assigned, so they can be configured correctly. My task has been to figure out the best way to create a timetable that will bring users to two separate locations convenient to them, for a ten minute rendezvous with an engineer over a period of two full working days. This must be done within a specified period to minimise down-time for the 200 users involved, and build enough slack into the schedule to allow for the inevitable minor glitches, late arrivals, failure to get the rendezvous message through to the person who has to perform the errand.
I went into the office early this morning to finish the task, as I had to officiate at a funeral after lunch, only to learn that the engineers had postponed the work for a couple of weeks. We had only just started to distribute a general reminder notice, and that a somewhat later date than desirable, as a preliminary to preparing the schedule notifications for distribution, so the notification task had to be aborted, and all users notified of the delay instead. At one level it was most annoying, but at another level, the extra preparation time will not go amiss, and will allow us to refine the scheduling plan to optimise the limited (expensive) time available. As a not for profit company we have to make best use of our finite resources, and to do this, a little extra time is most valuable.
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