Short projects pack just as much of a punch as longer projects because they are all equally purposeful.
In May, we tasked 100 top financial professionals from Deloitte UK to build a series of playground equipment including a train and planters, for children in Tower Hamlets, London, all from a hotel event space 20-minutes away in St Paul’s, in two hours.
The only thing is that for us, short projects mean we have a bit more on our plate! The logistics before and after this project were “harder than ever”, as our Project Manager Colin Robinson, explains…
Day one
We were slap bang in the middle of London and had a 20-minute time limit in the loading bay, alongside other vehicles, to unload a 7.5-tonne truck full of all the materials and tools. Then, we had to get it all up two different lifts, and a corridor in between, to the conference room.
In order to be able to deliver a project in such a short time frame, we had to do a lot more behind the scenes beforehand; we precut all the wood, for 21 different builds, and then loaded it all up, IKEA style, onto the lorry.
Five of us all met up at 12pm at the school (who made us the most fantastic Asian-inspired lunch) and afterwards we had a 3.5-hour window to rip out all the old planters to make room for the new equipment, and then get back to the venue for 6.30pm.
It was manic.
The hotel staff had never seen so much stuff in their foyer before. And the event space had never seen anything like this before.
Day two
The next day the project started at 1pm. Getting 100 people, most of whom had never used tools before, to build 21 different structures, was the easiest bit of the whole project!
But although we did a lot of prep, what they had to do was no mean feat. And if they didn’t roll up their sleeves and get on with it the way they did, there was no way they would have finished. It was a tough ask. They were really engaged.
You can imagine the noise. It was carnage.
Then, we laid out everything as it would be positioned in the playground before getting it all down in two lifts, load it into a truck, transport it to the school and then unload it all and put in place.
We finished by about 9pm.
Day three
We still had all the old planters to remove, and there was so much soil we had to get a digger in. We had to get out by 1.30pm so the guys could get out of London and head back to Devon, as it was the Friday before the bank holiday weekend.
I have never seen so much gear moved in such a short space of time on a project. It was amazing what they did. We filled two 20ft skips with around 40-tonnes of stuff.
The garden will mean everything to the children. The planters will be used by the school to teach the children how to grow, harvest and cook vegetables, and there’s a sensory element to the garden too.
Being outside is really calming for the children, many of whom don’t have any outside space at home.
