Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets!

Pick a date, any date

And so another day and another Grande-finishing date for the Boulevard Road venture. At this point, the city is gambling that all of the undiscovered unkowns are now discovered knowns.

Perhaps.

The truth is, as one might expect with undiscovered unknowns that you just never really know. Even as the concrete solidifies on the project, we citizens are left to wonder when will it all end.

It seems like a gamble. The project has taken longer than any pyramid in Giza, but noticeably fewer people working it. What we wouldn’t do for a few brick makers and someone like King Tut to lead the way. But then again, it’s not a road made of gold either. Well, perhaps it will be with the inevitable cost over runs, but maybe the city won’t have to pick up too much of that cost.

So if all goes well, I would say according to plan but there is some speculation about what plan means in Southside Virginia, and what, if anything, such an adage really means, we should see two-way traffic with a center turn lane by May 8. May 8 is a pretty defined date, the second Friday in May. Maybe it’s not the month of May but may as in May-be?

Either way, it’s well beyond the point of rattling a saber—or even a grader; just get the darn thing done. Still, such will not be the end of the plight for Colonial Heighters. Completion of the Boulevard fiasco merely brings several more projects down the pike, or should I say throats, as it were.

Dupuy Avenue is the next highway department mission in the starting blocks. Should we show fear? That section of the city is among the oldest. Do you think there will be any undiscovered unknowns ready to be discovered there? That doesn’t even merit a response.

Then we have two massive projects. First, Kroger, the delight of residents on Hamilton, MacArthur and Prince Albert avenues. And of course, the new I-95 ramp and whirly gig, ERRR make that roundabout on Temple Avenue.

Whew! Makes me tired just thinking about it.

It’s not just how screwed up the roads around there are going to be, not to mention the “correction” of Ridge Road which is supposed to line up across from Hamilton when all is done. But just the overall disruption to traffic. Putting in a roundabout the size of Picadilly Circus on Temple Avenue is bound to have some negative fallout. And, Kroger, with its gas pumps, will make for an interesting blivit in one of the busiest east-west corridors south of Route 10.

I guess we make a lot of sacrifices in the name of progress and these annoyances are merely just another of many. But they are coming so quickly, and all on the heels of one another. It can nearly make your head spin.

A roundabout, really? As one of the early songs by Yes, Roundabout was one of my favorites back when I was about 14. And the name still brings about a bit of reminiscence of those easier halcyon days of yore. But for me, I think the Britts got it right when the named them circuses. In Colonial Heights we're getting a new one, a two ringer. Bring on the elephants.

If you think that the boulevard was a jug-jump operation, wait until the Kroger – I 95 roundabout gets into full swing. Good luck.

Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg-A Modern Business Fable

Everyone knows the story about the Goose that laid the golden eggs. It’s a story about greed and how greed overcomes common sense, and how the goose gets cooked, and everyone ends up losing and hungry.

The same exact kind of thing, sort of, happens in the corporate world. I know this might seem hard to believe, but it happens every day. It happens especially in the contracting business, where the drive to produce more with less while maintaining high quality service levels is the driving force behind contract renewals.

A company makes a bid on a contract and manages to win it. Over the next few years, it works its way into becoming a leading contractor at the company. Everything is just perfect. The contract holder is happy, the contractor is happy, and the contract employees are happy.

For a decade, the company gets used to asking for things and receiving them with no questions. The flexibility and the willingness to provide virtually any service to the company becomes one of the unwritten dynamic forces in the contract.

As a result, the contract company expands. They add a new piece here and a new piece there at the customer’s request. All along the way, the relationship between customer and contractor becomes nearly seamless. A new emergency arises, no problem says the contractor, let us handle that for you.

Then of a sudden the cost of that contract gets noticed by the company’s management team. They start to wonder why they are paying this contracting company so much to provide these services, and it seems like we should be getting a better deal. So a new contract is sought.

Under the new contract, the customer sets constraints on overall cost and clearly defines the work they want performed. The contractor, in order to meet the requirement, has to share the goose with another company that meets some pre-ordained specifics about size and ownership. As a result, the new contract calls for plucking the goose somewhat. We don’t need all these tail feathers, and we don’t want the wings says one person on the contract proposal team. Oh, and we can probably reduce the amount we feed the goose, too, they say.

As the goose slowly deforms from the changes that have allowed it to blossom in the first place, the contractors go about figuring how they can continue to get enough golden eggs to support their program metrics. They begin to look at ways of cutting into their costs in order to improve their profit margin. They start looking at the goose’s legs and think, well we can just get some replacement legs and let those old legs move on. The new legs would be cheaper and would use less food, and we can put that money into our profit margin and that will make the big bosses happy and that will add to our bonuses and the customer will still be getting what he asked for.

But the legs aren’t strong enough to hold up the goose, and it starts to wobble just a little bit. As a result, it can’t get to the food that is being brought in, even though it is less, and the goose starts to thin out. Pretty soon the goose falls into bad health. It can no longer produce the nice shiny gold egg it used to produce daily. Now, instead, it can only produce a golden egg about half the size of the former.

Unhappy with the outcome, the big bosses call for more profit margin. The project managers agree because not meeting the demand has a direct effect on their well-being. They look around at other ways to improve the profit margin. Finally, they realize there is only one way to increase profit margin. Food for the goose has to be reduced. Within days of the reduced diet, the goose starts to show signs of disease. Its feathers fall out, its skin dries up, and it staggers as it tries to produce yet another golden egg. But this time as it strains to push an egg out, there is no egg. It pushes and pushes and pushes. Still no egg. The managers come over and huddle up. How are we going to meet the big bosses demand for more profit, they ask each other.

Finally one of the more brilliant of the bunch decides that if the goose can’t push the egg out, they will just have to go get it. With a flurry, out comes a butcher knife and they slice open the goose. Inside they find blood, guts, meat, bone, and sinew—but alas no golden egg. As they haul the remains of the goose to the recycle bin the managers look around. There is little left of their empire and as they start to realize their dilemma, the big boss hauls them into a conference call: “Have you figured out how to get more profit margin?” the big boss asks.

At first the managers are shocked as they realize there is no more golden goose. Then they start looking at each other knowing that without a goose they don’t need as many managers. Fewer managers means more profit. We can handle this. We can do this. The first knife strikes.
Ahhh, sweet profit, I know you well.