I have now finished my first week of work in the Southern Hemisphere. I've learned a lot in a short while, and I was reminded of what the philosopher Paul McCartney taught us decades ago that "we all know that people are the same wherever you go..."
I work for a very large joint venture between my parent employer and a very large, international company who was my competitor when I worked in Calgary. I started off by going to my parent company's offices for an "induction" (not as painful as it sounds) on Friday, November 11. Their offices were bright, shiny, open, colorful and modern. I got a bunch of passwords for some systems and did some online training for sexual harassment, bullying and unethical behavior. Apparently, my reputation proceeded me. Actually, everyone does it and it's pretty straight forward. The building itself is one block away from the river and overlooks the estuary, park and the clock tower to the south. Very nice views.
Then on Monday, November 14 I started at my project office where I will be spending almost all of my time. The building itself is 5 stories, 2 of which are basically underground because the building is on a hill. I work on the 3rd floor which is the de facto ground floor. *Tangent Alert* In Perth, they don't consider the "ground floor" to be floor #1. So, in most cases the floor above ground is considered floor #1. It's very confusing when you are in an elevator and you already don't know where you're going.
The building itself is on the other (read: east) side of the CBD. Nothing wrong with that except that lying between the building and the river is the very large convention center and then the freeway. So, you can't really see the river and it's pretty tough to get to from the office. It's your typical building from 1968: ugly and run down. I was supposed to have an office but they ran out so I'm sitting in the cubicle next to the dude I essentially replaced. He is being very nice and helpful despite this. Just about everyone is in cubicles. On top of that they're the one's with the short walls and people have their backs facing each other. As a result, it's pretty noisy and there isn't much (any) privacy. I've been told that they're considering demolishing our building and moving us into a newer one possibly in the fall (March-ish). That would be fine with me. I'm desperately hoping the newer one doesn't have the 60's style trough urinals (not kidding about this).
It's been interesting to see how they run a project here. There are a lot of similarities and there are some differences. Regarding the differences, in some cases they do things better and in other cases they do them worse. Part of my job is to improve the areas where I can although many of them are well out of my scope. Thus far the biggest learning curve has been the systems they use and some of the nomenclature. In my experience the toughest challenge about starting a new job is to learn the TLA's (three letter acronyms) that company uses. Sometimes they make me wonder WTF. But IDK, I guess it's just how it goes. LOL (not really).
The people I work with, for the most part, seem to be very nice and everyone has been quite accomodating. This is despite the fact that they were given very little information about my arrival and even less information about why I was being flown in in the first place. Everyone is still a little guarded around me and they are obviously trying to learn what to expect from me and how best to take me. I have a team of 6 people in the office and another 4 on the jobsite. I haven't met the 4 yet but one of them is from Windsor, Ont. The 6 I have met are very nice and they all work very hard. Without exception, each one of them reminds me of someone back home because of their personality and in some cases appearance. The group overall is very inexperienced and they were being led by someone whose expertise was in a different discipline. In general, as tight as the labour market is in Alberta it's even tighter here because of the BOOMING iron ore and LNG (liquified natural gas) markets. Good people are tough to find and if you find them you hold onto them with both hands (I think they mentioned something about that in the sexual harassment orientation...)
Australians have a somewhat deserved reputation of being lazy beach bums. In Western Australia it's even worse to the point where the "WA" in Western Australia is commonly referred to here as "wait awhile". Nothing gets done quickly. However, in the mining business here it's completely different. People work very hard and they work long hours. My project hours are 45 hours per week standard with a half hour lunch. So, that's 7am-4:30pm or some variation of that. Most people, however, are putting in quite a bit of overtime. I've been getting a bus (a free bus from where we currently live) at 6:50am to go to the CBD. It's the first free bus (known as the CAT) of the morning on the blue line, which runs near our apartment. I have been getting to the office by about 7:10am at the latest. By the time I get there the office is already 3/4 full. I think part of it is that alot of these people come from overseas and have a much different work ethic than your typical Perthopian.
Honestly, my initial impression is that I have taken a slight step back in my career. I went from a management position to a supervisor position. Initially, I was slightly bummed out about this, however, I reminded myself that a) we didn't move here for my career advancement; b) in the long term this will help my career because of the international exposure and experience in an industry outside of oil & gas; and c) I get to soak up more ideas about how other companies operate. My boss, a very nice POM by the name of Rob, is already talking about me taking on other roles in 6 months. We'll see if that's just talk or not.
All in all, I'm fairly pleased with the work situation. I get to leave the 'boom box' (it's really noisy in the apartment) every morning and just focus on work. Nadia has to sit and stew about schools, homes, cars, air freight, insurance, phones, internet connections and keep the kids from killing each other. I've had several POMs at work tell me that when they moved here, for the first 6 months, everyday they wanted to go home. Then they settled in and they love it here. So, as long as we can keep our heads above water for the next few months all should be well.
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