And some don'ts, each one from a piece-of-work who took over as managing engineer for another office in a company that I was with about 20 years ago. I had to deal with him a few times because I often worked with the staff in that office.
1. Do NOT cuss before and during an interview with a potential client for a project. The F-word, the Sh-word, the word that sounds like a structure that impounds a reservoir. That sort of thing. When we walked out, he thought we had nailed the interview. Imagine my surprise when we didn't get the project.
2. Do NOT brag about "training my VP" by not returning his phone calls or emails.
3. Do NOT propose and contract for 9 tasks for Engineering Services During Construction (ESDC), then list only 4 of them in the project budget spreadsheet, and then underbudget the 4 you did include. The design phase was also underbudgeted, but at least he had accounted for each task he had listed in the proposal. Only the pre-design phase was properly budgeted.
4. Do NOT bill into that limited ESDC budget when the design is only at 75%.
#1 and #2 happened on the same day. I am not by nature a tattle-tale, but when I got back to my office I sat down with my manager and told him what had happened, then we got the VP on the line. I suggested that the VP contact the staff engineer who had also attended the interview with us to verify my story and maybe learn a bit more about other issues that may be festering in that office. The managing engineer was fired the next day, in person, by the VP.
#3 and #4 I learned about maybe six months later when I inherited a project from said staff engineer when he left consulting to go work for the guv'ment. My first task was to go meet with the client (the day after I had inherited the project) and he was the one who brought #4 to my attention. I learned about #3 when I stopped by the other office after my meeting with the client to meet with the new managing engineer, pick up physical files, go through the financials, etc. Early the next week, after I had analyzed the contract, the budget, the status of the work, etc., I told the new office manager that we needed to rescind two invoices (fortunately not paid yet) and that we were going to eat perhaps $80k because of #3. After getting permission to do this, I set up another meeting with the client, where I told him what had happened and that we were going to meet our obligations regardless of the billing and budget errors created by the old managing engineer. During our conversation, the client offhandedly mentioned being annoyed by another consultant who would bill him for a three-minute phone call, and I told him that I didn't bill for short phone calls. I said that a phone call had to exceed about 15 or 20 minutes before I recorded it on my time card. Anyway, the upshot of all this was that the client told me the next week that he was impressed with my honesty and willingness to complete the project as-is and that he had found some additional money that he could make available for weekly site visits (which were not in the original proposal or contract), to the tune of about $45k. He then told me that he would be OK if I made it to the site once a month and that I could use the rest of the money to cover as much of the big hole in our budget as I could. I still had to donate a lot of my own time to this project, but at least I wasn't having to work 24-7.
A few morals from these short stories:
From #1: Use professional language at all times while on the job. Using professional language 24-7 is even better.
From #2: Use your brain and do good work. Leaving out most of the ESDC budget is dumb, dumb, dumb, and it WILL come back to bite you or someone you work(ed) with.
From #3: Don't disrespect your boss, even if you don't like him (IMHO, the VP was a pretty good guy). Related to this, but from stories I did not tell here: Don't disrespect your subordinates and don't make office politics your first priority, or your second priority, or your third priority.... We're supposed to work together as a team. Don't play narcissistic games.
From #4: Deal honestly with your clients, including communicating, writing proposals, calculating fees, billing based on the work done, etc. Also, be honest when there is a screw-up on your end. In this case, my client did what he could to lessen the financial burden on my company and the personal burden on my time. I am forever grateful to him for doing this.
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"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill
