Should I be doing this?

I spent much of this morning pulling together an overview of the latest RFP for presentation to my Boss. In this line of business no-one really likes to say "no" to an opportunity but as I trawled through my notes and applied a bit of common sense it was very much as case of insufficient time and resources to develop a solution for this let alone being able to deliver it should we win it.

As I have already said, nobody wants to hear "no" so I set out my case saying that we should really reject the piece but the best way forward would be for us to demand clear and concise requirements for the required solution elements and we would do our best. No commitments would be made until the request was clarified and that needed to be immediate in view of the fact that this would need to be worked over a period when most people are more interested in turkey and presents.

As I intimated in yesterday's entry, I didn't like the timescales associated with this opportunity. I had discovered that the RFP had been delivered in the second half of October but it had taken the Opportunity Team until the second week of December to come to us for assistance … talk about getting the shitty end of the stick!

The RFP was also for a client outside of the Industry Sector Team in which I work. My experiences with the last RFP demonstrated that getting resources within the Sector Team can be hard enough so very early in my presentation I made these points clear and asked whether we were the right team to be developing this solution.

My Boss latched on to this point and agreed that this wasn't for our team and advised that we should take no further action. He would liaise with the Requestor and inform them of the reasons for our disengagement. I must admit that I was quite relieved. I don't like having no work to do but I prefer my tasks to be challenging rather than bloody impossible.

The rest of the day was the fairly standard fare of calls and e-mail and I finished at a very civilised five o'clock.

A fire was lit in the lounge and I spent a while pottering in the garage which translates to taking a multi cutter to the bolts holding the front engine plate that remains stubbornly affixed to the Enfield's motor … after much deliberation I have decided to reverse the nuts and bolts that mount the plate. This allows me to remove the damned thing from the bike and paint it in the comfort of the house.

There may be some faffing around to get the thing remounted on the engine but it seemed the best way to refurbish it.