Wrap Up

Hi guys, thank you for having me here.

Even if I'm not live, was asked to Conrad and Jack to provide some summary,

some feedback on how my remote working has been for the past seven months.

So thank you for the opportunity and Jack, it's appealing to see you going,

but I'm sure we'll we'll cross our paths again in the future.

So what I wanted to explain a bit what happened.

So I committed with the company and with the project for

being the Digital project manager for the Western Harbor Tunnel project that

started back in january but in november had to move away

from Australia to stay close to the families here in europe.

So um but anyways,

I had given my word that I was going to do

that project and you know how difficult was to find resources.

So I said, yeah, I'll do it just do it remotely and let's see how it goes.

So this pose many challenges, but it also demonstrated good, good outcomes,

good opportunities.

I've summarized here some pros and cons

that I'd like to take you through.

So the real pro of being able to work abroad in a different

time zone remotely was that I gained benefits from the time focus time.

So when

you guys in Australia are asleep for the guys in the US are still asleep,

they haven't came up Russia yet.

So I've managed to do very much work done in those 45

hours that we don't have overlaps because obviously my focus time is uh

because obviously my focus is on the task that

I have to do without any interruption or distraction,

but that was very positive.

The other thing is um

there's no bugging said before, so I can't come and bug you.

I removed the destruction for myself but also remove being on a different time zone,

remove the destruction of others coming where that happens a lot,

where where you are in,

in an office and people just come up to tell a joke to ask you go for a coffee,

which is still great.

But um yeah, you, you removed that option from your daily work

and the other good thing that I've noticed is that you have time to prepare for the,

what I call wow factor and apologize if I'm inventing some words,

english is not obviously my, my main language.

So the wow factor, what I call wow factor is the overnight works.

So when Australia go to sleep and they asked me to

take over on some

tasks,

the great thing is that the next morning,

all the work when you guys wake up or

when the project for for Western harbor tunnel example

was waking up, they had the task completed already and that happened

both ways.

So when I was at the end of my day

and asking someone to do something at the next morning,

when I was connecting ahead, all these tasks already down.

So we were kind of working on

two shifts in one day, that was was a great,

great actually outcome of this work in different time zones,

A few cons I think I was missing

on face to face, obviously it's always good to

face to face meet people and

chit chat and so on, so you reduce that

part when you are working remotely.

And the second thing is you miss on events and like um social gatherings,

project drinks or any sort of catch up

and but also you miss on merchandise and I don't know

why when your remote uh you're kind of forgotten people don't

know where you live and I was enjoying so much all

the tweets that I was having when I was in Brisbane.

Um I lived out there

and the third thing is you can't wax lacquer,

so I had many times in Western Harvard Tunnel project where I had to go and chase the,

the consultants so externals obviously there's no slackers in willow as we know,

but I had to chase the consultants and follow them up and if I was in the

office I would have gone there and sat on their desk and wait until they come back

or they gave me an answer and unfortunately

being online they were just going offline disappearing from

teams not replying to emails and it was really hard to get the output that I needed.

So yeah, that's

country of working remotely.

Um

another things I wanted to share is lesson learned, so

it's important when you uh

change your working style,

you start doing crazy hours because you want to

still be able to, as Alejandro will mention later,

you want to still be able to prove that you're doing something,

so you want to be able to be present all the time and that's very difficult.

It's almost impossible.

You can't cover three different time zones

on one working day within reasonable hours.

So you have to start being picky and see okay, I will attend this meeting,

I will watch the recording for the other meeting and

I will catch up with someone a synchronous works.

It's it's a choose, it's a choice that you have to make and you

you take it will take a while to get it.

But yeah,

that's that's something that you need to give up on some of your other meetings that

you like and you will just like this one and you'll watch the recording later on.

Um The third lesson learned is that it's always good to have um

real life presence,

so especially on a project where we have to be in

the client's office and they want to see bums on seats.

So we I was lucky that Alejandro did it initially and then even

um

we're covering for me, so going once a week to the project office,

even if they were working on different projects and other stuff,

but the client really wanted to see the presence there, so

Unfortunately we can't change this, but it's a, it's a lesson learned,

so we can't have 100% remote working,

especially when you're planning to work on projects.

And the last thing I wanted to share with you is what I've noticed.

So I've noticed that there was initially not much difference in terms of

working from home due to covid or working remotely,

because for the last two years when I was in Brisbane, I was still

managing to catch catching up with colleagues, only over teams.

So it didn't matter if they were in Brisbane in Sydney in in europe,

but my communication were still happening through teams.

So that has really not much changed,

but still at the same time you have to be careful of what I call the,

the fake grip.

I don't know if if it's a thing and just making it up,

but I had a feeling that because I was watching the recording,

I was catching up with all the things the next day I was present, I was there.

But that feeling was kind of fake because it wasn't two ways

feeling so from the other side from your side guys in Australia,

um,

I wasn't there.

So if you have any question,

you have to wait until I came back or I came online and you didn't see my face,

I didn't see my body, so it looked like that, I wasn't there.

So this is a one thing that we need to pay attention with, so just to

make sure that because you're catching up on everything doesn't mean

that everybody else is catching up on you as well.

And the last thing is that you make new best friends.

So time and date dot com became a very good friend and I actually saved

my different working schedule with different hours on

my deck stop as my desktop background.

So when I have to catch up with different times on different people,

different areas, I tried to

always check what time is it for them and scheduling meeting and so on.

That became very important to

So thank you for the opportunity. I think I hope you enjoy my

my summary, my perspective perception.

I hope you enjoyed my perception of remote working and I hand it over to alejandra.

Thank you all.

Wrap Up

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated