6.30 AM

Wake up and ride to work.

After a good 7 hours of sleep the morning alarm goes off and it’s time to seize the day. Depending on the week I am either at home or in rural Victoria close to the client site, however this week is a home week. Quickly packing my bag, I jump on the trusty push bike and begin my hour ride into the city. 

8.30 AM

Find a desk and fire off some emails.

After a quick shower at the office facilities, I am refreshed, at a desk and ready to get stuck into work. We run a hot desk set up, today I was able to grab myself a standing desk which typically fill up first. Currently I am working on a capital project which has just kicked off for a manufacturer of baked goods. They are wanting to double the amount they produce on one of their manufacturing lines at the lowest cost possible. The day starts with responding to the emails that came in overnight. These currently consist of interactions with suppliers of equipment, talking through lead times, equipment specifications and payment terms. 

After the morning emails I like to spend some time planning out my tasks for the day setting aside time for each entry on todays to do list.

9.30 AM

Time for the morning coffee run!

Arguably the best part of the day is when the first person looks up from their monitor and motions that it’s time for a coffee. A group of us head out to the local spot where we get a free coffee.

10.00 AM

First meeting of the day.

Most of yesterday was spent creating a PowerPoint presentation with several charts and visuals showing the projects progress so far, the financial benefits of the project and the cost required to make it all happen. Now it’s time for the first meeting of the day where I am reviewing the presentation with my project team. This deck is going to be presented to the clients c-suite so it’s important to triple check every detail. Thankfully there was mostly good feedback but still a few changes to be made. 

I head back to my desk and get stuck into the deck, most of the required changes are minor formatting adjustments, however we also decided to include a new chart showing the timeline of proposed capital spend by project initiative. For this I dive into excel, perform some minor data manipulations and with a bit of excel wizardry have a nice looking graph ready to include.

1.00 PM

Lunch time!

My stomach starts to grumble so it’s time to reenergize with some sushi. A few of us go out, grab some lunch and bring it back to eat and chat together. This is a nice time to talk weekend plans, AFL results and learn what project some of my colleagues are working on.

2.00 PM

Supplier Management.

Most of the work at this stage of the project is around supplier management. We have over 10 pieces of equipment we are looking to procure and for each we are speaking with multiple suppliers. When I went through my emails this morning, I noted that there are a few suppliers that haven’t gotten back to me, it’s time to follow up. After making 4 phone calls (and getting ghosted once), I can update our project charter to say that quotes for these items have been promised by the end of the week.

3.00 PM

Client meeting.

Before this morning’s deck can be sent out as a pre read, we run it past some of the client team from the site we are working on. It is important to make sure everyone is aligned on the content before we present to the c-suite. We have a great discussion and an hour later are all happy with the deck, it can now be sent out in preparation for tomorrow.

5.30 PM

Back on the bike.

After firing off some final emails, the to do list if full is all checked off and so it’s time to get back on the bike and head home. No footy training today so it’s a casual night with some dinner and a few episodes of whatever TV show has me hooked before jumping into bed and getting some sleep before doing it all again tomorrow.

Thinking of experiencing life as an Argon & Co Graduate? Sign up to Prosple Australia to receive job alerts for Argon & Co