• Question: How long did you work on you most difficult project

    Asked by anon-74787 on 3 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 3 Jun 2020:

      I spent almost a year on a big project which involved many months’ worth of man-hours designing and manufacturing to the customer’s requirements.

    • Photo: Neil Runciman

      Neil Runciman answered on 3 Jun 2020:

      Six months on a project that was scheduled to take two years to complete The project had had three previous project managers and was eighteen months in and looked like it was going to overrun.

    • Photo: Fidel Olaye

      Fidel Olaye answered on 3 Jun 2020:

      I spent about a year on a project in my last job that was quite complex and that was just for work on a design.

    • Photo: Gillian Steele

      Gillian Steele answered on 3 Jun 2020:

      The length of a project is usually dictated by the type or scale. I have worked on very small projects which only take a few weeks or a month and others which are ongoing for years.

    • Photo: Asha Panchal

      Asha Panchal answered on 3 Jun 2020:

      Hi MattiE,
      This is an interesting question. I’m a ground engineer and am involved with the part of the build right at the start of a project. For example, we put the structure in to support a basement (retaining wall). Sometimes when we are installing the wall it we face lots of challenges, because there might be obstructions (which we can’t see). After we have put the wall in, other contractors dig the basement out and then we can see how well the wall was constructed. So, for me, I’ve been on relaly challenging projects for 6-9 months during the building of it, and then I have to come back even after our works have finished to fix any problems which could be for another few months!
      But at the end of the day, it’s the challenges that you learn from and make you think about coming up with new solutions and better ways of doing things.

    • Photo: Martin McKie

      Martin McKie answered on 4 Jun 2020:

      I spent around 7 years working on my PhD problem. In other roles I have worked on problems for up to 4 years. So the goal was to solve a huge problem but it was gradually solved by developing processes, which we did and implemented over a 4 year period but to solve the main problem our team was involved in developing hundreds of smaller processes.

    • Photo: Conrad Manning

      Conrad Manning answered on 4 Jun 2020:

      Generally full boat designs require about 2 years to go from concept to delivery to owner (some take less time some more depending on how much optimisation of the design the owner wants). Although it’s not full time day in day out, I’ve been part of a few of them

    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 4 Jun 2020:

      I’ve been lucky to work on really large projects, one those was Solar Orbiter, that launched in February this year. On and off, I spent around 2 years on the project, working on one section, then another, supporting other people when it came to big customer reviews, whilst also working on other projects.
      Some people on the project joined it at the very beginning and are now working with the data from the satellite in space – so they’re coming into their 13th year (or something like that).

      Now, I work on an on-going project, getting volunteers into schools. As part of that, I try to make sure that all schools get some support from the volunteers and I also check that what the volunteers are up to is useful, so lots of measuring! We tend to look at how things are going over a term and then a year, but also have things planned over the next 5 years!

    • Photo: Jeni Spragg

      Jeni Spragg answered on 5 Jun 2020:

      My most difficult project so far was my PhD (a research degree after my undergraduate degree), which took about 3 and a half years.
      When you do a PhD, you are responsible for your own research project. In many ways this is great, because you have the freedom to explore something you find really interesting. You can create your own experiments, or computer models, and be creative. However, it can be tricky sometimes, especially when things go wrong! You learn to be very determined and independent, great skills to take into any job.
      In my current job, we’re just starting a project that could take 10 years or more to finish. It’s a much bigger project, which will involve a huge team of people & a big budget – very different to my PhD!

    • Photo: Luke Winch

      Luke Winch answered on 10 Jun 2020:

      I work in construction as a designer so most of my simple projects are very short but for more complex designs, I can work on the design for 6 months, or a year or even longer.

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