The story of the Las Vegas branch begins in the Los Angeles branch.
The L.A. branch had become very successful. Great estimators had been 'stolen' from various contractors and since PCI was an attractive place to work, they had stayed and made a lot of money for the company.
The branch manager, chief estimator and one of the better estimators made a pitch to open a branch of the L.A. office in Las Vegas. There was supposed to be a lot of work there and that idea was approved. I was soon on an airplane headed to Las Vegas; the first time since my last trip there when I worked for Solari. When the plane landed and I made my way through the airport, I saw that not much had changed in the dozen intervening years.
The new branch manager was a great guy and he had thoughtfully booked a room for me at the Rio Casino Hotel. That really wasn't my style but I gave it a try. I parked my own car (no valet) and made my way across the casino floor, dragging my suitcase with me. (check-in is in the center of the casino) Crowds are always a problem for me, as well as seeing all the drinking. I'm an alcoholic and though not tempted, I still didn't enjoy seeing so much alcohol being consumed.
Enough of that, I already knew that I would be making my own reservations from now on. On to the office! It was a small one in a commercial area just east of the airport and maybe a few hundred feet north of the glide path of all the air traffic coming into Las Vegas. It's not really a glide path as they have to use power to make it onto the runway properly. Noisy power. And then I found that most of the estimators were unhappy about any kind of training and resisted it any way they could. They would have to go to a client's office for some reason, or they had a bad cold, or whatever they could think of.
I was able to get in some training time with a few of the estimators. The rest would have to wait till I returned. I had a corporate mandate to train them all! This news did not make them happy. I had a nice talk with one these holdouts and I explained my position. It was understood and we started to become friendly with each other. Except for one...I never saw his face. He had skillfully made his way in and out of the office each day without me seeing him. He was an English Quantity Surveyor and it appeared that he wanted no part of our estimating system.
I would return to this office many times over the next few years. And I found a nice hotel in a neighboring town that was close to the office and had no traffic to contend with. The office soon became a permanent Branch office and they moved a few more times as they grew in size. They remained close to that flight path though. And then there was a scandal of some kind that removed the branch manager. I was getting close to retirement at the time and never found out if they kept the branch open. I hope they did.
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