I have been watching a new show on the History Channel
called “Museum Men”. It’s about a small
custom fabrication (design/build) shop in Florida that builds (at least
primarily) museum exhibits. In some ways
the shop is very much like what I work in, and it is interesting to see how
projects play out in their shop.
On the flip side, the show brings up a number of concerns
(which I am sure is true for every industry that is boiled down to a short
reality tv series).
-Their
timeline from project initiation to installation is about a month. At times it seems as though they have a month
of fabrication time, either way, this isn’t very realistic or practical.
-How
the content is developed seems a little odd.
Perhaps we just aren’t seeing the nuts and bolts here, but the show goes
from a conversation about an element, to going forward full steam. In fact in an episode about building Chuck
Yeager’s Supersonic Jet, they were half way through building the piece when the
owner comes in with goods news and bad news.
Good – they client was spending more money, bad – they jet is too large
and a new piece needs to be built and installed with only the remaining 2 weeks
that had been previously scheduled. Seems
like the client is paying extra to have the jet redone- but this seems like a pretty
major detail that should have been worked out on paper before anything was
built.
-Drawings
and research, as well as what is being delivered seems to be at the owner’s
discretion. Once thy wondered if the jet
could be installed upside down? Even if
the unit is a design build contract, the client should be signing off on something
– including what it will be and look like once it is installed. It seems like they move forward into
construction before they even know all of the details about what they are
constructing.
-Perhaps
a few all night work calls still exists in the industry – but showing the tight
timelines and then encouraging these work practices doesn’t really help clients
understand what we can reasonably accomplish.
-And a
1 hour load in is just a little crazy.
I can only hope that the bigger picture is edited out, but I
am left with a connotation that it shouldn’t take more than a month to design,
build, and install a major piece of exhibition scenery, which is not really
feasible. Now there are a couple of
things to note – they do mention not taking on much additional work – it does
seem like they primarily work on one project at a time. Whether bad or good it is interesting to see
some of their processes and get an inside look!
