8.15 AM

Alarm rings; quick snooze but five minutes later, I drag myself out of bed and get up and running. One of the benefits of living in the city is that I can afford some additional precious minutes of sleep.

9.00 AM

I arrive at my desk. The sight of all the printouts from various projects litter my desk, but I fumble my way through to hit the power button on my laptop. I go through the emails and note the various activities scheduled for the day.

9.30 AM

I load up the documents and spreadsheets for the project I’m working on and continue where I had left it from the day before. The project relates to a dispute over the costs of constructing and timing for delivering a major oil and gas package. For this particular project, due to the voluminous nature of the data provided to us, I go through the data to make sense of it, and to consolidate and convert them into a more user-friendly format before it can be analysed.

11.00 AM

Quick coffee break! I am fortunate that our office comes fitted out with a proper coffee machine, barista style. I briskly make myself a cup of coffee, before heading back to my desk to power through the remainder of my exercise.

12.00 PM

As we are in the process of renovating the office space, management has called for an office-wide meeting to announce some upcoming changes. The whole office gathers and listens intently.

1.00 PM
 
Lunch is typically a quick affair; a sandwich from the convenience store downstairs. However, if I am meeting someone for lunch, I can be seen at one of the many cafes or restaurants in the vicinity of the office. One of the perks of working in the CBD is that there’s always too much to choose from!

2.00 PM

I dial into a teleconference for a catch-up with our internal teams over in Perth to discuss elements of the project we are working on together. As an outcome of the call, it was decided that I am to fly over to Perth first thing next week to provide some assistance on a particular tranche of work that needs to be completed urgently. The task at hand requires someone to go through the costs associated with delay and disruption. I get in touch with our administration staff to make the necessary arrangements as I make mental notes on how the rest of my week would pan out given the travel plans.
 

3.00 PM

Back at my desk, my manager turns to me and asks me a question on the methodology we had adopted for a component of the analysis. What was meant to be a two-minute conversation quickly turns into a full-on discussion over the next two hours, as we debate and challenge other elements of the analysis and our underlying assumptions!

5.00 PM

Fresh from the conversation, I note down the outcomes of our discussion, along with any action items that I took away and when they would need to be done by. While I didn’t manage to get back to my main work, the discussion allowed us to formulate a path forward on how best to approach the problems we were facing. 

5.30 PM

I take stock of where I am up to for the day, set up reminders in my calendars as milestone markers for when various tasks need to be completed by, before heading off for the day!