Call it competing in Internet Time.
Project deadlines that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago have now become the norm for Ceitronics and its fast-moving customers. Since the advent of the Internet, business is in overdrive, and normal installation and construction timetables are speeding up dramatically. Ceitronics' challenge is to keep pace with the accelerated needs of its clients. Recent fast-track projects for Microsoft, AboveNet, Intuit and IBM typify the demands of Internet Time.

Ceitronics and its project managers are frequently asked to start jobs before formal contract documents are received. Ceitronics' management and field staff work overtime and weekends, 24/7, to complete the fast-track timetables. Technology and other equipment needs, often impossible to procure on a fast turnaround, are pushed through the purchasing system or acquired in alternative ways; engineering designs are quickly created; wiring and cabling are done on the fly. Problems are solved with instant decisions in the field. With Internet Time, Ceitronics is constantly working on ways to keep up with the organizational flexibility, staff, and commitment demands required to move at Internet speed.

Ceitronics has completed the following fast-track schedules within the past few months for some of the Bay Area's top companies:
- AboveNet: Ten weeks from start to finish to complete a major series of high profile corporate presentation rooms, boardrooms, and video conferencing rooms for AboveNet's corporate headquarters in downtown San Jose. Normal completion time: four months.
- Microsoft: Six weeks to move, upgrade and install the WebTV usability labs within the new Microsoft Headquarters in Mountain View. Normal completion time: three months.
- IBM: A holiday weekend to dismantle, reroute, and rewire one of the major cabling systems at the San Jose IBM campus. Normal completion time: ten days.
- Intuit: Three weeks to order, program and install sophisticated presentation and AV systems at one of the Intuit office buildings in Mountain View. Normal completion time: Six weeks.

None of these projects is more indicative of the way the pace of business has speeded up in Silicon Valley than the completion of the $600,000 AboveNet corporate presentation rooms within a ten-week time frame.

"This is a major project with many systems," said project manager Ron Whigham. "We helped to design the presentation systems and also are ordering and installing all of the AV equipment for a number of rooms, including the presentation room, training room, a board room, video teleconferencing room, and atrium/lobby. There is a dual screen and rear projection system in the lobby for playback demonstration and presentation purposes that is visible from the street. We brought all the latest, most sophisticated communication tools of the industry into this particular job. Programming was also a big part of the project."

Whigham says that in a fast-track project like this one, the talent and quality of the Ceitronics field staff is a key factor in completing the timetable. "Each of the crew members has to be sort of an engineer, and each has to be able to make decisions on the fly. Having the right foreman on a fast-track job is essential. A good foreman picks the team of manpower that he needs. A lot of decisions are made in the field on an instantaneous basis."

Another key ingredient in making fast-track projects such as this one work is what Whigham calls "the big trust factor there has to be trust that we are operating in the owners best interest, " he said. "We must be allowed to make decisions and minor changes without approval. Keeping owners, consultants and other trade contractors informed on minor changes and modifications is a constant and critical requirement." Whigham was also the project manager for the fast-track upgrade of the WebTV labs on the new Microsoft campus. "Besides being a six-week turnaround, we finished the project before all the formal contract documents showed up," Whigham said. "This is typical of fast tracks. The contract was started toward the end of September, and we were scheduled to begin our work in the second week of October, and complete it by the first of November. The key was that WebTV's move-in date was November 1, so we really had no wiggle room.

WebTV had two existing usability labs and Ceitronics was asked to move and upgrade all the equipment in both labs. Because of the tight time frame and the expiration date of the lease on the old usability lab, this presented a unique challenge.

"They could never be down on both systems at the same time," Whigham said, "so scheduling was set up so that we moved and upgraded the first system, and had it completely set up and running in the new facility before we tore down the second one and moved it. In order to get the job finished within the time frame, we set our specific activities to accomplish each task by day and by hour. We detailed everything we needed, and then we outlined when and how we were going to do things to meet this turnaround."

"Our clients feel like NOW is reality," said Jim Thielemann, project manager for the Intuit AV systems fast track. "In this competitive climate, they know that if you don't get it done now you're going to miss the window of opportunity and be behind the curve, or the competition."

Thielemann said the biggest challenge in completing the Intuit job on a fast track was the procurement of the right AV equipment within a tight time frame. "We needed a certain kind of industrial-strength TV antenna, which had an eight-week lead time to order. We didn't have eight weeks, so after searching around, we finally found an equivalent antenna from an obscure vendor and bought it in time to fit the schedule. We had problems with getting a lot of the more specialized AV items on time, and so when we run into a problem like that, we have to ask, åDo we risk trying to get the product on time, or do we try to find something else in its place? "We have to play that game on a daily basis to get the job done."

Kurt Ikerd, Ceitronics' resident project manager at IBM, said tighter time lines at IBM reflect the need for the company's manufacturing operation to keep up with the demand for their products. "We are getting very little time to prepare for it," he said, "but speed is the nature of the business now."

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