I Am Questioning What I Do And How I Do It? What Is The Fundamental Offering?

What Am I Doing?

I have found that during most of 2020, especially since the start of the covid pandemic, I have become more and more overloaded with work. That is not paid work, but just stuff to wade through every day

There are so many aspects to internet marketing and there are so many distractions, that it is easy to become deflected from your primary goals. Everywhere you see emails and social media messages pitching apparently irresistible offers to you, it really is overwhelming. You really need to ask yourself seriously, do I need this, or why do I need this, if I have managed without it up to now.

I have refocussed my efforts on what I can do best, which I find is what I have been doing for the longest time, and that which I know most about.

It is from this knowledge and experience that I believe that I can add the most value to potential clients. To give customers the benefit of my experience so that they can avoid making the mistakes that have been made in the past, and which I can guide them through so as to avoid the pain points.

So my main task is to find people who have problems similar to those that I have previously solved, and to give them the benefit of my knowledge and experience. These are my potential customers.

What Do My Customers Look Like?

I need to really understand my potential customers. How can I do that?

My customers in the past have come from very varied backgrounds. Some customers have been publicly owned corporate customers, and others have been privately owned corporate customers. The types of projects that they have commissioned have varied greatly.

So perhaps I need to have a few different customer avatars that relate to the different sorts of work that I do.

Each customer avatar will have a different customer profile that is shaped by the problems and pain points that they have, and also may be influenced by the environment that they work in. This economic environment will have an influence on the sorts of problems that they will need solving by me or someone offering a similar service.

Maybe the environment that tmy customers exist in will also influence where they can be found, so in addition to knowing my customer avatar, I need also to find out where my customers are located.

So I have concluded that I need to fish in more than one pond, so in practical terms that could mean I need to find relevant groups on Facebook as well as relevant groups on LinkedIn.

That is enough Social Media to manage, without looking at all the other Social Media platforms as well.

How Do I Do What I Do?

I have been trying to find that Unique part of my knowledge and experience to emphasize, so that potential customers can relate to a particular part of my offering that may resonate with them. So that they ask the question, how may I help them to solve their particular problem or pain point.

I need to tell a story about problems that I have solved, so that potential customers can relate to this visual imagery, and identify with me and how I solved that particular problem. Then my potential customer may relate that visual imagery to their own situation, to their own problems and pain points, and that they may envisage and concluded that I could also solve their problem as well.

What Exactly Do I Do?

When I look back at the things that I have done, I suppose that you could call what I do is problem-solving day after day.

So generally I solve problems relating to the design and construction of a wide variety of buildings and engineering projects, such as railways, taking account of all the relevant criteria such as:

• Legal constraints (Legislation).
• Codes Of Practice for Design and Construction.
• Health & Safety obligations and requirements in both design and construction phases.
• Environmental Considerations and Constraints.
• Sustainability Considerations.
• Contractual Risk, that are time and cost-related, but also related to Safety as well.
• Commissioning Considerations.
• Operational Considerations.
• Stakeholder Management .

A common thread through solving all of these sorts of problems is communication, and the work that I do demands that there is a very high level of communication with different parties, and a high level of information as well.

Something that I have come to appreciate more and more is that there also needs to be a high level of collaboration between the numerous parties involved in complex construction projects. Large and usually complex projects involve sometimes thousands of people who may be located in different countries and they must coordinate their efforts so as to produce the building or engineering project, fully completed and commissioned and ready for operation within the agreed timescale and budget. Of course the level of collaboration that this sort of enterprise demands, must be of the highest order, if mistakes and time and cost slippage are to be avoided.

Conclusion

As a summary of what I do, in one sentence, it is to arrange and coordinate the efforts of a number of different parties that have a contractual relationship so as to safely produce assets to the required quality within the agreed time schedule and within the agreed budget - to create certainty of outcome.