it's been a while

Feck ! I didn't think its been that long since I last posted over 5 months. Alot has happened in the meantime. There's been major downsizing in the practice where i work. I'm now the only AT in the practice. Many other practices in the area too have down sized, I will be in the minority rather than the majority, when I return to work after Christmas, as unfortunately many AT's will not be returning to work. Many of our clients too have down sized their staff. It's not been an easy year and some say worse is yet to come.
In our practice, we have refocused abit, looked at costs and methods of saving money and how we are going to survive. By the looks of things, we have managed to get one or two lucrative projects for the new year, which should see us through until September or so. We're alos back doing insurance assessment's and Fire Safety Certificate Applications, in addition to the run of the mill stuff we have been doing.
Positive news brings back confidence and that appears to be alot of the problem at the moment, lack of confidence.

On a personal front, I have failed to complete my CIAT POP Record, mind you I am nearly there and will have it done early in the new year. The events that occurred in the office attributed to me failing my goal, but other things, like moving house, attending the scout jamboree all had to take priority. Early next year and I should be sorted.... Well actually I need to be as a Professional Qualification will become more important.

I have been developing my skills with AUTODESK's Impression 2 and think is a great package for preparing sketch drawings.I'm using it quiet a bit of late. Sketchup 7 has arrived too , although I haven't used it that much yet.

POP Records

What are they you ask, well POP records are short for Professional and Occupational Performance Records, which is the main means used by the Charter Institute of Architectural Technologists (CIAT) to access competency. At present I am progressing to Chartered Architectural Technologist from Associate membership and have been working on the POP record for the last 9 months or so. Just finished another unit this morning dealing with procurement procedures and advising clients there of. I pity the poor client when he seeings the letter i sent him, all 3 pages !
Reading the POP record there appeared to be alot in it, but when you work through it, it was straight forward, a 3 page letter to the client cover the unit, of course not all units are that simple, I have one or two which will take a bit more work, well it won't really as the work has to be done anyway....only normally not by me !!!

Time I got back to it now