Work–life balance is a term commonly used to describe the balance that a working individual needs between time allocated for work and other aspects of life. Luckily this week allowed me to enjoy some work-life balance. No mission, so I could spend some time with the family. Watching my son’s sports activities, the oldest of 15 plays football at WSC and the youngest of 12 plays handball at Tachos and they both had a game over the weekend which is one of my favourite activities to watch. Throughout the week I was able to enjoy having breakfast and dinner with the family and in the evenings simply some cocooning with my wife. At least most of the evenings as we also had to attend a presentation from the Willem van Oranje College which my youngest son is considering for his secondary education.
Though work never stops. Had to complete the Outline Business Case for a possible PPP for the development of a Truck Transit Park at Illela in Sokoto State, Nigeria. I had done most of the work already in December though I had to process the comments following a review by my peer Mohammed Kumalia with whom I’m doing this project. We managed to develop a feasible case assuming a phased development of some 800 parking lots including a broad range of auxiliary services. Key issues yet to resolve concern the willingness to pay the necessary tariffs to recover the costs and the legal authority of the client to launch the tender. We will have to wait now for the final decision making by the client.
In addition, I had a conference call with the ADB office in Pakistan and Rebel Group to agree on the inception mission for a new assignment concerning the development of an infrastructure financing facility. Look forward to doing a project again with Rebel Group, definitely one of the world’s leading PPP advisory firms and I will blog the progress we will be making on this project.
And I had to deliver a webinar for representatives from ECOWAS in preparation of a CP3P training scheduled for the coming 2 weeks in Senegal. More about this training next week.
Being an independent consultant you don’t have any fall back to any support services, like IT or Admin. You have to manage your support yourself. And unfortunately this week I had some frustrating experiences. Visa informed me that my credit card was hacked so I had to apply for a new one. Not a big deal but the implication was that my credit card was out of service for some time. And as many of my regular business expenses are made with my credit card such as subscription of cloud services or the Tesla superchargers, I had to make alternative arrangements. Even more troublesome was my problem with the battery of my Macbook. It’s capacity was reduced to 1 hour and I had to replace it. However that would take 4 weeks if I would use a certified Apple service provider. Not acceptable so I had to found an alternative solution. Luckily iService in Tilburg could help me out and solve the problem in one working day.
Most of the time was spend though on again the drafting of operational guidelines for PPP. This time for the government of Georgia. I had agreed with my team that we would submit these guidelines separately for every phase in the PPP Life Cycle. We had already submitted the guide for the Identification Phase and this week I managed to complete the Guide for the Preparation Phase based on the draft prepared by my co-worker Michel Leushuis. Good team-work.
The weekend was scheduled for some leisure activities with a group of 6 long-lasting friends. Our friendship goes back already more than 25 years and we have a yearly tradition of a weekend away. This time the destination was Willingen in Germany for some skiing. Although the snow conditions were far from perfect, the joy of good company, good food, and lots of good laughs made more than up for it.
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