I'm betting the person that came up with the idea must be a legend in the world of civic engineering.
While walking the dog on a glorious mid-winter day in Ladner last weekend, I came across a sign affixed to a pole on 45th Avenue just east of Delta Secondary. It advised all those in the area that water main work is being undertaken on Evergreen Lane and that said work would take six weeks to complete.
The genius of the sign, and why I think its creator is a hero to public engineering departments the world over, is that it doesn't specify when the six-week period will begin or end, or even if the work would be undertaken over six consecutive weeks.
There can be no deadline missed when there is, well, no deadline established. Someone deserves a bonus for thinking up this one.
Now I guess if you live on the street and were to make note when the project began, you'd be able to tell if the work was completed within the six-week timeframe, but how many people are actually going to do that? And for the rest of us that might pass by the site occasionally, the timeline would be an even bigger mystery.
Gee, has it been only six weeks since they started? It seems like they've had that road torn up for a lot longer than that, but if the sign says six weeks...
And therein lies the beauty of it all: If you go by a site where the dates on the sign indicate the job was supposed to be completed a month ago, you tend to scoff at the pace of work. Go by the same site 10 weeks into a six-week job, and without the dates spelled out, you've got to be paying close attention to realize the project is way behind schedule.
This little trick isn't going to fool everyone, and six weeks can only stretch so far, even in the mind of a preoccupied public, but I've got to think that if the sign is sufficiently vague it will at least buy some extra time before the nasty calls and emails start arriving at municipal hall.
There was a similar sign at the northwest corner of Memorial Park last year that I remember chuckling at every time I walked by. I can't recall the timeline attached to that project, but I do remember the sign being up for quite a bit longer than the intended duration.
As much as I think this approach is ingenious, if you really don't want to be tied down to a particular date, why not just omit any mention of timeframe from the sign? After all, I'm sure the public will let you know if the work is taking too long.
