“Plan ahead: It wasn't raining
when Noah built the ark.”
Richard Cushing
Nigeria has
a tropical climate with a mixture of dry and raining season.
However, the
country also experiences seasonal flash floods, which are sometimes lethal
especially in rural areas and overcrowded places.
One of such
lethal floods happened in 2012. As it turned out, more than 350 people died
while over 2million people were displaced and dozens of buildings collapsed and
several hundred houses became uninhabitable.
Though the
flood was serious, a significant portion of the tragedies on record was a
result of lousy care in town planning and building construction.
And that’s
what informed the choice of my topic today; how we can guard both ourselves and
our projects against preventable problems of life through buffer and thorough
planning—in advance.
In this
direction, an American climate scientist, Dr. Mark Cane rightly stated, “Meticulous
planning will enable everything a man does to appear spontaneous.”
In other
words, a man can be ready for anything if he thinks his plans deeply through
beforehand. With due care and thorough planning, our projects and plans will
survive almost any chaos.
However,
with normal efforts at planning and execution, our projects will always be at the
mercy of changing seasons, at the risk of rework or even on the brink of
destruction.
In essence,
the key lesson here is that, on any important projects, it wise to build in formidable
buffers to safeguard them against any unexpected problems.
Buffer in
this sense is defined by Encarta dictionary as, "something that reduces shock
or impact or protects against other harm."
To explain
it through the lens of construction, I interpret buffer as the ability of a
system to carry a load—or withstand a pressure— that is far greater than what
it is required or expected to carry.
You see, if our
project plans are designed to handle only the difficulties we can foresee, they
will likely breakdown whenever something unexpected happens. Therefore, it is a
smart move to create a potent buffer in our project plans for them to withstand
anything out of the ordinary.
While there
are many ways to apply buffer in our daily life, the core idea is just one: to
protect ourselves from unforeseen difficulties or situations by building a shock
absorber into our plans to mitigate the effect of any undesirable incidences
that can undermine our expectations.
It is safe
to assume that all plans come with their own invisible challenges. And since
the future is always is uncertain, building in a solid buffer is how we can
protect our project plans against eventualities of life; it is how we ensure
that our process can withstand all contingencies.
Finally, regarding the attitude of an
excellent planner and the concept of buffer, Denis Waitley, the author of ‘Seeds
of Greatness,’ brings everything together nicely when he said: “Expect the
best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.”
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