Cost center accounting using a hand drawn plan is a horror show experience. Back in the day before computers, using 1/8 scale drawing of a 150,000 square foot building and outlining the departments with a thick colored pencil, you could lose 30 square feet in a heart beat. Then it would take you all night to find it. This search and rescue mission was an absolute must before the end of the quarter, before the end of the last day, before the last hour, of the last minute; found always a hair before midnight.
For some reason, the balancing of a million square feet of office space to the satisfaction of the accounting department always happens on a Friday afternoon; usually a in the dead of winter. The numbers never seem to add up, or a department would be lost. The department was usually a small, two person relocation; that happened at midnight.
Definition of a Midnight move – no one was supposed to know they were relocated for what ever reason. So we cloaked them in the stealth technology of the day, “midnight” and moved them. It was a secret. Now we can’t find them, it was a secret! Now they are MIA. Crap!
“As built” drawings are used to calculate the square footage for each cost center. Every company wants to know how much it costs for each person to sit in their assigned space.
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