At the moment my main client is an American company called Warnaco who are based in Holland about 100km south of Amsterdam. In Europe, Warnaco are the distributors of Calvin Klein underwear, jeans and accessories. In the US, they also distribute brands such as Speedo and Chaps while they have a number of other brands in other areas of the world.

My main project is project management of the  implementation of links between Warnaco and its customers to allow exchange of electronic messages such as product catalogues, orders, despatch advices and invoices.  All software development is carried out on an IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) using RPG.

This week I am working with customers in Germany, France, Switzerland, UK and Italy. Warnaco itself has a multi-national staff and as an example, I am working in the IT department with people from UK, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Australia, Morocco, Ukraine and of course Holland. Its just as well they all speak good English as I have no language skils at all (typical Engish person!)

This has been a normal sort of week. I left home at about 7:45 on Monday morning, drove to Newcastle airport, took the KLM flight to Amsterdam, picked up a hire car and drove to the office. Total journey time was about 4 hours 45 minutes. Tomorrow, Thursday, I will leave the office at about 18:30 and should arrive home by about 22:30. Going home I gain an hour which is always welcome. When I am in the office I always try and start at about 8:00 and leave at about 18:30 so that I can get a full week in. On Friday I will work from home, mainly for Warnaco but I always try and spend a few hours on other projects or trying to find additional project work.

On Monday it all starts again …