October 21, 2019; The following are some words from Jerry Olson on surpassing 10,000 project numbers;
Fifty one years ago, 5 digits seemed like it was too far to achieve, and therefore Job 1001 was a safe start. The half dozen jobs worked on before the actual launch date of OEI were renamed accordingly.
I didn’t want to have some client know they were a part of Job 5, so I started at Job 1000.
Many years later, when we got to the point where we were sharing files on directories, Bruce Towle suggested that we name the files for new jobs the same as those of their geographic predecessor, since they were all tied together. That started a naming procedure that became 2000.01.01, etc. There were new clients for an old job and new jobs on the same parcel. We went back and renamed all the previous jobs accordingly.
When I wrote the 50 year history, I checked to see how many actual job we have had, and the new naming standards, have produced well over 10,000 distinct jobs, so we actually passed the 10,000 job threshold sometime in the past.
That does not diminish the impact of 10,000 as a milestone. It is something all have awaited.
It’s time for a Party!
JCO
