Sahara Dhunnookchand

6.30 AM

Whenever the weather is good I start my day with a workout session at the gym, and lucky for me, today is a beautiful day! I walk to my local gym, have a 45 minute workout and then walk over to the ferry terminal to catch the 8:15 ferry. I use my commute time to get some admin out of the way (i.e. check early emails, plan a rough agenda for the day) and obviously grab a cup of the ‘juice of life’ - coffee!

8.45 AM

My ferry docks at the downtown terminal and I walk to the office to start my day.  In Consulting we have hot desking, so any desk is free for all - even the cool standing desks! We each get our own lockers though, so we can keep all our personal belongings and client material in there.

9.15 AM

I get a calendar alert saying that my colleague and myself have a client meeting at 9.30 via Skype, to carry out a code change on their servers. We have 15 minutes to prep for that, which means knowing which codes and scripts to run and ensuring I have access to the client’s network. 

11.15 AM

After nearly 2 hours, the code update was successful and everyone is happy!  This is an example of the work I have to do as a Tech Consultant, but coding is not the only thing I do! Recently I have taken on the role of Service Delivery Manager for some clients which means I have to prepare financial reports, incident reports (i.e. what were the technical issues the clients faced this month and how they were resolved by the Deloitte team), contractor hour reports etc. and attend meetings to have monthly checkpoints.

12.30pm

Today is a pretty special day for the Consulting practice nationally – it’s our first ever Consulting ‘volunteer half day’! From 1-5pm, most consultants nationally will be giving up their time for various charities by either doing skills-based volunteering (usually pro bono strategy workshops) or traditional volunteering.

Myself and one of my colleagues, Kerry Shaw, are the Auckland leads for this event, which means we sort out the logistics of having 80+ consultants doing outdoor and indoor volunteering while ensuring they are safe, making an impact and having fun. At 12.30pm we do a little more last minute prep - giving lollies and crisps to the groups of volunteers, doing a final roll call and briefing the site leads.

1.00 PM

Everyone heads off to their volunteering site and mine is just a few floors above in our office building, where myself and a few of my colleagues will be holding a strategy workshop with No Fixed Abode, an organisation tackling homelessness. They want our help in finding out how to expand their current reach and help the most people possible. 

5.00 PM

It’s time for ‘Firm Drinks’. Once every month, each service line organises firm-wide drinks and they are usually themed! This month’s theme is Movember, in support of raising awareness towards men’s mental and physical health. 

I am about to head upstairs when my phone rings with a call from a client. One of the desktop robots myself and my team built for them has stopped working after a change they made on their system. I work remotely from the office to debug and fix the client’s desktop bot. Issues like these do sometimes happen in the Platform Engineering team and to ensure minimal disruption to the client they need to be handled quickly. After an hour or so, the bot is fixed and working again.

6.00 PM

Firm drinks is still going strong and I head over with some of my colleagues for some social time. I use this opportunity to catch up with friends from other service lines that I don’t get to see on a regular basis. I also get to meet all the other consultants that have come back from their outdoor volunteer activities - it’s great to hear about what the other groups achieved! All in all, a great end to a busy but fun Friday.

 

See the original page here and read more Deloitte diaries here.