Probably the two key points to successful project management are thinking ahead and communicating. Three speakers at the upcoming project management conference in Washington, D.C., share totally different perspectives on the subject, yet each centers on one or both of these key underlying themes: consider all possibilities from the outset to plan a course and communicate throughout the project to stay the course.

Communication is two-way or no-way
Excerpted from TQM and Iso 9000 for Architects and Designers, copyright 1995 by Charles Nelson.

On a design/build project in Boston, our painting group was managed by Tony, who had both a short fuse and high regard for his own opinion. Our painting foreman, George, happened to be completely deaf from birth. George could read lips and speak, so communicating with him was no problem as long as you could get his attention.

One day, Tony returned to the office so upset I sent him home for the rest of the day. He'd had a shouting match with George, which George won simply by refusing to look at Tony, which infuriated him. I went over to the project to find out what all the fuss was about and found George up on the scaffold painting away. When I got his attention, I asked what had happened. He looked at me for a while and finally said, "Tony is both deaf and dumb!"

Tony had a severe communication deficiency. I had a communication problem as well because I couldn't make Tony an efficient communicator, and he was my agent in communication.

I was learning that a central problem in communication improvement is in taking that capacity for granted. Busy firm owners never get sufficient time to either instruct or listen to their staff. The only solution, as this year's AIA convention theme speaker Tom Peters says, is to change your calendar. Move communication improvement from the back of your mind to the front.

Here are some specific actions I have come up with. You can create your own list from your own experiences. The hard part is to remember to follow your own advice.

• Always remember that those around you have different priorities, pressures, and agendas. A lot of miscommunication results from "the boss" thinking that all staff see the world as he or she does.
• Most people are reluctant to challenge their leader. That doesn't necessarily mean they agree, though.
• Ask questions. And when you know the answers to your own questions, bite your tongue.
• Allow people time to formulate answers and free up their time to do so. Nobody wants to look foolish.
• Having asked the question, don't demean the answer. Even the best solutions have negative aspects. Accentuate the positive.
• If an idea is full of problems, don't kill it yourself. Let the team talk it around. What is your goal, better communications or right answers?
• Bring in an outside opinion. People value a third-party perspective.
• Reward good ideas. Everybody secretly wants to be a hero.
• Don't answer your own questions. If the only reason for asking was to hear yourself talk, remember Tony.

—Charles E. Nelson, AIA
Building Technology Pty. Ltd, Southbank, Australia

Close Communication Reaps Significant Savings on Complex Jobs

The Amgen Center is an eight-story, 363,000 square-foot research and development building for the world's largest independent biotechnical company, whose mission is to be the world leader in delivering crucial, cost-effective therapeutics based on advanced cellular and molecular biology.

We used a very unusual process on that job called hypertrack, which changes the design process from one of sequential phases to simultaneous phases. When you go through schematic design, design development, construction documents, and construction administration, you have a series of handoffs. Even if the subsequent team is only slightly different, you have the opportunity for information evaporation and communication mishaps.

Under the hypertrack process, the key decision-makers—the owner, the architect, the engineer, and the contractor—are present personally and simultaneously when all key decisions are made. With this project , the owner lived in California, the contractor lived in Boston, and we are nearby in Cambridge. We literally got the owner an office in our building and an apartment down the street so he could be physically present when all the face-to-face decisions had to be made. During the construction process, we had a two-way conferencing system at the site. So when the owner couldn't be there personally in all the weekly meetings, we had virtual face-to-face meetings. That way, all decisions were made with the owner. Any change order, deviation, or modification was vetted from a cost and schedule perspective and presented to the owner.

This close analysis and decision process kept the cost and schedule on target for two reasons. First, the biggest cost in design is the cost of making a decision, and this constant face-to-face communication greatly reduces the friction in that system. Second, the hypertrack communication strategy guarantees that the guys on either ends of the train—the architect and engineer during design and contractor during construction administration—contribute to the design and understand how it goes together.

Let me be specific. The shell and core for the Amgen Center project was budgeted on the first day of the project at $150 per square foot. By using hypertrack during the entire design process, it dropped to $135 or $140 per square foot 2-1/2 years later. The reason that was possible is that there was no backtracking on long-lead items and decisions. It also greatly speeded up the process. It really was a different way of doing business.

Because we didn't know how to price our services on such an unusual process, the client agreed to pay us on a time and materials basis—an hourly basis. We built in a 20-percent profit margin into our hourly rate, which the client was perfectly happy to pay for.

Because the schedule was so fast and we saved so much time, we ended up saving the client millions of dollars in fees, even though we were paid on an hourly basis all the way through. And our profit remained fixed at 20 percent, which is higher than under a typical project management system. Ordinarily for a building like that, the architect might get a fee of about 8-1/2 percent. Paradoxically, we came in around 7-1/4 or 7-1/2 percent and still made more profit than we would have otherwise.

—Scott Simpson, FAIA
The Stubbins Associates, Cambridge, Mass.

When Crafting Your Partnership Agreements, Anticipate Everything

When starting a partnership, it is imperative that you take some time to close your eyes and imagine everything that could happen. When you say, "Oh yeah, that's possible, and I don't want to be there when it happens without knowing upfront how we're going to deal with it," then work it into your agreement. An example is the following scenario, which is hardly ever contemplated up-front or provided for in an agreement.

Say three firms have been in an alliance for a few years and have a project about to be finished, another is in the middle, and a third has just started up. All three entities are providing their apportionment of services to those three clients. Then, for whatever reason—financial problems, landing a $40 billion job, death of the lead partner, it doesn't matter—one of the alliance members wants to withdraw from the alliance.

Most strategic alliance agreements don't treat this situation realistically. Typically, they have a provision for termination of the alliance as a whole, as if everybody woke up one day and said, "We're going to terminate." That's a nice scenario to contemplate, but it's not the case, because it's much more likely that two of the three are really going to say, "We've got these fabulous jobs; we want to do great. Holy cow, how are we going to complete these projects?"

We put a provision into alliance agreements that says—and I'll put it in simple English: "If you wish to withdraw, you may do so without affecting the obligations—to the other parties and to the clients—that you have contracted for while you were part of the alliance. And you must cooperate and participate to ensure that no new liability accrues to the alliance as a result of your decision to withdraw."

Sometimes we go on and say: "If the other two can get the permission of the client and replace number three with an acceptable alternative, then number three may leave as long as that person cooperates with the successor architect or engineer."

You have to contemplate this situation because nothing is as neat and tidy as you'd like to believe the day someone says, "Hi, I'm out of here."

They have a contract and they have to understand the implications of the contract. They can't just walk away without first understanding that it's going to be deleterious to them, the alliance partners, and the client. And until they can satisfy all those different interests, they have to stay.

—Barry LePatner, Hon. AIA
LePatner and Associates, New York City

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.