Building a Highly Collaborative Team, Part 1

By Marvin Kemp, AIA, CSI, CDT

On Tuesday, October 8, 2013, I spent all day in a partnering or team building event for a large biomedical research project I'm involved in. I wrote a few quick paragraphs before the event started bemoaning the possibility of wasting a day in "touchy-feely" type discussions with equally uncomfortable construction professionals. As the event wore on, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the program and the caliber of the moderators. For those who follow me on Twitter (@BaltoCSI), you've seen many tweets lately related to ideas that came out of this session and there are more to come. However, I felt that I should expand beyond 140 characters and give a more comprehensive description of the event and my thoughts on it. I wrote the whole post at once, but will split it into two parts as it became quite lengthy!

Construction projects of any size are not easy. That is part of what appeals to me about my profession and our industry. I focus primarily on projects at institutions of higher education and research or teaching laboratories, at that. At any given time during the design phases on projects I’m involved in, there may be six or more architects, 12 or more engineers and other consultants and as many as 20 or more owners personnel involved in the project. Once under construction, the project team can balloon to 10 members of the contractor’s team, 50 or more workers on site and untold numbers of people involved in the raw material extraction, product manufacture and distribution of materials and equipment to the site. With all of those people, each with a small part and each with their own agenda, the complexity of even the smallest project can be enormous.

The particular project I'm currently involved in is a 400,000 GSF, $218M behemoth. The A/E team features three different architecture firms plus a laboratory design firm, five primary engineering firms and six more specialty consulting firms with close to 50 design professionals engaged in the design and production of contract documents. Our internal team coordination meetings routinely feature 15 or more people in the room and another six to eight on conference call. Right now, at design development, the drawing set is four volumes of over 200 drawing sheets each and two volumes of specifications at about 500 pages each. My firm is the associate architect, working closely with the architect of record and the rest of the team. I am our firm's project manager and assistant PM for the whole team.

The owner has retained the services of a construction management firm to perform both pre-construction and construction management services, including managing a design-assist process. For those unfamiliar with that delivery method, the CM has contracted with sub-contractors to assist in the design of the concrete structure, glazing and metal panel systems and HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems. This is a new process for me and my firm as well as for the owner, which is a long time client of our firm. Please follow this blog as there will be more postings related to that effort coming in the next few months. In the early stages of the design-assist effort, I’m finding it to be a fascinating process, but one where mistakes have already been made.

I'm going to try to keep the names of the owner, A/E and contracting firms and individuals inside those firms confidential. Their names are not germane to the discussion and provide unnecessary information. I have not asked permission to use anyone’s name and we agreed to confidentiality during the collaboration meeting, so I must respect that. With that said, I'm sure anyone who follows design and construction in my area or knows me personally will no doubt be able to figure out who some of these players are, but my purpose is to relay my experiences and thoughts, not point out the mistakes of others. 

It took over a month to organize this collaboration event. Given there were about 30 people invited from a dozen different organizations, finding a suitable date was difficult. The owner and CM finally agreed to hold it on a Tuesday and cancel the regularly scheduled design meetings that would have normally occurred on that day. The owner has given the CM shell space in a building near the construction site for staff office space, so that was the venue for the event.

The moderators of the event were from the home office of the construction manager. This CM is a large, nationally known firm which is headquartered in a major midwest city. These two people apparently run similar collaboration sessions for this CM all across the country. They were incredibly friendly, highly organized and seemed comfortable working with such a large and diverse group of professionals. They were also incredibly focused on the project, the collective team and our needs. They were not trying to make their firm look good but were incredibly focused on making the team better. That was an important thing to happen: adults, especially seasoned construction professionals can see phony a mile off!

The invited parties included several tiers from the ownership team: an Assistant VP, several directors and the owner's project manager and assistant project manager. In attendance from the A/E team was the architect of record's PM and project architect, myself and the principal's in charge for the structural engineer and HVAC, electrical and plumbing engineers. The CM was represented by their project executive, PM and assistant PM. There were also the four design assist contractors, each bringing project executives and one or two other people. On the day of the event, there were 26 people in the meeting plus the two moderators. It was a large group, all from diverse backgrounds and all bringing something different to the table.

I have to question some from the ownership group. The event was scheduled for 9:00A to 4:30P. At the beginning, the lead moderator asked if there were time constraints for anyone in attendance. Due to scheduling conflicts and miscommunication, there was a telecomm and audio-video design meeting in the afternoon. The architect of record’s PM and I had discussed who should attend and ultimately decided this event was too important, so he sent a junior project architect to that meeting. The owner's AVP said he had a conference call at 3:00P but would return for the conclusion of the session. The architect of record’s PM asked to be excused at 4:00P to beat the traffic back to the District of Columbia where his office is located. The moderator said he would work with that. Two people from the owner's team remained silent at this point but left after just one hour of the event. Two others from the owner's team arrived late but did stay for the duration of the event.

In his opening remarks, the owner’s AVP discussed how important he feels this type of event is but was unable to garner the same focus from some on his team. To be fair, many of us have had negative experiences with these types of events which may cause some to be less than interested in attending them. However, the other 22 participants were able to give their attention for a full day, so I believe the entire ownership team should have been able to do so as well. The two individuals who left after one hour were directly involved in one of the issues the group identified and discussed later on in the session.

The printed agenda was somewhat difficult to understand, hence my trepidation before the event started.  However, the agenda proved to be very simple. We introduced ourselves and discussed our experiences with partnering sessions. We then discussed personality or communication styles and took a quiz to help determine our own communication styles. We discussed definitions of each of the four styles and how best to communicate with persons of that style. After lunch, we left the generalities and philosophies behind and focused firmly on our project. I think that was the critical move that made a huge impact on the team and the success of the event.

I have mixed experience with partnering type events. The ones I have attended in the past were not terribly successful. They seem to always start with participants sitting around tables filled with Matchbox Car construction toys: bulldozers, dump trucks, road graders and the like. They seem to focus on heady philosophy or touchy-feely discussions that make professionals uncomfortable. As we began our session, I did not see any construction toys around and we were sitting in a circle so already the mood seemed different. When it came my turn to describe my partnering experiences, I said that I find it insulting to put construction toys in front of construction professionals. That elicited laughs from all and quick agreement from the moderators.

I think I'll save the conversation of the personality styles for a blog by itself, but essentially, this particular personality style indicator focuses on four styles: Producer, Planner, Promoter, Peacekeeper. In our room of 26, there was one Promoter (one of the moderators), one Peacekeeper (HVAC engineer) and the rest of us split between Planner and Producer. One of the characteristics of Planners and Producers is that they sometimes have difficulty communicating with each other as the Planners like to have all information required, in a high level of detail and the Producers want to act quickly, based on just the most important facts. That information by itself probably justified most of the day's expenditure!

As we broke for lunch at this point, I think I’ll break the blog here. Please return in a week or so to learn about the rest of the event. I found it highly successful and I hope the benefits continue to be reaped as the project moves forward.