Monday, July 9, 2018

Professional Correspondence: Part 2 "WHO"

This post continues from Professional Correspondence: Part 1.

The three main parties in a traditional project delivery for construction are the Client, the Builder, and the Designer. In this model, the Client holds a formal contract with the Builder, and a separate formal contract with the Designer. In turn, the Builder holds formal contracts with subcontractors, and the Designer holds formal contracts with engineers and consultants. The Designer and Builder do not have a formal contract with one another, but collaborate in order to deliver the project. There are other methods of project delivery, and these three main figures appear in just about all of them in varying relationships.



Depending on the project, these three players can easily grow to a whole cast of characters, including client representatives, construction managers, specialty designers, outside consultants - all of which makes navigating the overall project correspondence a bit like herding cats. For clear communication, it is critical to understand the relationships between all parties, and who has what obligations and authority within the project. This can be a daunting task even to those with experience; how much more so to those who do not! Establish the roles of each team member as early as possible - who has the authority to make binding decisions, who is just offering advice, who is recording discussions, and so on. Keep the flow of correspondence smooth with an understanding of these interrelationships, and how each individual fits into the overall project team.

Even the nuance of a salutation is important. I’m sure I’m not the only woman in this room who has been on an email chain that started with a salutation of “Gentlemen,” an unfortunate (and likely unintended) gaffe. Fumbling the salutation in a new business relationship is like fumbling the first hand-shake - it’s not going to kill a project in infancy, but it may contribute to a rocky start. Fumbling the salutation when the project is well underway, like that “gentlemen” oops, is going to irritate people because it signals carelessness or ignorance of the roles of each person on the project team.

Just as the cast of project characters each have their own roles, ensure that the project team within your company is well-defined and each role within the team is clearly understood. If the junior staffer is expected to take minutes of meetings, provide examples of previous meeting minutes for them to review in advance, to understand what should be recorded (and what should not). If the project manager is the point-person for all correspondence, state that explicitly in communication with the internal and external teams so that the PM is copied. While each person will have their own “voice” in communication, the correspondence that leaves the office should be consistent enough to be easily identified as project-specific and easily navigable to find in the future. Thinking about correspondence from the standpoint of “how will someone who hasn’t worked on this project find this information two years from now” can help guide the organization and nomenclature of correspondence and filing.

When teaching this to your colleagues, role-playing can be helpful to widen their frames of reference. How do you want your boss to receive an email from you? What are your client’s values that need to be addressed in your proposal? What information does the contractor need (or couldn’t care less about) in your RFI response? Coming at communication from a new viewpoint is a crucial step in understanding what language to speak.

Each project delivery model will have formal and informal relationships between project team members. The language of the formal contracts will establish the duties and obligations of each role, and the legal bonds between each team member. While not every person in the firm needs to have access to every piece of data, every team member must understand what the duties and obligations are that tie each party to one another. A clear understanding of the contract terms is also necessary to understand where the responsibilities of each party begin and end. Overstepping the boundaries will not only create confusion and frustration, it will open up exposure to liability.

As a young intern I had the misfortune to misunderstand the importance of copying the project team on all correspondence related to a single-family home I was working on. My boss had told me to discuss a specialty piece of millwork directly with the millworker, and did not explicitly state that the general contractor or interior designer should be copied on our correspondence. This custom bed and headboard that I had detailed so carefully with the millworker made it all the way to the site before anyone discovered that in the interim the client had changed the mattress size. It cost my firm several thousand dollars to correct this mistake; my boss was furious with me and there was a lot of crying. While experience is certainly an excellent teacher, the tuition is very high - teach your colleagues this lesson so that experience doesn’t have to.

Architects are fortunate to have the AIA document suite available for project contracts, which clearly describes the relationships and responsibilities of the different parties in the General Conditions. This guides the interactions between architect, contractor, engineer, and client, and describes the boundaries between each party’s responsibilities and liabilities. Portions of the Architect’s Registration Exam cover the AIA document suite, meaning that architects should be familiar with the general terms and conditions of these documents before they are even licensed to practice. This makes it all the more critical that deviations from these standardized documents are made clear to all staff working on a given project.

Beyond the formal contractual obligations are the more nuanced interpersonal relationships between project team members. Some people have more compatible personality types than others, and recognizing those strengths and weaknesses will also help shape the success of the project. If your client is very matter-of-fact and pragmatic, having a project manager with similar qualities means that they are already speaking the same language - a great step toward ensuring the success of the project. If your engineer has a great deal of expertise and offers a variety of product details and solutions but your site superintendent wants a clear directive, they are not speaking the same language and some kind of “translator” will be necessary.

This can get dicey when the project team includes contentious parties. This might be the client’s representative that plays the project team members off of one another to make themselves look good in front of the client at the expense of others. Or it could be the architect who disdains the interior designer’s selections and puts them down to the client or contractor. Or it could be a subcontractor who is out of their depth and hides it with hostility to questions about schedule and cost. Or it could be a client who refuses to accept the schedule and cost impacts of their frequent design changes. All of these situations put the success of the project at risk, in favor of an individual’s temporary gain. In general, appealing to the project team’s shared goal to finish the project successfully can help smooth these bumps over. If your colleagues are working with some of these contentious people, they’re probably going to need to repeat this message of “shared goal” over and over again.

It’s no surprise that referrals are a major driver in the construction field - we build relationships with people we’ve worked with in the past, and if that experience is a good one, we want to repeat it. We come to trust the people we work with, and trust that the people we recommend to them (and the people they recommend to us) are going to result in more and more successful projects. The world of construction is shockingly small; chances are someone at your firm knows someone who knows someone with a connection to that prospective client or potential consultant. Maintaining a reputation for professionalism, especially in the face of difficult project teams, will reap rewards. Teaching colleagues to keep this in mind can help them maintain an effective and confident professional persona in correspondence - how can you help ensure your former project team members, inside and outside the office, will recommend you to others?

If your mother is anything like my mother, she will have told you to always send thank you notes. When I left my last office, I took the time to send handwritten thank you notes to everyone I worked with; partly to inform them that I was leaving the office for a new opportunity, and partly to maintain a connection in my future endeavors. Each note took just a minute or two. The note I sent to the general contractor was so well received that his company asked to feature it in their marketing brochure, and now we are working on multiple jobs with them at my current office. The field of construction is small - actions as minor as a handwritten thank you note can add a great deal to reinforce business relationships.

Learn more about "WHAT" in Part 3.

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