Because your design project is complex and involves many details, multiple schedules and various special services, it is important to communicate intent for changes — immediately.
When an unexpected change runs headlong into a relevant process already in motion, real problems arise. Your go-to clearinghouse for any modifications to work-in-progress is your design professional and your project coordinator.
Most service contractors depend upon some form of critical path projection scheduling. Such schedules ensure that their specific function will interface their contracted services at precisely the right juncture in the project path. Each service specialty is part of a master “blueprint” where each process is connected and timed with what is appropriate before and after their function.
In addition to the contracted service itself, as an element of the design installation, there is a small army of facilitators and workers who have been scheduled to do your project work. When an unexpected change surprises the overall process, the ripple effect can be quite damaging.
A simple example is a situation where your project coordinator may believe that a client is simply procrastinating about the start button. It could be indecision about a choice, or problems with cash flow. Your design team will usually go to an understanding place and be patient — even though a full crew is waiting in the wings (so to speak) and your work has been on multiple schedules for weeks or months.
As diplomatically as possible, your designer will contact you again (and again) to encourage you. It will be emphasized how further delay will compromise your completion goals. It will affect all the subsequent procedures, down the line, that have been scheduled and set in motion on your behalf and with your authorization.
It”s a dicey situation to handle when your client reports that a generous Uncle Joe has suddenly appeared on the project screen and offered to do the painting part of your project for you, at no charge, on his vacation. Furthermore, you have agreed. There is not much your design team can do; you, after all, are in charge.
The consequences, however, are many, and the “savings” often do not show up in the end analysis. Who is Uncle Joe? Is he sufficiently skilled for the work you have authorized? Will he meet the rest of the scheduled aspects of your installation? Might his work have to be re-done or fixed? And, where was he when important decisions were being made? That”s just the personal side of it.
On the professional side of such a development, your designer may very likely have to “pick up the tab” for that kind of a change in the project plan. A lot is at stake, from possible monetary restitutions (for compromised schedules and hired crews no longer needed) to relationships with subcontractors.
Since Uncle Joe is an unknown quantity, you, of course will have the responsibility for everything concerning his work: his skill level, the quality of the products he uses, the timing of his work as it relates to what must happen next and his promised availability.
Many of us have an Uncle Joe or know of one; he”s that nice guy who makes himself (or herself) available to help friends and family with his generosity. The problems arise when Uncle Joe is not presented ahead of time as a possible part of the implementation stage of your project. Or, when his contribution does not meet the quality of other aspects of your project.
For project integrity, it is important to be responsible concerning the long, linked string of procedures and players and all their extenuating circumstances. All your professional team wants in that regard is communication, information, insight to possibilities and then — more communication. Preferably, at the front end of project planning and decisions.
Robert Boccabella is principal consultant with Business Design Services
