Building a High Performance Team: Engagement and Respect

I worked for an organization that decided it was imperative that we both modernize and expand our revenue generating facilities. While maintenance and renovation was an ongoing area of expertise for us, the institution had never engaged in any large-scale construction.

The Opportunity or Threat:

Most operating companies and organizations are not normally engaged in the architecture, engineering or construction business. When a company has decided to build new facilities to support the revenue growth of the organization they are faced with challenges in design, permitting, financing and construction along with the complexity of project management. Bad projects with their cost and schedule over-runs have gotten so much attention that many people assume that you can have no faith in a construction budget or schedule.

When you look at the body of expertise required for even a modest project it can be astounding when the architects, engineers of various disciplines, construction cost estimators and construction management people are all assembled.

The Insight:

Seeking engagement and giving respect are essential to optimizing long-term relationships rather than merely optimizing a transaction.

We needed to develop a project management structure where we had the competence and capacity to do the job but also a structure where there was shared success in the optimal execution of the project. In my role as owner, with fiduciary responsibility for the net result of the project, I needed to understand both the factors which provided optimal revenue generation and the costs in both time and money of the realized design.

The objectives of the project and the roles of each team member were reinforced at each major decision point in the project.

The Action:

Engagement has a few interrelated but different meanings and I wish to point out two of those meaning here. Engagement can refer to a contractual relationship between two parties where the "engaged" party has been hired to deliver a specific result. Engagement can also refer to the degree to which one is engaged in their work or a discussion or a relationship.

After building a small internal team of three people to act on behalf of the owner (including one VP-owner and two project manager-construction accountants), we began a process of both engaging emotionally and engaging contractually our design and construction partners. The emotional engagement came from a true two-way dialogue where the goals and objectives of the owners as well as our limitations were shared with the potential team members. On the reciprocating end, we sought proposals and had interviews with small pools of pre-qualified candidates and then selected our first choice partner on a combination of competency and value. In every case, we were able to negotiate the best value with our first choice partner and develop alternative sources for key work if needed in an emergency.

On the contractual engagement end, we entered into collaborative and integrated design build arrangements. The main driver for all became the achievement of a desired design and construction schedule at an acceptable budget. We worked together to price alternatives at several key points in the project. These exercises in developing alternatives allowed us to keep the project moving forward in the face of difficulty.

In addition to proper engagement the tone of the team was one of respect. There were three levels of respect that worked together; personal respect of each person as a human-being, professional respect of each person with regards to their expertise and contractual respect with regards to each person for their area of accountability. We worked hard to work through problem-solving and design-construction-cost detail resolution while holding these aspects of respect.

In a few instances, I gave license to a team member to have there ideas fully vetted even when most team members wanted to move on -and- on other occasions I was able to drive the team to a relatively quick decision with minimal discussion based upon the importance and possible benefits of further exploration versus the impact of delay on the project.

I was charged with responsibility for oversight of $20MM in construction for an organization whose largest previous project was a $2MM renovation. $15MM was spent for the design and construction of a new revenue generating facility and the remainder was spent on associated and required shared infrastructure upgrades.

After 13 months in construction, the building was permitted and opened on the promise date and we were able to return several hundred thousand dollars in unspent contingency from the budget.


To see how our work benefitted a client related to this method, visit a white paper and webcast of this project at Metamorphosis Management Group.