Project Management With Purpose Series
Part Two: Team-Building for Construction Projects
For any given construction project, there are a truly mind-blowing variety of players. They generally fall into four categories:
Contractors:Construction Managers, machine operators, electricians, HVAC technicians, carpenters, plumbers.
Designers:Building architects, exterior designers, interior designers, engineers, and various other design consultants.
Owners:Stakeholders, executives and managers. Depending on what you’re building, they could be professors, doctors, nurses, students, administrators, politicians and more.
Inspectors:This includes all AHJs (Authorities having Jurisdiction) including inspectors and compliance officials.
This is why team-building is so essential. Here are six tactics:
1) Find The Higher Purpose
Every construction project has a higher purpose. A school helps children. A hospital saves lives. An office building creates jobs. A retail strip inspires economic renewal. A good Harmonizing Project Manager becomes a journalist and mines that project for its magic. Maybe one owner has a rags-to-riches story. Maybe the funding company gives 10% back to a water-purifying plant in Ghana.
How to communicate that higher purpose? On the Children’s Hospital Colorado Springs project, a pediatric patient came to speak with construction workers during daily stretch and flex. The patient gave real life examples and spoke about the services this project would enable–how the quality of care would be going up. A powerful 5-minute talk like this spreads gratitude and goes deep, shifting perspective for the team. When your people understand how they’re making a difference in the world, they’re a lot more inclined to do things right.
Remember, 77% of our decisions are still emotive.
2) Schedule a Partnering Session
With so many players across multiple demographics, it’s essential to build bridges across teams. When everyone understand how their work fits together–not just in an abstract, see-this-big-whiteboard-on-the-wall way, but in a human way–motivation soars and project quality improves. A massive meeting is the way to do it. But it’s anything but typical. You want attendees to feel safe expressing their opinion. You want to encourage healthy controversy. And you want a respectful environment.
Logistics: Everyone is invited. (And I mean everyone.) Neutral ground is good, but the biggest space you can find is best. Four hours is ideal.
Cell Phones: Every attendee is given a brown paper sack to put their cell phone in. Believe me, this works.
Rules: 1) Raise your hand to speak. 2) No swearing. 3) No bad-mouthing. 4) One person talks at a time. 5) No stepping out unless there’s an emergency. 6) Facilitator is in charge.
Questions to Ask: What’s your biggest fear on this project? What does this project mean to you, really? People are hesitant, and planting a few question-answerers isn’t a bad idea. But it only takes a couple comments before everyone realizes they all share pretty similar fears. Connection and validation occur. Peer-to-peer relationships are formed. Inspiration blooms. People understand how they fit into the whole.
3) Host a Social Event
This is essential to maintaining the connections of your project community. Not once a week, not once a month, but once a quarter, you’ll want to bring all these project players back together to socialize and follow up on initial conversations. The only real rule is that it can’t be just a happy hour. It has to be an activity. Bowling. Putt-putt golf. That kind of thing. Something where everyone can participate and conversations can shift from work to life.
4) Implement a Feedback System
This is simple, but often-forgotten piece to project management. Many initiatives happen too fast to have feedback make sense. But construction projects not only span multiple years, but they’re cyclical enough to correct mistakes within the same project. Set up a survey monkey once a quarter.
Remember this is not a project review, it’s a real-time, private check-in on how people are thinking and feeling about the project. Without a feedback system, most of this information never gets directly expressed–and potentially creates resentment and overreaction. Why not learn from our mistakes when they’re fresh in our head?
5) Send a Newsletter
A newsletter helps water the seeds you’ve planted at the partnering session. It should be mostly pictures, captions, shout-outs and good news. No more than a few pages. Send it on email once a quarter and call it done. A project that feels connected, stays connected.
6) Schedule a Post-Project Get Together
Three to six months after the project is complete, bring the team back together (allot two hours) to talk about celebrations, struggles, triumphs, lessons and ideas. If you’ve maintained good morale throughout the project, they’ll be excited to share how their work evolved across time. I’ve seen it happen again and again. Post-project meetings get turnouts!
