No Construction

Readers looking for how to manage construction won't find it in these pages. As Chuck Thomsen points out in the foreword, construction, as a more objective pursuit, is more easily managed. It can be quantified, scheduled, and resourced. As implementation and realization, it's a far cry from the exploration and investigation of design. Some of construction's biggest management challenges are the result of incomplete, late, or unmanaged design. That's our focus.

Design Management, Not Design

In digesting the Project Design Controls framework, note the conscious omission of the act of design. We're focused on managing it and helping designers set limits. The intent is not to convey the architect's or engineer's skill set, but rather, to set boundaries and support systems for them. Aesthetic studies, detailing, drawing, presenting, and the “pure” design activities in the AEs province are left to design professionals. Managing them is our mission.

Management Culture

Good designers have design management tenets as part of their culture. They know they're essential to good design and wouldn't think of excluding any of them. They know better because they've learned the hard way. We all have. Unmanaged, or unmanageable design firms think they're above these things and ignore or refute them or drag their feet. They're the kinds of firms that introduce design risk. Owners and contractors willing to embrace such risk can do so but be ready. Skipping any of these areas or letting them lapse at the expense of others is a recipe for unmanaged design, and a runaway train. Derailment is certain.

Within the PDC areas are countless tasks and tools to create and monitor for success. Deeper analysis could yield thousands of micro-duties, steps, and obligations. Managing the design of this book precludes us from covering them.

Love

Designers and builders love what they do more than most people. They're not in it for the money, they're in it to make things. They need to create. Bankers, lawyers, and businesspeople like money, transactions, and deals. Their stereotype is extrinsically motivated. The work is a necessary evil – a means to an end. Not so with those who conceive and create. For them, the work is everything. Think of it as a co-dependency problem. Many are willing to sacrifice salary and status for the opportunity to do better work, labor beside a master, or toil with peers who can improve their craft. I don't know a single person who enrolled in architecture school with the goal of becoming the next great capitalist. (Maybe they should have, but that's another discussion.) Great artist or architect, yes.

I'm not sure this is the case in the insurance business. Software may be a middle ground – it's a creative, indeterminate field, with potential to automate business and generate wealth. Its proponents are creative, geeky, yet business savvy in web-powered ways. Not enough architects get that yet.

I've seen architects ooh and ah about the elegance of a hardware set, reveal joint, scupper detail, or sumptuous material. They fawn over the expression of a design ideology – things others don't appreciate. Maybe the occasional broker gets excited about a beautiful contract, but I doubt it. Know this: design-focused architects march to the beat of a different drummer, the percussion and syncopation of design.

Designers are intrinsically motivated. They're driven by a higher cause. Their design investigations or social issues push them, not money or promotions. It should be no surprise, then, that getting done on time or earning a bonus won't matter if achieving those things mean compromising their work or ideals. In design, the work's the thing. While most architects know design's leverage points, they're less attuned to those of business.

Don't underestimate this difference. Those who understand it have taken the first step in knowing how to work with makers. Learning how to fuel those motivations and shore their weaknesses comes next. In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that we find out what we're good at and like to do. And do it. Their convergence is the sweet spot, the intersection of motivation and capability, what he calls “flow.”¹

More than most workers, designers have found their sweet spots. What they may not have found is its integration with clients, schedules, budgets, and business. Or controlling the emotion that fuels it. That's where they may need help, and where supporting teammates can be valuable. These weaknesses have predictability in the design professions. Those who see them can call on the rest of us to help. Can we?

The Design Life Conundrum

A life in design and construction is difficult. It's a choice that confronts you with a myriad of lifestyle challenges. Making buildings is not a 9-to-5 job, so much so that maintaining relationships with family and friends outside the office can become problematic. Experts coach us on improving interactions with colleagues by taking time to get to know them, further challenging our home and personal lives. Yet the primacy of our design passion compels us forward. The conundrum persists.

Design's reach is vast. Its execution is demanding. Owners and contractors have no idea of the difficulties of reconciling code studies, consultant engagement, client listenership, digital contraptions and construction practicality, while continuing to serve at the pleasure of the almighty design master. Assimilating all that within a schedule and budget are almost unheard of. Doing it profitably is ever challenging. That's precisely why designers need help from their owner and contractor teammates.

Designers try valiantly, but by the time they're done trying, their fees and teams have long been exhausted. We've got to do the hard things. Together. It does no good to be a win-lose enterprise. All must win. Either/or was never the goal. In the good project teams of my career, the two co-existed: artistic talent and common sense. Enlightened architects found riches in team gettogethers. They listened. They grabbed the wisdom from their clients and contractors and turned it into gold. The palpable melodrama of exceeding the budget and deadlines was mercifully ended. We made it.

The Foolhardy

Who can expect to assemble experienced, opinionated experts who haven't worked together before and get them to function as a team? Each discipline thinks it's a little more important than the others. Many team leaders – often owners – are inexperienced in the very skills they need to lead such processes. How can they lead well? Most coaches had stellar careers playing their respective sport, learning the game's mechanics and strategies to prepare and direct their athletes. Mentored by coaches themselves, they internalize, mold and transfer that knowledge to motivate others. Many who design and build lack that essential background. Some practitioners even pride themselves on being “coach-averse.” A Fountainhead-like individualist idealism overrides teamwork. In today's context, this approach is nothing less than foolhardy. That we get anything done at all comes largely thanks to grace, aplomb, and survivalist persistence, and the help of our teammates.

Embracing Limits and Leadership

What currency goes to the heart of why we fight for something we believe in? Surely, it's not management – staying between the lines, meeting the budget or getting work done on time? Deeper motivations, belief in greater causes: design, a vision, or a charismatic leader willing to fall on their sword – they're more like it. There's a dramatic difference between “energy vampires” who toil because they have to, are told to, or are micromanaged, and an enlightened, high-functioning team that works with vigor, driven by a greater cause toward a longer-term goal – because they follow a great leader or are in it together.

I believe all designers, and others working in related capacities to manage design and construction, would rather be led than managed. As creative self-starters and holistic thinkers, they prefer the freedom to decide their own approach over being micromanaged in task-specific ways. They want to embrace the restrictions imposed and employ them as an integral part of their craft. They know without constraints they're doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. With them, they can rise to create a self-managed future.

A Bitter Pill

Do designers want to manage their efforts? Of course. In my days as a designer I tried. After being burned repeatedly, at the outset of each next design effort, I began with compliance and control top of mind. But deep down, other forces were always at play.

By its nature, design is exploration and rule-breaking. When an opportunity presents itself, it can't be turned away, can it? Even if it means going a little beyond the program, scope, or budget? Are we blinded by creative possibilities over cost? Does design trump all? Will luck or some unlikely windfall save the day? Not usually.

Design means working outside the lines, consequences be damned. It's how innovation occurs – and progress happens. For designers, this rule-breaking tendency can become an unsustainable norm despite the recurring lessons. On those occasions we must swallow the bitter pill – reworking, reducing, and diluting what we've created. Again, we must do the thing, in hindsight, we should have done in the first place. Failure can be constructive.