Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Sorry Mike. No pictures.

You are sure to have heard this phrase before: ‘Sandhurst is the best leadership academy in the world’. I have always had mixed feelings about all that and whether we as the military are as good as the rhetoric, but maybe I’m wrong. I’m not sure if others have had similar experiences in the industry. There were plenty of ‘tense meetings’ in construction, though I can imagine more shouting goes on away from the client; I didn’t really expect it in design though.

I’m not sure if there is any more background to him but the project manager on the Ft Drum NCOA is apparently a known bully. This week’s conference call a shouting match ensued between him and the generally mild mannered design manager. It certainly wasn’t my place to jump in and so I joined my colleagues in gently turning down the phone volume and letting the storm pass. Why? The issue was about a design freeze that had been issued by the project manager due to a VE modification (cutting a 12” slice out of the centre of the building, which clearly has architectural and structural implications). The project manager was arguing that although drawings couldn’t be updated there was still other work that could be done.

So what? The issue with the management of the project in my opinion comes down to two things: communication and the long handled screwdriver:

• On the communication front the project is terribly managed. Meeting minutes are only produced because the Fire Protection Engineer and I produce them as a de facto rather than de jure Other information is continually asked about despite there being a well set up folder structure for IM. Finally, and most relevant in this case, no one had actually told my office that we were to stop modeling; which I pretty much spent the whole of last week doing!
• As for the long handled screwdriver, the project manager is stepping on the design manager’s toes. He has been directing some of the designers and clearly keeping the design manager out of the loop; linking back to communication. Also, and it may just be a bugbear of mine but he uses the word ‘I’ too much as if all the decisions are his; which clearly they are not as he is neither the designer nor the client, rather a conduit for information.

Coming back to the shouting match what really surprised me, and the other Baltimore designers, was that they were arguing in front of us. Whether there are issues in the background or not this does not appear to be the basis of good team building.