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This scenario is unfortunately not
all that uncommon in the A/E industry. Too often firms tout the breadth of
their expertise but give clients only a small sample of it when it comes to
problem solving and design development. This might be expected on smaller
projects, but more complex multidisciplinary projects call for
collaboration—something that many firms frankly neglect.
The A/E/C industry has been fairly
characterized as "fragmented, inefficient, and
adversarial because each [project partner] is responsible for its
own silo of work and attempts to maximize their individual profit in the areas
of their own expertise." This has led to several efforts to try to improve
collaboration among parties, including Integrated Project Delivery,
which attempts to force better cooperation by sharing legal risks.
But the problem of fragmentation
isn't limited to work between design and construction firms. It's estimated
that half of construction change orders
are due to coordination errors during design. Undoubtedly, disciplinary silos existing
within many A/E firms contribute to this problem. These silos also rob clients
of the integrated problem solving and solution development they should expect
from the multidisciplinary firms they hire.
So here's a potential competitive
advantage that too few are talking about—creating added client value through
better collaboration. Clients deserve better, and it's fairly simple to deliver
it by more effectively pooling the intellectual and manpower assets you have in
your firm, or your extended project team. Let me suggest some opportunities for
improvement:
Collaboration through project
planning. It's surprising how little real
project planning I observe among the A/E firms I consult. This is where
collaboration should begin. The best planning starts with a broad,
multidimensional view of the project—vision, goals, critical success factors,
concerns, opportunities. Too often firms rush to defining scope, schedule, and
budget before really understanding what outcomes the project
is supposed to achieve.
To kick off an effective planning
process, assemble a group with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Involve
all of the key disciplines that will ultimately contribute to the project.
Develop an integrated plan up front to help avoid the common disconnects and
blind spots that occur when disciplines are only engaged in linear fashion over
the course of the project.
Collaboration between project
phases. Speaking of our linear approach,
have you ever considered how much better our solutions might be if we involved
planners, designers, builders, and operators in all stages of the project?
Might our plans be more practical, our designs more constructable, our
facilities more operator friendly? The evidence suggests there's a good deal
more value we could deliver with better collaboration.
I can anticipate the
counter-arguments—too expensive to involve so many, too many cooks in the
kitchen, too impractical to get all those parties together, etc. Those are
legitimate concerns. But what about the unrealized benefits of greater
collaboration? Fewer coordination errors, better solutions, better business
results, higher value delivered to clients.
Collaboration within the project
team. We could probably all agree that
members of the project team are expected to collaborate. But in my experience,
that's often not happening. The project manager (and perhaps a project engineer
or architect) call the shots and the rest of the team simply performs their
respective tasks as directed.
Beyond the collective intelligence,
there are other benefits of engaging team members in collaboration. It produces
higher quality. People take more ownership of their work when they have more
say. They can see more opportunities to improve their work product when they
better understand the bigger picture. It increases employee engagement, which
yields multiple performance advantages.
There are reasons we have historically worked in teams; perhaps we can take
better advantage of those strengths.
Collaboration between experts and
nonexperts. A/E firms have a tendency to
compartmentalize work based on respective areas of expertise. For example,
electrical design is left to electrical engineers. Makes perfect sense, doesn't
it? Maybe not. Is it possible that a nonexpert could help electrical engineers
come up with a better design?
Indeed, this has happened in
multiple technological fields, and the trend is growing. Steve Jobs wasn't an
engineer, but was the force behind most of Apple's most popular innovations.
Elon Musk founded PayPal, then served as head of product design at Tesla, and
now is CEO of SpaceX, which is sending rockets into space. Organizations from
NASA to Dell have ushered in the crowdsourcing phenomenon, where people with
all kinds of backgrounds are invited to weigh in on some of their most
challenging technical issues.
Technology pioneer Naveen Jain writes that nonexperts are
often better at technical breakthroughs because (1) they're free from the
myopic thinking that limits innovative thinking among many experts and (2) they
have the ready access to abundant information that opens up new realms of
thinking. Accordingly, technology companies are increasingly engaging
nonexperts in technical problem solving and product development.
Are there not similar opportunities
within our industry? Aren't we also prone to myopic thinking? Can we not
benefit from asking more "dumb questions" that lead to fresh
insights? Wouldn't it be helpful to partner with those who are better at recognizing
the human dimensions of the technical problems we tackle? In fact, I've
personally witnessed such breakthroughs coming from nonexperts.
Value creation, even in the
technical fields, is not just about technical expertise. When we bring diverse
people together to collaborate on our client's challenges, we create added
value. Shouldn't we be doing this more often? I'd love to hear what you think.
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