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Construction and Equipment Spotlight
April 24, 1997

Continuous Partnering, A Valuable Project Management Aid

By ANNE SMITH and GORDON CULP
Smith Culp Consulting

The partnering process helps project managers do the most challenging part of their job: developing and maintaining working relationships so everyone can do his job effectively and produce a successful project for all.

Most problems on projects arise because of miscommunication, lack of communication, assumptions or a breakdown in working relationships. Standard project planning and monitoring focuses on budgets, schedules and technical issues rather than the relationship tools needed to manage a project successfully. Partnering is a tool that addresses this shortcoming.

The partnering process has been proven to reduce problems such as: lack of communication and trust, differences in contract interpretation, widely differing business practices, and general friction between owners, designers, and contractors. All impede the flow of information, affect decision-making and, ultimately, damage the project schedule, budget and quality.

Less successful attempts at partnering often involve only an initial partnering workshop. Success in partnering comes from a continuous process that does two things: establishes initial relationships and practices partnering daily on the project. Behavior does not change, nor do good intentions survive, without constant reinforcement and monitoring in the work environment by the project managers.

The initial workshop

The optimum initial partnering workshop is two consecutive days with an evening break between to allow participants time for reflection and to bring concerns and questions back to the group.

Participants should include project managers and key representatives from the owner, construction manager, general contractor, major subcontractors, designer and involved agencies. The project managers have a key role in developing the content and agenda for the workshop. Typical workshops steps include:

  • Introductions to bring all team members and project managers up to speed on everyone's project roles.
  • Personal style awareness, to provide participants with better understanding about how others function, particularly in the context of the project and the steps necessary for completion.
  • Identification of common goals to get everyone working in the same direction.
  • Identification of potential problem to give team members a heads-up for planning and prevention rather than be reactionary.
  • Discussion of the dispute resolution process to get understanding and agreement on how long an issue can remain unresolved before it gets elevated to the next level and who resides in each level.
  • Develop a partnering reinforcement/monitoring plan and schedule for looking at the overall process to assure that the benefits of partnering are maintained.

Help for project managers

Follow-up procedures and strategies will give project managers and team members opportunities to build on the mutual respect and goodwill developed in the initial workshop which will help them later as disappointments, problems and conflicts arise.

The following partnering activities help the project managers assess progress, eliminate roadblocks, motivate staff and implement course correction.

  • Schedule monthly meetings for monitoring the partnering goals
  • Place partnering as an item on the weekly project meeting agenda
  • Celebrate key milestones (ground-breaking, ends of phases, etc.)
  • Recognize individual and team partnering efforts at meetings
  • Measure progress on partnering goals with periodic surveys that all team members complete indicating satisfaction ratings
  • Conduct periodic half-day follow-up workshops to reinforce partnering.

A recent project illustrates how partnering reinforcement helps project managers to execute a successful project. Participants in an initial partnering workshop for a large public works project developed a partnering reinforcement plan which included a number of the above activities.

One progress monitor they used was a survey sent to all participants. The survey rated progress on goals, such as "Exceeds expectations," "Satisfactory," or "Needs improvement," and also requested narrative comments. Some of the comments indicated a pattern of conflicts between participants based on their individual behavioral styles.

Building on the work done in the initial partnering workshop, a follow-up workshop was designed around how people with different styles react in various kinds of situations. Participants used actual work situations to apply their understanding of management-style differences. This allowed participants to acknowledge and accept different stylistic approaches to on-the-job situations that may not have been possible in the heat of battle.

At the workshop, survey summaries were distributed. Participants were asked to recognize what was going well on the project. Many successes were identified, including one subcontractor who saved the owner $100,000 by addressing a constructibility issue. The participants then discussed areas that needed improvement and developed action plans to deal with these issues.

The requirement to focus on partnering at weekly meetings was not happening. With day-to-day problems on everyone's mind and no preparation for the partnering item, no one had anything to say, so there was no regular reinforcement. Participants decided to have project managers and upper management attend the meetings once a month to participate in short partnering exercises. Some of these meetings were also scheduled as celebrations when key milestones were reached.

At the conclusion of the project the project managers in the partnering team wrote an article together highlighting the benefits and savings that partnering brought to the project:

  • Millions of dollars in savings with innovative construction methods
  • Earlier completion
  • Facility kept in service during construction due to cooperative nature of contracts.
  • No claims, all changes were resolved.

Partnering will produce significant benefits for project managers in helping them manage relationships, communication and expectations on projects.

Anne Smith and Gordon Culp of Smith Culp Consulting in Seattle, design and facilitate partnering programs on large and small, public and private projects from planning through construction. They also conduct project management classes for the University of Washington in the Department of Engineering Continuing Education Program.

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