Whatever it takes

Project Coordination: Practice the Hand-off

Coordination in architecture, engineering, and construction is all about the hand-off, just as it is in other businesses and in team sports. The hand-off happens all over the place, all the time. It is often accompanied by words like "You know what I mean", "You get the point", "Let's not have a repeat of you-know-what", "Just do it", and other codewords. But the message may not be clear to the listener, and the listener may hand off to yet another listener with an additional editorial comment like "It's another Chinese fire drill." It's the old story of the rumor traveling around a room: by the time it goes full circle, the message has changed considerably, having been edited with every hand-off. That's why managers, administrators, and others need to allow themselves to get bored by repeating the same message in almost every detail - with a few notable exceptions: it's important to tailor the delivery to the listener's ability to understand and make use of the message, and it's important to get immediate and periodic feedback to confirm understanding.

Tailoring the delivery means delivering the message in a way that acknowledges and respects the ability of the listener to understand the message and make appropriate and productive use of it. A highly skilled and familiar employee may be able to hear an abbreviated message - maybe just a headline - and fill in the blanks with a good understanding of the desired or needed outcome. "Two over, rye, and a side," may be all the information that is needed in a situation where abbreviated communication has been developed through years of practice. In that case a lengthier description may be read as an insult - unnecessary micro-management. But a less skilled or less familiar employee may need more detail in order to make a connection with the message. In either case, immediate feedback can help to verify understanding of the message, and it may save a lot of time and money as a project goes forward. Familiarity is a key to the successful hand-off, because even a highly skilled new team member (employee, consultant, contractor, subcontractor, supplier, etc.) may bring a different understanding of the abbreviated message.

What's wrong with this picture?

a. The arrangement and swing of the door make the closet unusable, unless it is part of a set for a Three Stooges movie.

b. It was built as drawn, and it cost $1,000 to change the door to make the closet usable, because it was not part of a set for a Three Stooges movie.

c. The picture was not drawn in CAD.

d. 'a' and 'b' above.

Vinyl Composition Tile: Getting to the bottom of bumpy floor tile

The vinyl composition floor tile (VCT) had been polished and looked great when the new building first opened, but a few weeks of use changed its appearance (and also reduced the level of owner satisfaction) as little, pimple-like bumps started to appear on the surface of the tile. Of course, there was speculation from numerous parties about the possible causes, from faulty concrete to unusual chemical and astrological phenomena. But the actual cause turned out to be pretty simple. The tile installer had a practice of using the same mastic container day after day, and little bits of the previous days' hardened mastic from the rim of the container found their way into the fresh mastic every day. This was not obvious in the finished product at first, as the tile was held up slightly by the ridges formed by the notched trowel that was used to spread the mastic. However, days of heavy foot traffic and passes by the owner's floor polishing equipment pressed the tile further into the mastic around the harder bits of old mastic that resisted being squashed, and they telegraphed through the tile as bumps on the surface. The flooring subcontractor had to make several return visits to the project to correct the problems as they appeared.

Missing consultant coordination, a hilltop building gets a surprise lift station

If you put a new building on a hilltop, the need for a sewage lift station may be the last thing you would expect. However, if you discover that the plumbing waste pipe leaving the building is below the end of the previously installed outside sewer pipe that goes to a newly constructed septic system, you may realize that gravity acting alone will not get the sewage into the septic tank. A sewage lift station - purchased through a change order - may be the most economical way to get the sewage to its intended destination.

It would be better, if possible, for the engineers to coordinate their work so that the inside pipe and the outside pipe would meet at the same elevation. Apparently, someone did not understand that plumbing waste lines below the floor inside a building usually slope to drain, and that a run of a few hundred feet inside the building could put the waste pipe outlet several feet below the floor level, not just one foot, as suggested by the elevation at the end of the outside sewer pipe.

The person who presented the change order to the owner may have explained that it would be better to have a lift station, because you can't always count on gravity.