The People Part of Planning

Stakeholders 

Your stakeholders are the people that you are working on behalf of in the planning of your project. You can’t have a successful project that ignores your stakeholders. If you find a way to involve your stakeholders in the planning process, your chances of success have just doubled.

Committee vs. Project Manager

Whether you use a committee or a project manager doesn’t matter. The key difference is in the day to day methodology, the politics and the symbolism of the two methods. To have a success the project manager will have to find a way to do everything that the building committee does. You will probably have a more difficult time finding and guiding a good project manager than assembling a good building committee.

Membership – Quality not Quantity 

The ideal focus for the Building Committee is the process. Some of the key skills that your Building Committee needs are Facilitating, Researching, Coordinating, Organizing, and Communicating. Desirable Building Committee Members are people who know how to lead, plan and manage. Involvement in the construction industry isn’t necessary, and sometimes it is a handicap. Examples of the individuals you are looking for are executives, entrepreneurs, educators, administrators, and managers. Specialists who diagnose and implement aren’t accustomed to the analysis of multiple alternatives that need to be explored. Participation in meetings decreases as the size of the group increases – so smaller is better. There needs to be a chairperson who speaks for the committee and communicates with the stakeholders. Be aware that “symbolic” members of the Building Committee will require special handling. The virtues of a committee member are open- mindedness, diligence and perseverance.

Mission 

The Building Committee’s mission normally includes two additional issues besides the 5 Key Issues – Organization, and Methodology. 

ORGANIZATION.  The first task of the Building Committee is to organize itself. Who will be members, who will be chairperson? When will it meet? Will it operate formally or informally? What staff can assist? What does the Building Committee need in order to do its job?  

METHODOLOGY.  An ongoing task of the Building Committee is to monitor and communicate the progress of the Planning for the project and to determine the methods that will be used to design and construct the facility. To a great extent the Building Committee’s work is nearly done once construction starts, but first there is a year or two of planning that they are responsible for before that milestone arrives.

The Spiral and Four Phases

The Spiral
You will find that it is difficult to resolve all five issues simultaneously. Your issues will be interconnected and each one will affect the others. Only the simplest of projects can be planned in one “pass” through the issues. Often three or more passes are needed for a coherent plan. Your process for addressing all the issues is like a marble spiraling around the mouth of a funnel and addressing one issue after another. Your order for dealing with each issue is not crucial. The order of Needs, Context, Constraints, Budget and Schedule usually works well. Each lap around the issues builds on what has been learned and leads inevitably to the integrated solutions. The first laps are slower and longer because there are many possibilities to consider, but the later laps speed up as you eliminate options and zero in on the limited options that are really good solutions for you.

Four Phases before Occupancy – Planning, Design, Procurement, Implementation
Before you are able to enjoy the end result of your project, you will pass through four phases. You may experience some overlap in these phases, but you will have more control if you take them one at a time and in the sequence Planning – Design – Procurement – Implementation because each phase builds on the decisions you have made in the previous phase. Procurement could also be called Pricing, Bidding, Contracting. You make your final commitments on cost. Implementation is usually construction or remodeling, but it could be installation of new furniture or a system.

Planning vs. Design
There is usually a desire to get to the Design right away. Resist it. Planning comes first because it is about developing an effective strategy. Design is second because it is about creating a solution to fit this strategy. Every design is a solution; and there are many more bad solutions than good solutions for your project. Without first planning, you won’t be clear about what issues the design should address so that you end up with one of the good solutions.

The Key Issues of Planning

When you are considering a construction project (or many other kinds of projects), you are faced with 5 Key Issues – Needs, Context, Constraints, Budget and Schedule. You will work on these issues in various forms all the way through the project.  

NEEDS Your Needs are usually about space, the lack of it. But you might also have Needs that reflect poor organization of space or features that are missing. Sometimes your Needs are about maintenance or replacement.  

CONTEXT Your Context issue is about location and circumstances. Some examples are: shape and amount of land, ownership, traffic patterns, neighborhood, topography, orientation, expandability, among others.  

CONSTRAINTS Your Constraints are issues about leases, deed covenants, zoning, building codes, life safety, fire codes, insurance, environmental regulations, landlords, parent organizations, easements, etc.  

BUDGET Your Budget issue has two sides that you will have to balance – funds available and the project’s costs. When budgeting you will need to consider the project’s soft costs such as design, engineering, and financing in addition to the hard costs of construction.  

SCHEDULE Your Schedule may be driven by a deadline or simply a desire to rectify circumstances. In either event you will need to know all the tasks and milestones that you must accomplish, how long they will take and the order in which you need to tackle them. You will probably learn that the saying, “Projects always cost twice as much and take three times as long as you think” is mostly true, sadly.

What is Planning?

Planning is distinct from Design and it should come first. Here is a parallel with buying clothes that helps explain the differences between Planning and Design. 

The clothes-buying process begins with the recognition that you need clothes. Planning steps would be A) determining what kind of clothes you need (coat, dress, slacks, shirt, shoes); B) the context in which you need the clothes (beach vacation, formal dinner, work); C) the constraints on the clothes you might select (conservative/flashy, the season, your size); D) the money you have for clothes or how much you can afford to spend; and E) when you need the clothes (special event, or some other basis).

The Design steps would consist of shopping (visiting stores, selecting and trying on clothes), and then buying the clothes and wearing them.

If you start with shopping, which is like starting with Design instead of Planning, it is easy to see that you may overlook something fundamental when you find clothes that you really like the looks of. With a building project it is inevitable that you will overlook something because it is so much more complicated. The result is wasted time, effort and money.