Do the Right Thing

I spent the better part of a recent Friday and the following Monday morning dealing with a problem that was not my doing. I have a client that has some particular contractual requirements. I can't name the requirements as it would give too much information away and is not germane to my points anyway. In December 2013, I was contacted by this client to prepare a fee for a renovation project similar to three other renovation projects we performed successfully with this client. For this new project, I was told to use the same consultant team we used on the previous three projects. Given these particular contractual requirements, we would not be able to entirely use the same team without a formal waiver from these requirements. Our client told me the waiver would be applied for and granted. It is now May 2014, I have submitted four different fee proposals based on changing scope from the end user and was told on that recent Friday that my original team has to be restructured to meet these particular requirements as there is now no time for the waiver process.

In the course of working with our client and their procurement officer, I found out that there is another way around these contractual requirements that could have been put in place in December 2013 which would have prevented me having to restructure our team. All that was required was the client's PM working more closely with the procurement officer and much of this could have been avoided. The process of altering the contractual requirements on the front end is remarkably simple: describe the project, list the design disciplines required, describe the client's desire for the same successful team and the procurement office can ease or eliminate some of the special contractual requirements. The "waiver" process has to be performed solely by the architect and is much more rigorous, time consuming and costly. In most cases, I have been told, the architect is not successful in gaining the waiver. The president of our firm, after looking at the waiver process, said it is doubtful our firm would ever willingly engage in that waiver process.

It appears to me that the PM and his immediate supervisor sought what they thought was an easier way to circumvent their organization's procedures and reach the same ends. For them, it might have been easier, but for me and our team, it was infinitely more difficult and the desired end was not met. The principal-in-charge from our firm, myself and members of at least six other firms have exerted countless hours in a pursuit that seems fruitless due to the imposition of these contractual requirements. I would conservatively say my firm alone has exerted nearly $5,000 worth of fee hours in the preparation of just this final round of fee proposals with the restructured team. I would estimate a similar effort or more for each of the previous four iterations of fee proposals.

I cannot fully fault the PM as he is new to the client's organization but his supervisor is a long-time employee who knows the procedures but willfully decided to not follow them. That decision alone has cost my firm and our consultant team thousands of dollars in effort spent correcting their mistakes. On the one hand, its all in a day's work and is the cost of doing business, but it does give me pause when such a simple procedure wasn't followed on their side and it cost my team money. This particular client is a government agency, so the concept of making money is somewhat foreign to them, but that is why we are in business. We love designing and helping build beautiful buildings, but we are not a non-profit. Continuously reworking proposals based on client whimsy directly affects our bottom line in negative ways.

In any business or endeavor, we should all do the right thing. Many rules, regulations and procedures are put in place for very good reasons. I'm not saying we should always blindly follow existing procedures without questioning them, but part of being a professional is knowing when to follow the procedures and when to question them and work to change them. For this client and project, some of these contractual requirements are mandated by State law while other requirements are goals or guidelines that the client has some leeway in reducing or eliminating. The procurement procedures were put in place to help the organization reach their legal requirements and their goals and guidelines. When the procedures are followed, the process can move very smoothly and fairly for all parties involved. In this case, when the procedures are circumvented, it caused all parties needless stress and caused our team to spend needless hours and financial resources to correct a situation that we did not cause.

I am a big proponent of mentoring. In this situation, the resolution wouldn't be strictly considered mentoring as the issue was more about education of a new employee rather than mentoring of an emerging professional. However, with a little mentoring on the part of the supervisor, the PM may have acted better. By doing the wrong thing, I believe the PM's supervisor has set the PM on the course of constantly doing things outside of the organization's procedures. The supervisor has potentially created a PM that provides disservice to the A/E teams they are seeking to hire and could potentially cause the organization to accept higher overall A/E fees to make up for the PM's actions. By simply doing the right thing, a new employee could learn the right way to handle his business and the A/E teams would be treated fairly and project initiation would go more smoothly.