Collaboration Fail

This is the fourth in a series that I'm calling "The Lost Blogs" - I discovered recently that I have 5 draft blogs that have never been posted. I also have a 4-part series in the works on leadership. I decided that I'd wrap up these posts and post them before the New Year. Then, in January, I'll post the 4-part series at one per week. 

For the past several years, I've been blogging and giving presentations on collaboration in construction. It has been my experience that when the owner, contractor and architect can all work together, the projects go much more smoothly and the end results are better. When either of these three parties is uncooperative or even combative, the results are less than desirable for all parties involved. I have case studies of several projects to help justify these statements. 

However, I fear that my personal feelings about the great benefits of collaboration have clouded my judgment. I've recently been involved in two projects where either one or two of the three primary players was not interested in creating a collaborative environment with the project team. I tried to force the collaboration by being overly accommodating and trying to "work things out" verbally rather than following the CSI rules. I have come to realize that this caused me to lose my teeth and become less effective as an architect in the field. 

This is a difficult thing for me to admit, to accept and ultimately to change the way I function on the job site. When I was young, my father owned a light commercial and residential HVAC and electrical contracting business. One of my closest relatives is a retired architect. I've spent most of my life hearing their stories of things going right and wrong and how things should be done. I've spent much of my career trying to break down the walls of the adversarial relationships and make sure my teams work together to the benefit of the owner and project. To see not one but two of my projects be less successful because of me is difficult. Even as I write this, I'm not sure I'll actually publish it!


Accountability is the key to collaboration and in these instances, I did not do enough to hold the construction team and the owner accountable for what they said they would do. Its difficult to hold some owner's accountable, particularly in the higher education realm where I practice. The owner has to want to be held accountable for it to work. In these instances, the owner did not want to be held accountable.

However, I also did not do enough to hold the construction team accountable. In the interest of team work and camaraderie, I let things slide. Both projects were schedule challenged and I let the construction team do some things in the interest of meeting the schedule rather than holding strictly to the contract documents. In both instances, the owner became upset with both me and the construction team. Fortunately, in both instances, I was able to change my working manner, make the owner happy and get the job back on track. However, it was at the detriment of my relationship with the construction team. 


I realized two things. The first is that we don't all have to be friends. We have to respect each other, conduct our business in a professional manner and be accountable to each other. But if we walk away from the project and don't like each other, that's okay as long as the job finished in a timely manner, with good quality and limited, if any, cost overruns. 


The second thing that I realized is something that was said in a partnering session I was involved in several years ago: collaboration has to be top down and it has to involve everyone - owner, constructor and architect. If any of those three parties are not interested in true collaboration, it will fail. In both instances I reference above, the construction team and owner were not truly interested in the same level of collaboration as me. Or at least they didn't understand collaboration the same way that I do. Regardless, I had to change my way of operating to make the job the most successful that it could be.