Electronic vs. Verbal Communication

As a satellite project manager I spend a lot of time on the phone and on email: construction is filled with disagreements, and problems arise with even the best planned and resourced projects. Unfortunately I see a growing tendency for managers to shoot off an email or other correspondence rather then walk over to the office next door and talk to the parties involved. Maybe lawyers have us convinced that we need to document everything we do (and there is some wisdom to this idea), but it is better to talk with someone then follow-up with an email, not the other way around.

The simple act of walking over to someone’s office and asking them about a situation can resolve potential conflicts before they become contract disputes or change orders. If problems do become contract disputes, the personal effort to contact the involved parties and any onsite discussions will help demonstrate to a third party that you as a contractor, designer, or owner performed your due diligence in an effort to resolve the claim. The requirement to prove due diligence in the face of a dispute can often determine the result of an arbitration. Although most contracts or specifications will outline a method of dispute resolution, personal meetings and firsthand knowledge of the parties involved will not hurt your chances of resolving a claim.

The benefits of personal interaction on the job site are not limited to claims or legal action. Although RFIs and formal requests for engineer support are essential to the smooth running of a project, an engineer showing up on the job and talking to the first line supervisors in the field resolves problems quicker and cheaper. For example, on a seismic retrofit project my team could not fit the new steel into the existing structure because a column terminated 3 inches from the proposed connection instead of 5 feet away. The initial solution was returned to us through the normal channels and would have cost the client about $25,000 and a delay of more then a month, while new steel pieces were fabricated and shipped to the job site. When the structural engineer arrived on the job site, my general foreman took the engineer to the connection and proposed an alternate fix that cost the client only $2,500 and accelerated the project by 3 days. Although the structural engineer won an award for the building design, the ironworker (with more than 20 years of experience) still taught him something about constructability.

Project managers and senior managers can also gain from personal interaction on the jobsite. The immediate effect on the work crews is the most obvious and beneficial one. When management personnel visit the job site, they can see issues that the field personnel are having and respond before these issues become safety hazards or major errors. Another impact onsite management has on the work is that hidden costs and contract issues are captured and change orders are recognized. This last impact can be very substantial in the current economic climate. As a subcontractor on public and private sector jobs, I have seen general contractors and owners try to get more and more work for free. Many foremen and general foremen are not equipped to know what actions become significant costs, and they do not always understand the full scope of the contract agreement that they are working under. Most foremen I have worked with are more concerned with completing the work in a fast, safe, and professional manner and less concerned with how much money the company makes. Unfortunately if the company doesn’t make any money, then nobody has a job.

Personal interaction is a must on all projects, and management professionals should make an effort to interact with their work crews, their clients, and the design teams. In my experience personal interaction makes a tremendous difference in the morale of the work crews, the continued relationships between contractors, the efficient execution of the project, and the profitability of the work performed.