How to Better Manage your Building Projects
As a professional building manager, among some of your core responsibilities, overseeing a construction or property repair project probably stands out. There has been a lot of time and resources spent on budgeting these big-ticket items, scoping the project, and selecting the right vendor. You’re ready to go and are looking forward to getting the project off the ground. As a contractor directory and bidding platform, Connex Property has run its fair share of commercial projects. We’d like to pass along a few ideas that we apply whenever we’re called to oversee a job.
1. Set up a kick-off project meeting– Depending on the overall complexity of the project, we suggest you set up such a meeting with all stakeholders. The group should include the contractor, your maintenance team, and any other persons responsible for the overall success of the project. You can use this time to address any issues or concerns, as well as review the project’s timeline from start to completion; you really want to address everything up front, so there’s less surprises on the backend. I’ve seen these meetings uncover a multitude of pitfalls, which ultimately saved everyone time and capital.
2. Establish a communication protocol. It’s obviously important to know how the project is going, and if there are any issues that need to be addressed. Once the project commences, establish how you would like to be updated (i.e. in person, text) and how often (daily or every other day). You want to build a solid rapport with your vendor. And by having this communication structure laid out, trust will be built, and all parties will feel more confident as the project progresses. Again, we have noticed that when both parties maintain a solid channel to communicate, the project tends to fare much better.
3. Resolving Issues- Almost every building project will have problems through its life cycle, some large some small. The important item to note though, is to keep calm and get ahead of the issue. Regardless of where the problem stemmed from (either the vendor or owners’ fault), work on the steps to immediately solve the problem. From our own experience and success of overcoming some of these project obstacles, both sides needed to be flexible. Collaborate to ensure that each party can come to an agreement, because it’s in everyone’s benefit to make this happen.
So, there you have it. Here are a few thoughts around how you can better manage your next building project. A well-run project begins with getting all stakeholders on the same page and remaining as such. Communicate frequently and any problems that arise, address immediately. We hope this helps!