The Historical Paradigm: Chasing Time
Design is a complicated process. It starts with an idea and ends with a building. A calendar of successive milestone events drives the process that translates the idea into the instructions that become the building. Managing this process to make the right decisions is a chaotic race for the client, architects, engineers, contractors, and suppliers. It is, without question, a process built on chasing time.
Poor Project Management is Frustrating
Many clients express frustration that this process is, on its best day, managed chaos. Their architects are, many times, at the center of this frustration. In 2012, the Minnesota Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA MN) commissioned a research study of 112 organizations. Building owners, contractors, and owner’s representatives shared insight to better understand the perceptions of the value of architecture.
The Architects in Commerce Research Initiative (AICRI) study is on the AIA Minnesota website here. Clients value architects’ creativity in the process. Yet, respondents cited the failure of architects to effectively manage the whole process as a key issue to the long-term value of the profession. 22% of the respondents said architects provided “poor management and lacked budget accountability.” 20% said architects produced “poor documentation” in the process. Sadly, more than a decade later, these perceptions remain a key issue holding back the value of the profession.
Managing a project effectively is complex. The primary focus should be on effective communication and clear decision processes that move the projects’ development efficiently through the process. The key to effective communication is capturing and organizing project information in a platform that builds trust. We built the Concert platform around this understanding.
Concert Focuses on Managing Deliverables
The Concert platform organizes and tracks communication based on the deliverables required at each step of the process. Early on, information is required from the owner for the architect to effectively start the design process – scale, scope, schedule, budget, and performance characteristics are all metrics the client must define for the architect. As the project progresses, the architect leads the charge, orchestrating engineers, vendors, and consultants to transform the idea into something buildable. During construction, the contractors take control, coordinating trades, ordering materials, and managing the expenditures against the budget. These differing needs are core to Concert, but we also recognize the complexity of the process. The Concert platform creates a simple unified dashboard that organizes the required deliverables, who is responsible for delivering them, and if the information is on the critical path moving forward.
Beyond organizing and creating a tracking mechanism for meeting deliverable schedules throughout the project, Concert also captures the discussion tied to each deliverable, eliminating the need to search folders and systems of all the participants for the “right” information. It is the single source of truth. Throughout the process, Concert creates a permanent, unimpeachable record of everything shared and communicated, writing the full history of decisions, directions, and communications, building a deeper understanding of how the idea became the building.
It is time to stop chasing time and adopt a deliverables-based management structure that organizes information and communication into one platform.
