Linked In Article by P.Whitfield Consulting Ltd June 2019

This short article sets out in simple terms how integrated project teams can better enable the process of pleasing a client.

Major infrastructure projects are high stake projects that are in the public eye. Glibly speaking, pleasing the client is easy – just deliver on time, with quality and within budget. Yet the CITB (et al) 2018 “UK Industry Performance Report (Based on the UK Construction Industry Key Performance Indicators)” reported that:

• the Client satisfaction with the service received from contractors dropped back to the 2016 level, with 77% rating their satisfaction as 8 out of 10 or higher. This compares to 81% in the previous survey. On 73% of projects, clients scored value for money as eight out of ten or higher. This is 7 percentage points down from 2017 and the lowest rating since 2003.

•Clients’ overall satisfaction with their consultants has weakened. The proportion of clients rating their consultants’ overall performance at 8 or better of out of 10 slipped from 79% in the 2017 survey to 75%.

Each project and the mix of staff working on it is unique, so the key focus should be demonstrating exemplary understanding of the client and their aspirations for a project.

At the project’s outset you have a written brief (specification), hopefully, and probably also other high-level documents that explain the particular programme of work that a project sits within, and possibly also a Scheme Requirements statement that articulates the desired outcomes in KPI (Key Performance Indicator) terms for the construction and post construction (in-use) stages. But does all of that that guarantee real understanding, and will those messages be cascaded properly through the team? It’s highly unlikely that the client’s documentation alone will be a sound platform, because the relative weights of certain factors won’t be well explained and there will be missing information that wasn’t included, either deliberately or inadvertently. Then there are the various client personalities and their perceptions to understand: the project manager, the technical assurance team, specialist advisors, and the senior leadership team and what is driving their aspirations and performance metrics. And then there are the objective issues and the more subjective issues to sift through and decisions to be made about how these should be weighed and articulated in your delivery approach.

A client will value your services if you strive to understand the project from all conceivable angles. This allows all parties to define and potentially refine the scope. This comes in the main from detailed conversations with key stakeholders, some of whom may have been “outside the tent” when the written information was produced. Good clients will also listen to their project team and will be open to sensible scope challenge, provided they are content that the scope challenge process can be tightly defined before exploration begins. In defining scope, in my view it is important to be rigorous and formal in documenting what is definitely in scope, what is definitely out of scope, and which issues are uncertain and require assessment and governance to record decisions. This process also includes specialist input to shine a light on the potential vagaries across disciplines.

Client expectation surveys are a key method of taking time out to sit with the client project manager and shape these issues. This process should ideally be early, but should not only occur at the very outset as this may result in receiving only one viewpoint and before the major challenges are visible. It is also worth time thinking about how to design this engagement process so that the client can gather their thoughts to inform a genuine two-way conversation.

Each project will have formal project controls over quality, time and cost metrics. The better project teams understand that quality is not just about delivering competent deliverables on time, it is far more than that. It is about showing professional judgement to understand technical challenges and identifying where the resource effort is most needed; concentrating on the big-ticket items and risks that could undo the project at stage-gates. It is about understanding how to brief your team of suppliers and remote work pools on what the client really wants and making sure that each team member can describe these client aspirations to each other with nuance and full comprehension. All too often fundamental messages about project scope get lost unless they are clearly documented and repeatable.

It is about looking for innovation to deliver the project outcomes in a way that helps the client “over- achieve”, not just achieve.

It’s about understanding how the infrastructure will operate and the linkage between the features and that operation.

It’s about showing value. Sometimes this is about getting more for less, but it should always be about getting more, sometimes even at higher capital cost (but always within budget!). Whole life cost, maintainability, safety, operations, sustainability and the environment must all be considered and articulated in a sound value proposition.

It’s about managing stakeholders. That does not always mean delivering everything that stakeholders want, gift-wrapped. It means fully identifying who has an interest, listening to their view, balancing options and then determining what fits with the scheme objectives.

It’s about communications and integration. Whether that be via multi-disciplinary meetings, information management or briefings, each facet should be clearly articulated and targeted to the audience. Good client-supplier relationships can survive mishaps and bad news. Be transparent and work through problems together.

It’s about articulating options to decision makers including explaining all perceived or real disbenefits and benefits of each option. And within that process, it’s about truly understanding the real weighting of the difficult balancing act across various imperatives. Sometimes win-win is just not possible, but good decisions rely on presenting multiple options including rejected options, not a single option.

In summary it can be concluded that many of the key ingredients for success rely on a range of soft skills to create the right background for technical delivery. It is largely unknown what proportion of training budgets and project budgets are used on these skill areas, but it would seem that teams that can better display these key skill attributes will be more likely to please their clients and demonstrate their contribution to pragmatic outcomes.

Linked In Article by P.Whitfield Consulting Ltd June 2019