Have you ever been faced with the dilemma of delivering a project to the highest possible quality standards, with an immovable deadline and a defined budget? Managing time, cost and quality outcomes of any project is where the rubber hits the road. If you are in the business of managing and delivering projects to meet client expectations these three chestnuts are really what the game is all about.

I have found that if you talk to your client early in the project set up about managing these three, sometimes opposing, forces that you can set an expectation and provide your client options. In this way the issue of managing time, cost and quality can become an inclusive and collaborative process with shared understanding rather than an ‘us verses them’ relationship.

 

MODERN DAY PROVERB

There’s a modern day proverb that goes something like this…

There are three suitcases. In the first suitcase is time, in the second is cost and in the third is quality. Here’s the deal. You can only pick up two of the three suitcases.

If you apply this wisdom to any project delivery process there are three possible outcomes that await you and your client.

 

1. Pick up the two suitcases with time and quality and leave cost.

If your project demands that time is of the essence and maintaining high quality is an absolute imperative, it stands to reason that it will cost more.

 

2. Pick up the two suitcases with time and cost and leave quality.

If your project needs to be delivered within a short period with an immovable deadline and cost reduction or minimisation is a key driver then it is likely that the quality of the delivered solution will suffer or at best be compromised.

 

3. Pick up the two suitcases with cost and quality and leave time.

If you want to protect the quality of your project and do so while constraining cost chances are it will take more time to source and deliver the solution.

 

MANAGING COMPROMISE

Most projects will involve some sort of compromise along the way. This is especially evident when there are multiple stakeholders involved. On the client side there is the marketing and communications department driving design and brand consistency (quality) there is property or facilities responsible for managing the rollout (time) and there is procurement and finance presiding over cost of change (cost). By nature these three departments have conflicting performance criteria against which they are measured.

On the contractor side you have a mix of creative consultants (architects, interior and graphic designers), project advisors (quantity surveyors and project managers), and a range of contractors, manufacturers and suppliers. On this side of the table there are multiple design disciplines and the tension between design creativity (representing innovation and design leadership) and the built reality (representing the pragmatic and what is actually possible).

If you imagine all these competing forces and agendas at work with the planning, development and delivery of a retail space or a showroom you can see how managing compromise can be the keystone to a successful project outcome. The imperative is to reach agreement on what can or must be let go for the project to be delivered and what, at no point, can be yielded.

The ability for this to occur in a timely, reasonable and smooth manner can at times be seen as achievable as reaching Utopia. On any given project, no matter what role you are playing, this compromise will need to be managed. Bottom line – the earlier the issues are flagged the better. It is best to try and get all the critical information, agendas, ideals, limitations, possibilities and performance criteria put on the table for discussion and debate as soon as practicable. Just as importantly, someone needs to put up his or her hand and own this process. The best party to do this is probably someone that is independent of the client stakeholders and of the creative team and suppliers.

A good example of how this can work is the recent ANZ Bank brand identity project. Being a rebranding project of global scale, the ANZ Bank brand was rolled out across over 4,000 physical assets and 32 countries. At the outset of the project the marketing, property and procurement departments of ANZ collaborated with the external creative design and project implementation teams to develop an overall project execution strategy. The brand elements were tightly documented to protect the integrity of the design and also to ensure affordable and timely execution.

In the built environment the new ANZ Bank brand has been applied to sky signs, airport foreign exchange kiosks, retail branches, ATM’s, corporate offices and sports stadiums. Continuous collaboration between internal and external project parties has ensured the brand attributes have not been diluted as the project passed through various client-side stakeholder groups.

The ANZ Bank Foreign Exchange kiosks located in international air terminals example a heightened level of communication between the client principal, third party authorities, designer, architect, project manager and suppliers. The appointment of an independent project manager to oversee the project deliverables and liaise with all stakeholders and suppliers helps to control the project outcome.

 

STRATEGY AND TACTICS

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu writes, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” 1. Obtaining a balance between design innovation and practicality, or the risk and return equation, does require project team members to consider long-term strategic goals as well as short-term tactical ones. Engaging the technicians in the strategic process and exposing the strategists to the tactical issues will go a long way towards creating a collaborative project environment.

On a smaller scale to ANZ Bank the design and fit-out of the new corporate offices for Diageo in Sydney and Brisbane featured early collaboration between the client principal, architect, designer, construction manager and contractors. The project structure for Diageo is interesting in that a flat structure was developed that combined design services with construction management under a single project responsibility. What this enabled is the design to be undertaken in an environment where concepts are continuously being tested against performance criteria such as buildability, lifespan, cost and ongoing maintenance. The outcome is a finished solution that has not been overly compromised.

With a flat design and construction project structure Diageo has bee able to control the quality of the design through the delivery process without compromise. 

The design of the interiors, environmental graphics and signage for the Diageo fit-out were married with construction management in a packaged plan, develop and deliver project solution.

 

WEIGHING UP THE COST OF IMPLEMENTATION

It is widely broadcast that the physical cost of implementing a brand outweighs that of the creative services by a factor of at least 20:1 and in some cases up to 40 times. What that tells me is that it is vitally important to ensure that the creative process is not undertaken in a vacuum. What normally happens is the creative work is done up front and then passed from the brand guardian to those with control over delivery-based objectives. Typically what this process results in is a ‘lost in translation’ moment where the strategic brand platform and communications alignment goes astray. At best this delivers a sub-par return on investment or maybe a design adjustment. At worst it can result in a whole redo.

To me it makes a lot of sense to bring the creative process together with the operational elements from the start to the finish of a project. Only then can one manage the inevitable compromise that will arise and achieve a great solution.

1. The Art of War, Sun Tzu, sometime around 500 BCE.

Lost in Translation blog written by Kelvin Taylor.

Find out more about Kelvin at Kelvin Taylor | LinkedIn.webloc

 

 

 

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