“So… how are things? What are you working on now?”
“I’m drawing up the cladding detail that we talked about this morning.”
“You know we need to send this out tonight, right?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. It doesn’t look quite right. Perhaps it’s not horizontality we’re looking for.”
“Well, but…”
“Maybe we should express the verticals. Are you going to be done by tonight?”
STOP
Why does this sound so familiar? Why does design work always take longer than we thought? The typical explanation, served with a helpless shrug, is that architecture work is very creative and that we can’t predict how long creative processes will take. If we can’t predict how long it will take, what’s the point of planning it? All we can do is throw the deadline at the team every day and hope that it will stick. Then we get paranoid, because deep inside, we know that it won’t stick. So we crack the whip, we hover around the team, we prick them and prod them and before we know it, not only we’re not hitting the deadline, but the team can’t stand us anymore.
Thankfully, that’s not the whole story. We can change this.
Other professions both within the construction industry and outside of it have to deal with unpredictability too. On a construction project, one of the key responsibilities of the project manager is to manage risks, which means to provide enough contingencies in design, in cost, and in construction. And it works. If managed properly, even the largest construction projects finish on time and on budget. If contingencies work for things as enormous as the Beijing Olympic Park, why can’t they work for a measly few months of design work?
The fact is, they can, and they do. Next time you’re planning a piece of design work, build in some contingency. Assign thirty or fifty percent of the time to it, and aim to finish before the contingency starts. This may involve either telling the project manager that you’re going to need a bit more design time, or setting yourself more realistic targets.
There’s a double win there. Not only you will have some time to recover in case things do go wrong, but you’ll also have less micromanaging to do. Your team will be more relaxed, you won’t have to hover around them permanently, they’ll be more self-reliant, they’ll do better work, and they’ll learn more in the process.
Not bad for a simple, free planning device.
