Managing from Behind: Part 1 – Helping Our Prime Consultants Help Us

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Part 1 – Helping Our Prime Consultants Help Us

We’re an independent landscape architecture firm. That means we work with a wide variety of architects, engineers and other consultants. We get to see (and experience) a whole range of project management styles and capabilities. This allows us to not only learn by example (from good and bad), it allows us to learn how to “manage from behind”. During the best of times this means that we get to function at a higher level on the consultant teams that are managed well, during the not as best times… it means we can try to save our teams from potential self-inflicted issues… or at the worst, try to shield ourselves by adapting to make sure we’re doing our work properly within the surrounding mess.

What surprises me is that ten years into Corvus Design, I can say that none of the firms that we work with have ever asked us how they might do better (and I have prodded them). We find that odd since we put effort into trying to do our work better, and reaching out for input. I believe that the reasons for this are a combination of not knowing better, not having the time, being unaware that there are issues and/or being blinded by ego (luckily a rarity). We’ve experienced all of those, and other versions.

We think about these things though! So, we asked ourselves the question: How could our prime consultants make better use of us and their teams?

  • Clarity in deadlines
  • Efficient meetings
  • Timely delivery of what we need (and brokering such delivery from others)
  • Clear project strategy based on reality (i.e. procurement methods)
  • Have humor
  • Manage THEIR time to avoid passing pressure to us
  • Stay calm and carry on
  • Check in using the phone
  • Balance communications: face to face, email, phone
  • Be strict
  • Have processes and strategies
  • Know your contract/fee… and ours too.
  • Set measurable expectations

We value the above, and do our best to “manage from behind” by being proactive about ensuring our relationship with our prime takes the above list into account. We just wish we could eventually stop doing this from behind… and do it together. Then when one of us forgets, the other has our back and remembers.

As a designer turned business person, I also really like the idea that our Primes might be concerned that we make our profit and stay in business. At the beginning of each project, there should be a profit meeting where we all discuss what we need from each other to achieve our scope within or ahead of budget. Do any primes do things like this?

This aspect merited another post on creating a team profit strategy that anticipates project and client complexities… and can adapt successfully to the unknown! A Team Profit Strategy

A Team Profit Strategy

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To serve our clients, we need to stay in business. To stay in business, we need to make money. To make money, we need to meet our budgets. To meet our budgets, we need to remain within expected scope. To remain within expected scope, a project needs to follow expectations. To follow expectations, everyone needs to be familiar with them and respect them.

So… to serve our clients, we need to meet and exceed expectations. Not just us, the client too.

Our fees aren’t a random number. We generate them based on expected scope. We try to establish what we will need to do, and how much effort it will take to do it. This then becomes our contracted agreement with our client. We have done our job correctly if we set quantifiable expectations. When the reality of a project drifts from these expectations, we assess what impact it will have on our budget… and as needed, we discuss modifying scope and fee with our client. We’re crafty with developing our fees, and the reality is that if something new is needed, it typically balances with something that might have gone away. We very rarely pursue additional services where we validate that scope is truly different enough to affect our fee.

We have also developed excellent coping strategies. We have internal processes in place where we have become incredibly efficient at certain project tasks (like drafting), and this provides some buffer for us when other tasks take more time (like more team meetings than expected). We have taken control over the things over which we can take control.

Then… there are the things we have no control over… like our prime and client.

We have all submitted scope/fees where our prime and/or client have asked us to reduce our fee. The typical way to do this is to modify/reduce scope (remember that scope equals fee). Then, during the project the client asks for the scope that they negotiated out of your contract… without the commensurate increase in fee. We’ll be kind and say they forgot…

What do you do?

Well… one approach we have is to shift our strategies and internal processes. This means that we might pull in our best CAD person who can speed through things faster than the staff we might have had on the project. BUT… we’re providing scope that the client/prime told us they wouldn’t need. Aw man… not fair! Oh well… we’ll be kind and say they forgot, and they reaaaallly need it. Maybe they have pressures to deliver and are between a rock and a hard place. We often see that our prime’s negotiated their team down in good faith with the client… and then the client puts pressure on them to deliver more than expected. It can be super hard to be in that situation. We never want to alienate our prime/client. The issue is that they often don’t contemplate the reality that they are alienating their design team. I think they’re just not fully aware of what they’re doing. They don’t realize that they might be compromising our ability to stay in business and serve them well in the future.

So… we all need to be open and honest, and have a great discussion about how we can minimize the pain for everyone. The client just squeezed the team, so the architect initiates a meeting with everyone to establish what we can do better. How can we be more efficient? Minimize changes… or at least lump them together so they can all be done at once. Have efficient meetings, or better yet reduce them. There are all of these strategies that could make the best of a poor situation. Heck… the benefit is that the prime might wind up minimizing their own fee loss by improving their team! And we all learn skills that allow us to be more efficient in the future. That means we can offer better fees, or that we can be more profitable.

The summary of all of this: Profit isn’t a dirty word. If I can help my prime be more profitable, sweet!! They’ll hopefully recognize that and see me as a valuable partner. Maybe they’ll also turn around and ask me how they can help our company be profitable. That hasn’t happened yet… but I’m looking forward to the first client/prime who prioritizes this discussion enough to make it a reality.

Pretend You’re the Person You’d Like to Be

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I came into landscape architecture from an environmental science degree (ecology minor). When I started, I had a great interest in ecological restoration. I read papers, went to conferences, presented a few times, and otherwise tried to visualize what I wanted. Some of my friends teased me because I had landscape architecture AND restoration ecologist on my business card. I wasn’t really a fully practicing restoration ecologist, but it’s what I certainly wanted to do. The disconnect was that I was doing some of that work, but the firm I was working with didn’t really have the work that aligned with that part of what I wanted to do.

The point of this is that I tried to be who I wanted to be, and gained great information and knowledge within an area of passion. Situations never really developed fully for me to become that person, but it’s a part of who I am… and I carry that knowledge with me to apply when needed.

Restoration ecologist faded from my cards, and I sometimes feel goofy for having had it on my card before I reached it… but I wouldn’t change it. I wish that more people started with who they wanted to be and where they wanted to go. When you do that, if you have the right people around you, then they know more about you… and might just help you get to where you would like to be. If you don’t announce it, how will you get there? Alone is a lonely battle.

My card now just states who I am… principal landscape architect. That’s appropriate to my existence, and owning my own firm allows me to do what I want to do anyways. But, what would I add to describe more of who I am? Entrepreneur? Woodworker? Silversmith? Excellent reader of trashy adventure novels?

A friend had the best cards for introductions. They had his name… and “personage extraordinaire”. He had it right.