Key Consideration while managing projects and teams

Project Team , Stakeholder and General

• Strictly adhere to the PMI code of ethics and professional conduct, alongside general ethical standards, in all project activities. Your suggestions and recommendations must be provided with impartiality and objectivity, free from bias or conflict of interest.

• Transparency is paramount throughout the entire project lifecycle. Maintain consistent, accurate, and timely communication within your team. Keeping them informed fosters trust, helps in proactively gathering crucial insights (early warning signs or new opportunities), and actively promotes the growth and engagement of your team members by giving them visibility.

• Make your team accountable for their work.

• Prioritize the use of local resources for your project. This includes consultants, contractors, and material suppliers. Utilizing local sources can often simplify contractual agreements, reduce logistical complexities, expedite response times, and potentially mitigate relationship conflicts that arise from working with distant or unfamiliar external parties.

• In all contract documents, clearly define payment terms that are explicitly tied to the successful achievement and acceptance of defined project deliverables. Linking payment to measurable deliverables gives you a strong mechanism for performance management and quality control. This contractual clarity minimizes scope ambiguity, prevents payment disputes, and ensures you receive the proper output without misunderstanding or unnecessary conflict.

• Always approach any stakeholder formally through a documented and approved communication channel (e.g., official email, dedicated project management software, formal meeting minutes, or letters). Formal communication dramatically reduces the risk of misunderstanding or misinterpretation of critical project information, decisions, or instructions. It ensures clarity and provides an official record of the interaction, preventing a stakeholder from later denying knowledge or agreement. Never rely on casual hallway conversations or unrecorded phone calls for binding commitments.

• Document and securely store all critical project information, communication, and artifacts throughout the project lifecycle. This includes, but is not limited to, contractual agreements, design revisions, meeting minutes, decision logs, risk registers, and formal stakeholder correspondence.

Comprehensive documentation is an essential criterion for successful project governance and risk mitigation. It creates a defensible project history, which is vital for:

• Providing evidence of why and when key choices were made.

• Serving as the primary evidence in contractual disagreements or legal proceedings (e.g., proving when a change was requested or approved).

• Facilitating knowledge transfer for future projects.

Designer 

• Do not proceed to the Tender stage unless all design documentation (including drawings, specifications, and scope definition) has been fully completed, formally reviewed, and received.

  • Issuing incomplete or contradictory tender packages severely damages your credibility with potential contractors. It suggests a lack of project maturity or organizational competence, causing reputable firms to either refuse to bid or to inflate their prices significantly to account for the unknown risk they must absorb.

  • Incomplete design documents guarantee a massive influx of Requests for Information (RFIs) during the tender period. This overwhelms the design team, slows down the tender evaluation process, and forces contractors to make assumptions, which usually results in higher provisional sums or claims later.

  • Tendering on incomplete data leads to inconsistency within the bid documents. Contractors will base their pricing on different assumptions, making true "apples-to-apples" comparison of bids impossible. This uncertainty directly undermines the goal of achieving the best value for the client.

  • The combined effect of poor credibility, excessive RFIs, and inconsistent bids often leads to a failed tender process (no acceptable bids received), necessitating a re-issue. This causes significant schedule delays and budget overruns before ground is even broken.

• Establish a formal Design Gate Review (often called a Gate 3 or Design Completion Checkpoint) before issuing any documents for tender. This gate should require sign-off from:

  • The Client/Owner (confirming scope acceptance).

  • The Lead Designer/Architect (confirming design intent is fully documented).

  • The Project Manager (confirming constructability review is complete).

This adherence to a gate control process protects the project's budget, schedule, and procurement integrity.

• During the design phase, assign the cost management scope (cost planning, cost estimating, and cost control) to a separate contractor or specialized consultant who reports directly to the Employer or the PMO independent of the design team.

  • By separating the cost function from the design function, you ensure unbiased reporting. The cost consultant's primary duty is to the project's budget, allowing them to report on the design's financial implications clearly and without fear of criticizing the designer's work.

  • This independence enables the cost consultant to challenge the design decisions that drive costs up. They can provide an objective cost baseline against which the evolving design can be measured, preventing the designer from potentially "hiding" cost escalation from the employer.

  • This oversight forces the design team to consider cost implications at every stage. It facilitates timely value engineering reviews and ensures that design changes are immediately cost-checked, dramatically increasing the cost certainty before moving to tender.

This structure establishes a clear reporting line and governance framework. The cost consultant should be integrated into the design review meetings, but their performance review and payment should be tied to the accuracy and timeliness of their cost reporting to the Employer/PMO, reinforcing their independence.

• If you are not fully confident in the quality or completeness of the design deliverables, and there is insufficient time to replace or fully correct the incumbent designer before a hard deadline (like a tender issue date), immediately appoint an independent Design Review Consultant. 

Prioritize the refinement and correction of the Bill of Quantities (BOQ) and key specifications. This focused effort directly addresses the commercial and contractual certainty required for tendering, which is often the most immediate danger zone.

This intervention serves as a fail-safe mechanism. While it won't fix deep-seated design flaws, it will eliminate the most obvious errors and inconsistencies that lead to massive contractor claims, excessive RFIs, and schedule slippage during the execution phase.

This action shifts the immediate risk from procurement failure to managing a controlled design correction process, minimizing future liabilities.

Execution

• If the Employer chooses to mitigate project delay by appointing multiple contractors to execute various construction work packages in parallel (a multi-prime or segmented approach), the following documentation control is mandatory.

  • Immediately initiate a formal Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) review to define and segregate the entire scope into distinct, self-contained Work Packages. Each package must have clear boundaries, interfaces, and completion criteria.

  • Formally instruct the designer to segregate and re-issue all primary contract documents—the Bill of Quantities (BOQ), Drawings, and Technical Specifications—so that they are unique to each defined Work Package.

  • The segregation must be handled with precision to prevent duplication and contractual ambiguity:

    • Each contractor's BOQ must be exclusive. Ensure there is no overlap in item codes or descriptions that could lead both contractors to claim payment for the same work (e.g., general site preparation or common utilities runs).

    • Create "Contract Drawings Sets" specific to each package. Clearly indicate the limits of work for each contractor on the drawings using boundary lines, color coding, or specific notes.

    • Segregate the technical specifications into package-specific documents. Where common specifications apply (e.g., safety standards or quality control protocols), label them as "General Requirements" and reference them consistently in all packages, while keeping the specific material and installation specs unique.