Speaker 2 (00:00)
When you think of a time when you've had a massive failure of communication, every single person had a little bit of culpability in missing something or talking past each other, thinking that we're on the same page and thinking that we're talking about the same thing when in fact we were not even looking at the same information. Here's the worst part of it, guys. Nobody said anything. Everybody just moved on to the next job.
Speaker 1 (00:27)
Hello and welcome to Management Under Construction. I'm Brad Wyant.
Speaker 2 (00:31)
And I'm Dee Davis. And today we are going to talk about miscommunication. My goodness, because this happens to us as humans all the time, right? We've always relied on communication, as long as there's been humans, to communicate with each other about food that is safe, water that is safe, working together cooperatively, developing and maintaining relationships, all kinds of things we rely on communication.
We communicate in numerous ways, not just verbally, with our face, with our body language, with our eyes even. I know my husband and I can tell each other when it's time to leave a party just with our eyes. We don't need anything else. I think any couple that's been together for a long time, you know the look and the eyes, the I'm-a-go. Despite all of our methods of communication, we still frequently have massive failures of communication.
Brad, can you think of a time when you've had a massive failure of communication?
Speaker 1 (01:35)
I certainly can. There was a job a little while ago in my history where the specification called for a material to be matched like for like with an existing historic finish, which is very difficult to do. Things are made long time ago with different materials and the intent was, we're going to match it because this is historic building. And the bid that our company submitted for the work included a big qualification to say, well,
We don't know how much that's going to cost. So we're just going to include this tile that looks kind of similar. The meat and potatoes, the job at the time was this very complicated other scope of work that everyone was focused on and how are we going to get them involved? And what is the engineering going to be on that? my gosh. And then we got down to the part of the job where we're going to talk about this tile. People were like, why did you submit this? This is not what we want to take a look at the specifications. yeah, but
You remember in our bid that we qualified that we weren't going to do that and that our contract doesn't include that. And they were like, we signed what? And it was just the cluster after that of all time, because it turned out to be a very expensive thing to do, unfortunately. As it all turned out, the work got done. We think we provided the client something that was good value for money, especially for how difficult it was to get it as right as we did. And
Everybody came away from it very proud of the work they had done. But I think the big failing of communication there that strikes me is focusing on the elephant in the room, the big scary thing at the moment in communication when there is a big scary thing, but there are other things. We have a tendency not to think about everything else there is to talk about when there's something so pressing, something so immediate on our minds that's going to disrupt our worth. And it's
On the one hand, important to address that problem. I got some great advice from a boss of mine, Jenny Shaw. She said, look, when it's overwhelming, just prioritize and execute. What are the things you have to get done today for the job to still go on? Do those then go down the list. I said, okay. Was able to concentrate, do my work well, but you can't exclude things in that list. You've got to think about everything else that is going on and you can't.
Get so single-minded about your communication, your stakeholders. You've got to make sure that they are thinking about the things that they're responsible for thinking about and not let things go unsaid. It's easy to get target fixation and not focus on the rest of
Speaker 2 (04:12)
Well, leaving things unsaid is another form of miscommunication. I like to tell people all the time, I remind myself and others around me, I don't have a crystal ball and I don't expect you to have one either. We often get upset when people don't just know what we want, what we need, what we expect. We say, well, they're not performing. They're not communicating. They're not doing this. Well, you got to look at yourself. Are you communicating?
Are you saying, hey, by the way, did you happen to notice in our bid exclusions that we said we're not, now what contractor is going to draw their eye to the things that they didn't exclude? That should have been caught in bid leveling.
Speaker 1 (04:55)
Nobody had this, I'm sure at this point. No, nobody had that scope of work, but it was incumbent upon us as we were getting started on the job to be like, all right, so let's go through our contract together and make sure that we're all on same page. It can be the kind of thing where it's people like, really? We need to have a meeting about the contract we just signed with you. But that would have caught that issue. And then we would have had the conversation earlier and then it would have been taken care of.
further in advance, we would have had more time. But it's certainly difficult to have that mindfulness to be like, all right, but did they actually read the things that we put in our bed? But did they actually understand that this is what we're going to do? We get so close up to things that we're always thinking about it as if everyone understands the thing that we understand. How could you not? What's so complicated about rocket science is the famous engineering shirt. But it is because somebody else is not living it.
day to day the way you are. always have to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You always have to consider that they do not care about or understand as much as you do.
Speaker 2 (05:57)
Yeah, absolutely. And these miscommunications can cost us time, money, and in the business world, reputation. It's a big deal potentially in that situation that you described. Maybe it wasn't possible for anyone to meet that expectation of matching exactly this historical thing. But because it wasn't talked about and it was submitted and it was like, wait a minute, you submitted the wrong thing. no, no, we said we weren't going to do that.
Well, now you look bad as the contractor because now you look like you're trying to get away with something, even if that may not have actually been the case. I recently had a failure in communication on a project that we're still working through and it's going to involve time, money and reputation for every single one of us involved. Without getting into too much detail.
It really started off with a note on a drawing that didn't match the specifications that were issued. It's just a little note. Doesn't seem like a big thing. The middles were approved, work was installed, test and balance happened, and commissioning of the building systems happened. As usual, at the end of a job, everybody's in a rush. Everybody wants to get out the door, hurry up, get finished.
We're under pressure to get everything done and turned over about a year, almost a year after final punch list. get contacted from the users of the facility and how they've been occupying this facility this whole time. But they're slowly starting to use different parts of the facility. And they called because as they started to move into this one part of the facility that they hadn't really used that much yet and do this one operation, they noticed that they had some airflow problems.
Well, we go back to the test and balance report. The test and balance report says it's good, but the users are saying it's not good and it's not safe. I can't actually perform the functions that I need to perform in this part of the building because of the airflow. During construction, we struggled through test and balance. We had some pressurization problems. Pressurization matters in this type of facility. And again, we're in a rush. It's at the end.
We dealt with some things on the fly. Didn't ask as many questions as perhaps should have been asked. Taking the time to properly communicate and resolve problems. I find that we always, and I'm going to say always, have this issue at the end of a job. We're under budget constraints. I've got certain contractors that running out of money. I've got an owner who's itching to occupy and start using the space.
We've got contractors that are looking to move on to their next project. It's really tough at the end of a job. Has that been your experience,
Speaker 1 (08:57)
You're saying that at the end of the job, when no one wants to see anyone that they've worked with the past year and a ever again, that they don't communicate effectively. What? That's crazy talk. Come on. That's when people are at their finest. Yeah, that is such a phenomenon in construction. Everyone in construction has got the squirrel mentality of just on the next thing. We always want change in our lives. We always want the new challenge.
The end of the job is by far the most challenging part. The higher ups within every organization that's involved, they're like, so did you finish on time? So did you meet your budget? And it's almost like, yeah, but no, but kind of it's, it's, it's a very tense time to be reporting to everybody while you're working with the city, while you're working with the fire department who only shows up at four 30 in the morning to do this one test. It's extremely strenuous. And for the most part, we've all been.
busting our butts to get there to begin with. So we're already out of gas and we are running on fumes. So when we make assumptions in those circumstances, stuff happens as Dee will now explain.
Speaker 2 (10:08)
As you mentioned, we've already been to Disneyland. We've been at Disneyland for 18 months and we're over sugared, we're exhausted, we're on our way home, we're cranky, and we don't want to deal with each other anymore. We're just done. Everybody's out there. In this particular job, the owner was pushing hard to get all the final boxes checked so that we would get out of there because we were pretty much out of money. There was no more money left.
to solve last minute problems, which makes things even more complicated. The last 10 % is truly the most difficult part of the project. No matter what kind of role I play, it seems like I'm always one of the last people left on the project and it's difficult. You become very impatient to hurry up and get things done and sometimes to your own detriment. Some of the reasons that we miscommunicate, you kind of alluded to already, Browd, is because we come from our own point of view.
We know what we know or what we think we know and what we've been exposed to in our lives or on that project. Since it's different for every single one of us, we forget that people are coming from millions of different points of view. And we forget that not everybody sees or knows what we see and what we know. The engineer of record in this particular case knew what they intended.
didn't necessarily get it on the documents as clearly as it could have been. Some conflicts were there and were not questioned. The installing contractors focused on the specifications and never noticed the conflict that was on the drawings and therefore didn't ask any questions. When I actually talked to the GC and showed them the note that was on the drawings, that was what I was focused on was the note on the drawings.
They were focused on the specifications. said, I never even noticed that note. And I said, and I never noticed the conflict in the specs. We were on the same job doing the same thing, but going down two different parallel paths without even realizing it.
Speaker 1 (12:17)
It's almost like the people that write the specs aren't reading the drawings and the people that draw the drawings aren't writing the specs. It's so amazing how that happens on so many jobs and so many different circumstances, I think. It's not an uncommon problem.
Speaker 2 (12:30)
Yeah, this happens more frequently than I think most of us would care to admit. Most of the time, it's not a huge deal. We catch it much sooner than this and we figure it out as we go and it all works itself out in the wash and it's not a big deal. Every once in a while, it ends up mattering. And in this case, it matters because it's the sequence in which equipment and how the equipment runs and works together in the building.
So it does matter in this particular case. And because we're having problems achieving what the design was, we have a safety issue now in an operating facility. So a quick accounting of some of the mistakes that we made. There were lots of them, quite frankly, and every single one of us has some culpability in the mistakes that were made.
And in these situations, it's easy to start getting into finger pointing. Well, they never asked the question. They never noticed the conflict. They never did this. They never did that. Well, what were you doing? Every single person had a little bit of culpability in missing something or talking past each other, thinking that we're on the same page and thinking that we're talking about the same thing when in fact we were not.
even looking at the same information. Comparing the various contract documents where there were conflicts, it wasn't noticed, and or if anyone did notice it, they didn't ask any questions. This is one of the things that I see happen the most in the industry is where there are conflicts or a lack of clarity. Questions are not asked. It is absolutely one of the first things that we should be doing at the beginning of every job.
is going through all of the contract documents, noting any conflicts, and we start writing RFIs. That's what we should be doing.
Speaker 1 (14:30)
And that to me is one of the things that is the most frustrating about the story so far. Not, we get in the trailer and we think, well, we're the ones, but somebody had thought of how this was supposed to go and just communicated it poorly. Getting in touch with that person, getting the story out of them, getting the right information would have alleviated these problems. What we want to do as builders is just have the project be designed and done.
the moment we go to start building because it falls to us to figure out when there are these conflicts, what the right choice is and to have a bunch of meetings. So the moment we see a conflict like this, here we go again. But if you don't do it, if you don't do that stuff that does suck, it ends up being worse later as Dee will now explain.
Speaker 2 (15:24)
You're right. Contractors just say, designers, it's on you to make sure this stuff is right and that it's all coordinated. And you know what? In the land of rainbows and butterflies, that's exactly what would happen is we would get perfect documents that were completely designed, completely coordinated, had no conflicts, and we would just go build it. Who among us would not love for that to happen? I got to be honest in almost 30 years of doing this, I've never seen it ever.
I've seen it done better and I've seen it done worse, but I've never seen a perfect set of design documents. So contractors, as much as that irritates you, you have to realize that this is where you're going to be. You're starting off with questions, problems, conflicts, details that maybe are not applicable to what you're building. Stuff happens.
Not trying to make excuses for it, just telling you that you're going to be in this position anyway. So just put that, put that in your head and go from there. and believe me, I am far from perfect. This was on one of my projects. I missed the conflict too. So none of us are perfect. None of us are clean. We all are human and make mistakes. When problems began to arise during test and balance, we didn't slow down enough.
to thoroughly communicate about what was really going on. I think there was enough engineers involved with this and people with engineering degrees or experience to realize that something bigger might be going on here. But we were being pushed, not that that's an excuse, but we were being pushed to finish. And so we thought if we can make it work, it'll be fine. Let's just make it work and move on.
The next thing was even though final documents were marked as revise and resubmit, the TAOB report was marked revise and resubmit by two people, two different entities. It was never revised and resubmitted. The project was closed out without final documents and all the questions being added. And here's the worst part of it, guys. Nobody said anything. Everybody just moved on to the next job and let it go.
Speaker 1 (17:44)
And this, think, goes back to that point I made earlier about us having so many things on our plate. I'm sure on this job, there were other things going on that were calling more attention of the key leaders of the project. It's not wrong that we do, but we do. get into this game of, I put it in somebody else's court. It belongs in that court. The ball is no longer my responsibility. I will move on. And that is part of prioritizing and executing. That is totally the game.
More broadly, the fact is that it's the owner's court, no matter who's part of the court the ball is in. We're all playing their game. In any case, where something happens that did need to happen, if somebody who's court the ball was not in kept pushing for it in a way that was politically savvy, that doesn't throw that person under the bus, then it might've gotten resolved faster and it might not have become such an issue later on in the job. It might have been resolved more...
smoothly and that'll be a feather in your cat. If you're the person who gets known for advocating for the client's best interests, even though it's not necessarily the most politically popular thing to do. And if that makes it bad to the client, which it doesn't always, that will stand you in good stead. That's the kind of attitude that everybody can appreciate when they've had some time away from it. Even the person whose feet you stepped on. If they look back and are like, yeah, but I did miss that and it wasn't going get done if they didn't push me.
Okay. That's how the hardest fought and most important relationships in construction are formed in my opinion, because those are the ones that were like, you pissed me off at the beginning, but came around on you. realized that you were a little bit right and now we're cool. So don't be afraid to step on some toes when necessary to advance the cause, even if the ball's not your court.
Speaker 2 (19:35)
Yeah. And that's great advice. And we'll talk about that some more. Everybody drops balls and we do have that tendency to be like, whoo, it's out of my court. Great. Into somebody else's court. And we've got 20 other things behind it. So it's not uncommon at all for somebody to drop the ball. But when a whole bunch of people all in a row, drop the ball, that's when we end up with, instead of two eggs on your face, now you've got a whole dozen on your face and kind of have to do a group hug and say, look, we all blew it.
Everybody blew it. I've met with the contractors already. I've had a meeting with the design team and I'm like, look, you guys, I'm not here to string anybody up. That's not the plan. It's unproductive. We all blew it a little bit. So let's just figure out how to solve it. So let's talk about what are we going to do next? How do we, how do we proceed? At this juncture, we have an operating facility. The fixes are going to require scheduled shutdowns with the owner.
So this is very high profile. There's no hiding under rocks for this thing. It's everybody's out there and knows what's going on. We got to get everybody together, go over all the issues, make sure that we're addressing every single one and make a plan that will have the least bit of disruption to ongoing operations. We have to focus on solutions and leave the floggings for later. If somebody really, really wants to just take somebody out to the shed and whip them.
for this, fine. But let's figure out how we're gonna solve this problem first. Because flogging, quite frankly, is unproductive. It's not helpful and it gets everybody defensive, which just makes everything work.
Speaker 1 (21:16)
I totally agree. I want to jump in there. I think that the floggings that I have seen, especially the public ones, were more about the ego of the person doing the flogging than they were of the intended, supposedly, purpose of making that person aware that they made a mistake in the hopes that they don't make it again. If you have people on your job site that are so dumb, they don't know that they were wrong, just fire them. It's not worth your time to try to shame them into being better at their jobs.
If they are not intrinsically motivated enough or too stupid to know what they're wrong about, then there's no hope. Publicly flogging someone will just end up making you look like a jerk to everybody and having them hate you. Not the right road. And frankly, that mistake is just going to live on their career at that firm for long enough and affect their promotion to the point where you don't have to flog them. It's all, they're already in for the suck and they know it.
Don't make it worse. It's not worth your time. It's not worth the energy. There are other ways you can be more productive.
Speaker 2 (22:20)
It's not the time for placing blame, finger pointing, figure out who messed up more than whoever else. It doesn't matter. We're all in the suck together and we have to together find our way out.
It's time to check your ego at the door. Come to the table with a good attitude and solutions to limit the amount of time and energy that you're spending on solving this problem. The milk is spilt folks. It's time to solve the problem, to clean it up, complaining, having a bad attitude, finger pointing, all those things. It just takes up more time. And contractors have this little line item in their budget called warranty.
It's usually a relatively small amount. If they don't have any problems and they do a good job, bonus, they get to keep that money. They don't have to use it. If they have a problem like this where they're going to have to come back later after the job is complete and fix something, that's what that warranty line item is for. Use it wisely. If we can solve it in 10 hours, let's solve it in 10 hours and not spend another 10 hours whining and complaining and being a pain in the butt about it. Designers?
generally don't have those kind of line items in their budget. So they oftentimes will do this and push away and say, no, no, not me, not me, because they don't have a warranty line item in their budget. Usually it's unbillable time for them. So they're going to want to minimize their time as much as possible. Sometimes the owner might have to pay them to help solve the problem. That's something for the owner to negotiate on the side with the design team. But.
It can be a little different for designers and for contractors. Lessons learned. We need to speak up and we need to slow down. Slow down. Even when it's, even when it's unpopular, we must slow down. We, we are rushed people. From the moment we get a job, we're rushing to start.
When we're in the middle of a job, we're rushing to get things done. At the end of the job, we're rushing to finish so that we can move on to the next job that we're going to rush to start. I think rushing is in our nature in this industry and trying to get things done as quickly and as efficiently as possible, but not at the expense of getting things done properly. We're missing things that are important. Don't get swept up in the rush to finish. Listen.
We're not as good at listening as we are at talking. So we have to listen. Personally, I'm sitting there thinking, could I have listened better in some of the meetings with the contractors when we were struggling to get through test and balance and some of the problems we were having? Could I have listened and asked better questions to maybe uncover this problem earlier? I think I could have. We need to think analytically about what is happening and why.
And then once again, take it down a notch, slow down. And as I always like to say, how do you know that you're doing the right thing? Because it's hard, maybe even unpopular.
Speaker 1 (25:24)
When you are becoming an unpopular person on the job site, but you think you're right and problems are getting solved, you're right, but nobody likes it. So just know that nobody is going to give you the pat on the back for this one because everyone hates each other now. But know that eventually when people look back on it, they'll be like, yeah, that person was steering the job in the right direction.
You will almost never lose if you keep the best interest of your client at heart and you advocate for their interests. Everybody works for somebody. And at the end of the day, we work for a company signing our paychecks, not for our clients. And that is something we all have to acknowledge. There's internal politics to be dealt with. And I'm not saying that those aren't meaningful, but if you get fired for putting the client's interests first without jeopardizing your con.
you're costly, then that's a bad organization and you can go trade on that to the next company that has a better culture. Do what is right for your clients because at the end of the day, they're the ones paying the company that's paying you and find a way to sort out the rest.
Speaker 2 (26:30)
Well, and it's your reputation. if you stand up for what's right, even when it's unpopular, or you raise your hand and go, I messed up. I, I've done it more times in my career than I can't care to count. remember having to go to a client and tell them that I made a mistake that was not a small one on their project.
It wasn't a functional mistake. Everything was still going to work, but it was not what they wanted. And I didn't catch that the equipment was coming in a way that wasn't what they wanted. I had to call them and say, I messed up. And the client wasn't mad at me. They would have been mad at me had I tried to defend my mistake. Had I tried to blame it on somebody else, not take responsibility for it in some way.
But everybody makes mistakes. Failures to communicate happen all the time. We need to slow down, make sure that we're trying to go and do the best thing for everybody and admit it when we make a mistake. And I can't guarantee you that somebody isn't going to try to flog you if you admit you made a mistake, but they're going to be a lot more forgiving towards you if you admit that at least, you know, you had some responsibility there.
And that you're acknowledging it. In my experience, what I've found when you do make a mistake is just, just say, you know what, you're right. I blew it. I ordered the wrong thing. I approved this drawing when I shouldn't have, because that little detail was wrong. Everybody makes mistakes. In the end, this isn't going to cost anybody a hundred thousand dollars or anything like that. It's going to take a couple of meetings and a couple of site visits from a few people, a shutdown.
to reorganize and retest some things and then we'll be done. That's it. All in with everybody's time and energy and mobilizations, 20 or 30 grand shared among many people, not the end of the world.
Speaker 1 (28:34)
Great superintendent once gave me advice. The building is going to get built. Move on. Let it go. Detach emotionally and do what's right.
Speaker 2 (28:44)
That's right. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.
Watch us on YouTube at YellowstoneProfessionalEd.co. Don't forget to like, share, and follow us. Apple, Spotify, everywhere you listen to your podcasts. You can email us with questions, comments, and suggestions at heyd at managementunderconstruction.com. That's H-E-Y-D-E-E to get me or Brad at managementunderconstruction.com.
