4 critical roles of communication in project management

Communication skills in project management literature

This article is to define the 4 key critical roles of communication skills in project management. The first part goes through the communication skills in project management in the published project management literature with relevant discussion. The second part discusses these key roles from a practitioner expertise and work in the project management field supported by examples from professional practice completed projects.

Communication skills are a skill set required for not only a successful project manager, but all the team in the project management. A project manager spends most of his time in any project he heads communicating with stakeholders, subcontractors, sub consultants, project consultants, and his project management team. Good communicators and good communication skills create a bridge between many stakeholders involved in a project. Face-to-face communication exchanges important information, expertise, perspectives, and interests in the project’s planned outcomes. Open mind is a strong communication criteria required for project success. Project management literature and related organizations define a set of criteria required to build a strong communication plan for any project. A project manager manages communications that including:

• Identifying stakeholders: the activity of specifying people and organizations involved in the project. Documenting their impact and interest and role in the project success.
• Plan communications: the process of defining and documenting what needs to be communicated throughout the project life-cycle.
• Distributing information: the process of defining the means or tools of communication and transport of information, like emails, face-to-face, and meetings.
• Managing stakeholder’s expectations: the process of communicating stakeholder’s needs and addressing project issues as they occur.
• Report performance: the process of collecting and distributing performance information of the involved stakeholders including status reports, progress measurements, and forecasts.

Project management communication and transferring information are executed at various levels. The external level is the level where information is communicated to support the decision-making process. For example, a planning engineer transforms data about preparing a project payment or installment to the project manager. The project manager will discuss the information with the company owner to proceed in sending the official letter to owner to release payment. The internal level is the project level itself where information is transferred top down (from PM to team) and bottom up (team to PM) to help move the project activities forward as per plan. Formal level is where information is transferred through reports, memos, and briefing. While informal transferred information is through emails and internal discussions. Official information transferred is for company publications and annual reports. It is essential for professionals in communicating information to understand two factors: when the transferred information is needed to support an internal project activity. And when the information is required for transfer to support a decision-making process.

Communication skills comprise three main skills. Informing includes various tasks such as how to execute a task, whether it is on site or preparing a document. Revealing a miss understanding from a situation through answering question or explaining an idea. Finding evidence to support communicated information. Persuading is encouraging others to take action or decide. Informative communication is less persuading than persuasive communication to take action. For example, project manager asks the project accounting manger to prepare a persuasive letter or email to the project consultant to approve a payment for the owner to release it. A project manager might send an email to a subcontractor to accept subcontract bid price reduction. Instructing comes from top-down direction to lower-level management. Instruction could come from project manager to lower manager’s levels to proceed to conduct an activity, whether it is related to documentation work or on-site work. This communication skill is necessary for a team member responsible for several activities in site or in office work like preparing construction drawings or detailing drawings. A project member (normally a PM) practicing these three skills in his daily work in a project must have several personal characteristics to support him in his work of effective communication. He must be an effective and active listener. Negotiation is another character required for effective communication to support reaching mutual acceptable agreement between project stakeholders. Problem solving is another one required to resolve conflict to prevent disruptive impacts.

Success in any project management requires knowledge, expertise, and authority. These components cannot make a team member or a PM move forward to project success without strong communication skills. Communication uses knowledge to support a project activity. If insufficient knowledge is communicated effectively to conduct a task, there is still a possibility to meet and discuss the knowledge required for the task. Through meetings and discussion within the team, a support could come to execute this task as per project plan. At the same time, expertise is like knowledge in the process of developing it through meetings and discussion to do a task, but when effective communication is present. Authority is a critical requirement to achieve success when all people in the project organization chart know their authority level. Knowing the proper direction of information to communicate and to which authority level is the success itself in any project. Communication skills are the major skills required for any project team member for a project to reach its planned milestones and goals.

The 4 critical roles of communication in project management

My experience in project management revealed many factors and critical roles of communications leading to the project management success. In 2009, I worked on a school project construction for 1000 high school students in the Middle East. The project was a design build project where my company’s responsibility is to design and construct the project. As a project manager, I had to deal with various matters in the project lifetime such as the high water table, and changing the floors slabs to hollow core slabs during construction. Another project I worked on as Design manger/project coordinator in 2014 was a district cooling plant for a major airport project also in the Middle East. The project witnessed various problems such as the soil cavities, pile casting problems, and construction time limitations. It included two big thermal energy storage tanks, main compressors building, and cooling towers areas. Targeted and planned completion time of this project is 7 months from building permit issue. Adding to these projects many other projects heading a supervision small team like shopping center, residential multi-story buildings, office multi-story buildings, and three urban development projects. What revealed from my experience  in the project management filed in these projects and long experience in construction for the critical role of communication in project management is:

Understanding project documents & design:  communicating project documents data and drawings information for the project management is the key critical role. Main project contract defines the contractor’s main activities and responsibilities. The contractor construction relationship with the various involved parties such as the subcontractors, sub consultants, material suppliers, and labor and other services suppliers. From that, a project management team member goes through in detail the mentioned earlier involved parties contracts with the main contractor and their planned activities. Then he should study the project management plan to understand the project activities and their timeline. Here the professional in the team in his study gets the clear understanding of the related to his work data and information and its flow not only between the involved parties but to the project manager. Project team and project manager are going to construct a project by using the project documents and construction drawings. The project design includes many disciplines: architectural, structural, civil, mechanical, electrical, infrastructure, surveying, and related fields as well as administration department. Every professional must study and understand his relevant field construction and detail drawings. The materials used in constructing his related work and to cross reference the project management activities to the project management plan, contracts, and documents. For example, a project includes a VRF cooling system to be installed. A mechanical engineer must understand the design and drawings if it requires reassessment or design work. He should have full knowledge on how the system is going to be installed indoor units, outdoor units, piping system, fresh air related system. The main contract clauses related to this work and its relation to the subcontractors work. The mechanical engineer to understand the project plan in terms of when every part of the design to be installed, when the materials are going to be delivered and where to be stored, the required testing and site checking to be conducted throughout the project timeline. Good communicators know when to do effective communication, whether face to face or in a project meeting to deliver accurate information for project management success. This critical role defines how human, knowledge, information, and data are involved and to understand how to communicate them. 

Understanding your role and other intervening roles: misconception always is present between all professionals in the project management team about the specific definition of role vs. responsibilities. This mix understanding leads to work clashes and failures in completing a task as planned. Every person wants to join a work team before applying for a job is supplied by job description, including his role, responsibilities, and skills required. The job description is specified by the human resource department. A role is the function assigned by the HR department for a certain job. For example, civil engineer, project architect, quality control inspector and so on. These functions in professional practice cannot be negotiated. Responsibilities are the specific duties and work for a project activity expected to be completed as planned. Here, they are negotiable before taking a job. The role in project management is about the position of decision-making allowance. Understanding your role means studying all activities under that position and which of these is under your decision-making allowance (authority). Defining a role means allowing the professional the capacity to accept submittals and work in site, reject work and submittals, and instruct and influence other to carry out work in site. A professional should go through the organization chart of any project and company to get thorough knowledge about other’s roles in the project and company. That is essential because many positions share the same responsibilities in project management work. For example, a civil engineer and a project architect role include supervising team, inspection, approving submittals, instructing to carry out work. The two roles intersect in many supervision areas and submittals work. Civil engineer inspects a foundation layout projected on site as per the structural drawings and the project architect inspects the accuracy of these projections to the architectural plan of that specific floor. A civil engineer approves a shop drawing of this foundation layout, but that approval is none complete. The project architect to check its compliance with the architectural plan. A civil engineer approves concrete site work after casting and that also is subject to the project architect approval to identify whether any defects might influence the finishing work and its supporting secondary structure. When two roles are intervening, communication must be conducted within the limitation of the role and responsibilities accurately to complete a task as per project plan, using an effective communication tool and method.   

Understanding decision-making process and required action: A project includes many and complex activities due to the many fields involved in the project management. Every activity comprises several tasks to complete it. Deciding when to start, assigning team members to accomplish the work, defining work required outcomes, checking procedure, and approval process. A professional in the project management team must, as revealed earlier study the project management plan. Prepare a checklist of his assigned activities. He must define when his activities start and expected deliverables. All tasks require communicating information and data. But the team member must define what required action to take within the activity process in terms of communication. Some activities require preparing a site report to the higher management written or verbal, others require conducting a test in handing over a task and what to communicate to higher management or other team members, or communicating certain information about a task either verbal or by email for others within the decision-making process. Effective communication within any activity in the project management helps team members execute high quality work, achieve project milestones, reduce risk, and reduce project management cost. For example, an owner informed by a telephone call while heading a school construction project that he wants to reduce construction time to catch up earlier with school opening schedule. He decided to change all slabs to hollow core slabs from cast situ. I had to communicate with my company manger about the decision by phone and asked him if we can call for internal meeting for all concerned engineers to study and decide on several things. How much time drop this change will drop makes, affect on construction cost, affect on constructed services underground and over ground , can the hollow core company achieve our project time table when preparing the concrete members, how much time our company need to prepare the structural design and detailing, and time required for authority approval.   

Understanding team member’s psychology and behavior: Working in the Middle East makes a professional see and sense many psychologies and behaviors. A professional works within a country including 200 nationalities. These affect the ongoing project management activity and communication positively and negatively depending on person culture, inherited manners, mind reason capacity, and humanity in assisting others to achieve their position and career goals. Project management activities include various levels of complexity therefore a professional to be sensible when communicating information and data, to be less aggressive within team members, understanding and supporting others in their work, encouraging and rewarding others spiritually, and selecting the most effective time and location to communicate information with other team members. 

you can refer to my book that discuss experience in design and construction and its influence in successful career, click here.