A design manager managing multiple projects

A design manager managing multiple projects is the eleventh article of a series. Articles about design management in architecture practice. I have discussed in the previous articles what is design management, who is the design manager in practice. Also, firm or project design management plan, what are the key functions of a design management plan in practice? In addition, what needs to be managed in architecture firm. This article is the sixth article on building and writing a design management plan.

The design management plan includes managing multiple projects in a firm. The firm takes on projects whether directly hired by the owner, developer, third party, or sub consultancy. These projects vary in size, work requirements, value, and profit. Managing multiple projects means understanding firm resources, ICT, and employee skills. This will lead to effectively pushing forward projects to achieve their milestones and successful delivery. The two criteria that affect reaching project goals and successful handover include.

Priority is the main character of many projects that an architecture firm takes on or is awarded. Either a government project that a firm does not want to lose as a valuable client, which passes jobs from time to time. A controlled project subject to a schedule and timeline connected to a bank loan and fund. This type of project requires urgent work and fast delivery.

An EPC, engineering-procurement-construction, project in the whole process of design and construction. This project is linked together in a specific timeline and a delivery time. A specific time that has been decided by a high official or VIP person or a high-value project. For example, like the Abu Dhabi International Airport, which I worked on in 2014. In some cases, a high-priority project but does not have much value and has less income for the firm. In this case, it causes lots of stress on the firm in terms of extra work and more payments to employees at the time of firm work overload.

Value is the character related to the size of the project, its esteem, fee, and income. Also, overall contribution to the smooth running of the firm. Firms understand that their capacity is linked, as mentioned, to the available ICTs and the number of staff. I have discussed in previous articles that firms tend to specialize in types of projects like hospitality, hotels, and resorts. Projects that require a large specialized team of engineers, architects, planners, urban designers, and landscape architects.

Infrastructure projects like sewage treatment plants, district cooling plants, roads and highways, sewage and electrical networks. And specialized industrial projects like oil and gas projects also require a large team of engineers and planners. These types of projects bring high income, and firms continue to take the same projects always. Firms rely on these valuable projects in terms of benefits that cover all expenses and all company overhead in the long run.

In many cases, firms take jobs like high-rise buildings because they contribute to the firm’s capabilities in providing innovative architecture and creative work. Day by day, the firm builds a team of architects and engineers that can take more workload. Work based on the previous experience in running one project in terms of time, staff number, and revenue obtained. The firm, in this way, could overlap and create gaps in work. The design manager can move his resources and staff from one project to another or assist in other projects. Attached is a sketch, figure 1, from my design management plan I submitted to a firm I was working with in 2014. It shows the relationship between time and value and how projects are linked and managed altogether.

To summarize this graph content the characteristics that have a significant effect on the ability of the firm to make a profit are:

• Small, High-priority, low-value:  these projects may help to fill a gap in capacity, but too many will place unnecessary burdens on the firm.
• Large, long-term, high value: these are the targets of many large-scale firms, they provide stability, and continuous cash flow to business.

In practice, problems appear when the firm is actively working on various projects and different scales.

Now, what makes all projects go and run smoothly to their planned deliverables deadlines? Or what is the key factor that makes the design manager and the design management plan guide and run the projects to their planned goals and efficient delivery?

All clients, regardless of their class developers or lower, require the firm to respect their project submittal deadlines. Submitting the planned and required deliverables on time makes the client issue the phase payment on time. A very important issue to take care of for smooth firm operations. If payments do not come on time and on the specified schedule, it causes the firm to use the firm’s fund assets. Using assets reduces project revenue and delays other projects’ progress and work. I experienced that when I was handling a design management division in the UAE.

Thus, submitting the required deliverables on time for all projects means in practice. The effective use of firm resources and how to use them within the design management plan. A timely delivery when managing multiple projects reduces the defects in running the projects smoothly. Assigning the proper team for a project represents the key factor for the effective delivery of submittals on time for each project. We will come to that in later articles about resources, teams of engineers, architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and so on. Leading to increasing revenue and reducing repeated work on projects.  A firm goal represents satisfying clients with high-quality management, work, and deliverables, and achieving client goals. Surely, that will increase the possibility of the firm obtaining more jobs without relying much on marketing individuals or assigning a marketing agency.

The design management plan must use two techniques in the process of managing multiple projects. That to overcome delays in submitting the project’s scheduled deliverables on time when managing multiple projects. For every project for large developers, their team reviews projects in every stage of the design period. The client at the large scale will have various departments to review the submittals from engineers, architects, QS, and so on. Mostly, the submittal review takes between two weeks to three weeks. The firm uses this period to shift and mobilize the project staff to handle other projects. A shift to speed up delivery for other projects or to assist other teams on other projects. Another key technique to manage project deliverables on time includes shifting and reorganizing the team members from time to time.

. A design manager does all that latter based on the full study, analysis, and understanding of employees’ skills, capabilities, and capacities to accomplish the required work on time (we will come to that in later articles).Other related articles you can find in these links ^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}