What are work wasteful habits in design management?  

What are work-wasteful habits in design management? Is the sixteenth 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 Eleventh article on building and writing a design management plan.

In this article, work wasteful habits I will discuss and illustrate what design managers focus on in running the workplace in the firm. Certainly, what he focuses on in relation to wasteful habits. What factors do design managers need to identify in the design management plan? Indeed, to ensure the successful delivery of high-quality work of the running design project?

What are work-wasteful habits in design management in practice?

The design manager in a firm witnesses various activities that reduce the work and quality of work. These activities range from the personal characteristics of a team member and their relation to following firm systems and procedures. Also, a lack of knowledge and experience in running software to produce quality work.

Wasteful habits in an architecture firm’s workplace have various effects on staff members. Also, the architecture firm, the architecture team working on a project, and related authorities connected to the approval of obtaining permits. Now, I will illustrate how these habits have negative effects.  

Staff Member

A staff member in an architecture firm working on a project shows an unconfident status by asking other team members about various related project aspects. He illustrates low knowledge and experience in dealing with the ongoing project. Depression and loss of interest in work lead to wasting time and producing a small amount of work.

Architecture Team

A team member must always show and be responsible for producing high-quality architectural work. If the team member hesitates in producing work, does not complete work on time, and lacks knowledge and experience that pushes the teamwork forward will have a negative effect on teamwork. The architecture team will lose trust in his work, and his work must be reviewed by another team member. Furthermore, his existence in the team will not be welcomed by the team. The team must provide support for his work, train and guide him in completing quality work. Indeed, that will consume the time reserved for completing the project.

The architecture firm

Involving a team member with wasteful habits in the organization chart of a project will affect the Firm in various ways. This team member will increase the project overhead because of his poor-quality work. The team member will reduce the project revenue due to delays in completing the work as per the schedule. This situation of wasteful habits will put the company on continuous work review, although the design manager reviews the work on schedule. The accumulated loss of paying for original software use per year will increase. The company’s hazel in finding an alternative and paying recruitment companies will put the company in an unstable status and unsmooth operations.

Authorities and planning organizations

The project building and planning permission takes a large amount of time from the firm, the architecture team, and the design manager. The design manager schedules the planning approval (as per my experience in the Gulf region) from the inception phase till obtaining the building permit. In one of the consultancy firms, I worked with the company occasionally had trouble getting the approval because of low-quality work. The authority considered the firm of low-quality work and architecture and delayed their work.  I managed to intervene in this matter and introduce the matter to my company manager as a way to solve the problem. Figure 1, shows one of the wasteful habits in architecture work.

 Types of work wasteful habits in practice?

The design manager must identify the wasteful habits in the design management plan for several reasons. To increase work quality, reduce the time reserved for projects, and reduce the staff members required for a project. Also, increase the revenue of the architecture firm, and assist the firm in running the firm operations smoothly. The types of wasteful habits include:

Overworking drawings: this common habit exists among architects, which is a wasteful practice. Architects go through the working drawings in a manner to review and check them. And they repeat this activity several times. Going through drawings several times will not increase quality. But the architect needs to have a schedule for preparing quality work before starting any activity. For example, drawing criteria, coordination with project BOQ and specs, and standards. In addition, compatibility with the software capacity for producing work.

Underworking (incomplete) drawings: architects within the architecture team must adhere to the design management plan. It’s prepared by the design manager for the team to follow the procedure to complete work. The wasteful habit appears because of a poor plan ( as mentioned above) to complete project work properly.

Incomplete written specifications: In large-scale firms, staff members of every discipline prepare the related project spec. The design manager designates a member with high experience to review the full specs. In small firms, a senior architect and civil staff prepare the specs. Also,  one MEP staff prepares the remaining project spec. In the Arab gulf region, some firms rely on one staff member to regenerate specs from previous projects that, in some cases, appear uncoordinated.

Firms in the Gulf region, like others in the world, rely on specific organizations to produce specs manuals for firms to follow. They give guidelines on what a staff member needs to consider in specs writing. Some of them give booklets and manuals to guide specs writing, include  MasterFormat,  NBS, and CAWS.

Failure to follow office protocols and accepted standards for information production. Accepting and implementing these standards correctly by staff members will eliminate excuses for failure. The design manager to introduce these protocols and standards in the design management plan. The team should consider them and apply them at work.

Searching for information: some design team members look for information while doing work. That shows poor working practices and failure to follow standard procedures. Architectural design and innovation do not have a standard procedure. Indeed, due to various available methods thus the design manager to identify specific methods to follow. The design management plan should include best practices derived from the architecture firm for design work.

Applying office standards and masters inappropriately. Incorrect application of standards and masters by the design team members will result in errors and rework.

Ineffective use of ICTs: Architecture firms register and pay for yearly subscriptions for ICTs to use for design and document production. Design staff members have various levels of knowledge and experience in using software. For example, the use of Autocad, Revit, grasshopper, SketchUp, and other software. Indeed, firms expect expert-level staff members to join and do work. For instance, in the Arab gulf region, many architecture design team members take courses to the intermediate level, thinking that is enough to work in an architecture firm. Also, they neglect many parts of the software, thinking they’re not used or essential. But they get surprised that these parts are very essential to complete the work. Finally, the design manager encourages and includes in the design management plan continuous development in using specific software to produce high-quality work.

Main sources of external and internal information in practice

Table 1, external and internal sources of information

Category	External sources	Internal Sources
Business Information	Market Nich, competitors, collaborators, and supply chain partners	Staff records, financial records, individual projects, mission statements, marketing literature, equipment, and materials.
Design Information	Literature from manufacturers, professional journals, academic peer-reviewed journals, books, design typologies developed by other firms, legal guidance documents,	Standard details and specifications, design typologies from previous projects, and design guides developed in-house.
Project Information	Clients, consultants, contractors, statutory undertakers and local authorities, user groups, standards, and codes.	Design typologies, planning, and monitoring, legal obligations to retain information.
Product Information	Feedback from building performance, clients, and users.	Internal Analysis and reviews
Systems and management controls	Management systems, controls, and framework. Professional code of conduct, guidance, and advice via professional journals. Project insurance	Plan of work, office manual. Quality management. Professional code of conduct,

The design manager must consider these sources of information. He should generate firm indexes and a supply of information. That is to develop staff knowledge and experience. Work wasteful habits affect the company, design manager, and staff members’ performance and produce quality of work.

Also, other related articles you can find in these links ^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15}