Design manager: design management plan psychological wellbeing

Design Manager: Design Management Plan Psychological well-being is the Ninth article of a series of 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, what a project or firm design management plan, what are the key functions of the design management plan in practice, what needs to be managed in a firm in practice, and this article is the fourth article on building and writing a design management plan.

A decrease in psychological well-being has several negative effects on members of the design team in the consultancy firm. First, reducing the concentration while conducting the design work whether it’s in the concept stage or in the later final design stage affects the final work output quality. Second, it has a direct effect on accomplishing design work as per the time schedule for every task and causing delays in completing the project on time and possible fines and reduction in fees. Third, first and second reduces the confidence in the team member in completing his role, tasks, and duties within the group and creates tension and loss of trust. Fourth, not complying with the performance requirements of the firm internal system could cause the firm to fire the design team member for non-compliance with work procedures and performance qualities. Fifth, removing a design team member puts the firm in an unstable status due to the complexity of finding alternatives and the time-consuming of the management to find one. Figure 1 shows the shape of the staff member in this status.

Now I have illustrated the psychological well-being effect in the work environment in design management. Here I will illustrate what types of psychological criteria for psychological well-being.

Stress and Burnout are featured highly in research studies in design management due to rapidly changing conditions, and the demand for work in less time.

Burnout: is the mental exhaustion resulting from too much work. Working too hard over too long a period will result in individuals becoming tired and less able to function effectively.

Stress: when individuals are given a task to conduct and lie outside their area of expertise and are not given the appropriate time and authority over decision-making and are expected to deliver too much within the available time.

What needs to be considered by the design manager in building and writing the design management plan regarding the psychological well-being in the firm environment?

All team leaders are to discuss with team members the allocated tasks in detail before the project kickoff and to confirm all tasks of the design program will be taken care of since all team members are not at the same level, capacity, and expertise. And to define what needs to be done when a team member passes a stressful situation in terms of mitigating the stress effect by passing his work to another team member or allocating it to another team member of another project. Design manager to assist when required to allocate the proper team member within the design team for a project based on the analyzed skills, capabilities, and capacity of the team registry in the firm.

Using good practices in mitigating stress and burnout through the project timeline and its design stages and through open communications. The design manager is to conduct occasional follow-ups for every project and meetings with the team to check project progress or meet the team head on an occasional basis to confirm work is going as per the design management plan.

Gaps between projects could be used to solve burnout and stress to allow design team members to conduct continuous professional development programs such as upgrading skills using software like Revit or other design toolkits. Participating in project management programs or design management programs to gain higher-level professional certificates. In practice members of the design team are transferred to conduct different tasks of design like graphic work or presentation that has proved to increase team member well-being and reduce his/her stress.

Mistakes in design work or reduction in work quality firm procedures and actions are to be checked to confirm they are aligned with firm internal rules and systems. A detailed analysis is to be conducted by the design manager once done all internal rules and systems are to be revised to prevent future defects.

psychological well-being is a major element of success in the design management plan. The design management plan is to define the project characteristics in terms of type, complexity, workforce required, time, and occasional follow-up and meetings if required, with the design manager, in the project timeline. Building the project team upon the detailed analysis of the project characteristics and relaying on the register of team skills, capabilities, and capacity to conduct work. A reporting procedure of all technical problems within the project timeline, review, and work quality check-up based on a register of design checklist checkups. Communication procedure to be defined whether it is an internal email system, a procedure to transfer data, work, or documentation from one member of the design team to another in a smooth way through an internal electronic system or an external hard system like Flash or hard disks. Meetings schedules or templates prepared in previous projects for use in future projects within the design team or with the design manager and higher-level management of the firm. A careful meeting bulletin typical point to be built for use for the meetings with clients in the early stages and the consequent stages of the project design stages until the competition of the project and design handover to the construction phase. The design manager assists the team in revisiting and checking the company’s archive and directory of projects to use its design templets, report templets, checklist of review, drafting, and design components that fit the new project, drafting and design drawing preparation procedures templates for use within the new project at any stage of the project design. More detail will be illustrated about every activity in future articles.