Design Manager: Design Management Plan-skills matrix is the thirteenth 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 and is it a project or firm design management plan? The key functions of the design management plan in practice. Adding to that What needs to be managed in a firm in practice. This article is the eighth article on building and writing a design management plan.
Design manager’s intervention with recruiters
Design managers identify regularly job descriptions. The Design managers intervene with the firm recruiter’s daily work. The firm announces a job vacancy online based on the job description updates. Therefore, design managers inform the recruiter’s team what is required for a job vacancy. Recruiters focus on the design manager’s instructions on the strength areas needed in the candidate. It’s the design manager’s role to update the job descriptions in the design management plan. In the next paragraph, I will discuss and analyze the organizational chart of firm staff. Management, design, and other skills are the base of defining a firm design organization chart.
Design manager and organization chart
On the top of the organization chart sits the design manager. He manages the firm’s projects and design team employees. Project managers manage the project work and the team doing the work. Design is done by the lead architect, or the senior architect mainly concept design. Senior architects transfer concept design to architectural designs with the defined team. They coordinate the architecture design with other engineering disciplines. They review the work from time to time as per internal and industry standards.
Architects continue the senior level work to architectural working drawings. Architects transform the building parts into workable details. Finally, the architect technologist prepares with the assistance of architects the architectural working drawings as per standards.
The design manager defines management plan parts and general guidelines. Manages client meetings and internal meetings with higher and lower-level staff. Administers all related matters of employee’s work. That includes administration of work schedules, the scope of work, increments, performance reviews, team building, and problem-solving. Project managers build project timelines. Coordinate subconsultance procurement process. Builds work schedules and assignments for the architecture team. Attend meetings with management, architecture, and engineering teams.
Lead architects prepare project concept design, client design reports, and distribute work schedules to the senior architects. Review architecture team design work Coordinate engineering design drawings with the engineering team. Writes the project architectural specifications, coordinating the client project requirements, and assigns a team member to calculate the project architecture bill of quantities.
Solve resource problems required by the architecture team and resolve technical issues of architectural design. Holds meetings with the engineering team in the design phases and reflects any concerns with the architecture team and design. Lead architect writes staff performance reports identifying major strengths and weaknesses and opportunities for development. Attends kickoff meetings with clients to introduce the project team along with the project manager, and design manager.
Senior architect transforms the concept design into architectural design drawings considering standards, rules, and regulations. Reflects all the specifications on the architectural design drawings and distributes the work to the architects to finalize the working drawings. Coordinates review of the working drawings preparations by the architects with the project specifications. Attends meetings with the lead/project manager to ensure reaching project production milestones, and to report technical problems if available.
Architects transform the architectural design drawings into architectural working drawings with assistance of the senior architects. They report technical problems in this process to senior architects for solving. Review, check, and ensure all the architectural working drawings are coordinated with the engineering drawings. Coordinate with the architectural technicians to assist them in preparing the working drawings and producing high-quality drafting architectural working drawings.
Architectural technicians assist the architects in preparing architectural working drawings and ensure they comply with industry and company drafting quality and procedures.
Design manager and work categories
In the design management plan design manager identifies work categories related to the staff position. We have management presented by the design manager and the project managers of the architecture projects. Design, visualization, and presentation work presented by lead architects, senior architects, architects, and technicians. Specifications and Bill of quantity presented by engineers, and lead architects. Design drawings presented by the senior architects and architects. Architectural and engineering details presented by senior architects and architects. Design review presented by the lead architect, senior architect. Drafting and drafting review presented by the architects and technicians.
Design manager and skills matrix
In addition to the following skills, the academic qualifications, practice certifications, and work experience come on top when preparing the skills matrix.
Management-relevant skills include but are not limited to: design management, people management, project planning, analysis, evaluation and assessment, negotiation, coordination, scheduling, time management, budgeting, estimation, communication, decision-making, problem-solving, leadership, and contracts administration.
Designer’s relevant skills include: leadership, design, review, scheduling, visualization, writing, coordination, estimation, and communication.
Technician’s relevant skills include: drafting, scheduling, visualization, review, estimation, coordination, and communication.
So according to that, a manager is evaluated on his academic qualifications and higher degrees obtained and in which specialty. How many years of management does he have in practice and what type of projects and teams he managed? What are the skills he possesses from the above-mentioned list of skills?
Designers on the other hand are evaluated based on the qualifications and higher education level and specialty. How many years in conducting design or developing designs, and concepts, in practice? Management type whether it’s projects or people and what type of these. Adding to that the above-mentioned skills.
Technician staff as well are evaluated on their academic credentials in technician work. Type of projects they worked on and the specialty like infrastructure, structure, architecture, and other related to firms work. How many years of experience in every type they have spent, and did they have a management role or not? Adding to that the skills mentioned above.
In the following graph, which is used to match staff skills, the firm’s design staff are categorized and grouped based on the three divisions. The above right side of the graph, written in blue, is the skills related to managers and lead architects. On the below part are the skills related to senior architects and architects. The above-left side shows the skills related to technicians. The graph has three arms that connect in the middle and every end is the mark of the gauge for low skill. Every arm is related to the three major categories management, design, and technician work. See Figure 1, the mapping staff skills and experience graph.
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