文/Monica Williams 译/赵克琛

为了迅速有效地开展工作，建筑项目干系人正在寻找团队合作的创新方法。

在大规模建筑项目里，承包商、分包商、顾问和业主也许是第一次和最后一次合作。在很多情况下，团队成员对将要与他们合作的人有很少决定权，实际上，他们有时甚至被要求与竞争对手组成临时的团队。面临着快速跟进的最后期限、复杂的工程和公众压力，你会陷入一种团队很难平和相处的境地。

了解到项目挑战后，项目业主试图寻找合作的新方式。“现在许多业主的公司在经验和人力上已经萎缩到无法有效管理建筑项目的程度，所以他们必须外包项目。”莱斯·普吕多姆说。他是PMI职业道德审查委员会主席和位于美国德克萨斯州奥斯汀市的美国建筑工业院的研究主任。

普吕多姆认为，随着外包变成一种必要的手段，软件技术可以用来促进沟通并且增强团队责任感，但项目经理必须掌握活跃气氛的技巧。毕竟，工具只有被正确使用的时候才会起作用。

夯实基础

“在任何一个主要的合同项目里，你会面临50到400个有着各自实施计划的公司。而问题在于，你如何将它们整合到一份实施计划里。”格雷琴·麦考布说。她是美国科罗拉多州丹佛市FMI公司业主服务部门的常务董事。

造价3.84亿美元的Invesco Field的完工给出了关于最高层团队合作的一个案例，建造Invesco Field是用来替代丹佛野马队前主场Mile High体育场。1998年项目启动时，业主要求在2001－2002赛季前完工。由丹佛市的六个县组成的大都会足球场区选择了德克萨斯州达拉斯市的特纳公司来领导体育场的建设，并选择了密苏里州堪萨斯城HNTB公司建筑师工程师规划师部门来设计体育场。工程的进度安排迫使此项目使用一种在体育场建设项目中从未使用过的“设计－建造”方案。

“之前，我们并不知道我们要与HNTB公司合资，但一旦业主意识到要按时完工就必须使用“设计－建造”方案，我们一致认为：我们别无选择。”特纳公司建筑项目经理查理·桑顿说。

很明显，特纳公司与HNTB公司会按80：20的比例分担项目风险。“在这样的项目里，设计单位承担风险这种做法是很少见的，但是我们都认为这是团队建设的良机，并且向市场展示“设计－建造”方案是开展此类项目的积极手段。

合资公司的下一层面是主要的建筑公司和设计公司，他们缺乏经验和彼此的了解。在这一层面团队成员会对每个项目所需的时间和费用达成一致，但他们不会承担任何风险。在设计和施工的任何阶段，项目中会有75到80个承包商和最多1200到1300名劳动力。

为了保持沟通顺畅并统一目标，项目团队采用了一种多层次的会议流程（参见附文《接力团队》）。对于大多数项目成员来说，这是一种他们从未经历过的合作层次。

“关于如何实现这套复杂的流程，特别是当分包商和初级员工参与了每两星期一次的业主/合资公司会议时，合资公司愿意承担风险。但这对他们真的很管用。”比尔·斯普拉金斯说。他是FMI公司的一名总监，负责领导项目协作流程的开发工作。

后来，体育场在野马队新赛季开幕前按时投入使用，现在其他体育场建设项目正在考虑把“设计－建造”方案作为一种快速跟进项目的方法。“这种合作的基础是信任和主要项目干系人创建的那种文化，如果业主或主要承包商的管理者不能合作，那其他团队成员也不能。”麦考布说。

国际项目的实践

上述原则同样适用于国际项目，艾哈迈德·阿非非如此认为。他是阿塞拜疆巴库市麦克德莫特里海承包公司的升级项目经理。阿非非领导者一个团队重建里海岸边的一个被废弃13年之久的预制件工场。这件工场原来用作建造海上平台的上层建筑。

重建工场的工作已经是一个巨大的挑战了，而且阿非非的团队包括了苏格兰人、罗马尼亚人、印度人、巴基斯坦人、埃及人、菲律宾人、英国人和阿塞拜疆人，而且项目领导要协调来自土耳其、英国、芬兰、新加坡、中国、马来西亚、台湾和阿塞拜疆的分包商、工程师和供应商们。此项目中，语言和文化的冲击是可想而知的。

此项目得以成功的做法是颁布合作的标准并就其在项目团队上下进行充分沟通。阿非非解释道。“借用麦克德莫特的团队合作原则，并将其铭刻在团队成员心目中的做法为分包商提供了一个良好的案例，并将他们融入进来。”他说。此原则根植于员工人身安全、员工发展、公平对待和以身作则，甚至当符号语言成为唯一的沟通手段时，此原则仍有效地帮助团队成员团结一致。

数年前建立起来处理此类复杂项目的核心标准被写入麦克德莫特章程，并被张贴在工地上。阿非非说：“任何合作努力的第一步是管理层接受。开始时，公司管理层必须认同它，然后承诺实施它。”

新技术登场

由于建筑行业仍旧被家族经营和小公司支配，所以其他行业的项目经理经常使用的协作软件在建筑行业里很少被采用。托马斯·赫南德兹说，他是美国纽约州纽约市的建筑/工程/建设行业的技术顾问。“早在网上竞标得到大力推广时，我们就看到了这种势态的迹象。建筑行业却没有准备采用它。许多合同的签订还是基于长期的合作关系和面对面的谈判。

面临着复杂的建筑流程，对于寻找能够将小型商业环境中的重要流程隔离和自动化的易用软件的工作，项目经理们可能会感到手足无措。然而，软件开发人员开始了解到这个行业的需求，他们逐渐引起项目业主特别是那些别无选择的业主的注意。这是哈德逊河公园项目的案例，这个项目耗资3.83亿美元，需要重建毗邻纽约市曼哈顿西区的13个公共码头和550英亩的公园。纽约州和纽约市于1998年创建了哈德逊河公园托管会作为此项目的业主。

“现在存在一种误解，即人们认为纳税人的钱会被花费在修建一个过于庞大的工程。实际上，我们的小工程中的每个人都有一大堆的职责。而这套软件的目的是帮助我们管理部分的职责。”托管会负责公司事务及沟通的副总裁亚历克斯·达德利如是说。

托管会选择了一款项目管理软件来帮助他们促进项目合作、提供对信息征求书（RFI）的访问，管理信函、申请、会议纪要、变更请求和报告等。此项目涉及了超过50个承包商和150名建筑师和工程师。

托管会的首席信息官麦克尔·布林称，许多团队成员起初对使用该软件表示怀疑。“但他们没有选择，这使得我们的工具最有效的发挥作用。”他补充道。

每位成员参加了为期两天的培训，补偿项目时间的损失只花费了很少的代价。布林说。“举例来说，现在我们已提交超过200份RFI，每份有最长14天的周期。如果给每份RFI的周期加14天，总的时间会变得很可观。”通过这套软件，每份RFI被分发给了正确的人员，这促使他们对要完成的职责负责。

当承包商提交一份RFI之后，建筑经理会阅读以确定其有效性及紧急程度，然后发给建筑师。此时，建筑师必须要回复承包商，这都需借助于软件的监控功能。

基于Web的软件会跟踪何人在何时提交了RFI，何人打开并阅读过，还有履行情况。“软件为我们节省了用来跟踪被遗忘履行的RFI的额外资源。”布林说。此软件还有报告功能，例如确定每位建筑师的汇报时间。

然而，软件却不能取代人与人的沟通。项目组仍然要每周开会讨论项目进展和未解决的事务。布林表示：“但是即使现在的那些会议变得更加不正式，我们还是可以清楚地获得进度和事务信息。”

接力团队

Mile High的Invesco Field项目团队使用了如下的多层次会议流程：

1.管理层

合资公司的关键成员与业主参与了微型合伙会议（mini-partnering）来讨论关键的事务，如“设计－建造”流程、角色与职责、干系人风险和业主期望等。

2.现场层

分为四个分类领域的经理们会见合资公司的管理层来讨论会议运作方式及管理层期望。现场层的经理们每六个星期向合资公司和业主汇报一次项目进展。每次会议提出分包商需要合资公司/业主提供的帮助以确保项目成功。

3.责任层

每个分类小组的经理在会议上担负领导职责。他们要确保事务最终被解决并且跟踪学习到的经验教训。


作者简介：Monica Williams是美国德克萨斯州奥斯汀市的自由撰稿人，Civil Engineering前编辑，她已报导建筑行业七年。

原文:

　　　　　　　　　　　　　Clever Collaboration

By Monica Williams

To work both smart and fast, construction project stakeholders are finding innovative ways to come together as a team.

On large-scale construction projects, contractors, subcontractors, consultants and owners may be joining forces for the first and last time. In many cases, team members have had little say in whom they will be working with and, in fact, may even be required to form a temporary alliance with a competitor. Throw in a fast-track deadline, complicated engineering and public pressure, and you create a situation in which few teams can survive peacefully.

Project owners who understand project challenges are seeking different ways to collaborate. “Some owner companies today have downsized to the point where they may not have the level of expertise or manpower to effectively manage construction projects,” says Les Prudhomme, chair of the Project Management Institute’s Ethics Review Committee and director of research for the Construction Industry Institute, Austin, Texas, USA. “So they out source it.”

As outsourcing becomes a necessity, software technologies can ease communication and increase accountability among teams, but project managers must possess the skills to keep things humming, he says. After all, tools only work when in the right hands.

Building on a Solid Foundation

“On any major contract project, you could have anywhere from 50 to 400 different companies, each with their own game plan,” says Gretchen McComb, managing director of the Owner Services Group, FMI Corp., Denver, Colo., USA. “The question is, how do you bring them together with one game plan?”

Completing the $384 million Invesco Field at Mile High, which replaces Mile High Stadium, the previous home of the Denver Broncos football team, was a lesson in teamwork at the highest level. When the project was initiated in 1998, the owners requested completion for the 2001-2002 season. The Metropolitan Football Stadium District, which consists of six Denver counties, chose Turner Corp., Dallas, Texas, USA, to head construction of the stadium and HNTB Architects Engineers Planner of Kansas City, Mo., USA, to design it. The schedule forced the project on a design-build path, something that no previous sports stadium project had ever tried.

“Coming into it, we didn’t know we were about to enter into a joint venture with HNTB,” says Charlie Thornton, Turner’s project manager for construction. “But once the owner recognized that, to complete the stadium on time, we would have to use design-build, we all realized there would be no other way to do it.”

It also became obvious that Turner and HNTB would have to divide risk on the project 80/20. “It’s pretty [unusual] for a designer to hold any risk on a project like this, but I think we both saw it as a great opportunity to build a team and show the marketplace that design-build is a positive way to move these projects forward,” says Thornton.

The next tier below the joint venture consisted of major construction and design firms, each with limited experience and knowledge about each other. At this level, agreements were made about the number of hours and fees per project, but none of these team members held any risk. At any time during construction and design, there were 75 to 80 contractors on the project and a maximum labor force of 1,200 to 1,300.

To maintain communication and align goals, the teams embarked on a multilayer meeting process. For most project team members, this was a level of involved collaboration they’d never experienced.

“The joint venture was willing to take some risks with how this comprehensive process would be implemented, particularly in terms of how subcontractors and junior staff were involved with the biweekly owner/joint venture meetings,” says Bill Spragins, a director with FMI Corp. who led the development of the collaboration process for the project. “But it really worked for them.”

In the end, the stadium opened in time for the Broncos’ season opener, and now other stadium projects are considering design-build as a way to fast-track projects. “The foundation to this kind of collaboration is trust and the culture the major stakeholders create on a project,” McComb says. “If the owners or major contractors’ executives aren’t capable of collaborating, then no other team member will be either.”

Global Proportions

The same principal applies on global projects, according to Ahmed Afify, project manager of upgrades for McDermott Caspian Contractors Inc., Baku, Azerbaijan. Afify leads a team to restore a fabrication yard on the shore of the Caspian Sea after 13 years of neglect. The yard was to be used to build the topsides of offshore platform.

While refurbishing the yard was enough of a challenge, Afify’s team consisted of Scottish, Romanian, Indian, Pakistani, Egyptian, Pilipino, British and Azeri leaders coordinating the work among Turkish, British, Finnish, Singaporean, Chinese, Malaysian, Taiwanese and Azeri subcontractors, engineers and vendors. The clash of languages and cultures on such projects can be overwhelming.

What made the project work, says Afify, was establishing and communicating collaboration standards up and down the project team. “Putting to work McDermott’s teamwork principles and establishing them in the hearts of the team members provided a good example to the subcontractors and got them to join in,” he says. The principles – grounded in employee safety, employee development, fair treatment and leading by example – helped the team members bond “even when sign language was the only means of communication.”

The core standards are built into the McDermott “charter,” established years ago to deal with such complicated projects, and then posted throughout the worksite. “The first step on any collaboration effort,” says Afify, “is management buy-in. It has to start with company management coming on board and committing to turn it to reality.”

Technology Marches On

Because the construction industry still is dominated by family-run and small businesses, it has been slow to adopt the collaborative software project manager use in other industries, says Thomas Hernandez, a technology consultant for the architecture/engineering/construction industry in New York, N.Y., USA. “We saw evidence of this a few years ago when there was a big push for online bidding,” he says. “The industry wasn’t ready for it. Many contracts were awarded through long-term working relationships and over a handshake.”

Faced with complex construction processes, project managers may be at a loss to find easy-to-use software that isolates and automates the processes important in a small-business environment. But as software developers come to understand the needs of the industry, they have begun to get the attention of project owners across the country, especially when those owners have little other choice. This is the case with the Hudson River Park Project, a $383 million effort to rebuild 13 public piers and 550 acres of park along Manhattan’s West Side in New York, N.Y., USA. In 1998, the city and state of New York created the Hudson River Park Trust solely to serve as owners of the project.

“One of the concerns was that there would be a misconception that the peoples money was going to creating a overly large staff,” says Alex Dudley, vice president of corporate affairs and communications for the Trust. “Each person on our small staff has to have a large number of responsibilities. And what this software does is help us manage some of those responsibilities.”

The Trust chose a project management software that would help them collaborate on a project this size, offering access to requests for information (RFIs), transmittals, submittals, meeting minutes, change orders and reports. The project involves more than 50 contractors and about 150 individual architects and engineers.

Michael Breen, chief information officer for the Trust, says many team members initially were hesitant about using the software. “But they didn’t have a choice,” he says. “I think that’s what made this tool most effective for us.”

Each team member underwent two days of training – a small price to pay for the project’s overall time savings, says Breen. “Today, for instance, we have well over 200 RFIs in submittal,” he says, “each with a 14-day maximum turn-around time. If you start adding 14 days to each of those, the time really adds up.” Using the software helps each of those RFIs to get through to the right people, and it holds them accountable for fulfilling their responsibility.

Once a contractor submits an RFI, the construction manager reads it to determine its validity and urgency and passes it to the architect of record. At that point, the architect is bound to respond to the contractor, thanks to the software’s monitoring capabilities.

The Web-based software tracks when and who submitted the RFI, who has opened it and read it, and its progress to fulfillment. “This saves us, as the owner, from putting additional resources into tracking those RFIs that have fallen aside,” says Breen. The software also features reporting functionalities that can determine, for instance, the average report time fro each architect of record.

No software can take the place of human contact. The project team still holds weekly meetings to discuss status and pending issues. “But not, even those meetings are more informed,” says Breen. “We have clear information about the issues and schedule.”

Relay Team

Teams from the Invesco Field at Mile High project used a multi-layer meeting process:

1.Executive Level

Key members from the joint venture joined in mini-partnering sessions with the owners to discuss critical issues such as the design-build process, roles and responsibilities and the risks of the stakeholders as well as owner expectations.

2.Field Level

Managers divided among four disciplinary areas met with executives from the joint venture to discuss how meetings would run and what was expected. Field-level managers reported their progress to the joint venture and owners once every six weeks. Each session stressed what that subcontractor needed from the joint venture and/or the owners to ensure success.

3.Accountability Level

Managers from each discipline group were assigned to serve as captains at meetings. They ensured that issues were eventually solved and tracked lessons learned.

Monica Williams is an Austin, Texas, USA-based freelance writer and former Civil Engineering editor who has covered the construction industry for seven years.

【 发表评论 0条 】