Project Management and Field Crew Meetings That Work!

by Jonathan McGaha | 1 February 2015 12:00 am

Why do most people feel meetings are a waste of time? Because they often are! Too often managers call too many meetings to report on what’s happening and don’t involve the attendees, ask for input, have meaningful discussions or adjourn with an action plan. In some meetings, the leader rambles along and doesn’t keep the group focused on tasks or priorities at hand. In other meetings, there’s no agenda or structure and they become free-for-alls without direction or conclusion.

 

Meetings Maximize Bottom-Line Results!

Can you imagine a football game without a scoreboard and player statistics to see who is winning and does the best out on the fi eld? Without scorecards and weekly feedback, results don’t matter much to supervisors. Therefore the meeting leaders must create a scorecard tracking system to record each attendee’s performance on every job for all to see every week. This will improve job performance and allow your foremen and supervisors to know, track and hit their goals rather than working blindly without anything to aim at.

When you hold regular field supervisor meetings, each foreman and supervisor is challenged to achieve specifi c results, track progress, report on last week’s progress, and discuss plans for the upcoming week. They report on their job schedule, crew-hours, equipment hours, safety, quality and performance. Every attendee is then committed to hit weekly goals. This teamwork approach creates a competition amongst peers to be the best and beat their project budget and targets.

Consider using these meetings to get everyone on the same page and achieve your company goals. Be careful. Don’t start tomorrow by implementing all of them unless you are really committed to holding them on a regular basis. There is nothing worse than starting something and then deciding it wasn’t really that important after all.

 

Field Crew Meetings

Daily Crew Huddle-Up Meeting

Can you imagine a football team winning games without calling plays before every down? Before every play in football, the team huddles up to discuss what they’re going to do next, makes sure everyone clearly knows their role and what they’re expected to do. Gather your fi eld crew in a daily huddle if you want your teams to be winners.

This activity will improve your bottom line as daily activities help members become better coordinated and focused on what end results are expected by team captains or foremen. This is a short 10-minute meeting where everyone talks about the upcoming daily targets, goals, activities, progress, production priorities, milestones, needs, confl icts, confusions, schedule coordination, material requirements, equipment needed, availability of tools and deadlines.

Monday Morning Quarterback Crew Meeting

Again, just like on every winning football team, every week the coaches review their team’s accomplishments, progress, needs, challenges, areas for improvement, and then decide what they need to do the next week to achieve their winning goals. Then on Monday morning, they meet with their entire team, review the game plan for the next week, and discuss what needs to be done to make it happen. Every field crew, management team, division or department needs a similar program to get everyone focused on their game plan for the upcoming week.

Meet Monday mornings in a convenient place where every crewmember can get involved and contribute. Use visual charts to explain the goals and plays. Discuss key success factors such as production targets, crew goals, customer satisfaction, quality requirements, schedule milestones, safety issues and project requirements. Review the weekly game plan and team tactics for the upcoming week including last week’s achievements and challenges. Set the current week’s goals, targets and production plan. Have each team member discuss their role, provide training on upcoming activities and discuss safety concerns.

All Superintendent and Foreman Weekly Meeting

Every week you must get together with all of your field foremen and superintendents to review their individual project progress, goals, results, schedule, activities, manpower, workload, equipment requirements, material needs, subcontractor performance, safety success and customer issues. Each foreman or supervisor reports individually on their project and commits to hitting weekly goals. The group will work together to help each other with ideas and suggestions to meet or beat schedules, budgets, safety and productivity goals.

 

Project Management Meetings

Project Start-Up Meeting

Before every football game, coaches spend hours mapping out their game plan to win. They have discussed every possibility for success and failure. Then they decide the best way to execute their plan.

To build successful projects, the same amount of advanced planning is required by the project management team. The culmination of this pre-planning is the presentation of the game plan to the subcontractors and suppliers. This meeting will force your project manager, superintendent and foreman to get together in advance and create a project plan to present to the team. Meet at the job site to discuss your project plan for success.

Make this a mandatory meeting held on the job site before every project starts. Make sure all the subcontractors and major suppliers attend. The project manager and field superintendent should lead the meeting, which reviews project goals and objectives; issues all plans, specifi cations and subcontracts; reviews the project schedule and discuss anticipated problems, coordination issues and long lead items; identifies quality, customer satisfaction and safety requirements; reviews job rules, permits, inspections and contract procedures.

Weekly Project Field Coordination Meeting

This one meeting can improve your overall construction project schedule and completion record by 25 percent or more. By getting every subcontractor and major supplier to attend weekly fi eld coordination meetings held at the job site four weeks before they are required to start their work, they become aware of the urgency of the situation. You have heard the statement ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ This is reality. Subcontractors who get phone calls from project managers or superintendents to discuss upcoming crew needs only hear the pleas. But, once they see the project moving forward, they become aware of the schedule and then make it their priority as well. This is a mandatory meeting, no exceptions.

The agenda should review the schedule, progress, milestones and priorities; manpower and crew requirements; field coordination issues, problems and needs; approvals required, shop drawings and finishes; permits and inspections required; job-site management and cleanup; safety and quality; and customer relationships.

 

Make Meetings Work For You!

Each of these meetings work, but they may not all be right for your company. Run your company like a winning football team. Hold regular meetings. Start with one or two of these meetings to see how effective they are. Then try another one. But, remember when you never hold meetings you are carrying the entire company on your shoulders and not getting the full support of your team.

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George Hedley is a licensed professional business coach, popular professional speaker and author of “Get Your Business to Work!” available at his online bookstore. To learn more, visit www.hardhatpresentations.com[1] or email gh@hardhatpresentations.com[2].

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