Friday, March 3, 2017

Connection Park team enhances client experience through collaboration

Phillip Crissman, Senior Superintendent, Matt Connors, Project Manager, Wesley Grant, Preconstruction Manager, and Joe Bethel, Project Engineer, make up EMJ’s team on Dallas’ Connection Park Phase II project. Our team is building the two-phase, 301,000-square-foot office development in collaboration with Stream Realty Partners.

The team began Phase II by proactively bringing all project participants together for an Envelope Coordination Meeting. Based on the principles of trade-specific meetings, which were recently outlined on the blog, the meeting aimed to align participants and encourage collaboration in the earliest phase of the project.
The team understood how essential this meeting was— not only for the project’s success, but also for the client experience. To prepare, they detailed discussion points, goals for the meeting and ways in which they could create a synergistic atmosphere.
Using C2C’s four steps, the team began the meeting by asking all parties to define their roles, then listening and thinking to clarify how one’s work could affect another’s responsibilities.

“Phillip coordinated the meeting so that the questions and answers became a flowchart of information,” said Brian Tiehen, EMJ’s Quality Manager, who attended the meeting with the team. “He would ask the installer a question, and the installer’s answer would bring up questions from the panel sub, and so on.”

Asking questions opened the flow of communication—to discuss what went right on Phase I of the project and what could be improved. This then led to action-items for each individual and unified goals for the project team as a whole.
“Everyone understood that they were accountable for their piece of the project,” said Brian. The meeting proved to be a success, and Connection Park Phase II is already on a track to deliver unique value to the client for an exceptional construction experience.

“It takes everyone’s buy-in,” said Phillip. “A successful project is not just about each party understanding his own responsibilities, but also knowing what the guy coming behind him has to do— how that could affect his product. And I think this meeting helped achieve that.”