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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Blueprint for Success: Unveiling the Secrets of an Effective Design Decision-Making Process

Discover the key steps to making informed, timely decisions in construction projects, ensuring cost, schedule, and quality are managed effectively from start to finish.

Q3 2024
In the last five years, exciting technological breakthroughs have substantially accelerated growth and competition in a race to bring new products to market, demanding that design and construction teams deliver projects that are bigger, faster, and more expensive. The “new norm” demands that we start these projects with far less definition than we used to. We consistently see the need for building construction to outpace the development of the process or production technology.

These projects always seem to find their way to completion; however, that is not the same as them being completed successfully. Cost, schedule, and quality are all fundamental factors that define success—beyond just completing the scope of a job. The weight and value assigned to each of these should be unique to each project—and in many cases, each decision—but none of these can be completely ignored. The impact of change, or the impact of a delayed decision, grows with the progression of the design. Even small changes or seemingly inconsequential decisions made too late can have major impacts on a project.

How do we know which one is going to tip the scale and be the key factor for making the right decision? How do we know we are even using the right scale to begin with?

Let’s break this down by first identifying the problem.

The Problem:
Project teams must make hundreds of design decisions, large and small, which require bi-directional flow of information to reach a final answer.

The Solution:
The project team needs to ask the right question in the right manner to the right person at the right time, and they need to be answered with a timely and informed decision that doesn’t change.

It really is just that simple! Not so fast... we already knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Here are five steps I’ve seen set project teams up for success.

Align on Goals and Values
Make a distinct effort to define the project charter – and do that early. This is something that must involve all essential stakeholders: owners, contractors, and designers. The team needs to actively engage in the discussion to ensure full alignment. How else can a team agree that they are working together toward the same goal if they’ve never clarified what success looks like, much less never agreed on it?

Take the time to walk through the basics: mission, goals, values, outcomes, and expectations. Allow the entire team to fully understand and value the scope, schedule, budget, and quality.

From the outset, we knew that traditional facilities wouldn't fully meet Intuitive Machines' ambitions. Establish Key Decision Makers & Decision Process
As important as it is to understand what defines success on a project and what values are going to govern the decision-making process, it is equally important to define who will be making decisions, how options will be presented, how decisions will be made, and where answers will be recorded.

Remember, this is a process. When a decision is made, that turns into a physical “thing” at the end of the project. And that “thing” may very well be cast in concrete. These decisions are defining the scope of the project far better than any RFP or contract ever will.

Establish who will be the final decision maker. If a team needs several decision makers based on specialty, make sure their division of responsibility and limitation of authority is clear. Ultimately, there needs to be a single owner overseeing all the decisions, even if they have delegates. Clarify the chain of authority to make decisions, especially when there are several vocal stakeholders.

Beware of having your delegates too siloed. Design decisions almost always have multi-disciplinary impacts, so segmenting design disciplines can be detrimental if the decision-making process does not engage across departments. Intentional collaboration is paramount, especially when you’re trying to make decisions quickly. Set boundaries by getting the right stakeholders involved and exclude unnecessary participants who might derail the conversation by introducing unrelated agendas.

Establish a clearly defined decision process. This is a shared log that is maintained reflecting decisions as they are provided. If confirmation is required by the final decision maker, then they are posted as pending until that occurs. Establish rules to control revisions and allow people to recognize updates when they are made. Tailor the tool to your project to make sure this critical documentation and communication is not lost among the day-to-day noise.

Establishing the key decision makers must be done alongside other measures. Otherwise, the project will slow to an intolerable speed or the processes will be bypassed. Talk openly about critical bottlenecks to make sure that people are aware of the impact if clear direction is not reached in time. Make sure stakeholders understand why temporary holds may be needed in some instances.

Present Questions the Right Way
Design teams have the responsibility to ask questions the right way. Don’t assume that other teams have people with similar expertise qualified to answer questions through the lens of an engineer or architect. If we want good, decisive responses, it’s important to take the time to frame questions by educating the team on the advantages of the different options. Sometimes that means providing what we think the answer should be and why or offering alternatives. As much as the owners owe the response part, designers have to own the informing part.

Proactive communication became a keystone because we never knew what they might need next. Take the time to counsel your client before asking them to make the right decision. There are creative ways to do this. Use BIM models, A3’s, sketches or exhibits, alternative comparisons, and “if-then” statements to make the context of an issue come to life for your audience.

Prioritize Decisions
Requests have to be prioritized…period. There are easy items to prioritize over others, and those should be no-brainers - don’t talk about tile patterns in the project kick-off meeting. Prioritization is even fairly straightforward when design is following a traditional schematic design, detailed design, contract document (30/60/100) progression. But we want to go faster. The project needs parallel early release packages while we are developing our overall construction budget. We need to get documents into permitting yesterday morning so we can break ground yesterday afternoon.

Subscribe to the presumption that everything can be ranked by priority - no ties allowed. Do your best to identify the most pressing items and help drive the decision making for those. Items that impact multiple disciplines should be prioritized, since there is the largest potential for impact for those items.

This would also be where a well-developed project charter and design schedule come in handy. Design pull planning allows the project to identify key internal and external constraints and integrate that into the overall project schedule. This gives an excellent starting point to identify decisions and prioritizing them. Having key activities in a schedule helps demonstrate the impact of delayed decisions and helps the team prioritize what is most critical. Once items are prioritized, set dates for a decision with the schedule clearly demonstrating the need and impact.

Invent Alternatives to Avoid Becoming Stuck
It is very important to remember that there is almost never just one right answer. While there is likely a “very best” option, oftentimes “good” will do just fine. Teams can’t get hung up on trivial decisions that don’t move the needle for the project goals. Evaluate whether something is really important or whether it would just be preferable to have. Be flexible in your approach and be creative in finding adaptable solutions for today’s need to make sure you’re not stymied later. Challenge your teams to consider whether you can create a solution that will allow flexibility for future decisions.

Establishing the key decision makers must be done alongside other measures. Otherwise, the project will slow to an intolerable speed or the processes will be bypassed. For example, you can develop some pretty conservative loading assumptions that preempt the need for detailed equipment sizing and locations, detailed utility routings, etc. When you need to get foundations and steel out fast, this is a great offering to discuss. While there could be added cost with this route, if schedule is valued higher, it could provide a path to accelerate completion. Deciding not to lock in a detailed decision and to allow for future flexibility can be very effective when there seem to be no other viable path to meet a deadline.

At the end of the day, what makes or breaks a project team is their ability to make good decisions well. We have to empower our team’s creativity to navigate the complex decisions needed to successfully deliver a complex project. These guidelines outline tried and true practices to build the strong foundation you need for effective design decision-making.

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