Design Managers Top Tips - Managing a Busy Workload
7 Nov 2018
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Design Managers Top Tips - Managing a Busy Workload
In this blog we spoke to an experienced Construction Design Manager to get their top tips on managing a busy Design Managers workload:
Top Tips:
1) Always work closely with your Construction team consultants, as well as your Project Manager and in particular the Planner as these are the key people to work with to ensure you have an agreed Construction and Procurement programme as this will allow a Design Manager to develop the design release programmes so the consultants are aware of the key milestone dates that they must work from to ensure that each detailed package of drawings and schedules etc can be reviewed on time and allowing approval from client and Design Manager to occur before achieving Construction status.
2) My own favourite tip is to ALWAYS produce daily " Things to do lists" as this allows you to work effectively and helps you to focus on the priorities for that Week.
3) Try and plan your time well, and don't become too concerned or reactive in dealing with constant e-mails as this will be so time consuming and will distract a Design Manager from doing other key tasks.
Try and get into good time-management habits and set aside time maybe first and last hour of the day to review and respond.
4) Need to be firm but polite/respectful when dealing with either team members, clients or consultants when many demands for your time become intolerable.
Best way from my experience is to focus on what is the priority each day, and not let everyone demand your time as if you are too obliging as a Design Manager then you will become overloaded with information flow and traditionally a Design Manager is meant to know virtually everything about all Design issues/drawing queries and that just isn't possible.
Delegate tasks to other Design team colleagues if possible, and ensure the workload is fairly spread out to avoid being overloaded...It happens !!
5) To survive on site as a Design Manager you certainly need to have multiple personal and technical skills, as the demands on site are far different from being office based as you'll get sucked in by construction team to be the voice and reason for everything remotely technical.
As a DM you have to be able to deal with a myriad of people and variety of issues. Allow yourself time to continually learn and the best way is to be site based where you are in the thick of the live project.
6) Most major contractors are now using their own preferred Web portals / EDMS for all contract documentation, so you'll need to have reasonable experience to be able to track information and progress of all Design documents. Seek training if you don't have adequate experience as the industry is changing fast and portals are now the main tool for information flow.
7) From my experience another little survival tip for Design Manager's is to always make notes whether it’s in Design/client meetings or general day to day progress.
Notes always allow you to review the key points that need to be actioned and closed out and a very good aide-memoir for recalling things that may become contentious contractually. Having your trusty note-pad along with doing your “Things to do today lists” are absolutely invaluable to a Design Manager.
Talk Recruitment Ltd are specialist recruiters of Design Managers, for more advice on this topic call us on 0121 748 1433, or alternatively browse our Design Manager Vacancies and Register with us for upcoming Design Coordinator / Design Manager opportunities