DESIGN MANAGER ROLE AND DYSFUNCTIONAL PROCESSES

I was told by a high-level professional manager working world-wide that, generally speaking, UK management is considered one of the worst in the world.

I can just testify about the construction industry since I have around 20 years of experience in the field.

Let’s start by saying that here in UK the design process is split in many parts compared to the rest of Europe. Roles and skills elsewhere attributed to the architectural team are covered by a larger team in UK: project manager, design manager and coordinator, technical manager and coordinator, site manager and coordinator, consultants coordinator, architect, interior designer, quantity surveyor, building control officer, construction manager.

That approach could potentially add quality to the process improving efficiency and increase profitability. The problem is that it doesn't.

I had a conversation with an Associate Quantity Surveyor working for a Developer I work with. He told me that once upon a time when architects were bringing all those skills listed above but, since the Design and Build became popular among developers (shifting the axis of responsibilities from the design team to the developer/contractor), architects started loosing grip on the process and progressively forgetting those skills. The problem is that those skills were never properly transferred somewhere else.

Anything involved in the construction industry is in and of itself complex and working in large team rises up the degree of complexity which requires great skills of management and coordination.

The key factor in managing people, leading them and coordinating their job should be the knowledge and the experience gained in the field at every level. Nobody would fully entrust a football team manager without any experience as football player. How is possible to entrust a Design Manager totally lacking experience as part of a design team? How a Design Manager can possibly oversee other professionals’ activity without first-hand knowledge about every single aspect of the process? How a Design Manager can go trough a list of deliverables, time-line, programme not having a clue about time and skills required to do something?

Still, this is exactly what happens all the time.

The result is a dysfunctional process where everyone is actually working alone (although pretending to be part of a team) since everyone's primary interest is not a good job done but be covered in case of a bad final result.

In such a scenario, Design Managers and/or Project Managers are apparently just in charge of attending meetings, drafting minutes, (randomly) distributing tasks, putting pressure to the rest of the team when everything (without fail) will start going south. The main goal is giving the impression that they have everything under control. The reality is that they haven’t.

Something better could be achieved with the right people and the right skills.

HRs and recruiting agencies should be the first one aware that is not the right title in a CV that matters but the right skills and the right experience: this is what brings value and increase profitability.