Strategies to Streamline CA Meetings

Construction administration (CA) is the final stage of a project before occupants use the space. It’s an exciting and chaotic time. Contractors are assembling parts and building materials are strewn across the site. The design vision depicted in the drawing set comes to life.

I still remember my first CA project. It taught me the importance of accurate drawings. I was working on a small interior renovation project, where I authored most of the drawings. I depicted an existing masonry wall with windows in the demolition plan. Even though I showed the windows in the demo plan, I didn’t add an annotation to remove them because the goal was to keep them as is. During our site walk, the site supervisor asked for clarification and requested a detail drawing showing the windows preserved for the final result.

The lesson learned for me is that site walks are an opportunity to confirm assumptions shown in the drawings.

During the design phase, architects, engineers, and contractors spend a lot of time in meetings. CA is no different. You'll typically encounter one of two types of CA meetings:?

1. site visit meetings

2. progress meetings with the client, project team, and general contractor.?

Depending on the project structure, construction project manager, owner’s representative, or sometimes the architect will host CA meetings.

A few years ago, I participated in a large office building renovation project where we had a series of CA meetings. We were at a critical point in the project - several structural issues discovered onsite led to a series of change orders and a frustrated client. The construction project manager’s ability to mediate between the parties helped transform a potentially contentious meeting into a productive session. Construction proceeded without further delay.

Why are CA meetings important? During CA, the site is an active construction zone. Things move fast to meet the client’s construction deadline. The number of CA meetings depends on the project type, complexity, and OAC (owner, architect, contractor) team.

CA meetings are pivotal moments where stakeholders

• Align on goals
• Mitigate risk
• Create rapport and build relationships
• Make decisions to keep the project moving

As architects and engineers, we have other projects to work on. It’s improbable for us to sit in meetings all day.

So how can you best work with the owner and contractor to accomplish the most during CA meetings?

1. Avoid meetings that could’ve been an email.

I cannot stress this enough. Don’t wait until the next meeting to bring up an important topic. You don’t want to be the blocker in the builder’s process. Often an email will suffice to create alignment or stave off a critical issue.?

Let’s say you recently learned that the equipment you specified is out of stock. Rather than wait to discuss this at the next meeting, inform the owner and builder as soon as you find out. Equipment tends to have long lead times. Remember to document this in whatever tool you are using as your CA source of truth.?

You don’t want to be the cause of construction delays for the owner.

2. Prepare for meetings beforehand.?

Don’t show up to a CA meeting unprepared. Whether you are the lead project manager or a primary stakeholder, gather necessary data points and documents prior to the meeting.?

Some tips include:

• Send or contribute to the meeting agenda ahead of time. Your colleagues will appreciate the heads up and the chance to formulate their thoughts before the meeting.
• Gathering data, like site photos, drawing sets, RFIs, submittals, etc. in one place so that documents are easy to navigate during the meeting.

3. Use technology to take shared and actionable meeting notes.

If attendees take notes by hand or in their sketchbooks, it'll take 30 minutes to translate them to an email to the project manager. Then, the project manager condenses the individual notes before issuing a cohesive summary to the larger CA team.

• If the project manager spends 30 minutes over the course of 8 to 10 meetings doing this work, that is 5 hours of time that could go towards productive work. Manually translating data and summarizing it after the fact is tedious and time consuming.

Real time software allows attendees to see notes taken during the meeting.

Additionally, I suggest teams assign action items during the meeting so that next steps are clear for parties involved. Spending 5 to 10 minutes at the conclusion of the meeting to agree on follow-up actions will help projects move forward smoothly.

4. Use drawings and sketches to visualize the discussion.

Architects and engineers spent countless hours creating the drawing set. The drawing set continues to be a living and breathing document during construction.

Rolling out a large printed set or screensharing a digital version of the drawings is a great way to call out and annotate issues and resolutions.

If you want to take it one step further, use a digital annotation tool to mark-up drawings in real time during the meeting.

5. Define a repeatable meeting protocol.

It’s rare that there is only one construction administration meeting for any project. Given this, it’s best to define meeting protocols early in the project’s life to set the stage for how CA meetings should run.

• Set meeting dates based on construction milestones.
• Start each meeting by following up on action items from the previous meeting.
• Use a live-collaborative note taking software to save time.
• Issue meeting minutes in a timely manner.
• Provide a protocol for bringing up questions, comments, and concerns outside of meetings.

Meetings are a time suck. My main point is this: conducting effective and product meetings should not be a burden. See this as an opportunity to create alignment and a contributing factor to a successful building project.