Meet the gang

Who is your client? Traditionally, this has always been a chap with a lot of money who would like a building. He gives you some sort of briefing document and pays your fees. He would like the building to be this big, next to one of his other buildings, and finished by September. If you had any questions he would supply the answers.

However, things are rarely that simple. You may find your client suddenly becomes unpredictable. Just when you think you understand exactly what they want, they change their mind. Suddenly they want the building by July, the staff canteen is no longer required, and the site is now down the road. Getting the project right is a bit like trying to hit a moving target. So are you working for a deranged individual unable to make up their mind, or is there another explanation?

The explanation is probably that, even though you had always thought you were working for one client, you are actually building for an organisation made up of individuals with differing wants and needs. You are, in fact, working for that fearsome beast: the multiheaded client. The decision-making process becomes convoluted and complex. You feed a question in at one end, the organisational machinery grinds away and the answer you eventually receive is a complete surprise.

There is a school of thinking that states that organisations do not have goals, it is the individuals within the organisation that use the organisation to further their own differing personal goals. By extension, individuals use the projects the organisation undertakes to achieve their own ends. Think about it. Do you go to work to help your company achieve every bullet point of its mission statement? Or do you get the 7am train every morning to earn money, gain experience, improve your CV, work on interesting projects, grow your department, build your empire, gain promotion and be part of the team? The same applies to the people in your client organisation.

Little wonder that when you are building to meet the diverse goals of your multiheaded client, it is difficult to find the right path that satisfies the goals of most of those individuals and prevents those who do not get exactly what they want from obstructing the project.

Think about it. Do you go to work to help your company achieve every bullet point of its mission statement?

It is probably useful to consider the individuals who seek to use the project to further their own goals as internal "stakeholders" with a stake in the outcome of the project. They could be anyone within the organisation. Most commonly, they are the eventual users of the project, but they could also be the heads of marketing, IT or human resources, other employees, trade unions and so on. All have a stake in the project and all can affect it, directly or by influence.

Creating a building for a multiheaded client is pretty difficult. You have to ensure that the project allows the client organisation to meet the many differing and individual goals of its internal stakeholders. How do you achieve this?

I believe the most important thing is to get the wider stakeholder group involved as early as possible. Involve them in the detail of the briefing process, present the initial designs to them, and take their comments seriously. Everyone must get a chance to learn about the project, have their say, hear about what others think, learn about the complexities and limitations of the project and the opportunities it presents. Not everyone will get exactly what he or she wants, but they are more likely to accept what they do get if they know why a particular decision was made and if they feel they played a part in making that decision. In addition there is the opportunity to streamline the project by sharing facilities rather than by satisfying individual wish lists. These processes allow you to tap into the knowledge, skills and creativity of a wider range of individuals. The process obviously needs some form of control, but communication should occur as freely as possible, and decisions made should be communicated to the wider group as efficiently as possible.