Human Resources: Transactional or Strategic?

Wages, payroll taxes, 401k, Section 125, 529 Plans, health insurance and other administrative roles need to be reliable and secured transactions, which have always been the core responsibility of the "Personnel Department." However, in the 21st century, Human Resources (HR) has also acquired a strategic role.

HR is no longer simply a service provider but a strategic partner with Principals and line managers. Performing HR activities in a strategic manner may involve helping the organization prepare for change, forecasting human capital needs that will be required to achieve strategic goals, leading talent management, restructuring the organization, and developing performance management systems that support strategic objectives.

If you are an owner of a firm and want a strong HR Professional to be your ally or, if you are an HR Professional who wants to have a career path that leads to the Strategic Board Room, here is a list of essential HR experience and personality traits:

• Strategic planning process

• Business management functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling, then using those functions in a strategic way

• Managing change in a diplomatic way

• Risk management, including thorough knowledge of labor laws

• Employee relations and career path development

• Understanding of compensation and benefits coordination

• Understanding of budgeting, accounting, and financial concepts

• Ability to influence and motivate people

• Ability to change gears fast and often

• Credentialed by the Human Resources Certification Institute as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR)

Keeping your workforce knowledgeable, skilled, productive and engaged, saves companies a great deal of money. With the cost of turnover estimated at 1.0 to 1.5 times that position's annual salary, it pays to invest in a strategically focused Human Resources Director.

7 Quality Control Tips

1. Encourage those actually doing the work, not just principals, to stamp or seal documents. Responsibility and initial quality rise with the signing of plans.

2. Adopt a formal checking system, instead of relying on the experience of individuals.

3. Build into a project's schedule and budget the time and costs of review by individuals not involved with the initial design.

4. Have a final design review after all documents are prepared. Late changes can have a major impact upon quality.

5. Get people to job sites as a continual training process. This is especially important for designers and drafters working on details, and will improve the quality of their work.

6. Make sure cost estimates are accurate. Develop inhouse expertise, use an outside expert cost estimator when necessary, and continually update and check the cost of items with suppliers and contractors.

7. Assign only one project manager to see a project through from beginning to end.

PSMJ Tips: How to Groom Leaders

• Make it clear that everyone in the firm is expected to develop his or her talents. 

• Write a development plan for any individual you've chosen as a potential successor. 

• Review individuals each year to check on their progress and determine current development needs. 

• Make sure employees understand the criteria for leadership and ownership. 

• Make sure prospective leaders understand the distinction between ownership (investment) and employment (doing a good job for pay). 

• Train prospective leaders and owners in the business.

Discovering and nurturing the future leaders of your firm is imperative, especially when considering Ownership and Leadership Transition. Even if you aren't ready to start the process today, you should start planning for the inevitable now. Successful transitions typically take 10 years to accomplish… most owners wait too late to start the process and harm the realization of firm value.

PSMJ has been addressing the issue of design firm ownership transition for 34 years and is holding two Ownership and Leadership Transition Roundtables for the leaders of today's A/E/C practices just like yours – February 11-14, 2013 in Beaver Creek, CO and May 7-9, 2013 in Chicago, IL. Together we'll walk through a structured, logical approach to developing practical planning tools for your firm's Ownership Transition. Click here to register now! 

PSMJ Tips: Win the Next Project by Cementing the Relationship During the First

It is much easier and more rewarding to sell to an existing client than a new client. This old truth still rings true. Building trust takes time, and time is money. But it is five to eight times more expensive to get a new client than to keep a current one.

What happens after your first project with a new client is awarded can make or break the long-term relationship. Remember, you and your firm are "under the magnifying glass" during that first project opportunity. It is not that the client wants you to fail; in fact, the opposite is true… the client wants to look as if he or she made the right choice in hiring your firm.


Here are a few ways to use that first project experience to cement a strong, long-term relationship with the client:

• Review project expectations with the client routinely. Most clients will make time for consultations on work products, schedules, budget, sub activities, etc.

• Ask the client to show you a properly prepared invoice. The client can remove any indication of the invoicing firm, but it is to your advantage to know how the client likes invoices to look. Hint: This step can get you paid quickly. A client who receives an invoice that requires lots of wading through to understand will often put it in the "act later" file… delaying your payment unnecessarily.

• Carrying this one step further, if there are intermediate deliverables or monthly status reports, ask to see others in a client-approved format. The more familiar you can make your documents to the client's eyes, the better.

• Get to know the client even better during the first project. Invite her into your office for a lunch and learn session.

• Ask lots of questions. Be curious about how the client's business really operates.

• Learn how the client prefers to communicate. If the client likes to respond to emails but never seems comfortable on the phone, take that into account and use email for routine communications. As millennials now become clients of the present and future, text messaging will be another powerful communications medium.

• At the project's end, ask for a formal debriefing with the appropriate client representative(s). Ask all the tough questions again… what could we do better; how did we communicate best with you; what was your most and least favorite part of working with our firm, etc. This client satisfaction survey should be a regular part of your project wrap-up, but especially with the first project opportunity with a client.


The overall concept is to make the client's experience with your firm as comfortable and familiar as possible. Cement your relationship early in the process. There's no better way to get repeat work.

The strength of every A/E/C firm is its project managers. Every practice must develop highly skilled project managers to deliver projects successfully. PSMJ's A/E/C Project Management Bootcamp, which has trained more than 30,000 top-flight project managers worldwide, dramatically improves the performance of project managers.

This fall, PSMJ is has 2 locations remaining to give your project managers the tools and confidence needed to join the ranks of the world's most successful project managers. Register today!

Can't make it to one of our Project Management Bootcamps this Fall? We just announced our NEW Spring 2013 dates! This Spring PSMJ will be coming to 15 locations all across North America and Canada, join us!

PSMJ Tips: Plan a Project PRE-Mortem

All projects have problems and speed bumps along the way. Many firms hold “lessons learned” meetings following project completion, discussing and analyzing what went wrong – or right, sometimes – to determine how the next project can benefit and improve from the last one. The goal of these meetings is to avoid making the same mistakes over and over, and to repeat the actions or factors that were successful.

But instead of performing a project postmortem, try doing a project pre-mortem, where you and your team brainstorm on all of the things that might veer off course, and determine what the corrective action would be. This follows the old adage of hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. Consider the following project factors when doing your pre-mortem:

• Project schedule 

• Project budget 

• Internal and subcontracted technical capabilities 

• Client dynamics and politics

• External factors (i.e. permitting, underground conditions, etc.) 

• IT issues 

If appropriate for the format, include some of what was discussed in the Project Management Plan (PMP), and share the pre-mortem with your client. It’ll help them understand where problems and glitches commonly surface, and it’ll show them that your team is already thinking ahead, making sure that the project runs smoothly.

The strength of every A/E/C firm is its project managers. Every practice must develop highly skilled project managers to deliver projects successfully. PSMJ's A/E/C Project Management Bootcamp, which has trained more than 30,000 top-flight project managers worldwide, dramatically improves the performance of project managers.

This fall, PSMJ is providing 4 locations to give your project managers the tools and confidence needed to join the ranks of the world's most successful project managers. Register today!

Can't make it to one of our Project Management Bootcamps this Fall? We just announced our NEW Spring 2013 dates! This Spring PSMJ will be coming to 15 locations all across North America and Canada, join us!

PSMJ Tips: 11 Reasons to Charge More for Changes

If clients are assessed a markup on every change that they make, they will be deterred from making too many. Here are 11 reasons why you should mark up changes, making use of a standard, firm-wide percentage:

1. Tell clients up front that no project is ever without an extra change. Your clients should include a contingency for these in their financial plans.

2. Project managers should regularly review their contracts and projects to determine that the firm has not inadvertently exceeded the contractual obligations. 

3. Always tell a client when you are doing something outside the scope of work, even if you are willing to include that item in your current fee arrangement. If you don’t plan to charge for that change, tell the client of its dollar impact anyway. Leave the door open by stating you are not going to charge “right now,” but that you might need to come back for additional compensation if conditions change. 

4. Inform the client in writing of every change in scope, whether or not it will be chargeable or not. Reference the extra work as subject to the terms in your contract. This may be important for professional liability reasons.

5. In the pre-project meeting, carefully review the scope of work. Make sure the client knows what is not included, especially if it is an exception to normal procedures. 

6. Help avoid disputes by developing a scope checklist and reviewing it with the client. Quantify as many scope items as possible. 

7. When you must bill for an extra or a change, bill promptly and at rates that deliver a profit by themselves. 

The strength of every A/E/C firm is its project managers. Every practice must develop highly skilled project managers to deliver projects successfully. PSMJ's A/E/C Project Management Bootcamp, which has trained more than 30,000 top-flight project managers worldwide, dramatically improves the performance of project managers.

This fall, PSMJ is providing 5 locations to give your project managers the tools and confidence needed to join the ranks of the world's most successful project managers. Register today!

Can't make it to one of our Project Management Bootcamps this Fall? We just announced our NEW Spring 2013 dates! This Spring PSMJ will be coming to 15 locations all across North America and Canada, join us!

PSMJ Tips: Clean Up your Marketing Material for the New Year

Admit it! You’ve been intending to purge and reorganize your marketing materials for years. As the end of 2012 looms and the beginning of 2013 is around the corner, resolve to clean up your marketing materials to start the New Year off right.

• Make your printed collateral material look like your website. Nothing conveys an image of consistency like having all of your publicity obey a single theme. 

• Clean up resumes. Do any employees have new degrees or new professional registrations? If you use photos, have employees undergone a “makeover” and need a new photo inserted? 

• Clean up project descriptions. Do you have project write-ups that show photos of the work under construction? Is the project now complete? Can you get photos of the completed project? If so, add them in… better yet, make a progressive collage showing the site, the facility during construction, and then upon completion. 

• Clean up news items. Has your website gotten stale with news that’s months old? Look at your site as if you were an outsider or perhaps a client… and see how it conveys your image. 

• Add new services or services that have expanded. Have you added a new service line or expanded an existing line? 

• Make sure office locations, contact information is current? Does a location have a new phone number? If so, be sure your material is updated to reflect these changes. 

• Update the quality of your photo library to get higher resolution photos, especially of your capstone projects. 

• Organize your photo library. You shouldn’t spend hours searching for project photos you’ve used a hundred times. Assuming your image library is digital (which it should be!), find a robust photo organization software application that allows you to easily tag and search for photos. 

 

Start the New Year off right with a fresh update on your marketing materials. This is a great way to spend those slow – sometimes unbillable – hours during the holiday season. Attend one of PSMJ’s Win Work Now: Three 1-Day Business Development Programs for more vital information on how to effectivly approach business development in the new year!

Recharge your Business Development Program by actively participating in these highly focused, targeted programs in the three key Business Development areas - Business Development Strategies, Winning Proposals, and Powerful Presentations. This fall, PSMJ is providing 3 locations all across North America and Canada to give your whole firm the tools and confidence you need to succeed in bringing in more work for the firm. Register today!