1. Teams and Team working
ARC411
Oliver Guest | Management in the Built Environment | 05/03/2017

2. Contents
1.0 Defining the Design Team. 1
2.0 Role of the architectural technologist (AT) 1
3.0 The role of Communication within management 1
4.0 Effective coordination between professions 2
5.0 Managing underperformance 2
6.0 Management styles and the design team 3
7.0 Conclusion 3
References 4
Bibliography 4

3. PAGE 1
1.0 DEFINING THE DESIGN TEAM.
1.1 Before looking at how the design team functions, it is important to outline who is involved within the
design process. Looking at the design process several different professions can be identified as
contributing to the final design. Understanding how these interact is important to understanding where
the role of the Architectural Technologist lies in the grand scheme of things. For this report, the wider
picture of the entire process will be looked at but also how Architectural Technologists function within a
practice.
1.2 Emmitt (2009) identifies the importance of understanding how ‘The construction industry is not a
homogeneous industry, it is made up of many diverse and competing organisations and professional
partnerships, the majority of whom are brought together for one, bespoke project, before transferring to
the next’.
2.0 ROLE OF THE ARCHITECTURAL TECHNOLOGIST (AT)
2.1 AT’s have a very central role within the design team, whether they are working in an architect’s firm or
in a practice solely made up of AT’s. The role they undertake can vary depending on the size of the
project but ultimately, they have the skill set to take a design from inception to completion. Along this
path, they must collaborate with other professions to ensure that the final design is coherent and
complete as possible. This can involve taking the drawings and schemes from Structural Engineers and
Services Engineers, for example, and making sure there are no clashes or issues when brought together
into the final design, e.g. air ducts trying to be run through steel beams which cannot be done.
2.2 Not only do they have to undertake this checking role, they produce the final working drawing package
which the builder’s/contractors will follow to carry out the construction phase. These technical
drawings are produced solely by the AT with any problems that arise needing to be solved, often with
the help of the other professions to ensure the most efficient solution can be found.
3.0 THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATION WITHIN MANAGEMENT
3.1 When it comes to managing a design project, it cannot be successful without good coordination
between the various professions involved. Clear and concise communication is therefore required for a
project to progress smoothly and quickly without delays and unexpected costs. The advancement of
information communication technologies (ICTs) have led to vast improvements for sharing information
between professions, allowing groups from all over the world to seamlessly work together on individual
projects. Services like Dropbox allow large files and drawings to be shared and evaluated by all involved.
3.2 Alongside ICTs, the use of meetings (virtual or physical), emails and telephone calls allow instantaneous
communication regardless of location and situation. This reduces waiting times that would have been
experienced 40 years ago, when drawings were not only produced by hand, but also communicated
between the different professions by post. This chain of sending information back and forth by post has
now been eliminated allowing design decisions to be made in good time enabling deadlines to be hit on
time that would otherwise be unachievable.
3.3 Even with these advancements in technology, it is important to understand that this is not the only
contributing factor to good team communication as highlighted by Emmitt & Prins (2009) when he said
‘Team communication in the design of buildings is dependent on the willingness of all group members to

4. PAGE 2
act and react, listen and share, as well as develop their skills for using communication effectively’.
Following on from this, it can be seen that Emmitt clearly saw that there is still a human factor at play
with communication. Change can only happen if accepted by all parties and can still be held back by one
or two individuals that cannot, often through the fear of change, use these new technologies effectively.
Therefore, the management of change must be undertaken by the design team to overcome these
issues. It may also give these individuals the dilemma of losing work as they are not being flexible
enough to work in today’s world. Building information modelling is a fantastic example of new
technology that is not being adopted as quickly as it should be, as discussed in the section 4.0.
3.4 Communication must also be upheld at a high level with Wheeten and Cameron (2015) claiming that
ineffective communication hinders working relationships by creating an air of dislike, mistrust and
suspicion as the communication breaks down.
4.0 EFFECTIVE COORDINATION BETWEEN PROFESSIONS
4.1 Alongside communication, coordination is another important aspect that is currently seeing a relatively
major shift with the introduction of building information modelling (BIM) over the past few years with
the backing of the Government. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a collaborative way of working,
underpinned by the digital technologies which unlock more efficient methods of designing, creating and
maintaining our assets. BIM embeds key product and asset data and a 3-dimensional computer model
that can be used for effective management of information throughout a project lifecycle – from earliest
concept through to operation. It has been described as a gamechanging ICT and cultural process for the
construction sector. (gov.uk, 2017)
4.2 Although communication has seen major improvements in itself, the next step of understanding and
interpreting the information is still a hurdle as different professions and practices do not use a universal
software and in a lot of cases still use AutoCAD which has many limitations and cannot be incorporated
seamlessly into the BIM workflow due to its 2-dimensional format. This is where software like Archicad
and Revit are making huge progress in uniting the information from all professions with 3-dimensional
models being at their heart. This can be used to identify issues automatically increasing workflow and
redistributing time otherwise spent checking minute details repeatedly.
5.0 MANAGING UNDERPERFORMANCE
5.1 Everything within the design and construction process is driven by the Client who has 2 main constraints.
These can be identified as an outline budget and time frame. This in turn sets deadlines for the involved
parties to meet throughout the process. To ensure that these deadlines are met, the client or the
appointed AT must manage the other professions avoiding delays and extra costs.
5.2 In a realistic world, deadlines are not always met for various reasons from underperformance to
miscalculating the time requirements to produce a piece of work. Managing the underperformance of a
practice or firm when they are not your employees is far from easy. Incentives do exist in various forms;
the promise of further work can improve the consistency of a firm meeting deadlines as they will
ultimately want to maintain the client’s work as it provides work security for the practice involved. Not
paying fees is a more crude and conflictual way of tackling underperformance with varying results which
tend to trend towards the negative so it is advised to avoid going down this route as it can have
repercussions for the client as people may no longer want to provide them with their services. If the

5. PAGE 3
firm is struggling to meet deadlines, it is important for the client to understand the root cause of the
problems and how they may be able to help as it is in their interest for the performance of the firm to
increase.
6.0 MANAGEMENT STYLES AND THE DESIGN TEAM
6.1 The construction industry is made up of various professions, as outlined in Section 1.0, which each have
a specific skill that they have specialised in. It is important then to look at F Taylor (1947) and how he
would go about breaking down complicated tasks and allocating them to smaller, specific groups more
suited to the task within the industrial sector. This can be seen even today within the construction
industry as the complicated process of designing a building is separated out for example into the
structure, services and environment all being dealt with by specialist engineering professions. This
results in a fully thought out design eliminating any guesswork. This has also been led by the change of
design responsibilities each profession undertakes due to new legislation and the Construction Design
and Management regulations (CDM).
6.2 When the members of the design team work together on more than one job, the management strategy
trends towards a Social school of thought where members feel part of the team and share the same
common goals. This is also bolstered by an increase in communication as firms become accustomed to
working together knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses helping speed along the design
process as each member knows what they must do to progress another stage of the project, whether
that’s getting initial ideas across to planning advisors or sub-structures to the Civil and Structural
engineers so they can progress their designs.
6.3 On the contrary, within a firm there are various management styles at play. For a firm to expand, a
Human Resource Management (HRM) approach is often taken where by giving individuals increased
responsibility, they can progress through the company allowing new talent to be hired and then
nurtured in a similar way avoiding the need of hiring new people at higher levels which may upset the
balance of the company if not undertaken correctly.
6.4 This report believes that the HRM approach is beneficial within the design team and the benefits can be
substantial for smaller practices. The Benefits include:
A business-orientated philosophy concerning the management of people in order to obtain added value
from them and thus achieve competitive advantage. It is a philosophy that appeals to managements
who are striving to beat of increasing international competition and appreciate that to do this they must
invest in human resources as wells as new technology.
7.0 CONCLUSION
7.1 To conclude, the recommendations of this report is that due to the design team being a dynamic group
of varying professions, as set out in section 1.0, that different approaches to management need to be
undertaken depending on the scale that is looked at. The management strategies used individual
practices and firms should tend toward the HRM side of management whilst as a whole system, a more
diversified approach should be taken where tasks are effectively split up into their key parts so that
specialists can take care of each component.

6. PAGE 4
References
EMMITT, S. and C.A. GORSE, 2003. Construction communication. Oxford, UK ; Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
EMMITT, S., M. PRINS and A.D. OTTER, 2009. Architectural management: international research and practice.
Chichester, U.K. ; Ames, Iowa: Wiley-Blackwell
WHETTEN, D.A. and K.S. CAMERON, 2015. Developing management skills. 9th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson
MICHAEL ARMSTRONG, 2001. a handbook of Management Techniques. 3rd ed. London: Kogan Page Limited
TAYLOR, F.W., 1911. The principles of scientific management. New York, London: Harper & Brothers
gov.uk. (2017). Building Information Modelling: Industrial strategy: government and industry in partnership.
[online] Available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/34710/12-1327-building-
information-modelling.pdf [Accessed 5 Mar. 2017].
Bibliography
CHAPPELL, D. and A. WILLIS, 2010. The architect in practice. 10th ed. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. ; Ames, Iowa:
Wiley-Blackwell, pp.317-338.
GUEST, D.E., 1987. Human resource management and industrial relations. Journal of management Studies,
24(5), pp.503-521.