Project Kickoff

Our invoicing process was broken. It was so messed up that we hired a consultant to help us fix it. They came in and executed a week-long kaizen event – the systematic breakdown of a process, to rebuild it again better. Years later, I’m happy to report that while it’s still somewhat painful, it is by no means broken. What did we end up fixing…?

… Project Kickoff (PKO)

After an exhaustive analysis of the broken steps and subsequent root-cause analysis, more than half of the invoicing errors were caused by not setting up the project correctly from the start. (The Pink Stickies in the image below are problems. That’s a lot of problems!)

As we began to dig deeper into our root cause analysis for safety incidences, quality gaffs, and schedule hiccups, we also landed on poor project kickoff.

Back in the day, project kickoff consisted of a half-baked one-hour meeting between the Estimator and the Project Manager, during which the Estimator slid the proposal across the table and effectively said, “Good luck.” The Superintendent was left in the dark, given an address, and told to get going next week. I wonder if this is still the case in most of the construction world.

Our first and most fundamental fix was to reframe kickoff from a point in time to a process. It needed to be a series of conversations that incremented through key milestones and focused on a holistic understanding of the project. PKO would move from a two-person meeting to a conversation that included EVERYONE on the team.

PKO includes 3 critical alignment areas:

Internal Dome Team [ALL Dome Team Members]
✅ Scope, Pricing, Contract Terms, Schedule
✅ Guided Team Conversations on Project Success and Risk
✅ Project Controls Setup
✅ Roles and Responsibilities (RACI)

External Stakeholders [Client, Designers, Key Trade Partners]
✅ Establish Conditions of Satisfaction
✅ Align on Behaviors & Systems that drive project success
✅ Communicate Project Approach
✅ Risk Identification & Mitigation

Trade Partner [ALL Trade Foreman & Managers]
✅ Communicate Client Success Factors
✅ Set Expectations for Safety, Logistics, Planning, Project Controls
✅ Emphasize a Culture of Collaboration

Everything we expect in a holistic kickoff process is captured in our PKO Workbook. When the workbook is fully embraced, our decades of learned lessons are addressed, and projects stand their greatest chance of success.

While our teams understand the importance of the PKO process, it remains difficult to ensure it is done effectively. Sometimes we don’t know the team members quick enough. Sometimes the time between award and mobilization is incredibly short. Sometimes the team is frantically trying to finish the previous project, and the last thing they want to think about is the next one. Yet we must make time for Project Kickoff.