Communication Is Key

When approaching a project that involves coordination with a new construction, one of the biggest keys to remember is the amount of communication required for multiple teams onsite. These include General Contractors (GC's), foremen, electrical contractors, general construction contractors, architects, and the customer. Even with the best communication efforts, the road is not always smooth as many times the customer sees the progress as they are frequently onsite during construction and realizes they need to add something, or they visualize it decide they need to make changes. This is very typical, but adds an additional step into the process where the Project Manager (PM) then has to ensure everyone has the most updated drawings.  Small changes can make big ripples in how the rest of the disparate teams complete their work.

Getting more granular, communication also involves making sure everyone knows who we are as an integrator, and what we are there to do. Every step of the developing process has to be validated. With almost 100% certainty, when PM's walk into a new construction site to validate that the pieces are all in place for the AV integrator to begin their work, they will find required things missing. Another part of the communication is to identify priorities with customer, and the customer needs to let GC know what those priorities are. Without this step, all of the individual teams/contractors think their work is the priority. 

The Art Of Project Management

For the AV integrator, the PM role is to make things easy for everyone to keep working in order to hit the timelines. As the project twists and turns with inevitable changes or delays, what can the PM do to pivot the AV integration team to do while waiting for required work to be completed. For PM's this can be more of an ART, than a science. PM's have to be able to balance, and pivot, and keep things moving forward in any way possible.

Leading the AV integration team you have and making sure everyone understands the integrator's role in the project is another key. The team needs to know who is assigned to what specifically. A big part of PM onsite is making sure everyone has their role, and that they are empowered to let the PM know if something needs to be changed, or if there might be a change to make that would improve the outcome for the customer.

AV Hardware Requires A Clean Environment

AV hardware has very delicate electronic aspects that can only be unboxed and assembled AFTER the site is certified as dust-free so there is no risk to the audio visual and other electronic hardware technology. Occasionally, after hardware starts getting installed, the GC decides that additional work needs to happen. These scenarios can vary but typically it is some kind of disruptive activity like an installation, some drilling, drywall repair, a changeorder of some sort or another unplanned, last minute process. All of a sudden, the exposed hardware is at risk. This could be a costly mistake, and the PM needs to work with the general contractor involved to stop any work until the hardware can be "covered" in some way and protected. This situation is NOT preferrable. Communication about the clean room status milestone allowing the AV integrator to begin their technology installation needs to be stressed in advance, or there can be very costly damage to sensitive AV hardware.

For any large scale audiovisual installation during new construction, the PM needs to be onsite and/or always available to handle issues like this, and the job of PM is to handle all the little things that get thrown at the process so the team can continue to be productive, and that the timeline agreed upon with the customer can be maintained. Every milestone in the timeline is there for a reason. No PM wants to be the one saying they need to push a timeline out because we are not delivering their part of the project work on time. This is the PM mantra: on target, on budget and on quality.

The differences between projects in new construction and pre-existing environments, is the ability to do a site visit and understand exactly where the power is running, where the access is, have completed as-built.  With new construction you never know exactly what you are walking into until it gets built and put into place.