Practical, experience-based project management lessons for project engineers, developing project managers, and field professionals.
Friday Field Notes #06: Confirming Conversations in Writing
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FRIDAY FIELD NOTES #06 Confirming Conversations in Writing Good morning team, This week’s topic: confirming conversations in writing. From the Field A lot of project direction starts with a conversation. That is normal. Work moves quickly, and not every issue begins as a formal email, meeting minute, RFI, or change order. The risk is when important conversations never get confirmed in writing. I’ve seen this create problems when people remembered the same conversation differently. The work may have moved forward, but the record did not. Later, when the team needed to explain why a decision was made, why work changed, or why additional cost was incurred, the documentation was not there. A short follow-up email can prevent a lot of confusion. Leadership Perspective Good communication does not stop when the conversation ends. Good leaders make sure direction is clear, especially when cost, schedule, safety, or scope may be affected. Written confirmation is not about making the process difficult. It is about protecting the team from misunderstanding. Field Observation One pattern I’ve noticed is that project problems often grow in the gap between verbal direction and written confirmation. A client may say something in the field. A superintendent may discuss a change with a subcontractor. A PM may make a decision during a phone call. None of that is unusual, but if the conversation affects scope, schedule, cost, or risk, it should be captured. The follow-up does not need to be complicated. A simple “Per our conversation today…” email can be enough to clarify the record. Spreadsheet Tip This week’s formula: XLOOKUP Use this when you want to find information in one table and bring back related information from another column. =XLOOKUP(A2,$D:$D,$E:$E,”Not Found”) In this example, Excel looks for the value in Cell A2 within Column D. When it finds a match, it returns the related value from Column E. If it does not find a match, it returns “Not Found.” This can be useful when matching cost codes to descriptions, invoice numbers to vendors, truck tickets to disposal quantities, or employee names to labor classifications. Question for the Week What conversation from this week should be confirmed in writing before details start to fade? Have a great weekend, Dan |
Friday Field Notes
Practical, experience-based project management lessons for project engineers, developing project managers, and field professionals.
Good morning team, This week’s topic: look-ahead schedules. 1. From the Field A look-ahead should represent what the project team actually believes is going to happen over the next few weeks. That sounds obvious, but I’ve seen look-aheads continue showing activities that everyone onsite already knows are not going to start on the dates listed. At that point, the document stops being a planning tool and becomes an exercise in updating dates. A useful look-ahead should reflect current field...
Good morning team, This week’s topic: project schedules. 1. From the Field A project schedule is obviously a planning tool, but I’ve found that its real value comes from how well it helps people understand what is supposed to happen next. A schedule can be technically correct and still be difficult to use. If the field team cannot tell what areas should be available, when subcontractors are needed, or what activities are driving the next few weeks of work, the schedule is not doing much to...
If you’re new here, Friday Field Notes is a short weekly newsletter built around practical project management lessons from the field. I originally started writing these notes for Project Engineers I was helping develop. The goal was simple: give them something useful they could read in a few minutes and apply to a real project. A lot of project management is learned through formal training, procedures, software, and project controls. But some of the most important lessons come from...