Design Team Priorities: What Can You Commit to Before Approval?

At 09:00, two design leads ask for the same specialist. One wants a drawing issued for coordination. The other wants an urgent presentation revised. The drawing has the greater downstream consequence, but the design basis still needs approval. The team needs a plan for what to do now and what will change that plan.

I would put this decision into a practice session for design managers. The exercise below gives the learner competing requests, limited capacity and a decision they can defend to both teams. The project, roles and timings are fictional.

Put three requests on the same board

One specialist has three hours of capacity before a fixed 12:00 review. The project lead can allocate that time. The discipline approver alone can confirm the basis for issuing the coordination drawing.

Make one commitment and one conditional plan

Start B and ask the discipline approver for a decision by 09:30. Keep A at the top of the dependency list. Tell the presentation requester up front that the specialist may switch at 09:30 and that the current slides are the fallback. Inform the downstream team that the 12:00 drawing is conditional on approval.

If the approver confirms the design basis at 09:30, pause B at its saved checkpoint. Run A from 09:30 to 11:30, then use the remaining thirty minutes to finish B if it is still useful. Tell the requester immediately that the revised slides will miss 11:00. The approved drawing can still reach the review, assuming the effort estimate holds. C can wait in that branch.

If approval is still missing at 09:30, finish B by 10:00 and prepare C from 10:00 to 10:30. Tell the downstream team it can use the comparison for a discussion, with the draft clearly identified. If approval arrives after 10:00, the original two-hour effort cannot fit before 12:00. Ask the authorised owner to decide whether to move the review or narrow it to material already approved. Keep the approval gate visible throughout.

Give the reviewer something to observe

Ask the learner for a one-line decision record with the work to start, the person who can remove the constraint, the check time, the downstream impact and the fallback. Then replay the case with C required at 10:00 for an independent review. Ask which commitment must change and who should hear about it first.

• Did the learner separate readiness from urgency?
• Did the promised work fit the actual time, including the checkpoint and the approval boundary?
• Did each affected team receive a clear update while it still had options?
• Did the learner revise the plan after the new constraint rather than repeat the original sequence?

The Lean Construction Institute describes making upcoming work ready by identifying and removing constraints before commitments. I use that distinction here as a prompt for a design-specific exercise. A good response in this scenario supplies evidence about the decision practised. It leaves project-wide delivery impact to be evaluated separately.

For your own rehearsal, bring a real type of dependency and invent the work items and timing. Give the facilitator a second version that changes the constraint. The Altaius Practice-Native Learning methodology explains how the decision, feedback and replay fit together.

Source

Lean Construction Institute, Last Planner System and make-ready planning.