Name: Aesha Deveshkumar Dave

Student ID: 301248911

CSM 701 – Management of a construction project - Interim Assignment 1

Personal Project Management Experience

In my last job, I was working in an outsourcing firm where we were assisting the USA and Canada-based
architects and engineers. But recently, we tied up with a house plan website where our role was to modify the
CD set purchased by the website’s visitors as per their request. It was a very good opportunity for us as we were
indirectly designing residences for our clients and providing design suggestions to the user directly with the
modification request, whereas usually in the outsourcing firm, designers are only exposed to drafting duties and
work for architects and engineers of another country.
Here, I would like to share my experience with the very first project of that website. I was given to modify
residence drawings of a retired lady. I would say she was very enthusiastic and excited about her new home.
She wanted to have each and every corner of her house as per her expectation and visualization. I was very
fortunate to have such an interesting client however, I faced some hurdles until the completion of the project.
As she was from a generation that is not tech-friendly, the hardest thing was to reach out to her, as she did not
have a smartphone or was not using email. We helped her set up a mail account so that we can send her meeting
invites and drawings. Further, she visualized so many things for the house, however, as she did not have
construction knowledge, it was next to impossible to achieve all her ideas by staying within budget and the
bylaws. For example, she wanted to remove a bedroom from the upper floor. Elimination of a room changed
the drawing set entirely as we had to revise the roof layout, elevation and sections as well. But we completed
the drawings and presented them in the next meeting, where, the client realized that she had completely
forgotten about the other changes which would occur because of the removal of the room. She did not like the
new adaptions and told us to get back to the old design. Over here, as an architect, I tried to explain to her the
consequences of bedroom removal at the beginning, but she was very passionate about her point, and we did
not have any other option but to make those unnecessary changes. Her constant change of thoughts caused a
lot of time, and the progress was close to none.
My seniors and her contractor were also frustrated with her stubborn nature as it was not allowing us to have
a functional design. After several meetings, I realized that I would have to try something to give her an adequate
understanding of the project. Although she did not subscribe for 3D views and walkthroughs, I made several
design options with my understanding and made walkthroughs out of them. I presented those to her outside of
my office hours as we were already running behind the schedule. We sat every day for a minimum of 2 hours
on a conference call and I modeled everything as she was describing during the meeting only in order to make
her understand how it is impacting the house. After more than 2 weeks of everyday meetings and numerous
layout changes, I managed to provide her with a good design and drawing set.
Summary analysis:
From this experience, I learned that it is essential to understand the phycology of clients as well as to make them
grasp our point of view. Without proper understanding, it is impossible to achieve client satisfaction and
ultimately, that is the most important aspect of any project.