Quantum Executive Director, Steven Beaumont, continues to look at the game of football and how Qatar’s construction industry may have more in common than the World Cup.
Did you see the recent World Cup from Brazil, if you didn’t it would take me until 2015 to write all about it. If you did you will appreciate that a picture tells a thousand words and watching the games on television is much easier than reading about it. Correct? If you did watch the tournament you will recall moments of genius, moments of sadness, moments of considerable errors and the occasional player who likes to take a bite out of his fellow sportsman. You see, if I was to write a narrative to explain just how brilliant the flow of play was before a goal was scored it would take many words and you probably wouldn’t read it because you already know the answer, a goal was scored in emphatic style.
In a very similar manner when we write a document to prove the background to a delay on a construction project, we have to make sure we explain the cause of the delay, the effect of the delay, the route to provide the contractual entitlement through the contract and then of course the substantiation in the form of records to capture the cause and effect. The end product of this can be a document which runs into hundreds of pages and supported by many files of evidence. A lot to take in isn’t it?
So how can this scenario be made easier to communicate? In the construction industry we are always seeking the easiest solution and this is primarily driven so that time is controlled and costs are kept to a minimal.
One clever solution is to look at football and consider how the game is communicated; it is televised and it’s easy to watch and understand. Just imagine how long it would take to read a narrative which explains the entire game including every incident both on and off the ball, then remember how easy it is to absorb the game from watching it on TV. Much easier.
“A 15 minute movie visually highlighting the problems and demonstrated how these problems were”
So when we have a complicated construction project, and let’s for a moment consider this project has not thought about the points raised in my previous articles such as correctly kept records, and the correct allocation of risks which have in turn resulted in a problem. The problem could be a technical issue, it could be a contractual argument, either way the contractor building the project considers himself entitled to additional time and money.
We know that it would take many words to explain this, and this is something which has to be done, but you know what, to make life easy and to make sure the circumstances are captured and communicated clearly correctly think about how football is communicated. Then think how a picture tells a thousand words; do you know what I do? I ask our in-house media team to make a movie. Yes, a movie!
You may have raised your eyebrows at this point but just think about it logically, producing a movie which visually compares the ‘as planned sequence of works’ to the ‘as built sequence including the reasons for the changes’ showing this comparison is much easier to communicate to our clients and employers.
I fondly recall one situation where an employer didn’t believe a contractor had an entitlement to additional time, during negotiations he wouldn’t read the prepared document which demonstrated the contractor was in fact correct so where could we go? Well, one option would be to trigger the contract clause for arbitration but this isn’t helpful to the employer or the contractor, it costs a lot of money, and time, remember. So what did Quantum do? We made a 15 minute movie visually highlighting the problems and demonstrated how these problems were the responsibility of the employer and not the contractor. We were able to convince the employer to watch the movie (I think the novelty factor – and less reading time – was a big influence) and after watching the movie do you know what the employer said? Oh, I see now what you are saying! From this point we were able to negotiate a solution for the contractor and he walked away happy and the employer also understood the issues in full.
“Our brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Hence the popularity of watching football on TV rather than reading about it”
So what can we learn from this? Well firstly we all prefer to watch football as we have all done so recently with the World Cup, and secondly we enjoy the fact we can see the big picture; what’s happening across the pitch and not just on the ball. We also know that we wouldn’t read a narrative on the game after we know the result – why would we?
So when a construction project hasn’t gone according to plan due to risks and changes and delays, we write the narrative and produce the document to prove the entitlement to time but to really get the message across, Quantum also make a short movie to make sure the contractors clients really understand the issues and their responsibilities.
As we said earlier a picture tells a thousand words and research also highlights the fact that 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual and our brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Hence the popularity of watching football on TV rather than reading about it, the same can be said about settling construction disputes – watch my movie about the dispute on the television it tells many thousands of words.
Steven Beaumont, Executive Director
Steven Beaumont, a Quantum Executive Director, is a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. Steven has over 20 years of experience in both local and international construction project disputes and regularly delivers construction claims classes and lectures to industry professionals throughout the GCC. QGS is acknowledged as one of the leading management consultancies dedicated to serving the interests of national and international construction and engineering organisations.
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This article was previously published in the August 2014 edition of Business@Qatar Magazine published by the Gulf Times Newspaper