Planning

The Reef
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@reef-building @Lee @ugne

new version of the planning available (TB/Stekke and Fraas folder /Planning)

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@Els, can they provide us with the Excel source? It would be easier to scan and have all the info.

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will ask

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Thanks for sharing @els.

Did the architects provide an explanation for the moving of the deadline for introducing the building permit? What I see is that we received our first planning mid-June, where the deadline was mid-December, then the second planning in October, where the deadline was moved to mid-February, and now the deadline has been moved to April. This means that over the course of barely 6 months, the deadline has been put forward by 4 months.

Without putting any blame on anybody, I would like to better understand what happened here, and how we can avoid it in the future.

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they’ve send the planning afterwards, so no time to discuss.

My assumption is that

  • we lost time to get to the weighing. When we saw them for the presentation of the maxi version, i remember we were talking about mid november to get the weighing. In reality we’ve send the plans for which we wanted a weighing towards the end of November (27/11) and received the weighing of the units on 06/12, which was presented to the group on December 16th

  • we lost time with the ‘decision of the choice of type of contract’. They were set on having a decision from our part to clearly define the mission of the technical experts ( i assume this is how they worked in the past). It took some time for TB to get clarity on what this exactly meant, and than it took some time for us to realise it was better to not clearly define the mission of the technical experts but to leave it open to not be blocked by this.

For me the lesson learned

  • for TB is to get a better understanding on the next phase(s) coming ahead / what they mean / what decisions will be expected from us (Sarah and me are seeing Mark tomorrow and want to talk to him about this as well)

  • we should try to take faster decisions (no idea how). Between receiving the info/question from the architects (and soon others), TB digesting this info/question, getting clarity on it (discussing in a TB meeting), writing a proposal, having it reviewed, presenting it to a PM and getting consent, it takes time. I think if all goes well, this takes at least 1 month (unless the topic is really easy to grasp) and I think we should go to 2 weeks. TB is meeting the architects biweekly and we have biweekly TB meetings (more or less), so I don’t see it realistic in increasing the frequency of any of those…

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What was Mark’s reply to this? And also: would it be feasible to break down the gant chart until the end of the avant-projet into smaller steps, so that we can better plan our work and our plenaries?

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@Sarah will post her notes about our meeting (so maybe wait for that) I personally found it a very interesting interaction on many levels. Maybe to discuss about this somewhere, sometime…

We asked the big decisions we will need to take and if he could give a timeline/overview of this (what/when), but he didn’t give a straightforward answer on this. Then we asked specifically for the next phase with the technical experts/sustainability where he gave the advice of contacting a facilitator of l’ibge.

He also said that now we need focus on getting fixed plans and fixed maximum budget (which we are doing) and that from that time onwards the board of the sosim needs to get operational, meeting regular (and less PM). (after reflecting on this, i don’t see clearly how this will work, with the different teams,… but i do wonder if we don’t need to review the existing teams)

want to discuss this as well with the architects, i’ve added some extra todo’s for TB already

@Lee : can we (TB) consult mark whenever we want? (foresee a budget for this for TB for next year?)

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As long as you budget for it, in principle yes. I’d be grateful though if you could keep me informed.

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I would propose we push back in a constructive way.

Logic: if the average household spends 800 EUR x month that it does not live in the Reef (rent + energy costs, let’s say), each month of delay costs 800 x 32 = 25,600 EUR. Delays are to be avoided at any reasonable cost. Four months extra are over 1% of the budget already.

So, I would ask them: delaying the project for us is difficult and expensive. What would need to happen for this second delay to be reversed?

I would also highlight that, in the future, we would like to have a say on the plannings, if only because taking a delay means calling a crisis meeting (technically it would be a level 5 decision) and taking a lot of stress. I would not like to receive any more messages saying “sorry, you are late again, here’s a new planning”. The messages I want to receive are of the type “heads up, if you do not do X by date Y, we are going to have to delay”.

An aside: S&F themselves do not like to wait. When I pointed out the latest Triodos delay, they said that waiting for ONE month would “put them in an embarrassing situation”. So I am sure they will be sympathetic to our misery.

For the future, most of the work is going to be at the intersection between building and finance. I would do something like this, but it does not belong in this thread.
  • Teams Finance and Building are dissolved. Everyone in them joins a a “talent pool” for helping circles.
  • Each midsize to big task is taken on by a helping circle drawing on the talent pool.
  • Coordination of these helping circles happens in the board of Coral Reef, with fairly frequent meetings. The interface with the architects is managed in the board (this also solves the problems of TeamFin having to write proposals based on interpretation of what S&F have said to others () – see).
  • The Reef ASBL runs recruitment (for a few more months), inclusion, community, external and support. General coordination meetings are much less frequent.
  • Plenaries are still needed for group decisions.
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TB is planning to talk to the architects about the delay in the planning and we can take up the above points.

So far we (generally) asked the architects for a wished deadline from their side. In the case of the ‘type of contract’ they indicated end of November. This was for me highly unrealistic, which i didn’t say right away (as it needed to sink in first). This deadline was mentionned in the meeting report but maybe TB should have explicitly said that.
When posting the proposal for the ‘choice of contracts’ i wrote a signal message indicating the architects where blocked by this (which for me meant ‘as long as we don’t give them an answer we are having a delay’, but maybe this was not interpreted in this way). I am quite sure, during the presentation in the PM, i repeated that this was blocking them. And in the after meeting with the notary, I shared I felt we had a delay of 1 à 2 months again.

We discussed about the delay on the planning in yesterday’s TB meeting and this also came up:

  • we (TB, our group) are not professionals, this is for us the first time we do a cohousing. We have the impression that with Stekke and Fraas’s previous cohousing projects they had ‘experienced/professional’ people in the core team (the architects themself, mark ,…) which required a lesser need to give context/explanations and made things go faster. This is not the case here. We want to make that clear to them so next time they can give us more context/info when dropping a request like this. On the same note, i have the impression they made up a planning based on their previous experiences, which for me is an unrealistic planning for our group (as it’s our first time building a cohousing, we need more explanation, we are a big group having to make a decision which - if I understood well- was not the case in the last cohousing projects of Stekke and Fraas: limited number of people making the decisions)

  • an added conclusion from the TB meeting is that we would like to closer work with mark , our coach. If we would have consulted him on this point after the meeting with the architects, we could have avoided this delay.

  • I also discussed this point with Lee at a certain point, who expressed her worry and questioning why this was put on the table, as this was not in line with the blueprint. Maybe this was another mistake to have put this on the table. I don’t know all the aspects of the blueprint by head, and this was not sth that had stuck with me (or sb else of TB). And even after having this info, i thought it was worthwhile to put it on the table, but yes, probably the first thing to ask the group next time is whether we should bring this to the table, knowing this discussion might cause a delay.

PS 1: I don’t want to put all the blame on me, TB or on our group, I do think Stekke and Fraas made some ‘mistakes’ in this as well.

PS 2: I (and i think TB) understand very well that delays means people will need to rent longer and are to be avoided at any reasonable cost. For me personally this is a very stressfull giving as member of TB/ TB coordinator, we do the best we can but i can guarantee you now we will make more mistakes. I am very open to constructive feedback and ideas to improve our way of working (and really appreciate your post above) but I hope you understand this is a certain weight for me/us.

PS 3: I do wonder, also related to the talk with mark, if @coral-board shouldn’t get operational soonish and/or come together to discuss how to work (or maybe that’s clear in your head already). Maybe these highly sensitive things like ‘budget’/‘planning’ should in the first place be adressed to the board?

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Thank you, Els, for formulating so clearly what came out of last night’s TB building

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Yes, i was aware of this. I was not aware that we were late in making a choice, and that this was causing a delay. That choice is not even in the planning, and – since we are planning via GANTT and not PERT – we do not know which activities are on the critical path, i.e. automatically transfer their delay onto the completion date if they are late.

On “choice of contracts” in specific, my impression is that, after the warning we got in Namur, the choice of contract is made: in order to reduce the potential for litigation, we all go to basic finishings, and the contract will contain a provision that additional work can be requested at a contracted price per hour. Requirements of sustainability, durability etc. will be specified in the call for offers, and later in the contract. A similar provision we have in the contract with S&F. Was this wrong?

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[Edited for clarity] I understood from the architects that they want to specify in the RFP (request for proposal) to builders the details for all units, regardless of whether the units have basic or custom finishing. If we don’t go into detail for all the unit ahead of time, they said, we risk overpriced change requests and many excuses for delays. This is their way of going “military”, I guess.

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hi @reeflings

Want to draw your attention to this. So below is a bit a resume of the discussions in this topic above, and the result of discussions in TB, with alberto, with lee… A talk with the architects will still follow, to get their feedback as well.

Situation

In comparison to the first planning we received from the architects (beginning of June): we have already have a delay of almost 4 months

In comparison to the last planning we received from the architects (beginning of october): we have a delay of 1,5 month more or less (which is taken into account in the 4 months in the sentence above)

Explanations behind this delay (TB reflections)

  • Not clearly defined request from the architects (like the one about the ‘type of contract’). TB has the impression that they are not aware enough that we are not professionals. In the previous cohousings they did, they worked with people having experience in creating cohousings (mark) or working with professionals (architects,…), so less of a need to explain thing better/in detail

  • Linked to the above, and linked to how we work (sociacracy): it takes time to come to a decision (first TB meeting to discuss, prepare proposal, going back to architects for extra questions, reviewing the proposal, bringing it to a PM, extra questions that need to be checked with the architects,…). So far the architects always give us more or less 14 days to come back with an answer, where my feeling is that we at least (in the very optimal case) 1 month, and in worse case scenarios (holidays, not clear topics, sensitive subjects,…) it takes up to 2 Ă  3 months. TB also has the impression, because we are new at this, it takes longer for us to understand what is meant + we don’t know what questions are coming at us much in advance, meaning we cannot prepare beforehand.

  • myself/TB has maybe not clearly enough communicated about the deadlines requested by the architects

Action points / improvements

  • TB working closer with Mark, our coach

  • TB working towards a more detailed view of the coming phases + creating a vision on which decisions we will need to take and by what time

  • based on the previous sentence: TB more closely following up the planning

  • TB trying to prepare beforehand so we have a better understanding of the topic and thus better understanding of the questions comings

  • TB discussing with the architects: their view on the reason of the delay / communicating our requests to improve things / asking them what we can do to reverse the delay / checking if we are indeed slower in taking decisions in comparison to the other cohousings they’ve worked with

  • TB clearly communicating the deadlines that architects request

  • We, as a group, try to take faster decisions.

Any extra feedback welcome, or maybe worthwhile to discuss in a PM ?

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Definitely. This is crisis meeting material.