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What are Best Practice Workshops?

A short series of practical workshops at the outset of a project designed to:

• foster a partnership-driven approach throughout

• improve communication and problem solving

• identify and implement savings and improvements

• recognise, reduce and manage risk factors

Everybody – including the client, who forms an integral part of the construction team – seeks to deliver the best possible outcome together.

Why invest in them? We firmly believe that, particularly for large or multiple contracts, Best Practice Workshops offer significant and tangible benefits for everybody involved:

• the client

• architects and designers

• the lead contractor

• major sub-contractors and suppliers

Even for smaller projects, where workshops may not be appropriate, our application of the principles that underpin Best Practice will still deliver benefits all round. 

What are the benefits? The key principle that underpin Best Practice is that a partnership-driven approach creates a win:win situation, with every party deriving benefits.  For the client, there are:

• Improvements to the design

• Real cost savings

• Quality assurance

• A better service

• Reduced risk

For architects, designers and contractors, it is a way to: pool experience and expertise; add value to the project and overcoming problems together; create better solutions; and to work in a non-adversarial environment as part of a team.

Who takes part? All the major players in the project: the client, architects, designers, main contractor, sub-contractors and suppliers. Typically one or two people from each who can take responsibility and make a difference to the project outcome.

Who runs them? We use an external facilitator to run the workshops.  This puts everyone involved in the project on an equal footing.  The facilitator has experience of the construction industry so understands the issues we all face.

How do you know it works? The short answer is ‘our experience’.

The longer answer is that partnering is not a new concept for Genus.  We have been applying workplace partnering ideas, originally used in the automotive and civil construction sectors, to design and build projects since 1992.

Dedicated Best Practice workshops are an application of that concept.  The process draws on the benefits seen in large civil projects and applies them to the normally adversarial environment of interior design and fit-out.

3 things that Best Practice Workshops definitely aren’t:

• Management-speak or psycho-babble (we don’t go in for jargon or waffle)

• Meeting for meeting’s sake (you don’t have time to waste; neither do we)

• Something to take lightly (the process involves partnership and trust)

Contact us  To find out how your project can benefit from our Best Practice approach

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